Especially in light of recent events where we definitely learned that, while some of the players might have changed, the power structure is still the same.
"No one ultimately cares all that much whether their daughter has a Coke or a Pepsi, do they? But they would do nearly anything to send her to an elite university."
Anyone else confused by this comparison in the opener?
Yeah it's a little odd to compare them considering universities vary so widely from one another in a variety of facets whereas Coke and Pepsi have significant similarities. Furthermore, the implications of which university one attends is vastly different than choosing a soft drink.
...yes. I think it sort of undermines his point. Because people might not care about drinking Coke or Pepsi, but lots of people would pick a brand name cola above a generic one.
The same with colleges: you could go to Harvard, Yale, Penn, MIT...one of dozens of highly respected colleges and have a fantastic time. Like Coke and Pepsi, it's much of a muchness. But the next tier down - the 'generic colas' of university education, if you will - that's a little different. Not bad, per se - just different.
The analogy doesn't really help the argument, either. "Here are two companies that are massively successful primarily because of branding. So, clearly, the even more significant branding of higher education will be unsuccessful."
He assumes that you should go to Harvard because you want to get a good job and leave with the best qualifications. This is not why you should go to Harvard. Harry Lewis (who has an excellent blog that's well worth reading if you're into higher ed[0]) has said in the past that students should really be going to Harvard to become better people.
Delivering education at scale is not in itself hard. Coursera, Udacity, Khan, edX...lots of people are making a very good go at it. Delivering the personal and social development that comes with a college education - that's the hard part. That's I have to disagree with Ferreira when he says:
> Even Harvard could admit five totally different freshman classes every year from the United States alone without compromising its standards
Technically, this is probably true. The majority of people applying to Harvard are more than qualified on paper (I've interviewed enough of them!). But a college education is so, so much more than just taking classes and getting good grades. It is about developing as a person, finding yourself. Doing that online: that's a very, very hard problem.
The funny thing is that Harvard already is making significant progress in the six areas Ferreira has identified (...edX, for example, a self governing body that uses the Harvard brand to further internet learning). The difference is that many faculty at Harvard understand that college is not, in itself, all about the lectures and grades.
[0]:http://harry-lewis.blogspot.com - Harry Lewis also has some excellent thoughts on why Harvard doesn't, as Ferreira suggests, offshoot campuses into rich countries.
Hmmm. I really like your ideas, but unfortunately I don't think the system you describe is the system Harvard is at the top of. I think it is at the top of the system where the goal is to have strong qualifications and get many incredible opportunities throughout life (not just a first job). It may also be a good place to become a better person, but ranking that seems much murkier to me. I can think of lots of things that could arguably be higher in the become-a-better-person rankings than going to Harvard or, indeed, any university.
You're right - I'm simplifying considerably. College is not for everyone, and there are many positive life-changing things one can do that don't involve going to university.
The thing is that even at universities like Harvard, Oxford, MIT, etc there's considerable debate over what the university itself should be doing. The Harvard Business School, for example, is culturally (and geographically) a world apart from the undergraduate programme.
Trying to distill what a university should become is hard, because there are so many stakeholders with vastly differing views.
> Delivering education at scale is not in itself hard. Coursera, Udacity, Khan, edX...lots of people are making a very good go at it. Delivering the personal and social development that comes with a college education - that's the hard part.
This is spot-on. The university I went to was good in terms of education; I learned a lot while I was there and it's definitely a cornerstone of my intellectual development. However, in terms of personal and social development, it was a dead end.
There are some institutions that manage to build thriving communities which encourage growth beyond the mere knowledge you gain there. That's something which you cannot replicate easily -- and a phenomenon that was long known. The wise men of the Lyceum or the Academia didn't spend their time there just for the lectures.
I don't know if Harvard is such a place, but if it is, that's a great asset for them.
This is the type of thing that come up every time a post-university world is mentioned. College is so much more than...
It's true but not true in a way that invalidates the arguments that college will become less important/desired. People spend 1-2 years trying to get into college programs and then 4 years of their life at college. Parents save for decades. Students go into debt for it. Governments give it priority in their budgets. The costs are huge.
The only reason so many people will put so much emphasis on anything is that it eventually impacts their socio-economic status. Some people take a year off to travel. This can be good for character development too. It costs far less in time and money. The reason its not an institution like college is because it doesn't directly impact socio-economic in the same way.
Especially with old, elite schools this is as much about impacting students' social identity & skills as it is about their intellectual and technical skills. Its often best to approach the socio-economic status thing from an angle. All these things can't be decoupled. If college stops becoming the path to getting high paying, high status jobs, it will not be worth the cost.
I think the erosion will start farther down the food chain than Harvard though.
> If college stops becoming the path to getting high paying, high status jobs, it will not be worth the cost
Oh, definitely. The cost is a huge problem. I think elite universities realise this - financial aid is, at universities that can afford it, at record high levels. If you're going to MIT, the Ivy Leagues, etc you're probably not going to be breaking the bank to pay your fees (...and if you are, it's because you were rich enough to start with).
But for the majority of people who want to go to college and don't have access to generous financial aid then at some point the investment clearly outweighs the benefits. So like you say, it seems almost certain any impact is going to be felt at the bottom of the chain, not the top.
"But a college education is so, so much more than just taking classes and getting good grades. It is about developing as a person, finding yourself."
Yes, and, furthermore, its because of similar intangibles that companies like Goldman like to hire Ivy League graduates. The idea that Goldman hires Harvard MBAs because that's their best proxy for specific technical skills is, well, I guess it's kind of sweet in its naivete. The old boy network that the post mentions in passing isn't an accident, it's the point - a Harvard degree isn't a proxy for technical skills, its a proxy for a particular kind of person with a particular kind of outlook, and that's what gets people hired.
> ...college is not, in itself, all about the lectures and grades.
The great thing about Khan et al is that they have "disrupted" the lecture part of the equation. I would like to see this result in more emphasis on research for the professor and less on lecturing. This will also make class time more about rapport building with one's professor and fellow students.
> He assumes that you should go to Harvard because you want to get a good job and leave with the best qualifications. This is not why you should go to Harvard. [...] students should really be going to Harvard to become better people.
Nevertheless, that is why people DO go to Harvard. For qualifications, connections, and the boost to their reputation. $250,000 (assuming you graduate in 4 years) is an awfully expensive way to become a better person if that is your sole goal.
Even for a family making $100,000/year, Harvard's net price is roughly half that of public school ($12,600 compared to $25,000). At US median wage ($50,000) Harvard is free to parents and $4,600/year to students, which is a reasonable expectation for summer and term-time work.
No one (in the US) pays full price at a high-end Ivy unless their parents can afford it. You can only rack up huge amounts of debt at state schools and less prestigious (and therefore poorly endowed) private schools.
Harry Lewis is a very profound thinker, who also has put some of his coursework online. Good link.
A couple thoughts on this:
- Harvard is the last to worry about on-line disruption. Every other school will be disrupted before then. People will want to send their kids there purely for the elite association. Boston University, Boston College, Brandeis and Tufts will all suffer immense disruption before Harvard feels it.
- Despite this, Harvard does offer on-line degrees.
- Even still, the worth of graduate degrees seem to be going down. To cite his example, Goldman Sachs seems happier to keep around analysts with 2-3 years experience, rather than hire new MBAs. It's not getting rid of the MBAs, but they're devaluing the degree relative to 2-3 years of relevant experience.
Harvard offers no degrees that can be earned 100% online. But I think the Extension School has some that you can do mostly online and a semester of "residency."
In the technical sciences Germany has arguably very competitive universities, but there is no University fetishism like in the US. Nobody really cares in Germany about what University you went to. So basically, thats where the American / UK system will be headed as well.
I'd say University fetishism is localized to certain areas of the US, too. I've lived on both the west coast (Seattle, San Diego, Colorado) and east coast (Boston). In Boston, where you go to school matters....a lot, likely due to Harvard and MIT being here, along with several other universities. When I lived on the west coast, it didn't matter nearly as much and I felt that I had an easier time getting hired at certain types of jobs.
German universities aren't very good at attracting foreign students and they tend to underperform in international rankings (in large part due to the previous point). I don't think German universoties are an example anyone wants to follow.
With regards to attracting international students, the effect of English being the language of academia cannot be overstated. If you compare Germany with countries like France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Japan or South-Korea, I would rather doubt that it attracts significantly less foreign students.
While it does seem likely that a disruption in education is immanent, the article doesn't ring true. I can't quite put my finger on it but it has something to do with assuming that the institutions of the elite (businesses, government, colleges) are driven by meritocratic impulse primarily.
This leaves out elements of human motivation like tribalism, pure status seeking, creative impulse, absurdism...there is a veritable smorgasbord of human attributes that defy quantification.
Most people fail to realize that the elite university phenomenon and the absurd tuition fees are not so much about producing qualified graduates but about "costly signals" in game theoretic sense.
When "elite" businesses like Goldman Sachs filter for these signals they are playing a very safe game and it works for them.
They might be able to afford overlooking other candidates. Other businesses often certainly can't.
I also have to question if this costly signalling game is beneficial for the society both in human and economic terms.
From the major online course providers I haven't seen a lot of effort disrupting the game.
Central America is, by any of the definitions used, a region of North America, so "Mexico is in North America" does not support "Mexico is not in Central America", as being in Central America requires also being in North America.
As most commonly defined (though there are exceptions, as in the UN geoscheme), Central America is North America south of Mexico, but that's not the only definition around.
Whoops. Sorry, I was lumping it in with Spanish-speaking countries frequently in the news for similar reasons and forgetting my elementary school geography.
In any case I would expect the cost to be similar to the estimate given for Central America, but that oversight should probably be reported to the calculator's developers.
Tuition isn't exactly cheap either. There is also the little matter of a few years not earning anything. Or the cost and effort a lot of students and their families go through to get in.
"Measuring" educational products is functionally impossible. The educational academic field has been struggling with this for over a century... the body of knowledge suffers from the same kind of constant churn and controversy and inability to make any forward progress that you see in management. Fads come and go and teachers keep going back to the same methods that have always been used.
While I expect that online universities can make some forward progress since they're hungrier, I don't think they'll be able to quantify outcomes well enough to overcome the brand power of the big educational institutions in the eyes of a skeptical market.
>"Measuring" educational products is functionally impossible.
Why? I'd agree it would be difficult, but "impossible?" For instance, I could imagine creating tests to measure a student's competencies in things such as engineering, programming, or foreign languages pretty easily. Then once you measure a student's competence at the beginning and ending of a curriculum, you have your measurement of the educational product. Not that standardized testing is the answer, or easy for any subject... but it's an example.
>teachers keep going back to the same methods that have always been used.
Maybe if they either don't care or if they don't see a reason to change.
I'm helping teach a course starting next month, "Technical English" (for non-native speakers), and am always looking for ways to improve on what I did last year.
In fact, if anyone out there would like to talk to my class about your job over skype one day, I will integrate that into my curriculum right now. (You could add "guest lecturer" to your resume as a possible incentive).
The author of this article is the founder of knewton, and educational software company for k-12. Their software optimizes questions and educational material for student based on measuring how fat the students are answering questions, in what types of questions they are wrong, etc.
They are deployed in some schools , and they show a big improvement for student results.
So i'm not so sure measuring is "functionally impossible"
48 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadPut both words together and you have something worth letting out a nice big SIGH for.
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list...
Harvard students? Faculty? huh? Why would $32 Billion USD care about that?
Anyone else confused by this comparison in the opener?
The same with colleges: you could go to Harvard, Yale, Penn, MIT...one of dozens of highly respected colleges and have a fantastic time. Like Coke and Pepsi, it's much of a muchness. But the next tier down - the 'generic colas' of university education, if you will - that's a little different. Not bad, per se - just different.
Delivering education at scale is not in itself hard. Coursera, Udacity, Khan, edX...lots of people are making a very good go at it. Delivering the personal and social development that comes with a college education - that's the hard part. That's I have to disagree with Ferreira when he says:
> Even Harvard could admit five totally different freshman classes every year from the United States alone without compromising its standards
Technically, this is probably true. The majority of people applying to Harvard are more than qualified on paper (I've interviewed enough of them!). But a college education is so, so much more than just taking classes and getting good grades. It is about developing as a person, finding yourself. Doing that online: that's a very, very hard problem.
The funny thing is that Harvard already is making significant progress in the six areas Ferreira has identified (...edX, for example, a self governing body that uses the Harvard brand to further internet learning). The difference is that many faculty at Harvard understand that college is not, in itself, all about the lectures and grades.
[0]:http://harry-lewis.blogspot.com - Harry Lewis also has some excellent thoughts on why Harvard doesn't, as Ferreira suggests, offshoot campuses into rich countries.
The thing is that even at universities like Harvard, Oxford, MIT, etc there's considerable debate over what the university itself should be doing. The Harvard Business School, for example, is culturally (and geographically) a world apart from the undergraduate programme.
Trying to distill what a university should become is hard, because there are so many stakeholders with vastly differing views.
This is spot-on. The university I went to was good in terms of education; I learned a lot while I was there and it's definitely a cornerstone of my intellectual development. However, in terms of personal and social development, it was a dead end.
There are some institutions that manage to build thriving communities which encourage growth beyond the mere knowledge you gain there. That's something which you cannot replicate easily -- and a phenomenon that was long known. The wise men of the Lyceum or the Academia didn't spend their time there just for the lectures.
I don't know if Harvard is such a place, but if it is, that's a great asset for them.
It's true but not true in a way that invalidates the arguments that college will become less important/desired. People spend 1-2 years trying to get into college programs and then 4 years of their life at college. Parents save for decades. Students go into debt for it. Governments give it priority in their budgets. The costs are huge.
The only reason so many people will put so much emphasis on anything is that it eventually impacts their socio-economic status. Some people take a year off to travel. This can be good for character development too. It costs far less in time and money. The reason its not an institution like college is because it doesn't directly impact socio-economic in the same way.
Especially with old, elite schools this is as much about impacting students' social identity & skills as it is about their intellectual and technical skills. Its often best to approach the socio-economic status thing from an angle. All these things can't be decoupled. If college stops becoming the path to getting high paying, high status jobs, it will not be worth the cost.
I think the erosion will start farther down the food chain than Harvard though.
Oh, definitely. The cost is a huge problem. I think elite universities realise this - financial aid is, at universities that can afford it, at record high levels. If you're going to MIT, the Ivy Leagues, etc you're probably not going to be breaking the bank to pay your fees (...and if you are, it's because you were rich enough to start with).
But for the majority of people who want to go to college and don't have access to generous financial aid then at some point the investment clearly outweighs the benefits. So like you say, it seems almost certain any impact is going to be felt at the bottom of the chain, not the top.
== we need a new/different test.
University was a proxy for 'merit', coming on the heels of the Enlightenment during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Yes, and, furthermore, its because of similar intangibles that companies like Goldman like to hire Ivy League graduates. The idea that Goldman hires Harvard MBAs because that's their best proxy for specific technical skills is, well, I guess it's kind of sweet in its naivete. The old boy network that the post mentions in passing isn't an accident, it's the point - a Harvard degree isn't a proxy for technical skills, its a proxy for a particular kind of person with a particular kind of outlook, and that's what gets people hired.
The great thing about Khan et al is that they have "disrupted" the lecture part of the equation. I would like to see this result in more emphasis on research for the professor and less on lecturing. This will also make class time more about rapport building with one's professor and fellow students.
Nevertheless, that is why people DO go to Harvard. For qualifications, connections, and the boost to their reputation. $250,000 (assuming you graduate in 4 years) is an awfully expensive way to become a better person if that is your sole goal.
http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/
Even for a family making $100,000/year, Harvard's net price is roughly half that of public school ($12,600 compared to $25,000). At US median wage ($50,000) Harvard is free to parents and $4,600/year to students, which is a reasonable expectation for summer and term-time work.
No one (in the US) pays full price at a high-end Ivy unless their parents can afford it. You can only rack up huge amounts of debt at state schools and less prestigious (and therefore poorly endowed) private schools.
A couple thoughts on this:
- Harvard is the last to worry about on-line disruption. Every other school will be disrupted before then. People will want to send their kids there purely for the elite association. Boston University, Boston College, Brandeis and Tufts will all suffer immense disruption before Harvard feels it.
- Despite this, Harvard does offer on-line degrees.
- Even still, the worth of graduate degrees seem to be going down. To cite his example, Goldman Sachs seems happier to keep around analysts with 2-3 years experience, rather than hire new MBAs. It's not getting rid of the MBAs, but they're devaluing the degree relative to 2-3 years of relevant experience.
This leaves out elements of human motivation like tribalism, pure status seeking, creative impulse, absurdism...there is a veritable smorgasbord of human attributes that defy quantification.
When "elite" businesses like Goldman Sachs filter for these signals they are playing a very safe game and it works for them.
They might be able to afford overlooking other candidates. Other businesses often certainly can't.
I also have to question if this costly signalling game is beneficial for the society both in human and economic terms.
From the major online course providers I haven't seen a lot of effort disrupting the game.
I don't think there is any question. The "elite" university phenomenon is about class, not academics.
As most commonly defined (though there are exceptions, as in the UN geoscheme), Central America is North America south of Mexico, but that's not the only definition around.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_America
In any case I would expect the cost to be similar to the estimate given for Central America, but that oversight should probably be reported to the calculator's developers.
Spoiler: I'm kidding.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme
While I expect that online universities can make some forward progress since they're hungrier, I don't think they'll be able to quantify outcomes well enough to overcome the brand power of the big educational institutions in the eyes of a skeptical market.
Why? I'd agree it would be difficult, but "impossible?" For instance, I could imagine creating tests to measure a student's competencies in things such as engineering, programming, or foreign languages pretty easily. Then once you measure a student's competence at the beginning and ending of a curriculum, you have your measurement of the educational product. Not that standardized testing is the answer, or easy for any subject... but it's an example.
>teachers keep going back to the same methods that have always been used.
Maybe if they either don't care or if they don't see a reason to change. I'm helping teach a course starting next month, "Technical English" (for non-native speakers), and am always looking for ways to improve on what I did last year. In fact, if anyone out there would like to talk to my class about your job over skype one day, I will integrate that into my curriculum right now. (You could add "guest lecturer" to your resume as a possible incentive).
They are deployed in some schools , and they show a big improvement for student results.
So i'm not so sure measuring is "functionally impossible"