Ask HN: Why aren't any of my classes taught by my instructors anymore?
To me, what they're doing feels wrong. They're outsourcing all the classes to some product made by some company. Every class is done in some website. The course instructors don't do any teaching.
All of these platforms have problems. They don't work very well, and they're wrong about so many things. There's never any chance to get the actual correct answer to the rest of the students. In a real class, you could just raise your hand and discuss with the teacher and class, but this is so isolating.
I've had a lot of issues doing my coursework from Linux. The "simulator" for my "intro to computers" (which should actually be named Intro to MS Office) literally had a built-in sensor to reject work done by people using Linux. I got around it with help from the instructor, who still seemed to have the hacker spirit, but it shouldn't be like that in the first place. We never could get past the detector for LibreOffice, but dammit we tried! That same simulator (SIMnet) marked any task as incorrect if you try to select text with CTRL+a. Apparently the "correct" way to use a computer is the least efficient way possible.
Is there a pedagogical reason I'm not seeing here? Or is it as I assume, and it's just another example of enshittification or whatever?
44 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadIt's very, very wrong. It's unethical, fraudulent and a scandal.
Higher education is a racket now.
University deans, chancellors, vice chancellors, deanlets, clueless professional managers, bumbling administrators should all be fired and put in jail.
I've written about it extensively [0..5]. After 30 years as a university professor I had to admit to myself - the university system is finished. It's fucked to the very core, devastated by decades of money grubbing gross mismanagement and total lack of vision. Good teachers have been usurped and the institutions taken over by tepid, buggy big-tech software from corporations like Google and Microsoft. Absolutely tragic.
You didn't say whether you're attending a public university or a private college.
I quit working at British universities citing "Unethical treatment of students", and copied my complaints to multiple "authorities". Nobody had the courage to reply.
Everyone should be deeply embarrassed by the state of higher education, which as you say is now on the path of "enshittification".
My advice is to get out while you can. Get a refund and find a private tutor or study group. The degree certificates universities offer are no longer worth the paper they're printed on. Even a weakly motivated student can do better studying alone with a little good guidance.
There's nothing a machine can teach you about infosec.
[0] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/your-teaching-an...
[1] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/joy-text-world-t...
[2] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/fear-zombie-stud...
[3] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/2048-informatio...
[4] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/eliminating-harm...
[5] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/how-do-we-get-mo...
Higher education will be here in 2124 and in 2224 and so long as human beings seek knowledge and wish to transcend our parochial epoch.
This shitty little period of sad human history, where they've disgraced themselves so far as become nothing but certificate issuers for their industrial masters will fade away like leaving little or no trace in history.
Eventually there aren't enough professors to teach, but the system still needs students to eat so you end up with this situation.
As a comparison, when I went to college, we were taught by full professors with Ph.D's and graduate assistants did the grading, helped with student questions, etc. These full professors had office hours where you could walk in and talk to them. One of my professors was an integral part in building the IRS database. Another was a project manager who helped build the SABRE system. Yet another argued a case before the Supreme Court (one if the highest accolades for a lawyer). Other professors also had impressive accolades in the "real world." This was a public university. This was in the mid 90s, I assume it isn't that way anymore.
The good news, I guess, is in the US, each state is responsible for their own educational system. If the state you are in has horrible education, you at least have the option to enroll in another state.
Your observation is so true it hurts.
I just can not bring myself to call it "Mansetmanuseman's Law." Can you please name it? I might get myself fired by putting it in my email signature.
I'm curious what the power law is...
https://www.reddit.com/r/careerguidance/comments/1373dim/com...
https://www.usnews.com/education/community-colleges/articles...
there is a subreddit /r/cscareeradvice which might be useful for you. obv. info sec is not the same as CS, but I ran a quick search for InfoSec in the subreddit and saw there are still posts about it.
FYI in 2021 FTC brought charges against 5 biggest for-profit colleges for misleading claims made to their students and Dept of Education went as far as cancelled students' debt. Those 5 were Corinthian Colleges, ITT Technical Institute, Education Corporation of America, Education Management Corporation, University of Phoenix. I believe other for-profit colleges were targets of similar probes as well. I see Infosec touted a as future-proof career and training programs are being advertised everywhere and I'm afraid you've been misled and paying for a very subpar program. I'd try and see if I could get out and find something better...
I got my accredited BSCS, and did learn some news things along the way (even after 15 years programming professionally), even the "bullshit" classes like project management taught me some ideas that keep popping up in the workplace.
Even though every course was just an app, I spoke with a mentor every week who kept me motivated. I also never had trouble getting in touch with instructors the few times I needed.
If you're getting this treatment from an expensive university, you're paying for the name. Is their name worth paying for? Don't pay brick-and-mortar prices for online-only treatment, unless it's a top 10 school whose name will be widely recognized.
This allows them to take in many more students per batch than would be allowed in a traditional college course setting.
What's the consensus on this here? I've worked in tech for 15 years and have never been asked for my qualifications once. What's important is learning what you need to land an entry level job or to take on some freelance work and from there you can work yourself up.
Given tuition fees these days I find it absurd someone would willing pay up for a crappy education that largely won't teach them the practical skills they need for employment anyway. I knew a lot of people who weren't able to land jobs after getting a degree in comp sci so the idea that there will be a job waiting for you when you graduate is wrong.
By far the most important thing to do is land your first job so I'd argue you'd be better spending job searching for 2-3 years than going to college and getting yourself into a ton of debt then finding out if you're even employable after it all.
Plus, assuming you care about learning, you'll almost certainly learn more this way too.
That said, I have seen an explosion in "Data Science" degree mills pumping out useless graduates. It will sadden me if CS has fallen that low.
I was a bit shocked. I assumed some of this was going on, but not to that level. Makes me wonder what things are going to look like in 30 years when nobody actually learned the content and they're the primary creators.
I don't know what to make of that. Is our moral character worsening, or is this the result of students feeling they get a half-effort from the university and so they give a half-effort back to the university in return?
The first group are out to get the degree. That bit of paper that gets you your first job. After that your job experience gets you the second job, and so on.
This is probably the larger group, and likely most of the material recognises this, and in some cases optimizes for it.
The second much smaller group are people wanting to get educated, in the sense of understanding the root fundamentals. They suck the marrow, determined to explore the nooks and cranies. They never ask "will this be in the exam?" (Ironically this group often do poorly in exams because they're too busy learning.)
Threads like this one happen when one group encounters the other, perhaps for the first time. If your goal is to learn then cheating is only fooling you. If your goal is to pass, well, there are multiple ways to do that.
All of these people are fine, regular human beings. But i have literally never experienced a colleague do bad on a test because they were "learning too much". My degrees of experience are computer science, mathematics, and physics though so the people who want to keep learning have to be pretty strong students to make it into the master and doctorate programs they want.
Ran into this for Master's level MIS courses. Admittedly they were the pre-req / must take courses, and were mostly overviews of X, where X = Java, Assembly, Mid-level Linux, etc.
But cookie cutter Pearson material. You could search some of the slide bulletpoints and find the same presentation archived at Duke, or UNM, or other schools. Ditto for most of the test questions / homework. They'd change a few of the numbers but it's clear that the course was 100% manufactured.
The instructor was mostly there to answer questions and give a low effort recitation. Some classes were great and had teacher than went above and beyond, but others were clearly a phone-in.
edit: worth noting that plenty of the courses weren't cookie cutter and were very bespoke -- and challenging. Some of the CE and Assembly stuff was clearly designed by specific professors and was quite rigorous.
Did you specifically sign up for online classes?
You should be able to specifically sign up for in-person classes for next semester.
Express your displeasure to the dean.
Some schools move students from in-person classes to online classes and hope you can not prove you signed up for in-person classes.
Meet with (and document your meeting with) an advisor. Ask for in-person classes where the lab is less important than the in-class meeting. Follow up be email. Cc the dean. The dean can overrule anyone on anything.
Then if they move you, go to the dean and complain. Find out when he is there and camp is his waiting room all day. Be clear and provide proof.
We teachers can teach many more students inline than we can in-class. It is possible they are profit driven, or that they have a facility shortage.
It felt like my undergraduate studies. It sounds to me like schools have gotten a bit softer and/or your school is really bad.
With that being said, take it for what it is if you don't have any other options. Dive deep into your textbooks, learn as much as you can, look into outside resources, keep on coding. You'll come out better on the other end of it.
The experienced instructors were providing expert-level instruction for the tech classes, such as "CompTIA A+ prep", Cisco CCNA prep, and Linux Red Hat basic-level certification prep. The instructors were highly credentialed and qualified, brought to the table plenty of industry experience, generously invested their time developing custom curriculum and helping students, and could competently answer all our questions during lectures.
By contrast, I took a Calculus course because it was required, and this course was largely delegated to Pearson. We purchased a textbook which included an online component (not cheap at all) and the online component was where we'd find lectures and tests. Our instructor was assigned to assist us with extraordinary questions we couldn't answer through the curriculum itself. In fact, since the course was 100% online, I never met nor saw my instructor. She was assigned to a faraway campus which I never visited. Imagine my surprise when it came time for finals and she informed us that we'd need to show up there in person. I protested, and my disability-assistance office came to the rescue. We arranged a privately proctored final, but it was an extraordinary exception that we shouldn't have needed, considering the online nature of the class.
The Pearson curriculum was OK, but I found myself supplementing knowledge through Khan Academy, and particularly instrumental was the on-campus tutoring center, where I got 1:1 personal attention with each and every problem that stumped me (and there were many.) I also discovered that I could basically brute-force every question on the Pearson quizzes and approach 100% just by guessing. Our assigned instructor was more or less superfluous.
Interestingly, after I met those prerequisites, they reduced/eliminated the Calculus requirements for my major/degree track, and nobody else was required to take such advnced classes.
The instructor's role is ideally to answer questions. Having to orally re-deliver content to a huge room of people feels archaic and inefficient. This does require the students to be motivated to learn the class. The challenge is maintaining the motivation for the extraneous content required for a degree but perceived as unnecessary by many students. If I am learning information security, I am far less interested in art history.
I believe any course should be waivable by a conversation with the instructor. Someone using LibreOffice on Linux is wasting time in the intro to computers course.
I once took a course on introduction to Internet. I advised the instructor I was an experienced CLI Internet user but wanted to take his course to learn how to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical audience. I also informed him that asking me questions could derail class discussions. We talked about Unix shell applications like archie and gopher in that class.
The instructor was great and I learned a lot about presenting technical content to non-technical audience, which was my goal. He once asked me a question during a lecture on NNTP on the permanence of Usenet posts and I canceled his post with a control message. ;)
The other, "education is important because educating people is important" point of view, runs into a more human problem: most students don't get one-on-one time with their professors, even when the professor ends up sitting in an empty office hour regularly, because doing so takes work. Students need to be reasonably proactive about reaching out, and that weeds out a lot of people regardless of how accessible the professor makes themselves. Online learning makes this even worse: In person, assuming the class is small enough (that's another can of worms), there's a fair amount of opportunity for small interactions: greetings, questions during lecture (for when the professor has completely lost you, which suggests he may have lost others, too), questions after lecture, hell, even body language exchange, where the professor can pick up on students being bored (i.e., they're going too slow, or they've lost the class). All of these make the professors far more approachable, where a brief exchange can become a "hey, let's continue this during office hours". I spent a lot more time in office hours with the professor who memorized all our names and faces before the first lecture than the one who was lecturing at a class of 300.
Not to mention the heightened ease of interacting with your fellow students, which is, IMO, 60-80% of the benefit of higher education.
And at smaller universities, the bureaucracies are a lot more malleable, too. Classes being "waivable by a conversation with the instructor" was very much a thing, albeit with the extra step of having the dean and registrar's office rubber stamp it.