The Day the Purpose of College Changed | Hacker News Reader

The Day the Purpose of College Changed

chronicle.com

56 pointsbrudgers46 comments

I would love it if most liberal arts institutions "fostered a broad set of knowledge and skills whose value is not always immediately apparent." But they generally don't, at least not anymore.

The erosion of standards in the humanities and the promotion of grievance/identity "studies" have led to academic environments based on groupthink and insulation from unapproved ideas. And that's among the "intellectuals"! Many of the rest of the students are just getting wasted every night and taking "gut" courses with open-book multiple-choice exams.

It's mostly "hard science" programs like engineering and math that have avoided this fate. Probably because it doesn't matter what you "feel" if your code won't compile.

Edit: Sorry, to be clear this is coming from an American perspective. I have no idea what liberal education is like in other countries, but I have to imagine it can't be nearly as bad.

I really have to disagree with one aspect of this comment ("the erosion of standards in the humanities.") Perhaps that's to be expected because I'm an academic who works in the humanities. But my point is a simple one and it's something that you can test out yourself: try comparing a half dozen academic history article written in, say, 1950, to a half dozen from 2015. I predict that, on average, a 2015 article will feature a far more robust evidence base, a broader range of sources, a richer historiography, and more rigorous language training than its counterpart from the 1940s, 50s or 60s. In my experience there is simply no comparison. In part this is because digitized texts make it so much easier to access a wide range of sources, but it also has to do with an increase in standards of graduate education. Getting a PhD in a field like history used to be an old boys club based on connections and family money. It certainly still retains some of those trappings today, but I think there can be no question that academic training today is far more rigorous (and entering graduate school or getting an article accepted more competitive) than it was in decades past.

I don't really take issue with the comments about students and multiple choice exams, though. The way we teach the humanities in the US leaves a lot to be desired.

I think the parent was talking more about undergraduate education in the humanities, and not research in the humanities.

I wonder if this is true. I suspect it's a bit like comparing Hollywood movies from today to 1950 — far better production quality, but script writing that's no better and possibly worse.

I'd say that the palpable difference in critical reasoning capacity between the two ancestor comments speaks volumes.

Or, maybe they're both right.

> I would love it if most liberal arts institutions "fostered a broad set of knowledge and skills whose value is not always immediately apparent." But they generally don't, at least not anymore.

All in all, I feel that I got a pretty well rounded education.

I took classes in philosophy, piano, base intro courses to all branches of science, GIS, art of listening to music (that was an awesome class!) a nice variety of history classes, English, painting, and then finally my major (CS) and my minor (Math).

I went to community college and transferred to a state university.

I can discuss techniques for using colored pencils, describe harmonics in FFTs from accelerometer input to musicians, have an intelligent conversation about many aspects of world history and culture, and then go to work and apply my skillsets to solving real world problems for my employer.

There really wasn't much group think. I got a taste of a lot of different fields, and at times I had to stretch my schedule to allow me to take a few more things I was interested in, but I have no real complaints. Heck my community college offered the piano courses as free to anyone who already had a full course load. (It counted as 2 credits they just waved the charge, and with practicing it took up a lot of time, but hey, free piano lessons!)

> art of listening to music (that was an awesome class!)

Great! Tell me more!

Once by accident I heard the Beethoven 7th Symphony and got hooked and didn't quit until I'd gotten through the D Major section of the Bach "Chaconne" on violin. Still, I never had a course of any kind in music, certainly not a course in "listening".

So, I still want to learn! How about some remarks on how to listen to each of the following three:

(1) some Bach

http://grooveshark.com/s/Cello+Suite+No+1+Bach/3seBIM?src=5

(2) some Vitali

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4B1ifcWa9o

(3) some Camille Saint Saens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X79OkSayPSw

At least one!

For the Bach piece, some of what I get out of listening to it, especially with that performance, is (a) a story of some of what happened to someone over some interval of time, (b) the story starts in an indefinite way, (c) the story continues and starts to repeat, with emphasis in various ways, what is important in the story so that now we can begin to follow the story, (c) some parts of the story are stressful and, in this performance, are indicated by some playing close to the bridge, (d) the story gets some serious parts indicated by some of the low notes, (e) the story starts to change due to some important and different aspects that add tension, (f) the end is an ascending chromatic passage that indicates triumph over the source of the tension and ends in a climax with some repetition for emphasis, (g) in this performance the last note with the forte at the end of the note indicates a successful conclusion to the story and underlines the victory over the source of the tension.

Is that part of what is meant by how to listen to music?

> Is that part of what is meant by how to listen to music?

My sarcasm detector is broken.

The course covered the history of music (very much Western biased), taught us the names for the various aspects of music, how to identify the different elements in songs, the commonalities and interrelationships between genres of music, and had us sit down and listen to songs in a wide variety of styles.

Going into the course I listened to a very narrow selection of music, by the end of the course I had an appreciation for a much wider range of music, and I can find something enjoyable about almost any genre. I'd say that in the very least it made me a happier person who can find more joy in life!

It's been quite awhile since I took the course so I cannot remember all the vocabulary, which is unfortunate since I found that having the right words to describe something helps highlight its essence. That said, if I was going to work on a project with musicians, I would go and study up on the field again to regain that vocabulary, thus aiding in communication.

(I likewise had forgotten 90% of the EE material I had studied until my current job where I was reacquainted with the material!)

Thanks. No sarcasm intended.

Maybe what you described is similar to what my wife once took as a course in Music Appreciation: I met my wife at Indiana University, was a grad student in math, lived in the dorm next to the excellent music school there, liked music a lot, and took that opportunity to get started in violin.

My wife knew a lot about music -- piano, clarinet, voice -- but next to nothing about classical music; so with my being interested in music also, she took a course in the music school in music appreciation. She really liked the course.

So, maybe your course covered the sonata-allegro from, tertian harmony, major-relative minor, key modulation, medieval, classical, rococo, romantic, modern, etc.

Okay, thanks.

> So, maybe your course covered the sonata-allegro from, tertian harmony, major-relative minor, key modulation, medieval, classical, rococo, romantic, modern, etc.

Yup, this sounds more like it. Although we also covered topics like identifying common themes in music, how to listen to different soundscapes, and other similar topics. (Of which I cannot remember right now!)

We mostly covered classical music, but I ended up with an appreciation for a wide range of music styles. My Pandora channel list got really weird. :)

> art of listening to music (that was an awesome class!)

So you spent several hundreds/thousands of either your own or the state's money to learn the "art of listening to music". Would you say you got your/their money's worth?

> have an intelligent conversation about many aspects of world history and culture

In other countries, that purpose is served by high school (I think the US might be better off fixing high school, instead of pushing everyone thru CC).

I suspect this is more of an American thing.

I have 6 years of liberal arts education from the top liberal arts college here in India. A lot of my professors got their PhDs from Ivy League institutions (Berkeley, Yale and Oxbridge). These were also the professors who subscribed heavily to the 'liberal' ethos and focused on those 'feel' arguments you described.

In contrast, the old-school professors who studied their whole life here would shoot down your arguments mercilessly if you didn't back them up with facts. You couldn't tell them that you 'felt' that Moby Dick was a symbol of American pioneer spirit; you had to give specific instances, quote research papers to justify your stand.

It's true that liberal arts education needs to cleanse itself. There are just too many cool rich kids in humanities who end up dragging not-so-cool, not-so-rich, and not-so-talented kids into humanities majors. All the kids who fit the liberal arts stereotype to a T in my college also came from loaded families (yet, you wouldn't know it if you looked at them).

The smartest, and the hardest working, on the other hand, were almost always there because they really, really wanted to do what they were doing.

You get out of it what you put into it, period. Those "loaded" kids aren't trying to get out of uni the same things that the aspirational middle class kids are. The upper crust just need the social network, not the coursework, to thrive.

The growth in the diversity of studies is not a flaw of the humanities, it is a feature. It the natural result of the growth in the sophistication and scope of what people think about.

In the time of Newton, natural philosophers studied the full scope of natural phenomena. Today, students can get undergraduate science degrees in molecular biology--a sub-sub-discipline that did not even exist 100 years ago. So, let's not pretend that science has not experienced its own diversity in areas of study.

But the point of liberal arts education is breadth. In a liberal arts curriculum, a women's studies major still takes some math and science, and a computer science major still takes some humanities and social sciences. A major is an area of concentration within a broad education, not a silo.

And science and technology do need cultural analysis. Not because one can "feel" code compiling, but because science and technology fields have their own cultures, and those cultures are prone to the same human tendencies as any other. Looking at the national conversation about diversity in technology, consider the possibility that maybe some folks in that field could benefit from taking a class in women's studies.

> I would love it if most liberal arts institutions "fostered a broad set of knowledge and skills whose value is not always immediately apparent." But they generally don't, at least not anymore.

As I briefly mentioned in a lower comment, why can't high school be for "breadth", while university is for "depth"? More people would benefit from this, since most people go to HS, and it would also be cheaper on both individuals and society.

History, logic, basic mathematics, languages (both native and foreign), geography, and many more are covered by high schools curricula all over the world.

Edit: I think this idea that college needs to be "broad" also creates further craziness in how some of the "deep" education is structured: you go to law or medical school after 4 years of college. In other countries, law and medicine are university specialties (in my country, for example, medical school takes 6 years of university education; in the US, first you get 4 years of college, then 4 more years of medical school).

> academic environments based on groupthink and insulation from unapproved ideas.

Arguably this is true of most primary, secondary, and higher learning in America. It negatively affects everyone who goes through it, regardless of their trajectory.

Most math and science professors I had allowed notes or books during exams. Most reading and writing classes had exams in the form of essays.

This is an egregious comment. It's extremely biased with an N of 1, and it doesn't accurately represent the experiences -- either educationally or socially -- many liberal arts students in the US traverse through their time in college. Sure, there are subsets of students who are just there for sports fanaticism & partying, and there are professors who are liberal ideologues, but it's unfair to paint these as truisms across the board. Speaking personally, it isn't what I experienced at UVA In the mid-90s (as a history & religious studies major), and it wasn't what I experienced a few years ago at NC State (earning a masters in industrial engineering). To posit a counterpoint, if you look at the mess UNC is in right now regarding it's African American Studies department & "fake" classes for athletes, sure, that's a travesty and punishment should be swift and firm, but that's still only a tiny part of a large research university.

College athletics as it is in the US is globally unique. It has its good sides, but it there's a darker aspect, too (see UNC). This should be addressed systemically (not via Title IX) but that's beyond the scope of your grievance.

I don't understand why jobs and curiosity have to be so starkly opposed.

I studied mechanical engineering, and I consider that a degree for anyone who's curious about the world. If you want to have a strong foundation to peel back the layers of existence, you really can't do much better.

I think one thing we sorely lack in modern education is a strong minor system. Students could easily get their well-roundedness by obtaining minors in subjects that interest them, and if the subjects are quite different from a job getting major, then all the better. I believe Paul Graham would say this is how startups happen.

Furthermore we need a strong system of technical minors as well. If a bootcamp in SF can get you an entry-level dev job, then why shouldn't a minor in CS train you as a web developer? Or why couldn't a sociologist minor in UX?

> I don't understand why jobs and curiosity have to be so starkly opposed.

One word: money.

> I studied mechanical engineering, and I consider that a degree for anyone who's curious about the world. If you want to have a strong foundation to peel back the layers of existence, you really can't do much better.

Certainly. But to do that, you need to spend four years or more being a financial liability rather than an asset. The standard justification these days is that you'll be more of an asset when you're done, because you're going to get a job as a mechanical engineer.

Or we could fall back to an older way of thinking, and say that everyone ought to spend four years being intellectually challenged. And by "everyone" we mean rich guys, because they're the ones that can afford it, and, really, we don't much care about anyone else.

But in a truly egalitarian society, we care about everyone. So that kind of reasoning won't do. Which leaves us with the question of who is going to pay for that foundation to peel back the layers of existence, and what motivation they have to cough up the money.

> Which leaves us with the question of who is going to pay for that foundation to peel back the layers of existence, and what motivation they have to cough up the money.

Presumably it would have to be the same motivation we had to do public education in the first place: Democracy can't work if the electorate isn't educated.

Now, if that remains a motivation for the elite today is another question.

(I'd wager 'no'.)

> why shouldn't a minor in CS train you as a web developer?

Because "Computer Science" and "Web Development" aren't even remotely the same thing.

I mean, if a school wants to offer a Web Development major or minor or vocational certificate program, great, but there's no reason to call it CS, which it isn't.

Exactly. Being a CS major is 90% fixing scoping issues with java to get your project to compile, whereas web developers don't even use java.

I hope you don't get too many downvotes for that. You may have been making a joke (and you did give me a good laugh), but for a huge number of students, it's the truth. It's hard for a student to focus on the underlying theories when he or she is having a hard time just learning the tools that are used to explore them in today's world. Other disciplines are similar - although boolean algebra may be the basis for digital electronics, if you don't understand the basics of how to use a breadboard, a multimeter, and a logic analyzer (depending on the class), it's going to make getting through most digital electronics classes nearly impossible.

All of the 'fundamentals' courses - graph theory / data structures & algorithms, compilers / parsers / language processing, number theory, artificial intelligence / machine learning, networking, computer architecture, operating systems, graphics, databases, ... are taught using a programming language. To be able to learn them in today's educational system, where the practical examples are routinely given in the form of code, you must first have a firm grasp of the language employed. I would compare it to attempting to learn history from a book that is half English and half Mandarin when one does not speak Mandarin.

I was actually being mostly serious. I understand that the 'theory' of CS isn't inherently tied to computers, but in practice getting the computer stuff to work is where the vast majority of the time gets spent. Especially when CS100 is in Matlab, CS200 is in java, CS300 is in scheme, etc. That's a large part of why I ended up not studying CS in college, because I didn't have 40 hours a week to spend on a 1 credit compiler class and not fail all my other coursework.

It's weird because I currently work as a developer and I'm definitely deeply reliant on other people who did study CS. But at the same time it seems like a lot of them have sacrificed way more than they're actually getting back. The only thing more cliche than non-technical folks who 'just need a tech person' is deeply technical folks wasting years of their lives building things that it would be obvious no one wanted if only they had a liberal arts background.

> All of the 'fundamentals' courses - graph theory / data structures & algorithms, compilers / parsers / language processing, number theory, artificial intelligence / machine learning, networking, computer architecture, operating systems, graphics, databases, ... are taught using a programming language

You must have been lucky, if you got to write code when you were learning those things. My experience was proofs, proofs, and more proofs. I took an algorithms/data structures course that had no programming assignments whatsoever.

The school I went to emphasized having students practice practical implementations of the theories being taught. I actually was a Computer Engineering major in undergrad, though, so I only took dta structures & algorithms, graphics, and networking from that list. I also got Computer Architecture, but taught from an EE perspective rather than a CS perspective (really pretty much the same thing) ... the biggest difference is that we had to design and build a single board computer for the capstone in that class, and the CS folks didn't (they explored it from a more software oriented angle).

Astronomy is the study of the heavens, not the study of telescopes, although they may be an important tool.

Likewise Computer Science is not the study of programming or computers, it is the study of data and computing. Programming is just often the tool for the job.

Some European Computer Science departments actually call themselves Dataology departments...

Right but astronomy isn't called telescope science either. Whereas computer science is.

No they don't, they call themselves Informatics departments.

CS 101 and 102 are this. After that I found CS to be 90% math, algorithms, and a sampling of some foundational topics such as operating system, graphics, and network programming.

Computer science is not vocational training and not training to be a good programmer. I've found many CS professors suck at programming anyhow, and people who never do much outside the curriculum aren't qualified to be programmers.

Btw, at my school, we had a co-op program. The undergrad program was 5 years long and you took three 6-month co-ops. This is a great way to get practical skills without changing the character of a CS curriculum.

edit: I have to add, plenty of web developers use Java, they just don't hang around HN.

CS departments use Java as a teaching language based on the ease with which a plausible case for its use can be provided to administrative superiors and student customers under the jobs training model.

"Object Oriented and used by business" is enough to sell the student customers who have yet to be trained and an administration that never will.

Useful term: "assignable curiosity". Those of us in the professional class are allowed to use our minds, but to the boss's ends. ("Do you have a passion for unit testing and SOA!?")

(First saw it at http://disciplined-minds.com/)

> Or why couldn't a sociologist

My wife's Ph.D. was in (mathematical -- statistical) sociology. Sociology is the study of groups of people. So, the role of sociology in the rise of the Internet now would be to apply some of their scientific methods to understanding, say, social computing, and the social network, yes, including the subject of that movie, Facebook. Also social are SnapChat, PInterest, the social graph, Fred Wilson's "large groups of engaged users", people and social cases of network effects, etc.

Or, just what the heck makes a successful social application? Then how to apply that understanding to create more successful such applications?

Likely there is something significantly social about the success of Apple -- just what is it?

For UX, that would be closer to parts of psychology.

I feel like the author is ignoring a giant caveat. The liberal educational ideal has always been connected to a certain degree of elitism. The author quotes Jefferson about broad access to liberal education, but Jefferson himself expected his university to be for only the cream of the crop. Something like the top 1% cognitive elite. Jefferson's argument about breadth was more about building a feeder system that would educate each person up to their maximum ability -- with the expectation that only very few would go all the way through college.

If instead you want to build a system where most people can successfully get through college, you need to meet very different economic and social constraints.

Would it not be fairer to say that the demand for highly-paid work has increased and that college is simply a victim?

Going back a few decades in the UK, a manual labourer could afford to buy a home, own a car, provide for the family, etcetera.

Nowadays that is falling fast.

Add to that the 'pandora's box' element of education (those who are educated will likely feel depressed if low-paid or non-stimulating long hours bar them from continuing to learn) and I think it's a natural reaction.

If you want to fix 'learning for learning's sake', then you need to get rid of the idea that the winner takes all and that those who are unskilled are fit for dog meat.

This also wasn't an issue when only the rich went on to further education, because they are not constrained by work.

I have a bit of a theory, specifically in the US, that in the near future there will be some very lucrative opportunities in things like plumbing and electrical as most folks got the idea in their heads that they HAD to go to college to avoid such work. And now equipped with a college degree there is a strange mental block in becoming s blue collar serviceperson despite the absolute need for plumbers and electricians.

A friend of mine skipped out on college, worked for 5 years for the local union and last year started his own electrician business. He now has two employees and makes fantastic money, which I only expect to go up as more of the old guys retire with no replacement.

Yeah it's not glamorous but at the same time he's doing what most folks on HN dream of in running his own business with high paying customers.

> Going back a few decades in the UK, a manual labourer could afford to buy a home, own a car, provide for the family, etcetera. Nowadays that is falling fast.

You could now say the same for college grads in many countries as well, and not just the peasants with arts degrees - the housing bubble is such that unless your parents can help you out in a very big way, owning a house is simply not realistic for even the very well paid, unless you want to spend 75%+ of your income on a mortgage.

I do agree college should not be free. It devalues the education and puts those who are there to truly learn at a disadvantage. Who wants to be in classes alongside people who just there because its free, or for the ride?

When you ask people to pay for something they rightly should expect something in return. They should also be able to set limits. There are many colleges offering degrees in nearly useless if not useless areas. There are many that simply exist to farm loans, scholarships, and the like.

>>I do agree college should not be free. It devalues the education and puts those who are there to truly learn at a disadvantage. Who wants to be in classes alongside people who just there because its free, or for the ride?

Being free doesn't mean they drop all their standards. Even in paid schools today you can be expelled and/or kicked out of a class for terrible performance, attendance or inappropriate behavior. As long as you keep those standards, free college should be fine. Now if you're talking about crowded classes and/or not enough teachers, maybe we should prioritize schools & teachers more and sports less... but that's a whole other discussion. I strongly believe school should be free. I expect Germany to do well with their recent changes:

http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/10/01/3574551/german... "At least for now, however, learning German might be the best financial choice an American high school student can make."

There's also quite a few european countries with free college/university education. To name the main ones: Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland

AFAIK, Norway offers this privilege even to international students, while Sweden gives it to any EU citizen

> I do agree college should not be free. It devalues the education and puts those who are there to truly learn at a disadvantage. Who wants to be in classes alongside people who just there because its free, or for the ride?

At what point do you draw the line for free education? I've definitely heard similar arguments about sending kids to private high-schools and middle schools, but I don't think we should force people to pay for a middle school education.

The tension has always been there. The first university in Europe was Bologna's, which was chiefly known for the study of law.

As for 1967 and after, I would complain less that we are dropping liberal arts departments, though I'd rather not see them dropped, than that the cost of studying anything at a state school has greatly outrun inflation. It costs a hell of a lot to study philosophy, but it also costs a hell of a lot to study electrical engineering.

It should be noted that Reagan's argument was against taxpayers subsidizing four-credit courses on organizing demonstrations, not intellectual curiosity and certainly not the private pursuit of intellectual curiosity. Governor Reagan would have had no issue with a private institution like Harvard offering whatever courses it liked.

Public funding for education can improve its quality and access, but it always comes with strings attached. And for good reason: taxpayers deserve accountability and transparency where public money is spent.

"Developing a meaningful philosophy of life" is a life-long pursuit, and to that end the four years I spent in college were way less influential than the years since have been.

The OP seems to say that education for jobs, e.g., as in the Obama quote about manufacturing and trades, is one case and that the other is a "liberal" education, which usually means heavily the humanities of literature, art, history, philosophy, and maybe some religion.

But, this dichotomy seems to have omitted mathematics, physical science, social science, engineering, and technology. And the purpose of some of these might be not just jobs but beneficial research results and new companies that create new products/services and jobs.

It appears that the OP has set up a straw man, education for jobs as something to knock down in order to praise his favorite "liberal" education.

I'd say: "Liberal" education, that's about the humanities, right? And the main purpose of the humanities is to better the lives of humans, right? Well, what else has so far bettered the lives of humans, say, compared with a few hundred or a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of years ago?

For bettering the lives of humans, how about agriculture, domestication of animals, textiles, writing, arithmetic, geometry, the wheel, work with wood, stone, and metals for tools, construction, etc., open ocean sailing, steam power, other heat engines, chemistry, physics, medicine, electricity, electronics, mathematics, engineering, materials, computing, telecommunications? Have these been good for humans and, thus, helped achieved the main goal of the humanities?

Are the classic topics in the humanities and a liberal education really the sole, best help for humans?

We can help humans by helping them to be happy, and one way is with some art, say, some Bach

http://grooveshark.com/s/Cello+Suite+No+1+Bach/3seBIM?src=5

some Vitali

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4B1ifcWa9o

some Camille Saint Saens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X79OkSayPSw

but also some math, say, Lebesgue and von Neumann as in Rudin, Real and Complex Analysis -- gorgeous stuff and with, e.g., a lot of beautifully done Fourier theory of crucial importance across the STEM fields. So, such math can make humans both happy and productive!

Some of the prerequisites for the crucial, core technology for my start up are in Rudin; so I expect that that material is productive; if my start up works, then I will thank Rudin, von Neumann, etc.; but if my start up flops, I won't blame them!

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