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Comment by recursivedoubts | Hacker News Reader

I think that the universities have an opportunity here to be the places where manual code is written so that juniors can gain the coding expertise necessary to become effective with AI.

Many universities are not set up to take advantage of this opportunity because they lean heavily into theory and look down on coding, but some departments will make the pivot well. I hope that ours (Montana State) is one of them.

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The argument for universities to be a place to learn to think critically and not learn specific skills is an even stronger value prop in an era where useful skills likely change rapidly.

There needs to be a realization of how important communication skills are to develop and possess. The act of disagreement has skill levels that do not trigger emotional responses, and cause cross understanding to occur. Learning how to convey understanding and gain understanding from others becomes more and more important in a landscape of rapid change. Which we are collectively terrible at, with most companies being miscommunication circuses, with all the stress that generates, needlessly.

The problem is that professors say "learn to think critically", then actually just want the students to learn to sound like them, and agree with them. Actual critical thought has been on the decline for some time.

This is especially true in the humanities and the social sciences. Where truth is hard to ascertain, and therefore it is easier to substitute political correctness for critical thought.

Some will probably dismiss your comment as partisan but it is very hard to (honestly) argue that this isn’t the case. “Think critically…” but only about the cliché punching bags of academia: capitalism, Western culture, American foreign policy, The Patriarchy, etc. I didn’t witness any college classes that encouraged us to think critically about socialism, or think critically about Islam, or think critically about non-Western countries’ foreign policy aims, or think critically about third-wave feminism’s impact on society. Instead, even questioning any of those sacred cows usually brands you as “far right” and professors sometimes even get fired for making others “feel unsafe” if they even try.

Note: you can still be an avowed and serious leftist and have my respect if you allow your ideas to be questioned, hold yourself to a standard of proof, and tolerate dissent. What I’m criticizing is the way especially in universities, people jump right to “You’re a Nazi/fascist and the only acceptable response is to shut you down and eject you from the community” if someone doesn’t embrace all the same political dogma as you.

Thank you for getting it.

The essay https://www.paulgraham.com/say.html captures the problem perfectly. I think that Paul Graham was completely correct when he said:

"I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them."

Those on the left have been trying to advance their power through creating new taboos that cement their position. But they've misjudged. As a result Trump, by simply speaking to the resulting pain points, has been put on a potential course towards dictator. (Note, he doesn't have to do anything about it - just name the pain.) Will he succeed? Probably not, but he's certainly making a try of it.

Very few on the left are willing to engage in the self-reflection to realize how they have contributed to Trump's rise. It should be obvious - if Trump is an existential threat then you should reach out to people you dislike, who dislike Trump more than you. But no. We've been doubling down on ideological purity. And the horrible result is in the (currently partially demolished) White House.

"Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle"

100% agree. But this seems to be standard now for most political dialog. Either one group will call you a racist or the other group will call you communist. Or maybe antisemitic.

so universities become trade schools? one concern is where does one get theoretical knowledge required for e.g. going to graduate school and then doing research to push the state of the art. that's one of the reasons universities emphasize theory: it's seen as the first step on the academic ladder, not as a trade school

The majority of undergrads are at university because a degree is the qualification they need to get a job. They are not there as the first step on a path to grad school and a Ph.D. and a lifetime of deep expertise, teaching, and learning in a field that they are passionate about.

So, yes. Universities are trade schools for the white collar world. Have been for quite a while. Never mind that most companies could spend 2-4 years running high school grads through an apprenticeship type of program and probably come out with better results.

Universities became trade schools as soon as the first company listed "college degree" as a job requirement.

I hear you, there certainly is a huge value in understanding the theory, including in computer science. I don’t mean to put words in someone else’s mouth, but I think perhaps in the future, writing code yourself, unaided by any AI, may be thought of as more of an exercise in theory than a practical skill in its own right. Kind of like doing math “by hand” is absolutely key for someone in college to study math, whereas after graduation in a job outside of academia, the same person would have every reason to avail themselves of software that automates the same thing.

First off I don’t like the tone most people use when they say “trade school”. Most cs students go to a job out of school. Of the roughly 10% who go on to grad school, 10% will pursue a PhD.

So 99/100 students in undergrad will not be pursuing higher computer science. We should acknowledge that and the new circumstances where writing code by hand is harder to do in corporations who use AI.

Universities can provide a place to do so.

I also happen to think that writing a lot of code is an excellent way to prepare yourself for computer science theory.

“education” is not the same as “job training”. there’s more to education than learning skills you can apply at your job. it’s learning how to think critically, study literature, problem solve, collaborate with others, etc. etc. skills that I believe all humans could benefit from, irrespective of their job. yes, trade schools are more immediately valuable in the strict capitalist sense, but I wish we lived in a world where everyone could spare a few years to grow as a person, not immediately start optimizing for salary. alas, could be wishful thinking

Learning to code is not job training. It is learning to think. Learning to code is a prerequisite for learning deeper computer science concepts.

As far as the liberal arts go I agree that it would be nice if people had time to study them. Unfortunately, the universities abandoned them long ago.

Good question! Maybe a scheme like in France: we generally separate engineering schools, which teach a mix of theory and knowledge, for getting a white collar hob; and the masters, which teach mostly pure theoretical learning, which leads to an academical career.

Both are at the same levels at +5 years after high-school, but they leads to different career paths.

That is a vanishingly small portion of undergraduates.

Residency programs, as in medicine. After completing your degree, you spend a few years working as a junior under formal supervision. The incentives are kind of bad but solvable.

If the underlying issue is that you need more skills to be worth hiring, it cannot be solved by shuffling the curriculum. The actual answer is more education and more training.

LLM are quite a good learning opportunity, mostly in classes where learning is sequential/needs building blocks, like mathematics, where if you miss a trimester, it's finished. Here it's like a free and immediately accessible private tutor. It would be great for computer sciences classes indeed.

I would have killed for access to an LLM during school. Not to do my homework (though that too, homework is an antipattern imo) but to fill my gaps at my own pace and level of patience. Just endlessly pestering the AI "ok, but why?" until I grokked it.

Agreed, but I can immediately see how painful it will be to monitor whether the work is actually done by the student.

At some point we will have to stop treating universities as tests to pass, and actually what they claim to be: places to learn. Ultimately it needs to be on the student to want to learn.

Obviously this would be easier if our entire school system before university wasn't seemingly designed too destroy every last ounce of a child's curiosity.

I wish you were not right. Every single positive experience with learning for me was only related to my school was incidental and more based on luck associated with the fact that I had access to at least two very curious minds that, unlike school, showed me actual use for, among other things, proportions. It feels highly unfair that your entire life can effectively boil down to whether you meet at least one person, who can make it relatable to you.

They don't know it yet but universities have a role to curate training data, so we can have trustable models.

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