Ask HN: Why hasn't college changed in the past 100 years?

Ah, this is a most amusing topic. Here goes my perspective:

In my university's electrical & computer engineering classes, the teachers no longer use slides - they did for a while and for various reasons switched back to chalkboards. I can see why - the ones that do tend to go through the slides way too fast, because they have nothing to slow them down. It promotes assuming the students know more than they actually do know too, and the danger of skipping slides.

On note taking: I just got a surface pro and aside from the handwriting being a little sloppy, I wish I started using a tablet PC years ago. As a friend that has done so put it, he has his notes archived from every class he's ever taken in folders on his computer. I only keep about a year of old notes/materials because it takes a ton of space when you do it on paper!

On ebooks: I like them if they're cheap/free. Frankly I'd rather the teachers just use public domain books or class wikis instead of assigning stuff out of a $150 textbook that nobody ever needs to read otherwise.

On typing: I grew up typing, we didn't have a computer at home until I was 9 (and I'm in my 20s), but we always had a typewriter, and when I saw my mom using it, I learned how to use it too! By the time I was around 10, I could already touch type without looking at the keyboard, and that fact randomly dawned on me one day lol. Right now I can type around 140wpm max.

On microsoft word: lol, my first computer was a 286 that was as old as I was. It ran WordPerfect and Lotus123. Yes, I used it to write a report, and yes I printed it on a giant dot matrix printer. It was awesome!

As for primary school: It has by a lot. The standardized testing and ACT/SAT stuff, especially in high schools, has made the top end crazy advanced. Students are under pressure to graduate having taken calculus, chemistry, physics - all things that for the most part weren't even options in my high school. If you so much as get a B, you won't have much luck getting into any of the good state universities here.

That's pretty scary, because as a teenager there's this overwhelming tendency to screw up.

Listen, I'm not saying your systems don't work. I'm just saying they are still far from perfect. And still so close to their predecessors.

People writing textbooks these day understand the people will read them on computers and iPads. But they don't change anything. We read ebooks, but they are EXACTLY the same. Sure, they work. But why don't they work better.

Like I said, why don't they incorporate videos? Customized problem sets based on what I don't understand?

Because textbooks are an effective monopoly and the publishers put in the minimal amount of work to keep students paying $150 for introductory textbooks.

Also, functionally an eTextbook with a clickable link to a video is the same as an eTextbook with a built in video.

Because it works, is why. Every one of the devices you cite was created by people who were educated in this way.

What happened to if it ain't broke don't fix it? Why are pizzas still made in wood fired ovens when you could just use a microwave?

>Because it works, is why.

"It works." Is a low bar. We should strive for higher. Especially at some of the best schools in the country and the world.

Also, didn't the typewriter work? Didn't the flip phone "work"? Lots of products and processes work. But people still strive to make them better, easier and more delightful. But, for some reason, not in education.

But what exactly is "better and more delightful" that's possible now, relevant to education and wasn't 12 years ago? You're moaning about the fact that pen and paper has been around for a few millenia without actually suggesting why it's bad, still less what would be better.

A decade ago I did a liberal arts degree and managed to get through first year without entering the library because the online papers were more than enough, and had a professor who once cancelled a lecture because the projector was broken and she believed chalk was a health hazard. On the whole, I'd have preferred it if she'd carried on with her examples using the technology of the generation earlier. And you know what, sometimes dragging oneself away from a backlit screen to read an actual book, complete with the previous owner's annotations, was a good thing in later years too.

My parents went a generation earlier without the repository of information that exceeded the size of the library sitting on my desk in my study bedroom, which I also used to run statistical tests that would probably have been beyond the capabilities of the university's then computer, had the econometric tests being run been invented at that point. So things were actually pretty different then.

We didn't watch much video for the same reason my parents didn't watch much video: it's a way of glossing over the analytical concepts we were supposed to be studying. We didn't play around on interactive apps even though we all had laptop computers with Flash downloaded, for the same reason, no amount of touch-screen tabletry changes that.

I am moaning about pen and paper. And perhaps the biggest problem with my post is that I have no constructive suggestion.

But I am most certainly not saying that the current technology is better: far from it. I agree that writing on black boards is better than powerpoint. I agree that books are better than ebooks. I agree that video isn't necessarily the answer, and that it won't necessarily help the younger generations learn more efficiently.

I'm purely commenting on the fact that nothing is better than pen and paper and a chalkboard (and Microsoft word for writing long peppers). I am saying that I've tried tons of new technologies in education and they all suck. And I'm asking why this is the case. Can we truly not do any better?

Writing on paper does have problems: writing by hand isn't fast. Paper is not backed up. Paper is not easy to share or edit. Paper is not searchable. Notebooks require physical space. Some cannot read others handwriting. These aren't major problems. But they are problems.

Most of the commenters focus on the technology of learning. Perhaps that's all that was intended, but there's more:

1) The student audience is staggeringly different. Back then, it was well-to-do Protestant white males. Now, it's far more representative of the population statistics.

2) The subject matter has radically altered. 100 years ago, quantum physics was nonexistent, cosmology was in its infancy, biology was "stamp collecting" (quoting a physicist) and computers were nice young ladies the folks in (1) tried to get close to. Whole departments, good or bad, have appeared (and disappeared) over this time.

3) The range and number of "advanced degrees" have greatly increased. Partially due to the huge increase in the number of colleges and universities but also for the creation and/or expansion of whole industries: weapons, pharma, electronics, ... What was the crown jewels of individual countries now shape the economics of the world.

4) Computational capabilities is infinitely higher than 100 years ago. This permits computational modeling, medical and/or biological processes (PCR, gene/chip screening, etc) or even economic or hobby activity that would seem diabolic to our predecessors.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Some things aren't worth changing - some of the pedagogic methods are thousands of years old. As others have said, why change what isn't broken, and why should we adopt "technology" that merely distracts from the problems at hand? Small classes, driven by discussion rather than lecture, are still amazingly effective in transmitting knowledge and stimulating thought.

Edit: Oh, and regarding physics... There's been a staggering lot of it in the last 100 years, both good and bad. Sorta altered the world, it has.

> But nothing has changed in schools in the past dozen years.

Education is the most conservative of conservative institutions. It will only change when it must, for example when people vote with their feet and educate themselves on subjects not provided by, and using methods not recognized by, present schools. Then you'll see change.

Education is also one of those places people hate spending money on - kinda like daycare and babysitting. My school district was so poor at one point that the school I was in got condemned by the Fire Marshall and they moved us out into portable classroom buildings. Remodeling all of the schools that had been built in the 50s and seldom fixed drove the district into bankruptcy, and was seen as this huge scandalous thing when it was the only responsible thing to do.

Of course you're not going to see change if people don't want to spend money on it - and usually when they do it's pretty demanding (see the standardized test stuff).

In a lot of areas population change is a complicating factor. The elementary school I attended has since closed, along with 2 or 3 others in the district. High school graduating classes are also substantially smaller. That is a huge hit to the budget.

An area with a growing population would have problems too, having to find money to construct space that may or may not be needed in 10 years.

I agree with your point. Institutions have been slow. And will be slow. I'm not complaining about this...

I'm more complaining about why nothing has been done outside of institutions.

Why haven't private companies created technology and services to serve students? For example: Why does half my class take notes with a pen and paper, and the other half use Microsoft word? Shouldn't a private company find a better way?

Pen and paper is fantastic. Phenomenally simple to use and reliable. So adaptive; you can make a mark literally anywhere on the paper, and make it any shape you can imagine. You can mix text and images with a breathtaking fluidity, with colour switching whenever you like. You can take the piece of paper and fold it, roll it, punch holes in it, spill things on it, it just keeps on going. The format hasn't changed for centuries, and won't change for centuries to come, essentially because it's near perfect - people will be able to view marking on paper, made today, for centuries to come.

You can mix and match your pens and paper without any fear of interface problems - a pen bought a century ago in Germany will work with paper made next year in Argentina. You can even pick up a piece of paper that a different pen was using, and carry on adding to the content with whatever pen or pencil you've got in your pocket. It's a complete, self-contained information display system. I could hand a piece of paper I wrote on to someone from the other side of the world and they'd be able to use it.

Anything looking to replace pen and paper is going to have to be seriously amazing. I'm genuinely astounded that people choose to make notes with Microsoft word instead. The only advantage I can see to that is that you can change what you wrote later (if that is an advantage).

I hear you. I too love paper. I too am astounded by the versatility, simplicity and beauty of it. It will not be replaced for my personal notebooks. And yes, something to replace pen and paper would have to be astounding.

But I still have problems with pen and paper.

I like the ability to add to notes and change them. Professors sometimes meander about in lectures, and I sometimes want to reorganize the ideas they present.

You cannot search efficiently with paper. I have terrible hand writing on paper. Papers wrinkle and drive me crazy. I write slower than I type - and it's assumed (by professors) that people are typing so they teach at that speed (ppt doesn't help). Paper cannot be as easily shared as documents.

With notes (this worked for me, and I imagine it would work for others):

Treat the notes you took in class as a rough draft. After class, revise your notes into a final draft. This way you can reorganize the ideas, simplify example problems, and fix any spacing issues or spelling mistakes. This helps you learn the material since you are working with it while it is still fresh in your mind, and makes studying much easier in the future.

> Shouldn't a private company find a better way?

But they do. When I went to apply for work on the NASA Space Shuttle in the early 1970s, I entered a room filled with college degree holders, and I didn't have one. But I had something better -- the prior night I had drawn up a circuit diagram showing how I intended to solve their technical problem. When the interviewer saw the diagram, he cleared his throat, rose from his chair, went into the other room and told the college degree holders that the position had been filled.

Things are even better now -- because of the speed of technical change, companies are more willing to consider life experience and other factors apart from formal education. I have a young friend who dropped out of high school and was almost instantly hired by Google, for an excellent reason -- he knows a lot about the kinds of things Google cares about.

My point is that the chasm between the real world and the classroom has never been greater, and students need to listen to many different voices, not just those of teachers.

I'd say this depends a lot on what field you are studdying. I don't believe many things have changed with libral arts and humanities because the fields overall are mostly static.

On the otherhand fields like computer science, mathmatics and engineering have chnaged immensly. These sorts of programs are preparing you for applied problem solving using (hopefully) industry leading technology. In order to use these tools you still must know the basics and be able to validate your answers with simple hand calculations. So those courses are delivered in a more traditional format. But once new tools are introduced to leverage that foundational knowledge the learning is nowhere near similar to what it was even 10 years ago!

You're right. I should also say that I go to a liberal arts college.

And you're right - Comp sci classes (and hard skill studies) are more modern.

But even so, in my CS 101 class, I read from two textbooks every night. And a third of each class was spent on powerpoint. Slightly ironic.

CS 101 is one of those foundational classes, learn the basics using nothing fancy or flashy and you will come away with an understanding thats much deeper and more helpfull when working on projects in 300 and 400 level classes with the latest tools

>Last night I read paper books. Today a professor talk about the books and used a blackboard. I took notes on paper with a pen. Why has nothing changed since my dad went to school.

Wait, what? My wife is a professor. In some of her classes, a significant amount of student work is done online. Students have the option of buying an electronic textbook. There are required online discussion sessions, online exams, and interactive online supplemental materials (videos, self-guided exercises, etc). I wasn't in college 12 years ago, so I guess I can't be sure - but I would be surprised if these things were commonplace in 2002.

I'm not sure I necessarily agree with the idea that these tools need to change. They seem to work well, and there's a huge variety of tools to choose from so everyone can choose the one that works best for them.

I would, however, argue that colleges need to shift from focusing on broadcasting information to students to something else. Information is easily accessible, and making somebody commit things to memory when it's a Google search away seems silly. I have things committed to memory because I need them and use them regularly, and not because somebody told me to learn it.

Education is a business and college administrators want to spend as little as possible. Radically changing things and incorporating new technologies costs money.

There are plenty of students willing to fork over cash for the product as it is now, and there is no competition to drive innovation. Prestige requirements, accreditation requirements, etc. lock small schools and newcomers out of the education market. It's also pretty obvious that the top universities and their administrators are connected to each other and act together to hold a monopoly on the business.

Colleges aren't the only ones at fault. They are part of the equation.

I'm also saying that the tools available to the student are weak or outdated.

It depends on the school and the professor.

The most progressive schools put their lectures online, and use class time for interactive q&a and group projects.

Marlboro College in Vermont has an innovative approach to university studies