I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own
blog.alyxandria.org
blog.alyxandria.org
It starts with colleges should be more than job training centers, then ends with trying to create an accreditation process to prove value to external entities (of which I assume employers are a big part?).
It mentions the high cost of education, then describes how his current options are lacking because the number of classes in each major is limited.
He talks about how administrators are unnecessary, then suggests a similarly labor intensive accreditation system that requires experts, committees and other logistics that requires significant manpower and time/energy.
There are many flaws with the educational system, of which convenience, rigor, equality, and cost are a few the OP mentions, however his solution doesn't seem to solve many of the challenges he mentions. I doubt that accreditation is a major cost to running a university - there are simply many other market forces (wanting facilities, a good football team, strong researchers that might not put teaching first) that causes the cost/benefit relationship to be the status quo. He finds it unconscionable that adjunct faculty don't make enough money, then hopes to solve it with a free market - where honestly the things he values might not be the things many others value. He wants rigor - then critiques current accreditation processes that largely does what he suggests.
Each of the major MOOCs already are trying to accredite/build reputation/be rigorous. What OP is essentially doing is describing the idea of Udacity, Coursera, etc without the technical backend, the users to attract such a marketplace, connections, support, or actually being able to do a MOOC.
Many of my peers didn't really have any idea why they were in college until maybe their third year. It wasn't until they had the benefit of having gone through such a program and looked back on it to appreciate what it was that it was and how it affected them.
My sister asked once why I considered college graduation a 'big deal' and not high school graduation. My response is that graduating from college is the first thing you can do where it's reasonably hard, takes a multi-year effort, and is completely optional. It is, for me, a signal that someone has decided to pursue something through to the end, and to do so with the full knowledge that not doing so is also a valid path. It is, for me, the kinds of things that adults do, and kids don't do.
Undergrad and then graduate school were a much bigger deal because it was up to me to complete them. I didn't have teachers or my parents or anything else making me finish, it was something I did on my own. They were also both interesting and challenging.
That's not entirely true - taking a job also falls into that category. Not saying that college isn't a valid choice, but 3 years of work at the same point can be an equally valid choice.
I was forced to drop out of college due to lack of money, but I would hardly consider what I have done to be less of an accomplishment. Over the last decade I have learned PHP, Perl, Javascript, Node, Python, CSS, HTML, various databases and now I am trying to transition into video game design and development which is what my plan has been for the last 15 years.
I disagree that college is the highest form of validation one can receive.
Edit: Grammer, spelling and this: forgot to mention that I have worked for several well known companies in a major US city now, one of them for 2.5 years, another for 5. I have also maintained a steady stream of side projects and clients.
It's also entirely possible to choose to go to college for several years rather than work - the decision to go to work at that point can be as as much an active (and optional) choice as going to college. No one is forcing you to do one or the other, or neither, at that point.
And even if you do have to work, you can choose to do the bare minimum to get by, or you can make the personal choice to push yourself.
But I do agree with you that many people are unsure why they are in college until they are able to reflect on it after the fact. I think that happens a lot in life where you learn about yourself by looking at prior events.
The one thing which benefited me the greatest when I came out of college is the ability to think critically. I was able to form my opinions, examine things in a scientific manner, and make conclusions based on research and a logical thinking process. Something I wasn't even close to handling when I was 18 years old - which goes to your point about teenagers taking time to find themselves. It took me at least 2 years before I actually realized the opportunity college gave me.
And yet, for all of the questionable classes and lackadaisical professors, I still came out with a much stronger set of tools to look at and examine the world around me and communicate those ideas in a coherent manner to my peers.
These are the kinds of tools you simply cannot put a price tag on.
I see this point-of-view a lot, and it is certainly the conventional wisdom. But, for a moment, let's abandon this belief and explore other perspectives.
What if college isn't a demonstration of tenacity or natural ability? Instead, what if education is just a game that everyone is forced to play at an early age, and what if advanced-degree seekers are those who have learned to enjoy playing the game? (Or, have been forced to play, because of economic reasons)
I certainly can buy that.
For instance, I know a lot of people with advanced degrees, and they generally fit into 3 buckets: 1) people who were expected to get an advanced degree because their parents had them, 2) people who enjoy playing games and winning external validation, 3) people who have an innate obsession with some aspect of knowledge. (BTW - I think the true scholars are category 3.)
What if people who win at education are just people who are naturally competitive, like being bounded by rules, are good at min-max game play, and who ultimately are driven by praise?
Certainly, those types of people would be excellent candidates for the corporation. But, are they also good candidates for being citizens or Humanity, in general?
And, what are other perspectives? I am just a curious person who happens to have a general dislike of conventional wisdom.
That people go to college for different reasons? I certainly think that would be generally agreed to.
I'm saying:
1. Just because someone finishes a degree program doesn't mean that they have tenacity or natural ability. (The conventional wisdom, which you invoked, is that they do.)
2. If the goal is to filter people for tenacity or natural ability, there are probably better ways to do that.
3. Hiring people who view education as a game (i.e. I scored better than you!) may be a good strategy for corporations but not necessarily for entrepreneurship, science, or society, in general.
Also, I'm not trying to 'win' at internet discussion - just bring up different perspectives, which I think are interesting. And, perhaps other people have other interesting perspectives.
You used the term "conventional wisdom" when perhaps you meant "What I think other people believe, or I have read other people to believe." That was confusing because I don't agree with the statement you made in #1. Folks I knew at college, and since then, all shared a common experience when their natural ability completely failed them in college. They 'hit the wall' as it were. That was part of the maturation process.
My comment was that college was the perhaps the first time someone gets to choose to take on a multi-year task that is nominally difficult. That isn't a subjective statement, it is a descriptive one. I say perhaps because it isn't the only possibility but it was the relevant one because the original article is about college and more specifically college degrees.
Your second statement asserts a filtration process. Again, not mentioned by me, but implied in the original article because the plan to make up a degree (presumably to qualify). Except that it isn't a filtration process its a selection process. Lots of people work in this industry and others without any degree or other certification. They experience selection bias when they are in a selection pool of individuals that have degrees but that selection bias is a primarily content based. The same person would have no selection bias in a pool of individuals with degrees outside the area of the job.
Successfully completed coursework in a topic, not necessarily a degree, carries with it an indication of interest. I've got 12 college hours of CNC machining coursework on my transcript, that comes from being interested in manufacturing. Interested enough to voluntarily invest some of my time to learn more about it. It is a social signal of sorts that it stronger than just a conversational opening of "Yeah I'm interested in CNC manufacturing machines."
I also disagree with your #3 but I understand what your are saying. Anyone who came through college and didn't get an appreciation for what it tried to teach them (which is my interpretation of the statement 'treating it like a game') would in fact be a signal not to hire them. It would represent to me, a lack of maturation in their ability to evaluate the use of their time. In my experience, that lack of maturity expresses as poor judgement in the workplace.
This is reductionist nonsense. Please. People get advanced degrees for a million reasons.
> What if people who win at education are just people who are naturally competitive, like being bounded by rules, are good at min-max game play, and who ultimately are driven by praise?
You can replace "education" with damned near anything in this sentence. "Business." "Basketball." "Super Smash Brothers Brawl." "Terrorism." Which is a sign that it's an asinine point.
> It starts with colleges should be more than job training centers, then ends with trying to create an accreditation process to prove value to external entities (of which I assume employers are a big part?).
It is absolutely consistent to realize that a degree is not about job training, but should probably produce employable graduates. Ensuring the quality of the program is important for both. Many universities/colleges are "not about job training", but all of them are accredited.
I think the point is to ensure quality rather than demonstrate value; the main reason he identifies for not attending the smaller public schools in his area is quality. Similarly for existing online schools, which definitely are about job training.
> It mentions the high cost of education, then describes how his current options are lacking because the number of classes in each major is limited.
I don't think this is inconsistent (which seems to be what you're implying), but agree that the author probably has a poor understanding of how such things work. See threads below.
> He talks about how administrators are unnecessary, then suggests a similarly labor intensive accreditation system that requires experts, committees and other logistics that requires significant manpower and time/energy.
Well, you actually answer this below. Lots of those "administrative" costs are not about necessary things like accreditation and instruction (sports, fancy facilities, libraries, etc.).
Some of these (e.g. libraries) are necessary (for serious students). However, this approach could externalize many such costs. Most public universities open these facilities -- esp. their libraries -- to the public (sometimes for a small fee). That doesn't make the cost problem for the sector go away, but it does provide an affordable education for those who cannot afford the mainstream option.
> however his solution doesn't seem to solve many of the challenges he mentions.
I don't think this is intended as a complete solution. I think it's intended to solve one specific problem standing in the way of a whole variety of solutions (that is, quality assurance and associated reputation).
> He finds it unconscionable that adjunct faculty don't make enough money, then hopes to solve it with a free market - where honestly the things he values might not be the things many others value.
This is a fair and important criticism. I think the author of the post should think deeply. I imagine there are two answers. First, his approach seems to genuinely value rigor. This can go a long way toward resolving negative perceptions (one major road-block for these sorts of approaches). Second, there might be enough similar people that this sort of project could become feasible.
> He wants rigor - then critiques current accreditation processes that largely does what he suggests.
I didn't see any critique of the current accreditation process. It's fair to ask why he isn't using one of those. I assume there are two reasons. First, many probably have a strong bias toward brick and mortar institutions. Second, I am sure many are "rubber stamp" committees (e.g. consider the dubious curricula of various "accredited!" online CS degree programs).
> Each of the major MOOCs already are trying to accredite/build reputation/be rigorous. What OP is essentially doing is describing the idea of Udacity, Coursera, etc without the technical backend, the users to attract such a marketplace, connections, support, or actually being able to do a MOOC.
Well, no. His model is actually very different.
The M in the MOOC model is important. Star lecturers, hundreds of students, several TAs and little or no cost to the student has been the model thus far. There are many reasons this model probably doesn't scale to an entire degree program. Quality of assessment is one reason.
His model seems to call for something more intimate and more hands-on, with the instructor paid exclusively through student tuition. This seems both more sustainable and more likely to produce quality students (imho).
edit: cleaned up some grammar. But this is still an internet comment post, so thanks for putting up with my slopping writing!
There are different levels of approval and accreditation in the US, and as a layperson the distinction might be unclear. Due to this lack of transparency means some agencies might be seen to be doing a better job that others.
My experience with the education board in Vermont was very good. And although it wasn't exceptionally hard to get approval to give course credit, which is what you can get if you don't yet have all the prerequisites for a full degree program, it was certainly not a rubber stamp.
> ...and as a layperson the distinction might be unclear.
This is really the problem I understand he's trying to solve. As long as there exists meaningless accreditation and general confusion among laypeople, non-traditional models face an uphill battle.
So it's not that accreditation agencies in general are awful. It's just at accreditation doesn't mean much to people who aren't insiders. Which is just as a bad, from a student's perspective and from the perspective of non-traditional institutions.
Offering an accreditation aimed at admittedly non-traditional degree programs where the accreditation really means something seems helpful. But perhaps this is better solved by going through one of the existing high-quality accreditation agencies and then explicitly pointing out the quality of your accreditation.
Not being an American, may I just take a slight space to admit that Mind == Blown
Then it wouldn't be an operational loss, if the attracted number of students paying for the school with a football team offsets the costs of running the team after any direct proceeds.
I am somewhat embittered though, as during my time at university, my tuition went up by $500 for the explicit purpose of funding the football team. And I was paying cash.
Try these two accredited schools that will award degrees entirely by examination, remote classes, independent study, project-based learning, and other proven study that matches a rigorous college program:
Excelsior is a traditional remote-degree program with lots of help to find you the right courses and get credit for them. Western Governors is new, online, and more experimental. Either one can both help you find ways to learn and get you the sheepskin bureaucrats need to hire you.
And they'll both handle all the accrediting for you.
However, the reason I never started it is because the value of a degree exists mostly inside other peoples' heads. Unless you can change what's in there, it doesn't matter what the piece of paper says.
And you'll face an uphill battle in changing it. Most people are not like Hacker News readers. They don't automatically assume that new ideas are interesting ideas; they tend to be risk averse instead. And so organizations that have built up a reputation over hundreds of years (like Harvard or Oxford) are at a significant advantage compared to even colleges that are decades old. Without a significant marketing campaign and a first class that goes on to be very accomplished, it'll be very hard to get people to take a new accrediting agency seriously.
Good luck.
Own that decision! Having a fake Bachelor's degree from some fake accreditation system you invented will just make you seem like you're defensive about it or trying to pull one over on people or something. It just feels weird.
Completing a list of criteria and scoring well on standardized tests is pretty much all that qualifies somebody for a "degree" from any one of our current post secondary insitutions.
When you wrote "fake Bachelor's degree from some fake accreditation system" I assumed you were talking about the Universities and Colleges of the world.
Oh wait, except for the "expect to have" part.
Maybe Twitter could use a better accreditation system for being famous - is that what you're implying?
2. If you're at all cut out for college, you can get scholarships.
3. Even if you're not brilliant and just persistent, you can get loans.
University administrators and their associated bureaucracy have been expanding for quite some time now. It's actually rather sickening. I went to a conference and inadvertently lost the receipt for a $20 supper that sparked of a month-long shit-storm of gargantuan proportions when I tried to claim it as a travel expense. I think the University must have spent upwards of $2000 in man-hours lost. I honestly would have just paid the $20 had I only know what I was setting in motion! They weren't even coming down on me! They turned on each other like a starving pack of wolves, desperate to establish who was the alpha!
It's worth asking how we can step back into sanity from our current, ludicrous position. Recently, several University of Alberta professors organized a protest in which dozens of professors have applied, in groups, for the position of president of the University. They argued that any of the many groups applying for this position could do a superior job to any single person, and they'd each be getting a raise despite splitting the salary of the position! While the obvious message is that top administrators make far too much, I actually hope the UofA hires one of these groups. An absolute bloodbath for the administration of the UofA would likely ensue! Perhaps those claiming $20 for dinner at a conference will simply be given the $20 without touching off a grand inquisition that costs thousands!
I am at Boston University now and while the sticker price is $55k/year the average american student pays about half of that. When my wife went to Princeton they used the FASA form to to calculate how much your family could afford and gave you a grant (gift) to cover the portion that should be student loans. In this way the fancy Ivy League schools can be cheaper than most other schools, and this is available to every student that is accepted.
$30k per year is still a lot, but its a private university in the middle of Boston. Half of that $30k is for room and board.
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl...
Many colleges do not have the endowments of the Ivy League, therefore, need-based financial aid awards are essentially non-existent for people who are simultaneously too rich for aid and too poor to pay outright.
For instance, in my application to Babson College in 2007, I was outright denied all financial aid because my parents (combined) made $90,000 and had a modest retirement portfolio in the $200k range. At the time, tuition was about $50k/year. Without them utterly sacrificing their entire nest-egg or moving out of their own house, paying for school on their own was entirely out of the question. Thus, I ended up going to the private loan market and got a decent rate for a $50k student loan. Thank God I was only there for a year, I cannot imagine having to service a debt of ~$1,500/month for the next 20 years.
Institutions who receive public dollars are audited at least yearly to ensure compliance with state/provincial requirements, and somewhere around every 5 years on federal statute. These audits include ensuring checks and balances on money paid out to staff/students for any reason, including travel and conference costs (fun fact, many federal programs have travel costs that are based on staff pay, thereby limiting the amount of 'excess' spending the programs can do on travel. . . .because everyone knows we attend conferences in Michigan for fun. . . ).
Anyway, it may seem like a small deal to you that you lost the receipt for $20, and in the grand scheme of life, it is. BUT, in the direct application of audit completion and legislative compliance, that $20 is the first step to lawsuits, persecution and public shaming of the University when it turns out that every employee was allowed to slip $20 past the business office. Controls are controls on everyone, they are impartial and they apply across the board; the same rules apply to the lowly grad. ass. as they do to the provost and president.
Is it senseless to have that much work and that many hours spent on on $20? Yes. Is it senseless to have that much work and that many hours spent to ensure that tax dollars are spent reasonably and within the bounds of the law?
No.
Source: I am part of those 'sickening' higher education administrative costs, and I have personal experience consulting for federal audit compliance at public colleges in the states.
And I think you vastly overestimate the cost of staff accountants, business office staff and compliance officers at colleges and universities. Those 'bee watchers' aren't making six, seven or eight figure salaries. More like 35,XXX-55,XXX; a very reasonable figure for accountants.
On reform, I'd say something similar to the IRS approach on taxes. Spend effort where there's a return on investment. IE, they're not going to audit people below the poverty line because they're sane, and the cost of the audit will be more than the return on back taxes. Similarly, don't audit $20 lunches, because five minutes of my time is worth more than the average we'll discover in errors.
In addition, an overall lower audit rate, but with randomized chance of audit that increases logarithmically as the charge goes up. Kind of similar to how the FAA checks pilot logs.
[1] http://www.post-gazette.com/image/2014/05/18/20140519college...
[2] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2...
[3] http://watchdog.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir...
Not sure how accountant pay rates are a red herring. You stated that they make 6, 7 and 8 figures; that's not accurate, I don't have hard statistics to back it up, but it just can't be. Also, the average institution (for my state) employs 1 staff accountant for every 500-600 students physically on campus, or every 800(ish) students counting on-line and commuter averages. That seems reasonable to me considering they do all of the accounting for the entire institution, not just student accounts.
[1] If you believe that college presidents have anything to do with internal controls of an institution, or have really any idea of what the audit compliance processes look like, you're stoned. The mucky mucks near the top have nothing to do with institutional audit compliance. The state and federal government does. You don't agree? Read http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-12-26/pdf/2013-30465.pd... [CAUTION .PDF]
That's one of six federal statutes that I have to be versed in, and I'm only one of four people (but it actually replaced three others I had to know in the past, yay for streamlining!!).
[2] I never made a statement about administration, and it's not really pertinent to this argument. It's correct that there are more administrators now than there were in the 70's. Again, though, what impact that has on institutional audits is really up for question, and doesn't really make sense.
[3] What's the saying. . . Correlation does not equal causation. Administration costs are going up, correct. So are the costs of every other damned thing. Pair that with a decrease in funding from the state and declining enrollment in the last 5 years and now you've got something. The answer to high college costs is not only administrator pay. Of course that's not helping, but it's much, much larger than that; attempting to shift the blame to that one area is ignorant of many factors in public education funding.
AND FINALLY. Your entire last paragraph misses the mark entirely. The institution isn't auditing the individual about the $20 lunch. They're ensuring that they have internal proof of the cost, that it is allowable to the specific fund, and that all costs are 'reasonable and prudent'. External, state and federal auditors are responsible for auditing the institution. So while that $20 meal isn't important, 50 people buying $20 meals without reason are. Again, the beauty of controls is that they apply to everyone, they are impartial and they apply across the board. You don't get to pick which legislation and regulation to enforce based on price. You get to make sure your ducks are in a row so when the state steps in, they find nothing.
Oh, and "an overall lower audit rate, but with randomized chance of audit that increases logarithmically as the charge goes up" That's sort of how it works already. The states that I've worked in have audited every school that received public money over a certain threshold annually. Federal audits only occur in institutions who receive large amounts of federal money (the largest state institutions: think University of STATE), or those who have thrown up 'red flags' in their spending. . . . such as those that have incurred many, many $20 lunches without any documentation about why these expenses occurred. . . .
If you take out "without reason," then 50 people buying $20 meals is not actually a problem.
If a person travels for 3 days and claims 3 dinners at $20 each, there is an obvious reason to claim them, and no reason to audit, even if a receipt is missing. In my experience, this is how personal expenses at corporations work, which by the way are also subject to significant audit and tax reporting requirements.
> Administration costs are going up, correct. So are the costs of every other damned thing.
This is not actually true; administration costs in academia are going up much faster than almost any other cost in the U.S.
For example, it's determined that students from the "Intro to Calculus for Programmers" course need to meet certain qualifications to pass. If they finish the course on their own, with no help from an instructor, then they only need pay an Instructor to oversee an "I know my stuff" exit process. If a student needs instruction, then the student can pay for the bits that they need. Instructors can become highly leveraged, experts in the parts where people really need help, charge more for their expertise, and students pay less because they need less overall instructor time.
That may be a little unclear. I've got a couple beers in me.
Everything, with the exception of the actual instruction between a professor and a student/class (not recorded lectures, actual instruction) will be open source and freely available for anyone to use with a non-commercial clause in the license allowing for the author (or anyone the author permits) to generate revenue from their use with banner ads etc.
A winning combo.
Isn't this MIT OCW and a zillion competitors?
That is very true for some degrees, but I laugh when potential C-S students say this.
My first year of undergrad at well performing state university, I took loans and worked at the schools IT support center, 7.50/hr. The following summer I worked as a "Application Development Intern" and made $10/hr. For the following three years I worked part-time at a local software consulting firm and made $15/hr and part-time as a C-S TA and made 10/hr. I paid off my debt 2 months after graduation and I got lots of great experience.
My story is very typical of my C-S and IS major classmates. And now those same internships in my Alma mater's town are paying 17-18/hr.
So when people say that can't afford to get a C-S degree I think they either don't know the score or want to be one of the "too cool for school" kids in the valley, but lack the proper reasoning (I don't use that term for people with good reasons).
I know programs at many schools are hyper competitive, so that will weed out the ones that can't hack it, but College is expensive.
That said, I liked the line from Rich Dad, Poor Dad that explained the difference between thinking "I can't afford it." and "How can I afford it?" The former just shuts off your thinking and accepts a situation.
Granted the OP is taking a creative approach to the problem.
Getting a programming job requires some hustle. Establishing a new foothold in the hyper-comeptitive landscape of high ed probably requires a whole lot more hustle.
I didn't do that; I worked through my CS degree much like you describe, but had I instead taken on debt then proceeded to get the same job offers that I did in this timeline, then I would have had my student loans wiped out within two years of graduating. CS grad earning potential is good enough to make taking on student loan debt not entirely insane; which is more than can be said of many majors.
(Of course that is assuming that I would have received those same offers, which is questionable if I did not have the work experience that got from working myself through college).
It's not easy, but if you work hard you can at the very least keep your debt reasonable.
(It is probably also worth mentioning that your debt was more than double the median student loan debt of people leaving college: ~$30k: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/student-loan-debt-m... Your school (and mine) was far more expensive than was necessary.)
I tried (not the raising the girls bit), with a full time job and going to school full time and my grades plummeted for that semester (which caused me to have to retake a couple classes and delayed my graduation a semester).
Even in a Mid-Missouri small town, making 7-8 bucks an hour working ~24 hours a week, it wasn't enough to survive, let alone survive AND pay "cash" for classes and books.
What you really want to avoid is taking on student loans, then dropping out. If you do that then you'll be left with little but debt to show for it. If you instead try to work your way through school, but still drop out, at least you won't be in debt. Dropping out is far less damaging if you don't take on student loans, which is why I made student loans my backup plan.
So unless you were a very top performer in your class, it was unlikely that you got into a state university. Instead, people got into for-profit universities they heard through internet ads or TV ads. (There is _always_ a spot for you in a for-profit university). For-profit universities were a bad deal, they manipulated their students and lied to them about their accreditation status. The problem didn't become known until maybe 2012 or so when the Obama Administration began to crack down on their shady practices.
The fact of the matter is, State Universities are the way to go, although they weren't an option for many people. Today, the average cost of an in-state university is $9000 / year. (This falls in line with my experience)
Even with books and stuff, that will only be ~$45k in loans for the average in-state university.
As the Echo Boomers leave college age, the college-age population is beginning to shrink again and it will be easier to get a degree now without resorting to overpriced out-of-state costs or for-profit schools.
I think besides where you go to school mattering for tuition, people forget about housing. Where I went to school students today pay ~$300/mo per head for sharing an apartment or house. Welcome to the upper midwest, obviously we can all think of places where housing is far more expensive.
I don't feel that you're restricted to a set number of courses for your major. Universities tend to tell students about the MINIMUM number of courses that you NEED to take within your major in order to graduate. Universities will be fine with students taking more courses within their major just as long as you take the minimum number of courses in other areas such as general studies. There are also more and more inexpensive online university programs, of which more and more are being offered by public universities.
Even if the courses don't challenge you enough in your university, there's nothing stopping you from asking a professor for more work in the form of a quarter or semester hands on project or research. GA Tech professors are more than happy to hand them out, and there are some cool ones.
Since we're on the subject of something that challenges you, you should try applying to Georgia Tech. I'm not sure what the stats are anymore, but not too long ago only 10% of incoming freshmen (most of whom were the top 5% of their HS's) would graduate.
Michael, I'm not sure you fully did your homework before coming up with your proposed solution (though I could still be wrong). imho I don't feel that anyone can fully understand the problems of the current university system, until they actually attend one.
That's because of accreditation. Bachelors degrees are valuable, in large part, because they're a common currency: employers know when they see a potential hire has bachelor's degree, he/she at least spent four years learning at a high level and fulfilled some level of competency in his/her chosen major.
Right now, there's no way for employers to make similar judgments about people who have obtained their education entirely online, so it's really hard to get a serious job in, say, software development, with just a few Coursera courses on your resumé. In that case, you'd need to build up a portfolio of OSS projects, etc. Whereas a newly-minted bachelor's in CS will get your foot in the door somewhere, even without that extra work to back it up.
One approach to accreditation/evaluation are domain-specific exams, like the Boards in medicine or the Bar in law. But just passing an exam doesn't necessarily communicate the same thing as a degree, and thus doesn't really solve the problem. There are also, no doubt, disciplines not well suited to this form of accreditation. This approach (Alyxandria) seems more focused on accrediting courses (which solves the same problem) and does it by peer-reviewing those courses, which I think is a very interesting, credible, and scalable approach.
Right now, LinkedIn might be the closest competitor out there to this. They offer a form of peer-review for one's skills with their endorsement feature. Another company that was trying to tackle this problem is Accredible[1], but it seems they've now pivoted to include many more features than peer accreditation — perhaps at its expense.
It'll be really cool to see how this problem is solved in the long run. I think "accrediting" individuals, rather than institutions or classes that individuals can then take, will be the winning strategy, as education becomes increasingly unbundled. That is, if articles, YouTube videos, etc. are to be considered legitimate tools of learning in the future, as college classes are today, then accreditation of individuals will be the only sensible approach.
Well this is not a general solution, but for Coursera's Probabilistic Graphical Models, I remember someone in the course discussion board said that this was such a demanding course that he would hire anybody, who passed the course with good points, to his company.
I don't think cheating on exams is that widespread, what are others experiences?
And who can blame students for cheating considering the incentives - I was never faced with the choice to cheat or fail, but you can bet if I'd gone $70,000 into debt for school I'd cheat before I'd fail.
I once sat in a computer lab and watched a group of four guys completing an online take-it-when-you-like multiple choice exam for first year mathematics for engineers. The software attempted to prevent copy-and-paste and changing windows to Google, and of course there were instructions saying the exam should be their work alone, and they shouldn't look up answers. One of the guys was on the exam system and would read the question; his three peers on computers next to him would google for and calculate answers. Needless to say, by the time the fourth guy was doing the exam his results had little to do with how much mathematics he had personally learned!
I don't have data on cheating available, but anecdotally, I've TAed economics classes at UCSD where---routinely---over 100 students in a class would turn in word-for-word identical homework (this had nothing to do with whether students were allowed or prohibited from "working in groups" on homework, so it was definitely considered cheating in some of the classes). I suspect that cheating varies a lot from university to university and from major to major.
I think most wise recruiters will look for evidence of being smart, of getting stuff done, and of being a good fit.
Unless you're in research, serious jobs are project based, not learning based.
If you spend three years learning all you can about CS and making an Awesome Cool Thing, I don't think many employers are going to think 'Meh.'
The situation in the UK is that degrees are getting more and more expensive and less and less valuable. It's making more sense now to go straight into work, even at intern level, than to lose three years and rack up tens of thousands in debt for no obvious benefit.
<i>If</i> the teaching and learning were truly worth the cash, it would be no contest. But outside the Big Name universities, they really aren't. And even there, a big part of the benefit comes the networking opportunities.
In middle league universities you don't get the networking, or the teaching, or the experience, or the industry connections. So what are you paying for?
MOOCs are new and exciting, but they're also new and unproven. Accredited bachelor degrees are valued because they have a long history of delivering value. MOOCs do not.
The key is to find a method of credentialing general enough that it can apply to both traditional, college-educated job applicants and non-traditional ones alike.
Whether MOOCs will be enough for those non-traditional applicants to be successful in this modern credential system is a separate issue, and, as you point out, far from certain.
" In my mind higher education should be almost exclusively about academics. I’m looking for an affordable degree program that is academically rigorous, and provides me the opportunity to challenge myself and not be restricted to the 10 or 12 classes available in a major."
For someone with these kinds of goals, I think the best perspective is to think of universities as cultural institutions, like marriage. The institution allows young people 3-4 years to spend on education, experimenting with their personality, etc.
Peers are important from that context as are mentors.
This seems like an exaggeration to me. Looking back at my BS I took about 45 classes total (not including labs). Of the 45 classes 16 were specifically for my major (EE), 14 were science/math/engineering, and the last 15 were general education.
Meeting people is the most important part of college. The vast majority of graduates find jobs through their personal networks. If finding a job isn't your top priority, students who expand their circles grow intellectually as they exchange ideas with people who have different perspectives.
Having said that, I've thought about putting together a do-it-yourself comp-sci degree that involves attending local Meetup events. One of the great things about this field is that, in most cities, there are active communities surrounding what it is you want to learn. So it's possible to capture the personal networking experience of college without the tuition.
One of the things that always struck me as stupid about college when I attended is that I knew I was paying mostly for the privilege of going to school with a bunch of other grads who were silly enough to drop 40 grand on an elite education, and yet would end up in powerful positions afterwards on the strength of the name alone. The academics I could (and did) get elsewhere, more efficiently, but the degree and the network can't be replicated. However, the degree (fundamentally) is just a piece of paper, and the network (fundamentally) was just hanging out with a bunch of people who also got that piece of paper. I've found both to be quite valuable post-college, but there are many, many subjects that I could've studied that would've been more useful than my courses.
I bet we would see a lot more innovation in instruction methods and content of courses if they were decoupled from social aspects, networking, residences, and accreditation.
I learned a lot and grew as a person interacting with people outside of my area who will probably never (directly) provide me with a competitive advantage in the job marketplace. However, I know what I don't know in much deeper ways than I otherwise would.
Attending meetups might get you this for the very narrow slice of the world that is CS.
A sample for today:
Professor John Schindler posted a photoshop http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/higher-education/navy...
Professor Bacevich retired http://www.bu.edu/today/2014/good-bye-professor-bacevich/
and is starting a MOOC https://www.edx.org/course/bux/bux-intl301x-war-greater-midd...
Reddit user 20kadjunct is adjunct professor with an annual salary of $20,000 and 2 other jobs. http://www.businessinsider.com/adjunct-professors-ama-on-red...
professor Thomas Docherty, a nationally recognised critic of higher education leadership and policy, was suspended last term in March. http://theboar.org/2014/06/23/suspended-professor-prevented-...
A fresh badge of Professors every day.
(the plot thickens)
I would be willing to help. I have a PhD in chemistry/biochemistry.
If you're not going to university, you must find yourself some good books to read. Get in touch with someone who is knowledgeable in the field you're interested in and ask them for book recommendations. I remember one day my friend recommended me the sequence of books for learning physics (CM by Goldstein --> QM by Sakurai) and reading these two books did more for my physics education than what I learned in class...
<plug> If you're interested in learning first-year science in an affordable manner, check out the No bullshit guide to math and physics. I wrote this book because I was tired of watching my students suffer at the hands of mainstream textbooks. http://minireference.com/ </plug>
A more interesting option would be to issue certificates for each course taken. Specifically, it shouldn't be necessary to sit through all the lectures and do all the exercises, but simply pass an "I know my stuff" exam, as per @amorphid's suggestion.
The test could be a 30 minutes skype interview + problem solving session over skype with an professional accreditator. Of course, this only pushes the reputation question to the problem of who accredidates the accreditators, but that might be easier to solve, at least for certain niches.
I haven't done it yet, but I am still contemplating the idea. One of the biggest problems that can arise with not actually attending a university in person is the lack of relationship and teamwork education. That can be partially mitigated via videoconferencing and online team projects, but it's not the same as being in an office and leading a group of individuals in person. One of these years I'm going to actually have time to do this....
I hope that the author of the article at least thinks about motivational problems such as mine before going through with it.
Professors charging less than the maximum amount allowed, plus the opportunity to take competency exams administered by a professor (which have a much lower cap on how much professors can charge) could reduce that cost pretty significantly.
"Oh you graduated summa cum laude? From where? ... your house, you say."
Sort of PhD marketplace.
For smart people who can teach themselves there needs to be some sort of validating and credentialing of the knowledge they have!
"The potential for a good story, is one of my only requirements in deciding to do or not do something."
It needs to be more fully fleshed out and coherent, and it needs more muscle (and players) behind it, but it is a cool ideas.
This seems like the beginnings of something great. I'm very curious to see how it shapes up.
The current system is hopelessly broken and corrupt. It's not serving most students, it's not serving most teachers, and it's not even serving most employers.
It mostly seems to be serving bean counters, bureaucrats, and property speculators, who are all making out like bandits.
A serious disruption is inevitable.
Yes, a lot of people travel away from home for school. I'm sure it can be a great experience. Should that be a requirement for an excellent education? Of course not.
Good on you for trying this, but try to work with existing accreditors.