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Comment by snowmaker | Hacker News Reader

We might, and I'm sure you're right that there are many great founders not applying to do YC because they don't want to move here.

But I think it would be a better analogy to compare YC to a university, rather than to a company. It's true that many companies operate remotely very effectively. But essentially zero universities have stayed remote since the early days of the pandemic.

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There are plenty of remote schools, always have been, they’re just lower quality and solve a different problem than traditional in person university

I agree, to add on - I think places like Open University are absolutely fantastic for folks who want to learn but have other "real world" responsibilities. The last time I heard a out OU was when a new parent was happy having being able to get a degree from there (while I think studying at night).

In Canada a lot of well-known schools are shifting much of their delivery to online. They're limited by the government how much they can charge/increase while international student visas have been cut dramatically. It's an existentially moment for international-focused schools, but even the best traditional universities are hurting.

The bigger problem for Canadian universities is that they have never had their funding restored to pre-austerity levels by the various levels of government.

“By the early 1990s, combined federal, provincial, and local spending had peaked at more than 50% of GDP.”

You mean those spending levels?

>> But essentially zero universities have stayed remote since the early days of the pandemic.

This is not true. I know several people at different institutions - decent schools - that have most or (in one case) all of their courses (at Queens) via remote delivery.

Because a university's ability to charge the prices they do depends on people being on location. Nobody is going to pay 50k or 100k for an online course.

Plus if rich fucks can't buy a building to put their name on that kids will walk through they won't donate money.

You make it sound like it's a decision based on school administrators putting learning first.

So much emotion! I graduated from a fairly shitty (and getting worse) state school and I started my own company. Which failed!

Then I started another. Horrible failure! Then another. And another!

And now I own a successful company built off all my previous learnings and failures. The “rich fucks” work for me now!

I like how other than being triggered by the word rich fucks your reply has nothing to do with universities being remote or in person, just you bragging about personal accomplishments? I mean congratulations, but universities are still going to charge more by requiring you to go on location.

I was triggered because people rationalize why they fail because of “other people”. But the reason you fail has nothing to do with universities

Universities are still a scam though, that was the point of the original comment

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