Permanently, too, if this causes a paradigm shift and virtual learning becomes the norm. Beyond the crisis, colleges were already planning on declining enrollment due to demographic shifts. Real estate in exclusively college towns, dependent on collegiate rentals, will be seeing long term changes regardless.
I don't believe virtual learning will be widely used long-term. I might be biased, coming from a mostly engineering school, but there is a lot of vital lab equipment needed for the curriculum, not to mention that social networking and connections are essential to most careers going forward, and I don't see that transferring over in the same way
I’d be happy if this was the beginning of the end for humanities departments that have become overtly political. More resources should be shifted to more utilitarian degrees like engineering and hard sciences.
Gutting humanities in favor of “practical” degrees is short-sighted in the extreme. The problem with humanities is not that it doesn’t provide value to the community, the problem is that it is difficult to monetize skills in the humanities.
There is a pathology that larger organizations often develop where they start investing only in ideas that where they can measure the impact on the time scale of a performance review cycle. For example, any project where the results can’t be measured in one or two quarters might be dead on arrival, depending on what company you work for.
The same kind of short-term, narrow-minded thinking is what makes people dismiss humanities.
Or there is an oversupply of humanities graduates and that is what is causing monetization problems. Just think about how many poorly paid artists there are.
Perhaps if you took the time to learn the humanities, they’d become more accessible to you? It’s not like engineering texts are the paragon of clarity.
The opacity of contemporary humanities texts is overstated. Yes, the general academic style tends to be verbose and baroque. But it bespeaks a certain hubris when a layman to a given field claims an absence of meaning to its work. The topics being discussed are often technical and by virtue of their intended audience (peer scholars) presuppose vast amounts of preliminary knowledge.
You don't need a politicized liberal arts department to teach engineers to write.
We would be just as well served if we went back to learning classics, for example. I was disappointed to go through college having touched nothing older than Shakespeare officially.
But I got plenty of feminist and minority-focused literature that was irrelevant to my particular (non-white) echnicity. Why should these modern authors take such a heavy precedence? Isn't it hubris to presume that your ideas are superior simply because they are new? Students are a captive audience when the entire institution is leaning in the same direction.
There was a great tweet/meme about people savaging the idea of bailing out the arts industry during a pandemic, all while spending more and more time reading news sites, playing games and watching TV/movies online...
You can pick up most of the soft skills you learn in humanities by doing things like reading and practicing writing. The minimum functional skill level is low enough for a majority of people to achieve through practice with minimal guidance.
People don't have to spend thousands of dollars and four years of their life to paint or sculpt or whatever - it may not be proficient and lifelike but it'll still be art.
Your world wouldn't be all that much more drab if we stopped forcing engineers to learn "culture".
> People don't have to spend thousands of dollars and four years of their life to paint or sculpt or whatever - it may not be proficient and lifelike but it'll still be art.
I don't think it's important to the overall argument of your comment, but this is incredibly reductive. If one has little appreciation for a particular form of art maybe this is true, but if, for example, all orchestras or other classical music ensembles were comprised of less proficient musicians I'd sooner stop listening to classical music altogether.
> Your world wouldn't be all that much more drab if we stopped forcing engineers to learn "culture".
I'm not sure if it was your intention, but quoting the word culture comes off as disparaging, but given the tone of your comment it certainly seems so.
I think I would've agreed with you if you'd simply said "engineers shouldn't be forced to take humanities in higher education; doing so is largely ineffective, at least in terms of imparting cultural appreciation and other related soft skills." Instead, I can't help but read it and think that it's single-minded and tone-deaf.
I once thought like this too. And then I studied engineering to learn that I hated it. I ended up switching into the humanities. Once there, I began to apply a combination of statistics and computer science to address very real problems (crime, vacancy, civic participation, neighborhood economics etc.)
We don’t actually live in a world governed only by the hard sciences. There are people here too, and I’d argue that understanding people is just as difficult as understanding the laws of physics.
Some of the biggest challenges in society today are not questions of hard science, but rather about people and groups and institutions. I think our current situation exemplifies this.
I didn't criticize humanities in general. I criticized humanities departments that have become overtly political. The overtly political ones produce useless graduates.
More resources ARE being shifted to those "practical" (read: revenue-generating) programs, to the detriment of students. The purpose of higher education is edification, not securing directly applicable job skills - that's what trade schools are for. Being able to read, write, interpret and communicate well are just as important to a software developer than the textbook CS curriculum.
It's only because of the harsh economic reality of America's university system that such a prospect is even thinkable.
Adding on to this, college is a great place to meet students from all around the world. The downside of virtual learning is that many students fled the countries where the government's response was underwhelming, so it's hard to collaborate across so many timezones. If virtual learning continues to be the norm, then students would likely go to schools to operate in a timezone that works best for them (which would most likely be during the day for them). This would eliminate the opportunity to work on projects with people from the other side of the world for most.
In my experience, the primary limit for engineering/CS labs are simply room capacities and the number of PCs per lab. Each lab therefore must be tightly scheduled by the school. Virtual learning has been amazing in this sense: labs can be rescheduled, have unlimited capacities, can run concurrently, etc.
They're also far easier to manage, less noisy, you aren't on your feet for hours.
As someone who has made an effort to build a connection with my landlords, being a landlord is not in any way an easy job.
Good landlords spend an immense amount of time on maintaining their properties and making sure that their renters have all their needs tended to.
This is doubly so in a rural university town where the seasonally renting(2/3rds of the year) population is anywhere from 10 to 30 times the size of the permanent residents in the surrounding area.
Also more generally, the lack of university students in these rural university towns could potentially cripple the local economy for a long time. Many of the local businesses are only able to sustain themselves with the income they receive during the Fall and Spring semesters.
> Good landlords spend an immense amount of time on maintaining their properties and making sure that their renters have all their needs tended to.
Good landlords are hard to find. There is so much information asymmetry when choosing a rental property. They can get large troves of data on you, but the reverse is not so easy if possible at all.
Being a good landlord is not an easy job, but individual landlords (good or bad) are in the minority. The majority of properties are owned by PMCs, and the difference is larger when you look at MDUs or college towns.
By their nature, PMCs are after profit, and improvements are an expense to minimize. The nature of college towns mean that there is a constant supply of “fresh meat” in the market, often moving to or from other cities, further disincentivizing improvement or good behavior on the part of the PMC. Why bother to replace moldy carpet, if the tenants don’t stick around to take you to court for it?
Having rented from PMCs in the past, having worked in college housing, the idea that you would feel sympathy towards a PMC in a college town is pathological.
> The nature of college towns mean that there is a constant supply of “fresh meat” in the market, often moving to or from other cities, further disincentivizing improvement or good behavior on the part of the PMC.
I grew up in a tourism economy and absolutely hated it for this reason.
Not having to do repeat business allows businesses to do all sorts of sleazy thigns that would have gotten around and had them out of business in short order anywhere else. Because their bad behavior never comes back to get them the scumbags can out compete the honest businesses for all the things businesses need so the cost of commercial rent, a plumber's services, tires for a skid steer, etc, etc, all reflect an income level that a business needs to behave badly to obtain. Eventually the entire local economy runs in a mode where prices are massively variable because everyone rips everyone else off as much as they think they can and you can never trust anyone you do business with to give you a fair price and a massive amount of time and effort is wasted on price discovery because nobody can trust that they're not paying some integer multiple of what someone else got charged for an equivalent.
Deriving income from a large transient population is just an all around recipe for a crappy low trust society.
Just to add to this, I attended college in a small town. Almost all of the housing was owned by people or organizations that weren't local. So almost all of the money that people thought was coming into the town wasn't.
In practice, PMCs in college towns are bad actors. At least, on average. They are basically sitting on an investment (land) and providing the minimum level of work necessary to keep money flowing. It’s a legitimate business in the sense that it is “legal”. However, the profits do not correspond to the value that they provide to the economy.
Yes, landowners and the maintenance they to or fail to do has massive impacts on the lives of their tenants. In an "as-is-where-is" state the only recourse when the roof leaks is to move out. That is expensive and disruptive, and you can't even recover the funds. This fantasy of shareholder value, where everyone takes care of himself, consequently everyone is taken care of is just that: fantasy.
Obviously not—it’s not the amount of work done, but the value which the work provides.
Landlords contribute a small amount of value relative to how much they are paid, compared to other businesses. Most of the value is provided by the land itself, and the landlords merely have a monopoly on it. So I am less inclined to be sympathetic to PMCs which are suddenly being paid less, since they are generally overpaid.
We have to be careful to distinguish rent from actual productive economic activity, because rent provides no value and requires no work. Speaking here of “rent” in the Adam Smith sense of the word.
If PMCs are overpaid, then the property owners wouldn't employ them. And if landlords didn't do much work, property owners wouldn't pay PMCs to do that work for them.
I’m not being perfectly precise in my terminology, and you’re spitting out a compiler error in response.
Landlords/PMCs are overpaid because tenants pay rent not only for the services provided by the landlords/PMCs, but also for access to the land which they own. This happens because the property owners have a monopoly on that piece of land. The rent will increase in accordance with the contributions of the people using the land, and yet the money will be paid instead to the people owning the land.
> The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take, but to what the farmer can afford to give.
If you've ever rented out land, you'd know that the price you can charge is not at all set by what the tenant can afford. Like other prices, it's set by supply and demand.
For an obvious example, if I tried to rent my house out to Bill Gates for $50 billion, which he can afford, how far do you think I'd get with that?
Comparing rent on farm land is not the same as rent on housing.
I own a rental house. What does the rent go to? Well, I pay a mortgage, taxes, utilities, and upkeep. That is, I'm saving up now for a roof and a retaining wall (to give better access on one side of the driveway).
What value do the renters receive?
1. No risk. They can walk away, but I still have a 30-year mortgage. The plumbing can fail. The roof can leak. The electric can degrade. The building can crumble. I, the owner, have to fix it IF it happens. The renter does not assume any of that risk.
2. No commitment. Aside from a short lease (which they agree to the terms), the renter has no long-term obligation to that property. I, as the owner, have committed to maintaining the property for decades.
3. Access to the property and all of its features. If you don't think that that is value, then try being homeless.
4. Furthermore, I, as the owner, DO NOT have access to the use of the property. Perhaps for decades.
5. Monopoly? I cannot think of a single example of a monopoly in land ownership other than the government itself and the threat of eminent domain. If you don't like my terms for lease, then go next door. Different owner, different terms. Or buy your own.
6. Initial Investment. I, as an owner, had to save for years to consolidate the capital for the down payment of that property. That means that, for years, I did not party, buy the latest technology, eat at moderately-priced restaurants, go on vacation, buy a shiny new vehicle, purchase concert tickets, etc. I deprived myself of entertainment and luxery to, instead, work multiple jobs, with the intent of having a rental property.
7. Improvement. I improve the property. If I do not pay someone to do it, then it is me doing it myself. I refinished the hardwood floors. I fixed drywall and painted. I removed old ductwork. I provide appliances. I provide furnishing (I rent to students, after all). I put the labor into the property, further depriving myself of other more enjoyable activity.
I'm sorry, but I completely disagree with your restrictive definition of what of "rent" represents. Rent is compensation for my years of preparation and self-denial of the reward for my own personal labor. Rent is the fee that the renter pays for not having done the same. Rent is never pure profit. Rent is a continual financial planning for the upkeep and sustaining of the investment.
Do I benefit from my investment? Yes.
Do I feel guilty about it? No.
Should I feel guilty about it? Never.
If you are mad at a landlord for having to pay rent, then dig yourself out of that situation. What if it takes years? Welcome to the club. Do it anyway. So what if you have to move? Again, welcome to the club. Do it anyway. So what if the landlord is wealthy? Wealth has to come from somewhere, and if your current financial strategy isn't making you wealthy, then change it. It will probably take a lifetime to do, but then again, that's probably what your landlord did (or is in the process of doing).
You’re evaluating the benefits and drawbacks renting and owning, taking our economy and laws for granted. This is different from what I was doing, which was comparing the economic value produced by landlords to the money they are paid for it.
1. Assuming risk is valid. However, it only accounts for a small portion of rent.
2. You do not actually have that kind of commitment. You can sell the property. The only risk here is that you cannot make a profit when you sell it, so this is nothing more than a repeat of point #1.
3/4. Access to use of the property would exist whether or not it had a landlord. The landlord is not providing value here, merely using the power of a government-granted monopoly on the land.
5. Land is not fungible and there is a limited supply. You are granted a monopoly on the land that you own.
6. The reason the initial investment is so high is because local laws are generally put in place to protect the interests of homeowners, over the interests of renters.
7. The improvement only accounts for a small portion of rent.
> I'm sorry, but I completely disagree with your restrictive definition of what of "rent" represents. Rent is compensation for my years of preparation and self-denial of the reward for my own personal labor.
You obviously don’t feel sorry, but you are benefiting from a system which is rigged in your favor, and building capital on the backs of people who actually provide value to the economy. That’s not to say that you are not providing value to the economy—it’s just that the value you provide is much smaller than the amount you are paid for it.
Consider, for a moment, the reason why rent may go up in a particular area. The main reason it goes up is because of the economy in a particular area. The economy makes the rent go up because the people living there are more productive—not because the landlords are more productive! So the landlords are being compensated for other people’s work, when the rent goes up.
> If you are mad at a landlord for having to pay rent, then dig yourself out of that situation.
I wouldn’t get mad at leeches, mosquitos, or other parasites. They are merely making the best out of the ecological niche that they arrived in. But I’m also not going to feel sympathy for parasites, nor am I going to care whether they feel guilty.
If I can jump in here, based on watching my dad and my grandfather rent properties.
1/2. Risk is a big part of owning property. Liquidity of the property is also very important. You are vastly underestimating this.
3/4. As long as the right to own property exists, the right to exclude access to land that someone owns exists. If the landlord did not rent the property, then only the landlord would have the right to access it. Unless you deny the right to personal property?
5. In the sense you're using it, I have a "monopoly" on my laptop. It's one of those old Thinkpad X230s, and there's a limited supply. You're welcome to buy it from me...but there's also more on ebay. To call my laptop ownership a 'monopoly' is ridiculous, because you can go buy a different one, even though there's a limited supply. In the same way, you can go rent land somewhere else, even though there's a limited supply.
6. That's actually a big factor in deciding where to purchase properties that you want to rent out: do the local laws favor the tenant or the landlord? It can be so expensive as to be not worth the effort, when the laws favor the tenant. If you can't kick someone out until they've gone six months without paying the rent, but still have to pay for the upkeep of the property, then you want to be very, very careful that you find good tenants.
7. In what world to you live in? All that stuff costs thousands of dollars - even just repainting. And it's not just improvement, but upkeep. Plumbers are expensive. Random stuff breaking is expensive. Not everyone has the time or ability to do those things themselves.
> you are benefiting from a system which is rigged in your favor
See 6) above. It's not rigged; housing is a hard problem to solve, and it's expensive on both sides.
> building capital on the backs of people who actually provide value to the economy
Ever stayed in a hotel? Those provide exactly the same benefit as a rental, on a shorter time scale. Or do you not consider hotels valuable?
> The main reason [rent] goes up is because of the economy in a particular area.
The landlord picked a good location to purchase the property. Seems strange you expect the landlord to keep their prices down while everything else gets more expensive. The landlord is still providing value. If you don't like the prices, you're welcome to move somewhere with cheaper apartments...but a cheaper apartment will come with some downsides, too.
> not going to feel sympathy for parasites
I'd say a tenant who failed to pay rent matches the definition of parasite pretty well too.
Providing housing, whether a hotel room or an apartment, is a valuable part of the economy. You've given several reading recommendations in this thread, let me pass you something in return:
Look into what it would actually involve to rent a property in your area - cost to purchase, the building codes that have to be followed, the upgrades that have to be made (a lot of old houses have lead in the paint - that has to be stripped or covered); check out the effort it takes to coordinate with a rental agency to find a decent tenant, and look up the probabilities of the costs associated with bad tenants. It's also worth checking out how long the average tenant rents for, and the cleanup time and effort involved with prepping for the next tenant. Don't forget to check the competition - does the bathroom need to be upgraded? Maybe the houses in your area all have walk-in closets, and the rental agency says you need one too, to stay attractive. How much does the contractor say that'll cost, and how long will it take? Also check out the correlation between rental property destruction and income level - if you rent cheap properties for cheap, what's the cost of repair come to each month?
Final question. Did you decide to skip the above exercise, because it looked too time-consuming and/or difficult?
Providing rental property is yet another industry in which "Why don't we just screw over people with no options" has prevailed. It may be legitimate in that people need places to live, but it is far from legitimate in any way regarding getting what is paid for.
Because you have had bad experiences renting apartments, that means an entire sector of the economy is illegitimate? There's a lot more variety to rentals than that.
Being a legitimate business does not mean I can feel no sympathy or empathy for those who fail in that business. I can think of some legitimate businesses where my feelings of hearing of hardship within that business borderlines on pleasurable (say any legitimate business which is tied to lobbying to increase prison sentences).
You can have whatever feelings you like, but comparing property rental to (I assume you mean) for-profit prisons advocating longer sentences is a pretty gargantuan leap.
Landlords collect money for owning property. They pay maintenance people slightly above minimum wage to fix any issues that may come up. How is that a legitimate business? What commodities do landlords produce?
Current college student here at a school with a large off-campus housing population - one thing I've been hearing from some of my friends (although anecdotal) is a decent amount of people still want to go to their apartments next semester even if it's online. I don't know how much of a dent this behavior will do overall, especially because I think an overwhelming majority of people would prefer not to have to pay rent every month for an unnecessary apartment.
They'll decide again when they have an outbreak in a dorm or when a few faculty members die. It's hard to imagine that presence instruction will be back in the fall.
I’m a little surprised by this sentiment (maybe I’m naively optimistic). I’m curious, do you (and others) think elementary and high schools will be back next fall?
I doubt that school will be back in session. Coronavirus infection in children and adolescents is generally mild, but that does not mean that they are not infectious and can't pass the disease to their parents. That will have impact, 20 % of adults will become severely ill with fever for weeks. It will hit hospitals and workplaces.
I suspect there will be a lot of pressure from parents to reinstitute in-person schooling so they have daycare.
I suspect we'll also see our first couple of disease clusters and super spreaders with associated deaths clearly attributable to a child in school. (I hope to god we'll have some compassion and keep the kids' names out of this, but I doubt it.)
Once that hits the news, I suspect lots of parents will refuse to put their kids in school.
In CA, for example, this may have devastating effects on the school district: they get money on an asses-in-seats basis [1]. I suspect that home schooling is about to have an enormous boom.
Almost certainly. I think the vast majority of teachers, students and parents would rather go back to school with elaborate restrictions (like is happening now in parts of Europe) than stay home for another entire semester.
But high-risk students and households will need to be accommodated too, so a remote component could be necessary even if most kids are back in physical classrooms.
I feel bad for the colleges. But anyone in their right mind that's going to college to learn things will take a gap year.
Those going to college just for the paper are well advised to keep going. The next couple of years will be easy mode, for sure. You get an A, and you get an A--everyone gets an A!
If you are relying on scholarships to afford university, this is not an option. If you break full time status you essentially forfeit all of your scholarships and it is very unlikely you will get them back.
Yes, I know. I think a number of them just pause for quarters you’re absent and then resume once you come back, provided you don’t lose student status or whatever.
I'm not saying I want to just "pause" and play video games for a year, though I'll grant that's true of some of my peers. Rather, I'm saying it makes sense for many people my age to make changes to their up-coming year. I'd continue working as a developer, continue with non-profit work, and keep working on side projects to build skills. I've been working through some interesting books (Boneh and Shoup's crypto book and Crafting Interpreters) and learning a great deal outside the rigor of any formal class.
Essentially, while I get why colleges and politicians would want students to go about business as usual, it seems it benefits them rather than me. I'm going to college for two things: research and connections. Both of these are greatly impeded by virtual-only learning. Research is possible in CS but much harder, especially if one doesn't already know the professor. And it seems impossible to form relationships over videochat only.
Taking a gap year isn’t specially viable for parent students, or even transfer students mainly due to the fact of age discrimination in grad schools and or job markets, ergo the sooner we can graduate the better off we are as prospective grad students and also job candidates. (Am a pure math student who’s on average 2 years older than my peers in classroom)
A typical HN-reading college student likely already does those things alongside studying. So instead of doing a different of activities like you have imagined, this hypothetical student would now be bored out of their mind by having an even more homogenous set of activities available to them.
Take a gap year and do what, exactly? Sitting around your parents' house for a year is probably worse than getting the coronavirus, for an 18 year old. Maybe much worse.
As an 18-year-old, exactly this. Even with the lackluster online classes I am getting, sitting at home is unproductive, uninteresting, and just mentally exhausting. The primary thing I looked forward to in college is independence. Even if my parents completely laid off for the year, I would still feel judged for every decision I made.
You could work on personal projects. I am a college student too, currently at my parent's home and writing a experimental debugger. Under the usual workload, it's hard to find free time like this; everyone should use this opportunity to better themselves (unless they are impacted directly by the virus, or ciritically affected by the economic downturn).
If you're unproductive, that seems more like a personality thing vs a being 18 thing. There's hobbies, things 6i can learn, pick up new skills, exercise and get healthy, learn to cook, start a business, etc.
I really wish I took a gap year at that age to learn new skills. For instance I went to school for mechanical engineering but I would have loved to have learned programming back then. It was always on my to do list but never had enough time. If I had done it then, I probably would have received a degree in CS or IT instead.
Even for my friends that went for CS, they also said they would have loved to have had more time to apply and actually create things vs just learning theoretical/ engineering side of things in school.
Or for instance my brother if he took off from school he would have had the chance to go pro in the MLS, but it was too big of a risk to put off school at the time. Not that sports are happening now, but just gives a more diverse view.
A more HN example would be to create a business or side hustle.
18-year-old here, heavily considering a gap year. I've already got a job at a cybersecurity firm as a developer, and would continue working there. It's a start-up, so I've gotten to work on many different things and build skills in lots of different places. I've worked on projects to build skills throughout high school; I'd continue working on those. I'd have more time to focus on learning "real things" vs. padding my accomplishments for college admissions. Finally, I've got lots of non-profit work to continue. It sounds much more compelling than paying $75k/year for "zoom university".
If you already have a decent job, the 3-4 years of extra real-world experience will likely put you much further ahead than college would. I wouldn't waste so much money and time on it given your position regardless of covid.
Back in the day, HP hiring used to value a Masters' Degree as 1 year of experience. And a Master's Degree took 2 years. So they made in explicit: get out of school and get a job.
One of the most valuable things I did during college was to "eat" documentation wholesale. I read absolutely everything I could get my hands on, and also played around with a few toy projects.
This turned out to be more useful than 80% of what I learned in college.
"... If a student wants to study at Princeton, he doesn’t really need to apply or pay tuition. He can simply show up and start taking classes. As a professor, I assure you that we make near-zero effort to stop unofficial education; indeed, the rare, earnestly curious student touches our hearts. At the end of four years at Princeton, though, the guerrilla student would lack one precious thing: a diploma. The fact that almost no one tries this route — saving hundreds of thousands of dollars along the way — is a strong sign that students understand the value of certification over actual learning..."
"...Educational austerity is the simplest path back to an economy in which serious on-the-job learning starts during high school — not after college."
>The fact that almost no one tries this route — saving hundreds of thousands of dollars along the way — is a strong sign that students understand the value of certification over actual learning..."
Or a sign that some people don't understand the value of networking and the value of what earning admission to Princeton signals.
It may also be a strong sign that few young Americans have the money to live in that area with no income for four years. The student admitted to Princeton can get money--financial aid or loans--to apply to food and shelter. The student apparently just hanging out has to have some other source of money. I also wonder whether the libraries and the computer centers have such a laissez-faire attitude.
I highly doubt that. In most college towns, at least until very recently, it was really not difficult to get a college-town-like part-time job that could easily pay for food and a shared room. The point is most people aren't going to do that is if the story is at the end of those 4 years you have no credentials to show for it, and I think more importantly, a primary value of college is the social experience. It would be very difficult to integrate yourself into college life if you were not an admitted student without lying.
If you don't have a Princeton ID, you aren't going to be allowed into their libraries. You _might_ be able to attend lectures, but basically everything else will be off limits. Good luck joining a study group.
If you are genuinely capable of learning everything alone, just from lectures, there's no need to move to NJ. It's all online anyways.
I went to an Ivy League school, and while an ID was needed for some resources (mainly the libraries and gyms), no one would have batted an eye if you went into a decently sized lecture.
Notice that he does a neat little switch there. He talks about Princeton, then he says "As a professor", then he talks about Princeton again. He's a professor at George Mason. I think anyone can figure out why he used Princeton rather than the place he works without actually stating the name of his employer.
The author's not at Princeton, so why is he even offering an opinion? This is a bunch of made up BS anyway. Princeton faculty aren't going to be okay with dozens of extra students attending their lectures (there are room capacity constraints). They're sure as heck not going to grade essays, hold office hours, and answer email inquiries from a few dozen random individuals that decided to stroll into the class.
He's basically saying there's no need to buy food because you can eat free samples at the grocery store. He also just happens to be the author of a "contrarian" book arguing that college is worthless. It's purely a coincidence that he's posting misinformation on the same topic - making claims about a university where he doesn't work - in one of the most widely read news outlets.
> The next couple of years will be easy mode, for sure
Sadly this isn't true for a lot of math/computer science courses, speaking from very recent experience. While having an open book and even online access is an advantage, many profs implement measures ranging from webcam proctoring services to extremely difficult time-limited exams to compensate.
If all the incoming freshmen take a gap year, then the following year there would be a double-sized freshman class. That wouldn’t work so well. And 4 years later, would the university have to admit a double-sized class again in order to keep a relatively constant number of students enrolled?
Probably not UCLA, which does not even have enough space for people as things were. Even more so considering that nobody will want to live in a tiny 3 person box after all of this.
> You get an A, and you get an A--everyone gets an A!
My friends who are currently in college tell me that they’re currently dying under a massive workload as teachers fail to realize that “remote learning” does not mean you can assign hundreds of pages of reading “to fill up free time”. Those that are from other countries really dislike waking up at 3 AM to take synchronized online quizzes…it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
Yup, aside from the current situation there's total a classic issue of a teacher not realizing they're not the only class being taken, let alone any remorse for those that also have jobs, kids, or any other type of responsibility.
Colleges are not going to let many people take gap years. So it'll be a choice between attending the school you want or reapplying next year (when it'll probably be even harder to get in).
Usually most people who want gap years are allowed to do so, but usually there aren't many people who want to do gap years (at least in the US).
Oh I checked my uni's calendar and you're right, there's a brief notice that deferral isn't guaranteed. In practice I've never seen it denied, but these times are different.
My university's policy is that for student-elected gaps, if you returned within three years, "re-admission" was guaranteed. It was a bit dicier if the university required you to leave due to health problems or disciplinary/academic violations.
Usually, yes, but now colleges are having revenue problems. The president may block foreigners from attending (big revenue source), and many students may want to delay. So colleges are pretty likely to tell students to suck it up for a year or not get admitted to try to force them to attend as normal.
My college had comprehensive exams. It was hard enough remember specific details of a class you took 3 years ago even when you were in other classes, seeing the professors every day, and constantly talking about the field. I can't imagine taking a year off and then trying to come back and remember everything after being away.
> You get an A, and you get an A--everyone gets an A!
I'm a prof at a SLAC. Many of the students I have are doing fine. But a good number of them are struggling. Some are working, sometimes many hours because their parents are out of work or anticipate being out of work. Some of them have illness in their family (I don't know of any who are themselves ill).
And for some of them it is that they are not good at this environment-- they didn't sign up for this. Online education is hard. Personally I perceive that especially for people on the left side of the curve, less learning takes place because they are often just not skilled at self-learning.
In the present environment, when working with students I often feel that this is a person who could well have learned, say, Elementary Statistics except that the circumstances hit them where they are weak. Some leeway is called for, it seems to me. I'm not talking about certifying them at something where they are not prepared for the following class (that is, no "Everybody gets an A"). But my school, and many others, is allowing people to choose "No grade" in some cases and that seems reasonable to me.
> The next couple of years will be easy mode, for sure. You get an A, and you get an A--everyone gets an A!
If my experience of college professors is anything to go by, it'll be more like "You couldn't complete the work because I forgot to include a crucial part of the instructions. Well tough, you fail anyway."
Classes won't all be like, be the ones that are will take up so much of students time that they might as well be.
Harder still to imagine being 18 and deciding to play it safe and stay with mom and dad for god-knows how many more months. I'd take the risk if I was able.
CFR for those aged 60 or greater is at 6.4%[0]. And of course an even larger percentage will end up hospitalized. How many professors are in that high risk demographic? Class is just supposed to go on while professors inevitably fall ill, become hospitalized and die?
I would think many professors will ask for remote teaching option even if campuses reopen? With office hours held outdoors?
I am a product of University of California system and many of my lower level classes had hundreds or students. I barely got to see the professor up close so maybe this remote video teaching may even been a better option. :)
My guess is there will be mandatory testing for students wanting to return, along with heavy disease surveillance. I also suspect even places claiming "normal operation" will not actually be normal — certain things will be virtual and other things not. There will likely be some reshuffling of teaching assignments too.
I noticed also (former professor) that my institution is now heavily incentivizing early retirement for those getting close to qualifying, and are not shy about linking it to coronavirus.
Finally, I think a lot of social distancing guidelines apply technically in many situations with lectures, etc.
The list by itself is of limited use, since each college on the list has made different announcements. I’d say the summary is most have vaguely worded statements leaving open the possibility of either remote learning, in-person learning or some combination of the two.
I work for a student lender (for postgrad degrees only), we're scrambling to handle all the classes that are being postponed, or telling their students not to fly and they'll start online (since we lend to international students, the date they are in country matters a lot).
I moved back home after my university moved my classes to online (mid-march). I’m now paying rent on an apartment I don’t need and have a lease for next school year that I might not use. Even if in-person classes start again, I’ll have to worry about being screwed again next spring. The only other option I could think of was subleasing but unfortunately I signed my lease in January.
Same issue but I’ve considered contacting the landlord to renegotiate lease terms or take it to civil court if they refuse to help us during these extra unusual circumstances.
This depends on the jurisdiction and the terms of the lease. Most places in the US, there are very few ways to break a lease without a clause in the contract allowing it.
For example, in New York, if you break a lease the landlord is obligated to make a “reasonable effort” to re-rent the apartment. You are still on the hook in the interim. In the current environment, the apartment probably won’t be re-rented.
One approach is to line up prospective sublease tenants to see the apartment, and have them request showings that appear reasonable but that a large company cannot achieve (if your landlord is a large company). The idea being if they drag you to court, you simply show records that you tried to line up showings but the landlord who has the keys (since you're out of town) couldn't bother to assist in the effort. The way I approached this previously was to advertise on Craigslist with things like "first two months free!". I had people lined up to see the place and the landlord could not show-up without a weeks notice. No judge will side with the landlord in this kind of situation.
I highly suspect that many large public universities will make large lectures online and cap in person enrollment for discussion/seminar/lab. You can probably easily ramp up hiring for these since they're mostly grad students, and frankly grad students are cheap (I say this as one).
STEM grad students are surprisingly expensive given how poorly they're paid and how valuable their work is (I say this as a former grad student, but also as someone who budgets for them).
Universities will now have to cull "overhead". Grad students and professors will have a golden opportunity about 1-2 years from now to capture a less tiny fraction of the wealth they create. Don't let it go to waste.
It is just my personal opinion but if I was in a position to plan for the upcoming academic year in US, I'd recommend below.
- Start Fall semester with onsite classes.
- For those who wish to participate remotely for medical reasons or personal preference, they should be allowed to teach/learn remotely.
- But everyone (administration, profs, students, support staff, local town/city) should be prepared to have the teaching go virtual with the campus shutting down on a short notice.
- If Covid-19 reappears locally or surges again nationally, campus should close down.
I say at least start the upcoming semester in Fall 2020 with onsite classes, for the sake of human bonds to form between the students/professors. It may sound too unpredictable but I think having even one or two months of in person interaction would be beneficial for the incoming freshman class.
Also, dorm/parking/housing cost probably should be charged in monthly increments, not per semester, to prepare for possible shutdown of campus in the middle of a semester.
It was announced today that experts are already doubting the possibility of hosting the Tokyo Olympics even in the summer of 2021, because a vaccine may not be available or widely applied then. I suspect we are going to see a new wave of cancellations of things we initially thought might resume by the end of 2020 or mid-2021. I don’t know if this will affect enrollment of local students who wouldn't have to travel to campus, but the conference side of academia may be disrupted, i.e. everything which was scheduled for 2020 and was recently postponed to 2021, may not happen even then. Expect a lot of complaining from academics about this being a lost two years (at least) for them in terms of in-person networking and career advancement.
High schooler here. On-line school is far from perfect. There are two approaches I've seen:
1. The "self-taught" style. This one is being done by my linear algebra class: the prof tells us which chapters to read, sends out notes, and some recommended problems. Periodically, he sends out a take-home test; we work it and send him the answers. This style is helped by the fact that our book is short and concise enough to teach but still be readable. No one wants to read if a chapter takes hours. This approach works great for me, but it requires a more self-directed student to function.
2. The "micro-manager" style. This one is being done by my physics class: the prof uses online, checked homework, multiple zoom calls, requires us to record videos of ourselves solving problems in a "tutorial style", gives on-line quizzes, and attempts to give the same tests on-line as were given in-person. This results in horrible, invasive solutions that give a "proctor" remote access to one's computer, require one to use a webcam to be monitored, and require one to show the space around him using a mirror. This style is awful, wastes colossal amounts of time, but is the option on which teachers fall back when they lack confidence in their students to be self-directed.
Most teachers are going for option 2, which is worse than in-person learning. This may sound cynical, but mot of the tools for "active learning" or "on-line engagement" make students' lives harder, waste their time, and offer no benefit beyond an administrator feeling as though he's "done something".
Edit: can any current student tell me if y'all are getting refunded for room and board, at least partially? Y'all paid for something and are being prohibited from using it, so that seems reasonable.
There's a third method, roughly in the middle of your 1 and 2. My wife practices this (she teaches Math at college level): keep the lectures at the times they are regularly scheduled, but on Zoom. Use an iPad-based whiteboard (Notability) and share the screen. Allow questions, give answers. Pretty much the regular class time, only online. Quizes happen at the scheduled times. Students receive the test pages via email, and they have to print them out and send photos of their worked solutions by a certain time limit (roughly the same as the one for a normal exam, plus a few more minutes to allow for printing, etc). She simply decided to trust her students. So far she has zero reasons to believe any of them cheated; in particular one submitted an empty exam. No students have dropped the class, and the attendance is better than the one prior to the lockdown.
>require one to show the space around him using a mirror.
I'm hard-pressed to think of many subjects where an "open book" test isn't a better option, even for in-person classes. If a cheat sheet can help during a test, then it's asking predictable questions and measuring regurgitation.
My wife pointed out language tests to see if students can use the skills on the fly, but I can't think of another good case. This should be a time for schools to find which teachers are just going for easy-to-write instead of useful tests.
My linear teacher did a good job of this, because you're right that regurgitation isn't useful. He does open-book tests that are focused on doing proofs and conceptual questions that depend on using properties of stuff rather than just juggling numbers. Good CS teachers have done the same; rather than demanding students memorize a half-dozen sorting algorithms, they ask students to use an appropriate sort in a project. In History, students can write papers and give perspectives rather than regurgitating dates. In Econ, students can do modeling projects rather than spouting formulae and facts about AS-AD models.
The caveat to all of these is that they take more work for teachers, so many prefer not to use them.
Per issues with #2, they are assuming that the webcams of students are unmodified.
Yellow highlighters' coloring is called 'Solvent Green 7' and has a peak at about 494nm.
You can buy filters for lenses that will knock out certain bandwidths of light and keep the rest coming into the camera. These are called notch filters, as they take a notch out of the light.
There just so happens to be a notch filter that should know out the yellow highlighter color. Meaning that the light reflected from a yellow highlighter will not enter into the camera.
They are not cheap though, and as such, I've not tried this at home to see how well it works.
Other solutions may exist at to the ideas that these people may have about how your webcam is working. I'd experiment with other lenses, polarized filters, exposure times, etc.
That said, studying is a lot easier than trying to jerry-rig your webcams.
Although those physical approaches are fascinating, I think there must be an easier software solution. How hard can it be to live edit the webcam recording so that half of the frame is a static picture? Then you just have notes flat on your desk... And the webcam will show it empty.
Alternatively, one could run a VM with the monitoring software, and have a separate window with notes. As long as the mirror is angled so to hide a small portion of the screen that should be good enough.
To build on your physical solution using polarization: that's easier. You can apply a polarized filter to the webcam (you can get one from an old pair of 3d glasses) and then have the notes on a secondary screen that will then look completely dark on webcam. Maybe lay the device on a black background so it's not obvious that there's a "turned off" device and you're done.
This is all a fun thought experiment. I don't have invasive professors, thankfully. They simply made all tests open book and raised the difficulty of the questions accordingly. That being said, I enjoy trying to work arounf hypothetical limitations...
But this is on a thread about high school. You're way over thinking it. Just ratchet down the bandwidth available to the relevant machine (or straight up disable the video feed). Easy peasy. What's the teacher going to do, fail you for not being rich enough to afford a good internet connection? They aren't paid well enough to take that risk.
You can see some online learning drama unfold here. Student has to go back home to bad home situation, bombs online test, complains about prof, to the point where prof gets on to defend themselves.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gatech/comments/g5vzfc/stasko_doesn...
161 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 206 ms ] threadGutting humanities in favor of “practical” degrees is short-sighted in the extreme. The problem with humanities is not that it doesn’t provide value to the community, the problem is that it is difficult to monetize skills in the humanities.
There is a pathology that larger organizations often develop where they start investing only in ideas that where they can measure the impact on the time scale of a performance review cycle. For example, any project where the results can’t be measured in one or two quarters might be dead on arrival, depending on what company you work for.
The same kind of short-term, narrow-minded thinking is what makes people dismiss humanities.
We would be just as well served if we went back to learning classics, for example. I was disappointed to go through college having touched nothing older than Shakespeare officially.
But I got plenty of feminist and minority-focused literature that was irrelevant to my particular (non-white) echnicity. Why should these modern authors take such a heavy precedence? Isn't it hubris to presume that your ideas are superior simply because they are new? Students are a captive audience when the entire institution is leaning in the same direction.
People don't have to spend thousands of dollars and four years of their life to paint or sculpt or whatever - it may not be proficient and lifelike but it'll still be art.
Your world wouldn't be all that much more drab if we stopped forcing engineers to learn "culture".
I don't think it's important to the overall argument of your comment, but this is incredibly reductive. If one has little appreciation for a particular form of art maybe this is true, but if, for example, all orchestras or other classical music ensembles were comprised of less proficient musicians I'd sooner stop listening to classical music altogether.
> Your world wouldn't be all that much more drab if we stopped forcing engineers to learn "culture".
I'm not sure if it was your intention, but quoting the word culture comes off as disparaging, but given the tone of your comment it certainly seems so.
I think I would've agreed with you if you'd simply said "engineers shouldn't be forced to take humanities in higher education; doing so is largely ineffective, at least in terms of imparting cultural appreciation and other related soft skills." Instead, I can't help but read it and think that it's single-minded and tone-deaf.
Value judgements merely reflect the person that created them.
We don’t actually live in a world governed only by the hard sciences. There are people here too, and I’d argue that understanding people is just as difficult as understanding the laws of physics.
Some of the biggest challenges in society today are not questions of hard science, but rather about people and groups and institutions. I think our current situation exemplifies this.
It's only because of the harsh economic reality of America's university system that such a prospect is even thinkable.
They're also far easier to manage, less noisy, you aren't on your feet for hours.
This is doubly so in a rural university town where the seasonally renting(2/3rds of the year) population is anywhere from 10 to 30 times the size of the permanent residents in the surrounding area.
Also more generally, the lack of university students in these rural university towns could potentially cripple the local economy for a long time. Many of the local businesses are only able to sustain themselves with the income they receive during the Fall and Spring semesters.
Good landlords are hard to find. There is so much information asymmetry when choosing a rental property. They can get large troves of data on you, but the reverse is not so easy if possible at all.
By their nature, PMCs are after profit, and improvements are an expense to minimize. The nature of college towns mean that there is a constant supply of “fresh meat” in the market, often moving to or from other cities, further disincentivizing improvement or good behavior on the part of the PMC. Why bother to replace moldy carpet, if the tenants don’t stick around to take you to court for it?
Having rented from PMCs in the past, having worked in college housing, the idea that you would feel sympathy towards a PMC in a college town is pathological.
I grew up in a tourism economy and absolutely hated it for this reason.
Not having to do repeat business allows businesses to do all sorts of sleazy thigns that would have gotten around and had them out of business in short order anywhere else. Because their bad behavior never comes back to get them the scumbags can out compete the honest businesses for all the things businesses need so the cost of commercial rent, a plumber's services, tires for a skid steer, etc, etc, all reflect an income level that a business needs to behave badly to obtain. Eventually the entire local economy runs in a mode where prices are massively variable because everyone rips everyone else off as much as they think they can and you can never trust anyone you do business with to give you a fair price and a massive amount of time and effort is wasted on price discovery because nobody can trust that they're not paying some integer multiple of what someone else got charged for an equivalent.
Deriving income from a large transient population is just an all around recipe for a crappy low trust society.
In practice, PMCs in college towns are bad actors. At least, on average. They are basically sitting on an investment (land) and providing the minimum level of work necessary to keep money flowing. It’s a legitimate business in the sense that it is “legal”. However, the profits do not correspond to the value that they provide to the economy.
Is that how you measure the value of the business?
Landlords contribute a small amount of value relative to how much they are paid, compared to other businesses. Most of the value is provided by the land itself, and the landlords merely have a monopoly on it. So I am less inclined to be sympathetic to PMCs which are suddenly being paid less, since they are generally overpaid.
We have to be careful to distinguish rent from actual productive economic activity, because rent provides no value and requires no work. Speaking here of “rent” in the Adam Smith sense of the word.
Landlords/PMCs are overpaid because tenants pay rent not only for the services provided by the landlords/PMCs, but also for access to the land which they own. This happens because the property owners have a monopoly on that piece of land. The rent will increase in accordance with the contributions of the people using the land, and yet the money will be paid instead to the people owning the land.
The Wealth of Nations is on Gutenberg. Skip to Chapter XI in Book 1. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-0.txt
> The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take, but to what the farmer can afford to give.
For an obvious example, if I tried to rent my house out to Bill Gates for $50 billion, which he can afford, how far do you think I'd get with that?
For an obvious example, the rent in Manhattan is higher than the rent in Tulsa because the salaries in Manhattan are higher.
Comparing rent on farm land is not the same as rent on housing.
I own a rental house. What does the rent go to? Well, I pay a mortgage, taxes, utilities, and upkeep. That is, I'm saving up now for a roof and a retaining wall (to give better access on one side of the driveway).
What value do the renters receive?
1. No risk. They can walk away, but I still have a 30-year mortgage. The plumbing can fail. The roof can leak. The electric can degrade. The building can crumble. I, the owner, have to fix it IF it happens. The renter does not assume any of that risk.
2. No commitment. Aside from a short lease (which they agree to the terms), the renter has no long-term obligation to that property. I, as the owner, have committed to maintaining the property for decades.
3. Access to the property and all of its features. If you don't think that that is value, then try being homeless.
4. Furthermore, I, as the owner, DO NOT have access to the use of the property. Perhaps for decades.
5. Monopoly? I cannot think of a single example of a monopoly in land ownership other than the government itself and the threat of eminent domain. If you don't like my terms for lease, then go next door. Different owner, different terms. Or buy your own.
6. Initial Investment. I, as an owner, had to save for years to consolidate the capital for the down payment of that property. That means that, for years, I did not party, buy the latest technology, eat at moderately-priced restaurants, go on vacation, buy a shiny new vehicle, purchase concert tickets, etc. I deprived myself of entertainment and luxery to, instead, work multiple jobs, with the intent of having a rental property.
7. Improvement. I improve the property. If I do not pay someone to do it, then it is me doing it myself. I refinished the hardwood floors. I fixed drywall and painted. I removed old ductwork. I provide appliances. I provide furnishing (I rent to students, after all). I put the labor into the property, further depriving myself of other more enjoyable activity.
I'm sorry, but I completely disagree with your restrictive definition of what of "rent" represents. Rent is compensation for my years of preparation and self-denial of the reward for my own personal labor. Rent is the fee that the renter pays for not having done the same. Rent is never pure profit. Rent is a continual financial planning for the upkeep and sustaining of the investment.
Do I benefit from my investment? Yes.
Do I feel guilty about it? No.
Should I feel guilty about it? Never.
If you are mad at a landlord for having to pay rent, then dig yourself out of that situation. What if it takes years? Welcome to the club. Do it anyway. So what if you have to move? Again, welcome to the club. Do it anyway. So what if the landlord is wealthy? Wealth has to come from somewhere, and if your current financial strategy isn't making you wealthy, then change it. It will probably take a lifetime to do, but then again, that's probably what your landlord did (or is in the process of doing).
1. Assuming risk is valid. However, it only accounts for a small portion of rent.
2. You do not actually have that kind of commitment. You can sell the property. The only risk here is that you cannot make a profit when you sell it, so this is nothing more than a repeat of point #1.
3/4. Access to use of the property would exist whether or not it had a landlord. The landlord is not providing value here, merely using the power of a government-granted monopoly on the land.
5. Land is not fungible and there is a limited supply. You are granted a monopoly on the land that you own.
6. The reason the initial investment is so high is because local laws are generally put in place to protect the interests of homeowners, over the interests of renters.
7. The improvement only accounts for a small portion of rent.
> I'm sorry, but I completely disagree with your restrictive definition of what of "rent" represents. Rent is compensation for my years of preparation and self-denial of the reward for my own personal labor.
You obviously don’t feel sorry, but you are benefiting from a system which is rigged in your favor, and building capital on the backs of people who actually provide value to the economy. That’s not to say that you are not providing value to the economy—it’s just that the value you provide is much smaller than the amount you are paid for it.
Consider, for a moment, the reason why rent may go up in a particular area. The main reason it goes up is because of the economy in a particular area. The economy makes the rent go up because the people living there are more productive—not because the landlords are more productive! So the landlords are being compensated for other people’s work, when the rent goes up.
> If you are mad at a landlord for having to pay rent, then dig yourself out of that situation.
I wouldn’t get mad at leeches, mosquitos, or other parasites. They are merely making the best out of the ecological niche that they arrived in. But I’m also not going to feel sympathy for parasites, nor am I going to care whether they feel guilty.
1/2. Risk is a big part of owning property. Liquidity of the property is also very important. You are vastly underestimating this.
3/4. As long as the right to own property exists, the right to exclude access to land that someone owns exists. If the landlord did not rent the property, then only the landlord would have the right to access it. Unless you deny the right to personal property?
5. In the sense you're using it, I have a "monopoly" on my laptop. It's one of those old Thinkpad X230s, and there's a limited supply. You're welcome to buy it from me...but there's also more on ebay. To call my laptop ownership a 'monopoly' is ridiculous, because you can go buy a different one, even though there's a limited supply. In the same way, you can go rent land somewhere else, even though there's a limited supply.
6. That's actually a big factor in deciding where to purchase properties that you want to rent out: do the local laws favor the tenant or the landlord? It can be so expensive as to be not worth the effort, when the laws favor the tenant. If you can't kick someone out until they've gone six months without paying the rent, but still have to pay for the upkeep of the property, then you want to be very, very careful that you find good tenants.
7. In what world to you live in? All that stuff costs thousands of dollars - even just repainting. And it's not just improvement, but upkeep. Plumbers are expensive. Random stuff breaking is expensive. Not everyone has the time or ability to do those things themselves.
> you are benefiting from a system which is rigged in your favor
See 6) above. It's not rigged; housing is a hard problem to solve, and it's expensive on both sides.
> building capital on the backs of people who actually provide value to the economy
Ever stayed in a hotel? Those provide exactly the same benefit as a rental, on a shorter time scale. Or do you not consider hotels valuable?
> The main reason [rent] goes up is because of the economy in a particular area.
The landlord picked a good location to purchase the property. Seems strange you expect the landlord to keep their prices down while everything else gets more expensive. The landlord is still providing value. If you don't like the prices, you're welcome to move somewhere with cheaper apartments...but a cheaper apartment will come with some downsides, too.
> not going to feel sympathy for parasites
I'd say a tenant who failed to pay rent matches the definition of parasite pretty well too.
Providing housing, whether a hotel room or an apartment, is a valuable part of the economy. You've given several reading recommendations in this thread, let me pass you something in return:
Look into what it would actually involve to rent a property in your area - cost to purchase, the building codes that have to be followed, the upgrades that have to be made (a lot of old houses have lead in the paint - that has to be stripped or covered); check out the effort it takes to coordinate with a rental agency to find a decent tenant, and look up the probabilities of the costs associated with bad tenants. It's also worth checking out how long the average tenant rents for, and the cleanup time and effort involved with prepping for the next tenant. Don't forget to check the competition - does the bathroom need to be upgraded? Maybe the houses in your area all have walk-in closets, and the rental agency says you need one too, to stay attractive. How much does the contractor say that'll cost, and how long will it take? Also check out the correlation between rental property destruction and income level - if you rent cheap properties for cheap, what's the cost of repair come to each month?
Final question. Did you decide to skip the above exercise, because it looked too time-consuming and/or difficult?
I suspect we'll also see our first couple of disease clusters and super spreaders with associated deaths clearly attributable to a child in school. (I hope to god we'll have some compassion and keep the kids' names out of this, but I doubt it.)
Once that hits the news, I suspect lots of parents will refuse to put their kids in school.
In CA, for example, this may have devastating effects on the school district: they get money on an asses-in-seats basis [1]. I suspect that home schooling is about to have an enormous boom.
[1] https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/education/how-do-you-...
But high-risk students and households will need to be accommodated too, so a remote component could be necessary even if most kids are back in physical classrooms.
Those going to college just for the paper are well advised to keep going. The next couple of years will be easy mode, for sure. You get an A, and you get an A--everyone gets an A!
Essentially, while I get why colleges and politicians would want students to go about business as usual, it seems it benefits them rather than me. I'm going to college for two things: research and connections. Both of these are greatly impeded by virtual-only learning. Research is possible in CS but much harder, especially if one doesn't already know the professor. And it seems impossible to form relationships over videochat only.
Even for my friends that went for CS, they also said they would have loved to have had more time to apply and actually create things vs just learning theoretical/ engineering side of things in school.
Or for instance my brother if he took off from school he would have had the chance to go pro in the MLS, but it was too big of a risk to put off school at the time. Not that sports are happening now, but just gives a more diverse view.
A more HN example would be to create a business or side hustle.
This turned out to be more useful than 80% of what I learned in college.
"...Educational austerity is the simplest path back to an economy in which serious on-the-job learning starts during high school — not after college."
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-caplan-education...
Or a sign that some people don't understand the value of networking and the value of what earning admission to Princeton signals.
If you are genuinely capable of learning everything alone, just from lectures, there's no need to move to NJ. It's all online anyways.
Also I think a more obvious example of it being popular is the courses and lectures that are made freely available online.
He's basically saying there's no need to buy food because you can eat free samples at the grocery store. He also just happens to be the author of a "contrarian" book arguing that college is worthless. It's purely a coincidence that he's posting misinformation on the same topic - making claims about a university where he doesn't work - in one of the most widely read news outlets.
Sadly this isn't true for a lot of math/computer science courses, speaking from very recent experience. While having an open book and even online access is an advantage, many profs implement measures ranging from webcam proctoring services to extremely difficult time-limited exams to compensate.
My friends who are currently in college tell me that they’re currently dying under a massive workload as teachers fail to realize that “remote learning” does not mean you can assign hundreds of pages of reading “to fill up free time”. Those that are from other countries really dislike waking up at 3 AM to take synchronized online quizzes…it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
Usually most people who want gap years are allowed to do so, but usually there aren't many people who want to do gap years (at least in the US).
How are they going to get out of abiding by their own regulations? Universities I'm familiar with all provide for deferred years.
They're desperate, and they're about to be a lot more so. If your money's green, they'll let you.
I'm a prof at a SLAC. Many of the students I have are doing fine. But a good number of them are struggling. Some are working, sometimes many hours because their parents are out of work or anticipate being out of work. Some of them have illness in their family (I don't know of any who are themselves ill).
And for some of them it is that they are not good at this environment-- they didn't sign up for this. Online education is hard. Personally I perceive that especially for people on the left side of the curve, less learning takes place because they are often just not skilled at self-learning.
In the present environment, when working with students I often feel that this is a person who could well have learned, say, Elementary Statistics except that the circumstances hit them where they are weak. Some leeway is called for, it seems to me. I'm not talking about certifying them at something where they are not prepared for the following class (that is, no "Everybody gets an A"). But my school, and many others, is allowing people to choose "No grade" in some cases and that seems reasonable to me.
Rather, just noting that for some students and some courses (especially the non-useful ones), this might be a real opportunity.
If my experience of college professors is anything to go by, it'll be more like "You couldn't complete the work because I forgot to include a crucial part of the instructions. Well tough, you fail anyway."
Classes won't all be like, be the ones that are will take up so much of students time that they might as well be.
[0]https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
I am a product of University of California system and many of my lower level classes had hundreds or students. I barely got to see the professor up close so maybe this remote video teaching may even been a better option. :)
I noticed also (former professor) that my institution is now heavily incentivizing early retirement for those getting close to qualifying, and are not shy about linking it to coronavirus.
Finally, I think a lot of social distancing guidelines apply technically in many situations with lectures, etc.
It will be an interesting semester.
Beloit College
Boston University
Brown University
California Baptist University
California State University at Fullerton
Chapman University
Centre College
Christopher Newport University
Claremont Colleges
Clemson University
Cornell University
Drury University
East Tennessee State University
Emory University
George Mason University
George Washington University
Harvard University
Haverford College
Iowa Board of Regents Iowa, and the University of Northern Iowa
Macalester College
Marquette University
Merrimack College
Montana State University
North Carolina State University
North Dakota State University
Oakland University
Ohio State University
Purdue University
San Jose State University
Shenandoah University
Southern New Hampshire University
Stanford University
Trine University
University of Arizona
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
University of Colorado at Boulder
University of Connecticut
University of Central Florida
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Maine system
University of Mary Washington
University of Maryland system
University of Michigan
University of Missouri
University of Nebraska
University of Oklahoma
University of Oregon
University of Portland
University of Pittsburgh
University of South Carolina
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
University of Texas at Austin
University of Virginia
Utah System of Higher Education
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Tech University
Wake Forest University
Washington State University
Wayne State University
West Virginia University
William Jewell College
Williams College
Yale University
For example, in New York, if you break a lease the landlord is obligated to make a “reasonable effort” to re-rent the apartment. You are still on the hook in the interim. In the current environment, the apartment probably won’t be re-rented.
But the jurisdiction is also important, not just the terms of the lease.
Universities will now have to cull "overhead". Grad students and professors will have a golden opportunity about 1-2 years from now to capture a less tiny fraction of the wealth they create. Don't let it go to waste.
- Start Fall semester with onsite classes.
- For those who wish to participate remotely for medical reasons or personal preference, they should be allowed to teach/learn remotely.
- But everyone (administration, profs, students, support staff, local town/city) should be prepared to have the teaching go virtual with the campus shutting down on a short notice.
- If Covid-19 reappears locally or surges again nationally, campus should close down.
I say at least start the upcoming semester in Fall 2020 with onsite classes, for the sake of human bonds to form between the students/professors. It may sound too unpredictable but I think having even one or two months of in person interaction would be beneficial for the incoming freshman class.
Also, dorm/parking/housing cost probably should be charged in monthly increments, not per semester, to prepare for possible shutdown of campus in the middle of a semester.
1. The "self-taught" style. This one is being done by my linear algebra class: the prof tells us which chapters to read, sends out notes, and some recommended problems. Periodically, he sends out a take-home test; we work it and send him the answers. This style is helped by the fact that our book is short and concise enough to teach but still be readable. No one wants to read if a chapter takes hours. This approach works great for me, but it requires a more self-directed student to function.
2. The "micro-manager" style. This one is being done by my physics class: the prof uses online, checked homework, multiple zoom calls, requires us to record videos of ourselves solving problems in a "tutorial style", gives on-line quizzes, and attempts to give the same tests on-line as were given in-person. This results in horrible, invasive solutions that give a "proctor" remote access to one's computer, require one to use a webcam to be monitored, and require one to show the space around him using a mirror. This style is awful, wastes colossal amounts of time, but is the option on which teachers fall back when they lack confidence in their students to be self-directed.
Most teachers are going for option 2, which is worse than in-person learning. This may sound cynical, but mot of the tools for "active learning" or "on-line engagement" make students' lives harder, waste their time, and offer no benefit beyond an administrator feeling as though he's "done something".
Edit: can any current student tell me if y'all are getting refunded for room and board, at least partially? Y'all paid for something and are being prohibited from using it, so that seems reasonable.
To my knowledge, all colleges/universities are refunding room and board for the times campus is closed. Legally I don't think there's an option.
Online teaching is difficult. It's not a good substitute for all parts of the in-person experience.
I'm hard-pressed to think of many subjects where an "open book" test isn't a better option, even for in-person classes. If a cheat sheet can help during a test, then it's asking predictable questions and measuring regurgitation.
My wife pointed out language tests to see if students can use the skills on the fly, but I can't think of another good case. This should be a time for schools to find which teachers are just going for easy-to-write instead of useful tests.
The caveat to all of these is that they take more work for teachers, so many prefer not to use them.
Yellow highlighters' coloring is called 'Solvent Green 7' and has a peak at about 494nm.
You can buy filters for lenses that will knock out certain bandwidths of light and keep the rest coming into the camera. These are called notch filters, as they take a notch out of the light.
There just so happens to be a notch filter that should know out the yellow highlighter color. Meaning that the light reflected from a yellow highlighter will not enter into the camera.
https://www.thorlabs.com/thorproduct.cfm?partnumber=NF488-15
They are not cheap though, and as such, I've not tried this at home to see how well it works.
Other solutions may exist at to the ideas that these people may have about how your webcam is working. I'd experiment with other lenses, polarized filters, exposure times, etc.
That said, studying is a lot easier than trying to jerry-rig your webcams.
Alternatively, one could run a VM with the monitoring software, and have a separate window with notes. As long as the mirror is angled so to hide a small portion of the screen that should be good enough.
To build on your physical solution using polarization: that's easier. You can apply a polarized filter to the webcam (you can get one from an old pair of 3d glasses) and then have the notes on a secondary screen that will then look completely dark on webcam. Maybe lay the device on a black background so it's not obvious that there's a "turned off" device and you're done.
This is all a fun thought experiment. I don't have invasive professors, thankfully. They simply made all tests open book and raised the difficulty of the questions accordingly. That being said, I enjoy trying to work arounf hypothetical limitations...