The Problem with Higher Education - An Unfortunate Email | Hacker News Reader

The Problem with Higher Education - An Unfortunate Email

selfcommit.com

42 pointsSelfcommit47 comments

The reason why you get this kind of behavior from advanced degree programs is (you probably guessed it) rankings.

When "acceptance rate" is one of the factors in your ability to inch up those of so precious rankings, marketing yourself to applicants in this fashion suddenly makes sense. Sure, you'd like the best, most qualified applicants to matriculate. But more immediately, you have a need to inflate the number of applicants to your school, keep the number of seats constant, and make your program look "more competitive" to get into.

IMO this kind of short cutting may work in the short term, but erodes the quality of the student body in the long run.

Whenever you see "has been investing heavily in their marketing efforts" from a graduate program, I take it as a warning sign that something might be cookin' in the kitchen.

Right, the incentive is to reject the highest possible number of applicants. The system is built around reducing friction for applying while rejecting almost all of those people as cheaply and easily as possible.

I wouldn't be surprised if some schools create entire "pre-disqualified" marketing funnels specifically designed to automatically reject everyone.

>I wouldn't be surprised if some schools create entire "pre-disqualified" marketing funnels specifically designed to automatically reject everyone.

That thought really just rocked my world. It's just crazy enough to be true.

Why else would they turn away a paying customer?

>"reducing friction for applying"

Awesome phrase. Completely agree.

In fact I personally know of graduate programs that have reduced their recommendation letter and essay requirements for this reason!

I have attended more than a dozen Colleges and Universities. I have a degree from none.

I had a ground floor corner window office at Microsoft. (those who know, know what that means)

I was told by Google if I took a job with them I would have to "finish" my studies with in 2 years of taking the job.

I was on the standards committee for h.264, VC1, HD-DVD, and Bluray. Today I build some of the most advanced Natural Language Processing systems on the planet.

What is wrong with higher education is the belief that it is necessary to do well. There are definitely fields where I want the person to have earned a Doctorate. (I would like my Brain Surgeon to have at least one if not two) But over all I find that the person with the discipline to find out what they need to know through seeking someone who can teach them, or through reading, or through taking a gig that will train them is far more impressive than attending a school. Especially for IT.

>I was told by Google if I took a job with them I would have to "finish" my studies with in 2 years of taking the job.

Why? What would happen if you didn't? Would they fire you? It seems very odd that Google would value an unnecessary degree over the actual experience that was why they were interested in you in the first place.

Parent doesn't have any degree and the minimal qualification for almost all Google's software engineering is a bachelor. I am sure some people are exceptions.... like the most brilliant people you find probably just too famous to deal with a degree. I guess they just want to ensure most of the people at Google (except the reallly really really top famous talents one) are at least on the same page? I guess? And it might be easier to calculate salary as well. I am not saying parent is not smart - just referencing what is listed on the career page.

Yes. The particular position was related to Video Compression. There are maybe 10 people in the whole world at my level in that space. We each have slightly different skill sets, so I will say "same" level. There are probably 50 in the world that are comparable in that they have enough working knowledge to know where to look something up to do 90% of what the top 10 can do.

Most of those have a PhD but in the top 10, myself and one other have no degree, 2 have art degrees (film stuff).

In the top 50 few have masters, 2 don't even have highschool diplomas.

>There are maybe 10 people in the whole world at my level in that space.

This is highly unlikely. It's more like 10 people that you know of. Less than 1/3 of the world speaks English. Some advanced video firm in China that has no interest in participating in US standards bodies could very easily have more people with your skills.

If you are trying to build something that is compliant with the various standards, the best people are the people who wrote the standards. There are about 10 of us who have been on enough of the standards bodies that we know all the ambiguities and how they are meant to be interpreted. There is no guy standing around in China who was spying on those meetings and therefore knows more about them than we do.

And many of the people on that list are not English speakers. Math is the primary language.

Do you know what Chinese for discrete cosine transform is? Discrete cosine transform. Hebrew for Deinterlace? Deinterlace.

Yes, Basically it was a condition of my employment. They also offered me much less than any other company in the Valley would have. I didn't take it.

There are a few companies that put a lot of weight on degrees, and some that even restrict to specific degrees. Google often won't let certain positions go to people who aren't CompSci.

And there are a few places in the Valley where if you aren't a Stanford, MIT, or Ivy League grad you won't get an interview.

>And there are a few places in the Valley where if you aren't a Stanford, MIT, or Ivy League grad you won't get an interview.

That's a good sign to stay away from them anyway. It means they lack the ability to even evaluate if someone has skills.

Agreed -- the fallacy pushed out into society that higher education is the only path to success is absolutely absurd.

Even moderate domain expertise in most fields will trump the copious amount of useless information floating around in textbooks today.

Traditional academia has already begun to erode over the past few years, but I'll be happy when society finally wakes up and recognizes that empty credentials shouldn't always serve as the absolute indication of future success or achievements.

One of the reasons I decided not to pursue a master's degree is their ridiculous over-reliance on undergraduate GPA scores.

I was kind of a dumbass in college. I didn't take anything outside of my major seriously - I merely took them to fulfill the so-called "general education requirements." As a result, my GPA suffered.

More than half a decade later, those mistakes are basically ensuring that I can never get into a top-tier master's program, regardless of my GRE/GMAT scores or letters of recommendation.

Sigh. Oh well.

> those mistakes are basically ensuring that I can never get into a top-tier master's program

Take courses at a local community college or state university to bring up your GPA and demonstrate that you now do take things seriously. It works.

I agree with you that most schools suggest this, and it seems to be effective on improving acceptance (From what I've read).

I have exceptional difficulty dedicating a significant amount of my time to highschool level work (My experience is that the community college classes are often Busy/foolish work - I could make an entire new post on the CC prof that scored me negatively for correcting the java code on the questions from his test generator.)

Interesting. I am part of the board of admission at my local university in Germany. We don't even see the undergraduate grades of applicants for the masters program. Furthermore, if an applicant shows a significant improvement from his first semester to his last semester, we typically see this very positively--that studend grew with his studies.

Do you have a Computer Science program?

Nope, it's engineering only (though German engineering, which is more hands-on and less business than American engineering).

It sounds like universities are adopting the same kind of dysfunctional behavior that lots of companies are using to recruit employees: automated application systems with inscrutable criteria that reject qualified applicants without any human involvement, followed up by spamming previously-rejected applicants (in the case of job-seekers, via LinkedIn).

Now, just wait for the inevitable whining: "It's sooooo hard to find qualified grad students in the U.S., so we need the government to increase the number of student visas."

If universities or companies are seriously trying to recruit qualified applicants, there should be a human being at the other end, not a mindless piece of software.

Most universities aren't having much trouble finding qualified applicants. Instead, they're having trouble finding enough funding to expand their programs to meet the demand, especially in public universities.

However, it could be assumed that a previously-rejected applicant may have done any number of things to improve their qualifications in the 3-12 months between application periods. Most universities will have some advisors that will be able to tell you any number of things you can do in a relatively short period of time to improve your chances of being accepted, such as re-taking exams or specific classes. In other cases, related programs may have more openings (or fewer applicants), improving your chances of getting into those programs.

Sometimes just getting to know the people involved in the program (faculty and advising staff) can improve your chances, as being able to recall a face that goes with the name on the page can be the deciding factor between two similarly-qualified candidates. At the very least, it shows an active interest in the program, as opposed to someone that sent out applications to X, Y, and Z universities (after all, how many of the accepted students actually enroll is important, too).

Hah, it would be interesting if Cassey replies. It would be more effective to write them a letter and post it to them. No doubt 99% of the replys to the email are "no such address" or "user email inbox is full" or something equally un-germane to the process of recruiting. As a system administrator you could write to the President of the University and explain to them how Cassey appears to be wasting college resources with an ineffective spamming campaign but mention that if you were a student there, pursuing your Masters degree, you would also be available on a work study basis to help Drexel develop a much more accurate and useful student recruitment tool, this would greatly enhance the value to Drexel of having you be part of their program.

I agree - I'm not holding my breath. I replied to the general email, and would love if this post found it's way back to someone in the admissions office.

Cassey isn't wasting resources. Schools want a high rejection/acceptance ratio. It's in their best interest to recruit applicants regardless of their abilities/background since they will just reject them anyway.

How is that not wasting resources?

Admissions people are usually employed full time. Once they have enough students, they might as well boost the rejection rate of the school (subsequently boosting the school's ratings).

Are you making the argument that they seem more "selective" if they only accept 3% of applicants, and they achieve that number by soliciting enough unqualified people to make the numbers work based on how many they have accepted?

Doesn't seem to reflect a very high standard if true. Of course I don't give a lot of weight to acceptance rates as a percentage of total applicants.

There are a series of serious and growing issues with higher education and the pursuit of a career as an academic and this is clearly a symptom. As I see it, there are three separate goals: personal growth of students (education for it's own sake), providing a quality workforce, and expanding the reach of human knowledge and achievement. Through a series of well-intentioned but misguided attitudes, the whole system is getting progressively more broken and serving it's goals (or my version of them) less and less.

It's a hard problem to solve, and we see the beginnings of solutions, but we all have a long way to go and the future doesn't necessarily look all that promising without some pretty significant changes in our culture.

It seems as though Drexel is acting somewhat foolishly (at minimum, just putting their foot in their mouth), but it's not clear that this particular incident relates to higher education in general.

True enough - I suppose my search for an interesting program (That I could 'qualify' for) has soured me towards Higher Education in general.

Needless to say, their email was not well received...

I wish I could find a legitimate school, with an online program, that would accept me.

Just out of curiosity, did you apply to Georgia Tech's Online Masters when it opened a few months ago?

It will be interesting to see how they treat candidates with primarily industry credentials/experience, given that an online degree may attract a higher proportion of these prospective students (industry credentials suggest a full time job, which may lead to a preference for an online degree, but I'm obviously speculating).

Honestly, I was really looking forward to that program. I started the process, but was deterred by: 1) The need for official Transcripts (I attended 3 undergrad schools - 2 of which require in person forms/snail mail and a 2-4 week waiting period) I have unsealed formal transcripts I can send in - I don't understand why those arn't enough for a conditional acceptance.(based on verification)

2) The need for letters of recommendation (As I mentioned in the post - I've recently asked my employer/co-workers for letters twice, I hate to impose that again)

It might be worth revisiting GT's program.

_that_ is definitely an issue with higher education. The qualities schools look for are generally difficult to accurately represent and quantify in standardized ways (e.g., GRE, GPA). I've been devoting some brain cycles to this. The best idea I've come up with so far is a "draft" style selection, where applicants come together for a week to demonstrate their ability in a given field and schools then make offers based on that. This might only be tractable in a smaller field though.

Update: Not sure if someone actually read my reply, but I just received this from Drexel, unprompted.

http://i.imgur.com/JP8c0i6.png

I recently attended a lecture by our college of engineering graduate admissions recruitment officer. He basically wants a 3.7 GPA or higher and he says he'd get it were it not for a couple if departments who insist on bringing in the occasional person with a low GPA. Sounds like he's going to strong arm them in the next few years into not accepting those kids. They do all sorts of recruiting tricks to target the smartest kids to come to graduate school.

It's all about those ranking metrics, never mind all the successful people that for whatever reason either didn't graduate or did poorly in undergrad. Doesn't matter if you went out and ended up being successful.

Two major things combine to increase those entrance GPAs: 1) As the number of applicants increases, the number of openings increases at a much slower rate (if at all), and GPA is a simple starting point for quickly sorting out a large number of applications.

2) When departments/colleges allow exceptions with lower GPAs, the students are rarely as successful in the program as those that met the minimum GPA requirement. This usually leads to fewer exceptions being granted.

No matter how successful we are in professional life, graduate school is still school. The two are very rarely as strongly linked as some would like, and the best measurement admissions staff have for how well you will do in school is how well you have performed in school previously.

In my case, it doesn't even matter that the university finds me qualified enough to work for them in my field of study. My grades are a major problem for admission, and I'm better off improving them elsewhere, first.

i graduated with a 2.01 GPA from my undergrad program nearly 10 years ago (a top 20 school, basically the best public STEM school in the nation). since then i've worked extensively for big name-brand companies and have cofounded a multi-million dollar services firm which i now run.

after doing some very cursory research into MBA programs, i decided that it probably wasn't worth the effort and money required to even apply, given my academic achievement. a non-starter, so to speak.

the only answers i could wrangle out of admissions folks and people who had gotten their mba were bogus platitudes and non-responses, i couldn't get a god damn straight answer out of ANYONE whether or not it would be a waste of time to pursue admissions with a C average in undergrad, even given my professional track record. not a single person said "yes. it is possible that an elite school will accept you with a C undergrad gpa." even worse, nobody said that i would be rejected outright. basically, nobody knew.

i got the distinct feeling that mba programs cast a wide net on applications and keep the secret sauce of admissions as closely guarded as possible.

therefore, i gave up on the process and have pretty much decided that i am done with school for life. it's not really feeling like much of a loss, to be honest, especially considering it would take me over 500k of lost earnings and tuition to go to a school anyway. i dunno if that's worth it.

My situation is very similar to yours.

(Although if I'd founded a multi-million dollar start-up I don't think I"d be interested in continuing school)

having an mba and getting some job that pays me $250k/year to do basically nothing would be a great plan B in case my company goes belly up.

running your own company makes working a job, any job, even the golden handcuffs elite jobs, look like a fucking cakewalk. no joke.

I'll bet - Sounds very exciting. Hopefully someday one of my own projects takes off.

I'm at a decent MBA program right now and from what I've gathered from the admissions process, I would conjecture that accepting you would "hurt their rankings" too much and thus they would reject you no matter how good you were technically.

IMHO MBA these days is just a pipeline for people to move up in their very rigid career tracks (professional services, just checking off a check box) or shift industries/functions. The focus is not on learning. I would honestly dissuade you from applying regardless of what your GPA was.

edit: If you're interested in hearing the gory details, shoot me a msg. Details are in profile :)

I've been an MBA program prof and seen what MBAs have learned and done.

There are some advantages to having an MBA; at best, these advantages are terrific. Sadly one of the best of the advantages is just meeting the other students -- something like the advantages of being in a good country club where know that everyone else has been carefully selected.

And you can learn some business basics in accounting, finance, organizational behavior, business law, statistics, and maybe something about information technology, production, management, etc.

Mostly the universities run MBA programs to get the tuition revenue and, later, the alumni financial gifts. But mostly a university wants to do 'research', and the MBA program is a bit far from that. Mostly the rest of the university wants to turn out college profs which, however, usually don't make much money so aren't good bets for gifts. So, a university can swallow its pride and run an MBA program.

For some students, an MBA can get them on a good start in business. Alas, for someone already successful on business, an MBA is highly questionable. E.g., for someone already successful, they no doubt meet lots of people, even ones better to know than other MBA students. For accounting, after a few tax seasons and discussions with a tax lawyer, likely know a lot about accounting. For business law, working with a lawyer a little will likely teach you all you need to know about that. Really the main thing you need to know is your business that you are making successful.

So many people see these points that a university might have an 'executive MBA' program where they can get successful business people through in less time with less bother.

There may be some direction for you in the future where something in an MBA program would really help you, even be crucial, but this is not clear. Or, can look at a lot of successful people in business, e.g., Gates, Page, Brin, without an MBA. Or, if they want an MBA, then they will hire one.

My guess would be that an MBA program would be a waste of time, money, and effort for you and also possibly a severe shot in the gut of your career. Indeed, many profs will feel guilty that somehow the university had gotten you to leave your successful career, and likely hurt it, for the university's questionable material.

If you can find an 'executive MBA' program at a good school and really have the spare time, then maybe okay. Otherwise I'd advise you to be very careful and actually go for an MBA only if you could find some astoundingly good, special, and unique reason. Stay with your bird in the hand and be less interested in the two birds in the bush.

If only this were the singular problem with higher education.

I have a problem with the phrase the problem, as if there were a single, uniquely identifiable problem. Example sentence: The problem with 'the problem' is that there is no canonical, singular, uniquely identifiable problem.

This was on Hacker News a while back, maybe give him a try? http://jeffhuang.com/rethinking_the_phd_application.html

the problem with higher education is that with all it's great rhetoric it was made for the greatest common denominator. it's not made to surface ones capabilities and talents, it's rather designed to network and create as many mediocre worker bees as possible.

on an unrelated sidenote, i'm looking for professions or studies where the biggest gap exists between what is taught and is actually used or needed during actual work or practice. if anyone has suggestions, please comment or email me.

Somehow I got on an email list which low-tier universities use to spam potential students like this. He's right, they really are desperate for fresh blood.

> At a point in history when self tutoring often provides more than the average Graduate course, it blows my mind how difficult it can be to get into a Masters program.

Things to consider:

(1) Take the GRE tests for both aptitude and your speciality. Really good scores will be tough to ignore. And if your speciality is in a STEM field, then you get to f'get about all the English literature, history, etc. and your grades in those nonsense subjects.

(2) Emphasize points of success in your career. Why? Because you will look like you are taking your career seriously and might later in your career be able to make significant financial contributions to the university. Yes, Virginia, universities like rich students!

(3) As in the quote, do some independent study. Then in your application, describe the significant books and journal papers you have studied. You may be doing enough independent study now just for your career.

(4) Get the description of the Ph.D. qualifying exams. Mostly the coursework for a Master's and for preparation for the exams are similar. So, just study the darned material on your own, apply to the Ph.D. program, and offer to sit for the qualifying exams before being admitted. Offer tough to turn down.

Note, at one time the Web site of the Princeton math department just flatly stated that the graduate courses were introductions to research by experts, no courses were given for preparation for the qualifying exams, and students were expected to prepare for these exams on their own. So, do it, on your own, without going to campus.

That you successfully prepared for the qualifying exams on your own is big time impressive and a big point for any graduate program because one of the basic necessary conditions for success in a Ph.D. program is good ability at independent study. So, showing such ability can make a graduate department really happy, i.e., no longer afraid they will have to write your dissertation for you.

(5) Find a problem, maybe at work, that needs solving and get a good solution, both in theory and in practice. Write a paper and submit it for publication in a peer-reviewed journal or a conference.

If are unsure on just how to do this, then find a friendly Ph.D., researcher, professor to give you the 101 Big Secrets They Never Taught You in College on How Get a Paper Published or some such.

Pretend to look for a recommendation of a suitable journal and write to a suitable professor in the program you want to enter and send a copy of your paper. So, prime the pump via a backdoor. If he likes your paper, then it can be that all the rest goes quickly. E.g., once I applied to a graduate program at Cornell and got turned down. It happened that there was a prof there I wanted to talk to about a problem I had at work and flew up. We took a campus tour, and back at his office I showed him my problem and my progress on it. Suddenly I got another letter from the department admissions saying I was in. I didn't go. Via such things I also got into Brown, Princeton, and Hopkins. I went to Hopkins.

(6) Typically a STEM department has a seminar series. These can be painful as a toothache because you may be listening to stuff you don't have the prerequisites to understand. But they can also be good because they can, on a good day, give you some great help in picking a research problem.

Well, typically such seminars are open to the public, and maybe also the department tea before the seminar. So, crash the party and meet some of the profs and/or graduate students. From the students, get some of the 'low down' -- they can be quite helpful to a fellow suffering human.

You need to know that graduate school, really, is not much about learning. Instead, the three most important aspects are research, research, and research, as in "new, correct, and significant" and/or "worthy of publication". For a prof, what's important is research good enough to get a good grant, e.g., from the NSF. E.g., that Princeton Web site didn't even want to teach basic material and only wanted students to get involved in research; the assumption is that hard part was doing the research, not finding, reading, and understanding it in the library.

As a graduate student, do some work that is nice and clearly publishable, especially if you publish it, and can suddenly find that life in the department gets much nicer.

Finally, my Secret Guide to Research Success in STEM Fields is, "be wise, mathematize". Basically get an ugrad math major with emphasis on topics that can be important in the other STEM fields and then make the research basically some new theorems and proofs. It's worked for me.

For the admissions office, try to f'get about them! They just can't be the brightest bulbs on the tree.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com