[HN Gopher] The Triple Failure of 2U, EdX, and Axim
___________________________________________________________________
The Triple Failure of 2U, EdX, and Axim
Author : raybb
Score : 224 points
Date : 2024-08-27 00:34 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.classcentral.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.classcentral.com)
| jollofricepeas wrote:
| What a great write up!
|
| The EdX brand was amazing. It's sad what it's become.
|
| I don't know too much about classcentral but I hope that the blog
| post was written in the interest of seeing MOOCs thrive.
| raybb wrote:
| I've been following classcentral for a few years. They make
| money from affiliate commissions but as far as I can tell it
| hasn't stopped them from producing decent quality coverage of
| the MOOC industry. I like their occasional writeups of new
| MOOCs coming out though it's been a while since I took one
| because I'm currently wrapping up a full time masters.
| orsenthil wrote:
| Excellent write up, Dhawal Shah. You have been bringing the
| happenings of the MOOC world to general public in a very good
| way.
| lupire wrote:
| EdX sold for $800M and is running an open platform?
|
| Sounds like it was incredibly successful.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > In 2021, the unprofitable 2U bought edX, an unprofitable non-
| profit, for a staggering $800 million
|
| How do you sell a non-profit?
|
| Or, more specifically, how do you purchase to gain control?
|
| Board members aren't supposed to sell board seats or do anything
| for self enrichment
| red_phone wrote:
| I don't know how this transaction went down, but it's very
| likely they didn't purchase the organization itself, but rather
| its assets. The surviving organization would then dispose of
| the resulting cash in a mission-oriented fashion and shutdown
| thereafter.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Yeah, the article's phrasing makes it ambiguous
|
| I like that non profits can be asset stripped, I just
| wouldn't call the thing sold to be a non-profit
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I gather that non-profit board membership doesn't pay very
| well.
|
| Consequently, when the non-profit in question has something
| valuable (like market share or branding), there are some
| misaligned incentives.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Board members at a non-profit cannot profit from sales of
| corporate assets. if that's what you mean.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| There's direct payments, and then there's the infinite
| number of ways to receive indirect compensation.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I suppose it's possible a non-profit board member is
| taking illegal/fraudulent kickbacks. Quite an accusation
| though. i guess there are "misaligned incentives" if a
| board member is willing to act illegally or fraudulently.
| grobbyy wrote:
| It's not quite an accusation but mainstream practice.
| Agarwal, in the early days, earned more than everyone
| else combined, and took credit for the work of others.
| After the sale, he was offered a coushy job at 2U.
|
| Funneling nonprofit money into private pockets is like an
| art at MIT. How many professors are millionaires? How
| many would be without MIT?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| thats not what's necessary at all
|
| non profit salaries of board members can be extremely
| high, the aggregate reporting on this is poor despite the
| public filings, as the filings say the same things in
| wildly different ways
|
| I think the weirdest meme in the non profit world is how
| many act poor, or actually are undercompensated, but the
| answer to why is "its a non profit soo...." as opposed to
| "the board chooses to underpay me soo..."
|
| additionally, many things can be done with assets. even
| if a non profit does not directly buy a board member's
| investments, it can use its funds to pump that
| investment. for example, buy 2 houses on the board
| member's block at inflated prices, so the board member
| can sell their own house at a huge profit. can do the
| same with anything especially illiquid things like art
| with small float. can do it with small stocks that are
| easy to pump too. can do it with crypto that wont be
| scrutinized for pumping. as long as the transactions
| aren't directly to the restricted party it meets all
| regulations.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| Harvard and MIT sold the assets to 2U; the money was rolled
| over into a new nonprofit:
|
| https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/digital-...
| - They put $80M into edX and got back $800M.
| fastball wrote:
| Yep, definitely 2U's $800M mistake, not Harvard and MIT. They
| made off like bandits.
| michaelt wrote:
| Many universities like to claim that their mission is to
| educate the next generation of citizens and leaders, rather
| than to make off like bandits.
|
| Some would call it a failure to uphold that mission, even
| if it was good for their bank balance.
| jefftk wrote:
| _The original non-profit edX sold its brand and most assets to
| 2U. The remaining non-profit entity was temporarily renamed
| "The Center for Reimagining Learning." Last year, this
| organization was officially named Axim Collaborative and
| appointed a new CEO. ... Axim appears to have become primarily
| a grant-giving organization. Besides supporting Open edX,
| there's little evidence of using its "substantial resources"
| for innovation as initially promised. ... Axim's current assets
| exceed the total amount edX spent during its entire non-profit
| phase._
|
| A nonprofit built something, sold it for a lot more than it
| cost to create it, and now has the cash which it is legally
| required to spend furthering its mission. This seems generally
| reasonable to me, though of course Axim may end up spending its
| millions poorly.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Thanks! That's pretty cool and practical
|
| I could have thought of selling some assets, I didn't think
| of selling even the _name_ of the non profit and just
| renaming the old one
|
| It is funny that the original one now has cash that it doesnt
| spend after years of high churn, I'll check out its non
| profit tax filings
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| A good summary, although The Crimson is not happy with the
| results of the deal:
|
| https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/2/23/climaco-
| harvard...
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Now they have the opportunity to buy it back from the for-
| profit in bankruptcy proceedings
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| Honestly? It would be a hilarious turn of events. I hope
| they do it and use the remaining money to revitalize
| their offerings and infrastructure.
| raybb wrote:
| Isn't that kinda what happened with gumroad?
| manav wrote:
| Wouldn't it be 2U's $800M mistake?
| ClarityJones wrote:
| Or, perhaps the lender(s).
| wrentopher wrote:
| Worked for 2U. It was the most incomprehensibly incompetent place
| you could imagine. Terrible people with zero real skills all
| backstabbing each other.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| This sounds increasingly common in US corp culture, it was
| reasonably common when I worked there (when times were good)
| but perhaps now even more so.
| hilux wrote:
| I interviewed a few years ago. Did not get an offer. It all
| seemed very white, a very salesy culture, and with very
| inflated titles.
| zo1 wrote:
| How would you feel if I complained about a company being a
| bit "too brown"? Since when did we normalize this subtle
| racism towards white people?
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| i think he's referring to the collar (not the skin) as in
| white collar work vs blue or brown collar.
| zo1 wrote:
| Valid point - if that was the intention then my bad, bit
| of an overreaction.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| I really don't think this is the case
| hilux wrote:
| The US is a white-majority country where the power and
| money are disproportionately in the hands of white people.
|
| When a company (in education!) that makes lots of noise
| about diversity obviously favors hiring white people, it's
| noteworthy.
|
| If we were in some brown-majority country where white
| people were excluded from money and power, yes, that would
| be noteworthy. Call it out! The US, despite what Trump
| tells his MAGA followers, is not that country.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| For a workplace to be very white means they are self-
| selecting whiteness for their employees instead of hiring
| in a way that gives equal opportunity to all people. In
| other words, they have (probably unconscious but still
| inexcusable) racism in their hiring practices. Reasonable
| people would agree this is a bad thing.
| sho wrote:
| > Terrible people with zero real skills all backstabbing each
| other.
|
| You know, without you saying another word, I feel like I know
| them, down to being able to describe their clothes, haircuts
| and of course powerpoint decks. It's like some bad business
| school archetype that just re-appears by itself in nature.
| fsckboy wrote:
| 2U's due diligence might have missed that they weren't getting
| Walter Lewin's popular material, he's not bankrupt, still going
| strong!!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@lecturesbywalterlewin.they9259/vide...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWnfJ0-xXRE&list=PLyQSN7X0ro...
| grobbyy wrote:
| 2U did no due diligence. A minimum might have been to contact
| the author of the platform to check on IP issues (or anything
| else). This never happened. Lots of other things never happened
| either.
|
| What they bought had little resemblance to what they thought
| they were buying. They got fleeced by MIT and Harvard. Wasn't
| the first and won't be the last.
|
| There's a sucker born every minute
| ecshafer wrote:
| I don't really like how any of the MOOCs run, and I think my
| issue is that they are not run like universities, they are run
| like job training centers. They all have the _Same_ courses and
| the _same_ degrees. Other than a few actual schools like Georgia
| Tech with OMSCS which actually seems to be trying to innovate to
| give degrees online at a fraction of the on-campus cost, they
| also don 't seem to be trying to actually give degrees.
|
| A successful MOOC in my mind isn't one that will have some
| credits for an online certification for programming or nursing
| that can transfer to a _Real school_. A successful MOOC is one
| where I can take a course on Ulysses or Semantics or Mathematics
| or Plato or whatever just like I could in a real undergrad, but
| without the same financial and time constraints. I want to be
| able to spend $5000 taking classes that I find interesting, and
| accidentally have an English degree Or spend $5000 and really
| focus and get my degree in X.
| a2tech wrote:
| Well I can tell you that the university of Michigan has exactly
| what you want. And the professors teach the same class in
| person as well as online (with some modification to fit the
| format).
| derbOac wrote:
| > my issue is that they are not run like universities, they are
| run like job training centers
|
| I think part of the tricky thing is that this is what
| HR/employer/MBA-type cultures increasingly see a degree as. So
| why not just go right to that?
|
| I don't agree with this perspective, to be clear, but if you
| look at it from a certain viewpoint it's not too difficult to
| see why there would be pressure to approach with that tack. You
| might even go a step further and argue that if these things are
| failing as the article states, it might say something about the
| viability of that hyperspecialized perspective on degrees. Or
| maybe not.
| mu53 wrote:
| I think the only reason this doesn't happen is economics. If
| someone were to "fix" the education system and start giving out
| bachelors for less money, the value of bachelors degrees would
| go down. In part, because more people would have them, but also
| because schools have systems to prevent abuse such as fraud.
|
| If you just want to take a class, there are plenty of MOOCs
| that give the lectures, exercises, and tests out for free.
|
| Another reason is that different universities may emphasize
| different things as part of the curriculum. Lets say a
| philosophy degree at harvard emphasizes Greek philosophers, but
| a philosophy degree at UT emphasizes post modern philosophers.
| Taking a class at one doesn't transfer to another. Mixing
| classes at different universities simply doesn't work because
| you weren't educated at the university so why should you get a
| degree from that university?
|
| The way I see it is that if you just want to get educated the
| resources are out there, but if you want degree, you gotta go
| to school.
| nine_k wrote:
| Obtaining a degree should be a separate optional examination,
| likely on-site, like other extern examinations.
|
| But receiving lectures and coursework equivalent / comparable
| to those received by regular students, such that would
| realistically prepare you to passing the same kind of exam
| (given adequate study effort from you), would be actually
| useful. Useful even if you don't take the exam and don't
| receive credits / papers. Study is not for costly signaling
| alone.
| mu53 wrote:
| I agree that the education system would be better with this
| kind of arrangement, but it doesn't happen because of
| economics and american independence.
|
| What certifying body would administer the exam? A
| university that would miss out on $30,000 to $200,000+ on a
| student attending classes? A government institution
| influenced by politics that would likely end up creating
| inadequate testing leading to irrelevant examinations
| disregarded by most employers or anyone of substance?
|
| The only reason why exams work for trades is because it is
| very well defined what a plumber needs to know. Even for
| software engineers, certificates are useless for most
| because what engineers need to know is rather abstract or
| highly dependent from job to job
| csomar wrote:
| If you can take the same degree for $5K instead of $50K, no one
| will be taking the $50K degree. Most people go to university
| for the credentials of the university.
| fragmede wrote:
| For the wealthy, University degrees might just be a Veblen
| good.
|
| It might be the "same", but there will be people that judge
| them for getting the cheap one.
| nine_k wrote:
| $5k is for education, $45k is for campus life with
| offspring of the right families. May be a good deal from a
| purely rational standpoint.
| csomar wrote:
| If they are the same, there shouldn't be any difference
| between the two issued. It'd be possible to know only by
| asking the candidate.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Other than a few actual schools like Georgia Tech with OMSCS
| which actually seems to be trying to innovate to give degrees
| online at a fraction of the on-campus cost, they also don't
| seem to be trying to actually give degrees.
|
| that's because selective universities don't _want_ to give
| degrees through MOOCs at a lower cost as it 1) reduces the
| value of their degrees, and 2) reduces their reputation.
|
| Top universities could easily increase their student body 2x or
| 3x, bringing acceptance rate back up to 15%-20%. But they don't
| want to. Because what they're selling is not just an education
| (you can get that at (fill in blank) State), they're selling
| prestige and future opportunities, and the value of that lies
| in its _scarcity_.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Because what they're selling is not just an education (you
| can get that at (fill in blank) State), they're selling
| prestige and future opportunities.
|
| Obvious follow up: Are there state universities using these
| techniques to drive down costs and be more flexible?
| sologoub wrote:
| The community college system does a good deal here. As an
| example in California, students can get a great deal of
| their undergrad lower division work done at a community
| college for a fraction of even UC or State university cost
| (which for instate students is already fairly low).
|
| Community colleges are also where folks would normally turn
| to for casual the classes they wanted to take but didn't
| necessarily want the formalities of the full degree. Online
| delivery of there helped further but vs MOOCs, CC has
| geographic and residency restrictions for who can actually
| study there.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| There definitely are state schools that work hard to drive
| costs down for in-state students.
|
| Florida is weirdly enough a good example as the sunshine
| state scholars program provides a reasonably approachable
| way for any student in the state to enter high school with
| the intent on going to university and graduate with the
| criteria to get 50%, 75%, or 100% tuition and fees covered
| under the sunshine state scholars program.
|
| Then you have states like Virginia who have some of the
| fastest rising costs of attendance in the country and where
| cost of attendance at state schools (which are generally
| supposed to be cheaper) actually ends up being comparable
| or even more than cost of attendance at private
| universities.
| razakel wrote:
| The Open University in the UK is one example, and has been
| around since 1969.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Community colleges for sure -- I would argue they have
| taken up the mantle of truly educating, especially those
| from lower income brackets, and are free for lower income
| students in many states. They also have good transfer
| pathways to a four-year university. It's by far the most
| affordable way to get a bachelor's degree.
|
| Some flagship state schools (example [0]) offer free
| tuition for lower income students providing they maintain a
| certain GPA.
|
| But middle class families have a hard time as they are
| usually above the threshold for aid, and yet tuition (and
| housing) is a huge financial burden.
|
| [0] https://pathway.uoregon.edu/award-overview
| ericjmorey wrote:
| The State of New York is offering free tuition at any SUNY
| school for all students who reside in the state with
| incomes up to $125,000 for dependent students; $60,000 for
| married students with no dependents; $30,000 for
| independent single students with no dependents.
|
| This will make a huge difference in the market for degrees.
| zzma wrote:
| Oregon State has a large offering of online undergrad and
| grad programs: https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/. There were
| 11,430 ecampus students in Fall 2023 [1].
|
| The ecampus tuition (~13K/year) is still substantial
| compared to the in-person tuition for out-of-state students
| (~38K/year), and nearly identical to the in-person tuition
| for in-state students (~14K/year) [2].
|
| [1] https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/news/2023-ecampus-
| enrollment... [2]
| https://financialaid.oregonstate.edu/cost-attendance
| pknomad wrote:
| > that's because selective universities don't _want_ to give
| degrees through MOOCs at a lower cost
|
| That's one big reason for sure.
|
| The other, I suspect (and I'm sure there are more), is that
| it's also rather difficult to provide the same level of
| quality of courses to the masses than say select few
| undergrads.
|
| Some of the best courses I took in my uni (T20) were the
| upper level electives where it was taught by the professors
| who cared about the topic, had interesting teaching
| materials/presentation, readily available support resources
| (TA's/office hours/department support), and so on.
|
| Also keep in mind - Georgia Tech's program is a master's
| degree - and these programs don't affront the same level of
| prestige and opportunities in the same way the other programs
| do (BS/BA, PhD, MBA, MD, JD).
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > it's also rather difficult to provide the same level of
| quality of courses to the masses than say select few
| undergrads.
|
| I agree
|
| > master's degree - and these programs don't affront the
| same level of prestige and opportunities in the same way
| the other programs do (BS/BA, PhD, MBA, MD, JD).
|
| I'd throw MBA in there too (unless from the top dozen biz
| schools, Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, Booth, Kellogg, Sloan,
| Haas etc.)
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > that's because selective universities don't _want_ to give
| degrees through MOOCs at a lower cost as it 1) reduces the
| value of their degrees, and 2) reduces their reputation.
|
| Huh? Many selective universities already make their
| educations free for many undergraduates.
|
| The MOOCs charged money because they failed to solicit
| donations.
|
| > Top universities could easily increase their student body
| 2x or 3x, bringing acceptance rate back up to 15%-20%.
|
| This is true.
|
| > Because what they're selling is not just an education (you
| can get that at (fill in blank) State)
|
| The thing is, the best state institutions are operated like
| there are small elite academies within a larger, public body.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > already make their educations free
|
| yes, but not their _degrees_, which is what I said. Sure,
| Harvard can give all of its classes online away for free,
| why? Because the actual value you get from attending
| Harvard is not the education. When you go to get a job,
| company X doesn't care that you "took some classes at
| Harvard", they do care that you "graduated from Harvard".
| ta_1138 wrote:
| It's also important to see university departments as groups
| of people who often will end up working together for decades,
| and therefore leadership will see internal politics
| everywhere. What does doubling your student body do to said
| politics? Better to minimize growth and keep people happy
| than deal with the risks of what happens when you end up with
| far more staff.
|
| A lot of similar fun is occurring as the all the student body
| that isn't trust fund babies really wants to study topics
| that will pay well, which in many universities, might not
| even have a lot of political weight, or even their own dean.
| See all the universities where you can end up taking CS
| classes in 8 different unrelated departments, but where they
| really, really don't want to admit that 50%+ of the student
| body is programming, as building a proper umbrella for this,
| which then has so many students, takes a lot of power away
| from incumbents.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| These universities have turned from "growing our mission of
| education" (in which, wouldn't you want the largest number
| of people possible to benefit from some of the best minds
| in the world who work for you?) to "sustaining our
| business".
| Edman274 wrote:
| How do you inexpensively scale the personalized work done by
| professors and TAs in grading your work, making sure you're not
| cheating or plagiarizing, and clarifying your misunderstandings
| when you're not "getting" the educational material? If a firm
| hires someone with a degree, what they're paying for is knowing
| that a person actually learned the material, which requires
| human intervention to do grading and to prevent cheating. That
| costs a lot of money, because technological innovations don't
| really make the grading or cheating prevention any cheaper.
| Education is the prototypical example of an industry affected
| by Baumol's cost disease.
|
| The cheapest part to scale is the educational material and
| lectures, but that's always been the case, even before MOOCs.
| It has been possible for more than a century to go a library
| for free and get access to more educational material than one
| person could read in a several lifetimes. What has never been
| cheap are teachers who care, and I don't think that MOOCs can
| technologically innovate so much so that they reduce the cost
| of a teacher that cares.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| I do think, however, that what they _can_ leverage is
| community, having more sociable spaces for interactions
| related to each course and /or more generally. I understand
| some already do, but I feel like in the few classes I have
| tried through EdX they were not utilized well.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| why can't online universities have TAs like real
| universities? Pay for a course, have someone who completed
| some more advanced course grade your work or provide one-
| on-one feedback!
| hilux wrote:
| I worked in this field - I've met Anant, John Katzman, and
| Bonnie Ferri. The MOOCs (and any well-run university, probably
| the minority) have excellent data on what classes students want
| to take.
|
| Well over 90% of the searches on their site are for tech-
| related topics. And most of the remainder are probably for
| business.
|
| You can fantasize about a USA where people want to read Plato
| and accidentally get English degrees. I also think that would
| be great. In our current reality, only the trust-fund kids, who
| already know they never need to work, will want to pay for
| that. (I mean, their dad or grandpa is the one paying.)
| rebolek wrote:
| I get your point. Paid school is problem and people should be
| free to find their purpose.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Unpaid school is a different problem because it's society
| subsidizing their hobbies.
| Hellolearning wrote:
| A persuite of knowledge is not 'subsidizing their
| hobbies'.
|
| Its a captialsm valuation nothing more.
|
| What are we as humans if we don't have the resources to
| educate and learn and be curious?
|
| I really hope the current AI and Robot wave will lead us
| all to a more 'free' society
| drawnwren wrote:
| It's strange to me that you can't see the correlation
| between free markets and their products while
| simultaneously looking forward to more production from
| those same markets.
| Hellolearning wrote:
| Get rid of all unnecessary things and overhead in our
| society and we do not have a resource issue.
|
| Focus on automatisation and we don't have a production
| issue.
|
| Its a man made problem, not some kind of magic rule.
| drawnwren wrote:
| I think this is one of those wordcel arguments that
| sounds nice but probably has no bearing on actual
| reality.
|
| If we live in a world where human effort has no marginal
| utility, we also live in a world where human life has no
| value. If we don't, you're in a world where you're
| competing with other humans for some set of resources.
| Regardless of whether you believe that you are competing
| with them, others are competing with you.
|
| I think competition is perhaps one of the most basic
| rules of reality.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| We are free to be curious and to "find ourselves". But
| why should we expect society to pay for it beyond a
| certain point? At some point it is indeed "subsidizing
| hobbies".
|
| As long as things cost something, and a course costs
| something to create and deliver, the question of
| valuation in some way is valid. It's not a capitalist
| issue, it's an allocation of resources issue, which is
| something universal as long as resources are limited.
|
| Where it works, the free market is great because it
| transparently shows how people actually value something.
| That is, it shows how we actually are and what we
| actually want, not what would be nice in some utopian
| world.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| It's interesting how abstract these discussions are.
| Countries with free - free for the student, at least -
| tertiary education do exist and you can use them for
| comparison.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Yes they do exist. On the one hand this is great but on
| the other hand it also also generates waste, both in
| terms of resources and time.
|
| I went to university in France when it was both free
| (still basically is) with no selection for entry and the
| amount of waste was huge for no benefit to anyone... well
| except for official stats because " _I 'm not unemployed,
| I'm a student_"...
| em-bee wrote:
| please elaborate on the waste you saw. i studied in
| germany and austria and i didn't notice waste. on the
| contrary, requiring payment would have excluded many of
| the good students. (entry is limited to qualified
| students however, so there is some selection. does that
| make all the difference? i doubt it.)
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _on the contrary, requiring payment would have excluded
| many of the good students_
|
| How? Surely people/families in Germany/Austria, some of
| the richest countries in the world, can afford to pay
| _something_ towards education costs... And in fact they
| do through their taxes, which are needed to pay for this
| "free" university. [obviously poor families can benefit
| from bursaries so this is not a relevant argument]
|
| The waste is students picking courses just to do
| something or just because they are vaguely interested in
| them (and then they get all the benefits afforded to
| students, including housing subsidies). And then they
| give up, or they fail, or once they graduate they realise
| that it gets them exactly 0 job. So huge waste of
| resources and time and, as mentioned, sometimes a way to
| hide youth unemployment.
| em-bee wrote:
| _Surely people /families in Germany/Austria, some of the
| richest countries in the world, can afford to pay
| something towards education costs_
|
| rich country doesn't mean rich people. we have high taxes
| and lower average wages. high rent in cities. in vienna,
| more than 60% of people live in subsidized housing. none
| of them could ever afford to pay for university.
|
| and if more than 60% of students need financial support,
| all we are doing is adding expensive bureaucracy. might
| as well just make it free instead.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That does not answer my question and it is obviously not
| true that people cannot afford to pay for university, not
| least when we haven't mentioned a price.
|
| Every time similar topics are discussed it's odd to read
| some comments because they give the impression that
| people in the richest countries in the world have no
| disposable income (they can't pay for healthcare, they
| can't pay for higher education, they can't pay for public
| transport, etc). Of course there are poor people, but the
| majority have plenty of disposable income (that's what a
| rich country means).
|
| > " _in vienna, more than 60% of people live in
| subsidized housing_ "
|
| This does not mean that this is a necessity it shows some
| issues with the housing market and housing policy, not
| that people are "poor". In fact, if the majority of
| people in a rich European city get housing subsidies it
| seems quite clear that this has nothing to do with
| poverty and not being able to afford it, but is a
| policy/market disfunction issue.
|
| To go back to France, in France every student gets
| housing subsidies. This does not mean that they need it,
| it's just that the choice of policy has been to dish out
| subsidies without consideration of need.
| em-bee wrote:
| subsidized housing is only available to those with
| limited income. in vienna that is below 60kEUR per year
| for a single home, and below 90kEUR for a couple, which
| means 45kEUR income per person. if we take the cost of
| public schools in the US which ranges from 10k to 20k USD
| per year, it should be pretty clear that those expenses
| are unaffordable. if they could afford them they probably
| would not be eligible for subsidized housing.
|
| _the majority have plenty of disposable income (that 's
| what a rich country means)_
|
| no, it doesn't.
|
| rich country means a high GDP, but we put most of that
| into public infrastructure, public healthcare (so, yes,
| we can all pay for healthcare because everyone has
| insurance) and public transport, and we don't need to pay
| for education. if education were taken out of the mix
| then those with lower income would be excluded.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| It's interesting that you chose Germany as an example of
| ease of access to the education you want. Maybe if you
| managed to get into a Gymnasium and didn't fuck up when
| you were like... 10? Sure. Otherwise yeah, good luck
| getting into university for the degree you want.
| em-bee wrote:
| _Maybe if you managed to get into a Gymnasium and didn 't
| fuck up when you were like... 10_
|
| not true. there is also the gesamtschule which delays the
| decision to make the abitur until you are in 10th grade.
|
| 40% of students in germany qualify for university (and
| another 10% for fachhochschule). that is much higher than
| the university admission rates in the US.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| And then, what happens after that decision? How free are
| you to get the education you want after that? If you pick
| a path and then want something harder or better, say
| going into medecine in school. How hard is it going to
| be? And aren't 10th graders around like 14 years old?
|
| Again, that's just as bad as paying for education. At
| least with money you can work or take a loan and chose
| the path you want even at age 20 or 25, you're not locked
| in by a choice that was made when you were a teenager.
| Yes, I know you also have to get good grades in the US or
| Canada, but at least here in Canada you can basically
| almost always go back to university, take a few perp
| courses and be eligible to apply even for medecine.
| em-bee wrote:
| _If you pick a path and then want something harder or
| better, say going into medecine in school. How hard is it
| going to be?_
|
| the abitur i got from the gesamtschule is just as good as
| the abitur someone got from a gymnasium. if i want to get
| into medicine or some other highly popular field all i
| need is good grades in the last 3 years of school.
|
| a 10th grader is 16 years old because first grade starts
| at 6 years.
|
| those 10th graders that don't continue school go into an
| apprenticeship, of which there are many choices
| available. germany has 12 years of compulsory education
| (9 or 10 years of school and 3 years of either school or
| professional education)
|
| and no, that is not the same as paying for education.
|
| loans are way harder to get in germany as the banks are
| much more conservative. getting a loan for school would
| be practically impossible.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Genuine question, what about Hauptschule?
|
| And I guess that makes sense for Germany. Where I live,
| loans are basically guaranteed and almost free for
| students especially if you are graduating in a degree
| with good job prospects. This allowed my dad to basically
| switch paths entirely when he was like 40, as it paid for
| his entire spendings during his degree and he could do it
| easily in north America. It was basically impossible for
| him to do something similar in France.
| em-bee wrote:
| in my time there were two ways to university. gymnasium
| or gesamtschule. i understand that it was somehow
| possible to switch from other schools if you had very
| good grades, but it wasn't natural or obvious. at the
| gesamtschule i believe only the worst students were
| denied to continue, and i think about a third of all
| students actually did continue after 10th grade in my
| year. (i don't remember the specifics as i actually went
| on to be an exchange student for grade 11, and i came
| back to school for grade 12)
|
| i don't know if switching schools became easier or
| harder, but today i would only send my children to a
| gesamtschule where it was certain that they would not be
| under undue pressure in order to be able to continue
| after 10th grade. in my opinion the three-tiered system
| might as well be abolished because evaluating 9 year old
| children whether they might be capable of passing the
| abitur some 9 years later is absolutely dumb and
| misguided, and forcing them to switch schools will also
| hurt their socialization as they lose touch with some
| friends and have to find new ones.
|
| the system should be replaced with a highschool like
| system that allows everyone a chance at passing the
| abitur, and only those that specifically opt to learn a
| trade instead should be able to leave school earlier, and
| even those should be offered a short path to an abitur
| test if they complete their apprenticeship.
|
| on the other hand there is no problem entering university
| in germany at 40. it's free, so what should stop you? i
| actually did become a student again at age 30 for a short
| time. noone suggested that that would be wrong.
|
| getting a loan for that is an entirely different matter.
| conservative thinking and ageism suggests that nobody has
| good job prospects starting a new career at that age. but
| you can do it if you get a part time job (actually, if
| you switch your current job to part time, which is
| something you are allowed to do by law in germany) and
| then use the remaining time to study. if classes are
| still structured the way they were in my time then you
| can study at your own pace. it may take a bit longer, but
| then i also expect that at 40 you are more driven to
| focus on getting stuff done so i don't think part time
| study will double the time you need to complete your
| studies.
| em-bee wrote:
| why are people downvoting that comment? are you disputing
| the facts stated? those are the numbers i found on a
| quick search. if they are wrong, then please share
| references to correct them.
| Hellolearning wrote:
| You can actually get a university allowance through your
| job experience.
|
| You can get Bafoeg (financial support which you get for
| free) if you have a job degree and go to the BOS to get
| your university degree that way.
| em-bee wrote:
| in my time bafoeg was 50% loan, and it would only cover
| living expenses and study material. if university cost
| actual money, financial support for it would be another
| thing entirely.
|
| the point is: does charging for university and then
| giving financial support to those who need it really
| change anything other than causing more bureaucracy and
| risking that some people can't go because they don't
| qualify for financial support yet shy away from the
| expense?
|
| reducing taxes so that people have more money so they can
| afford paid education is not going to lead to more
| students but less.
| tonypace wrote:
| The difference smells like culture from across the ocean.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Surely you know that in those countries, education is
| gatekept in a different,perhaps even worse way. Sure you
| don't have to pay to get university education in France.
| But good luck entering a program you want, or reorienting
| later in life, after highschool. You end up with a lot of
| people competing for the sought after degrees, and not
| ever being able to even dream of "learning what you want"
| if you messed up your bac exam. And the requirements are
| very strict and inflexible for those,much more than in
| the US.
|
| The same thing happens in Germany but in an even more
| vicious way. You are basically triaged before high school
| and can only manage to switch with tons of bureaucracy
| and difficulty. It's gotten better but it's still very
| much 'your path is set and is almost impossible to change
| after high school' for most people.
| Hellolearning wrote:
| Because we as a society are the only reason who holds us
| back.
|
| We use capitalism to control resources etc. but only
| thanks to controled capitalism / politics we are keeping
| pure capitalsim under control (like minimum wage, labor
| laws etc.).
|
| We could create a new system. A system which determines
| how many resources we as society can produce on one side
| and want we need + want on the other side. Than we
| optimize our system for this.
|
| Which would mean we would get rid of everything we don't
| need and optimize everything we can.
|
| We don't need thousends of different companies doing
| simliar things just different with their own overhead.
| Capitalism needs this to control itself.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| naive. free market shows what generates revenue.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| And what generates revenue is exactly what I described:
| what we want and value and thus are willing to pay for.
|
| I don't see what's naive there. On the contrary this is
| absolute realism. And furthermore this goes hand in hand
| with individual liberty. Alternatives have been tried,
| and they failed...
| authorfly wrote:
| I think you are very correct.
|
| The other point, as made in the "EdTech doesn't scale" post
| the other day, is that Edutainment is one of the only really
| scalable ways to do EdTech profitably, and that favours
| consumption, not growth or testing (because for learning to
| be effective, it more or less has to be quite hard). At
| least, to remember most of the content, not just highlights.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Something I noticed is that I watch a lot of edutainment
| content but I don't really retain any information from
| that, not even the highlights. I'm wondering whether this
| is basically wasted time.
| pas wrote:
| Wasting time is okay. Some people watch sports, play
| video games, go to the pub, work on that old thing in the
| garage (and just end up watching youtube videos about
| other people's projects).
|
| I started taking notes, started cutting down on low-
| quality infotainment/edutainment (for example while I
| know folks at SciShow work a lot on their content, put a
| lot of effort into producing scientifically correct
| stuff, but it's just not deep enough, it's too fast), and
| in general try to watch/listen to multiple videos that
| touch the same topics. (Because many complex things
| require multiple passes to comprehend anyway, and getting
| different viewpoints, different presentation helps a lot
| with that.)
| passion__desire wrote:
| The multiple passes statement reminded me of The
| Unfinished Swan game.
|
| https://youtu.be/X9YaFY8S75M
| hilux wrote:
| If the student only watches the content, and doesn't have
| the chance to be (1) tested on it, and (2) apply it over
| time, the learning is quickly lost.
|
| That's my personal experience, and that's also the theory
| nowadays.
|
| I mean, it's not worse than watching reality TV or sports
| or something. Maybe better - maybe consuming edutainment
| will inspire you to follow through and apply it.
| soperj wrote:
| Is it really the testing that reinforces the learning? or
| is it the application over time?
| authorfly wrote:
| It's true that testing benefits learning (Test Effect).
|
| However the question is increasingly whether simply the
| cognitive load of feedback is the reason for this is
| coming up.
|
| i.e. does the Testing effect reduce in efficacy when you
| apply it to every waking hour, every course? does it just
| benefit when you study one course?
|
| There are clear links that subjects where students have a
| stake in the result (i.e. it is mandatory for college)
| lead to higher attendance and final grades, regardless of
| study method.
|
| Lots of the predominant psychology applies only to
| motivated students or those in mandatory courses.. so
| basically, we can't know the state for free willed
| learning/edutainment.
| lupire wrote:
| Testing and application are the same.
| soperj wrote:
| there's no way that's the case.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| Also, as someone who used MOOC quite often, I take only STEM
| courses because I'm used to any humanities subjects being of
| lesser quality. I'd rather read a good book about that topic
| than take course online.
|
| For STEM things, I think it's usually of the same quality,
| and I prefer videos, so it's easier choice.
| bnralt wrote:
| A large part of the issue, as I see it, is that the
| university format is just a very poor way for people to learn
| information. If people want to learn a tech skill and don't
| care about credentials, they invariably find a lot of other
| ways far superior to university courses. The closest I've
| seen to university style courses that people actually find
| useful is Udemy. Very few people seem to get much use from
| EdX or Coursera classes, far fewer still think it's a good
| idea to take classes at their local university.
|
| Same with Plato. You can read Plato on your own, you can
| listen to many more hours of free lectures on Plato, usually
| from better quality speakers, than you'd ever get at a
| university, you can join groups of people who want to discuss
| Plato's philosophy. These people will actually be individuals
| interested in the topic, not bored university classmates who
| spend half the time talking about other things because of
| their disinterest. This is all for free.
|
| Even discounting the cost, university education trails far
| behind other forms of learning. Once the cost is factored in,
| the only appeal ends up being the credentials and the four
| year summer camp environment.
|
| That's why when I see MOOCs brought up these days in the
| wild, it's usually from people who are taking them for
| credentials. Once credentials are taken away, MOOCs and
| universities just don't have a ton to offer for a motivated
| learner. It would be good if credentials and education were
| decoupled (for instance, like with the CFA), but there
| doesn't appear to be much of a push for that.
| em-bee wrote:
| decoupling would really make a difference. i should be able
| to acquire knowledge however i want or am able to, and then
| pass a standardized process to get the accreditation.
|
| the problem with standardized tests however is that they
| lead to more schools just teaching for the test and not
| actually helping the students learn. it's tricky. depending
| on the subject or field. though i suppose papers and
| dissertations can be judged on their own merits. but other
| tests are trickier to do in a way that they can't just be
| passed by memorizing test knowledge.
| bnralt wrote:
| Honestly, though, removing standardized testing usually
| just obfuscates the problem. There are many ways to game
| the system. The ubiquitous college cramming is usually
| about temporarily learning for the test the night before
| a big exam.
|
| It's better to work on improving transparent standards
| for credentials than to have tens of thousands of
| different standards that no one pays attention to and
| hoping that they're adequate, despite having no clue if
| that's actually the case.
| hilux wrote:
| As a related aside, "competency-based education" is a
| thing, slightly more popular in Europe than in the US.
|
| I don't want to destroy all universities (like Trump or
| DeSantis do). But it IS true that the higher-education
| system needs a big revamp, and that the necessary change
| is unlikely to come from within, because the people
| (tenured faculty) who currently hold all the power have a
| strong interest in not rocking the boat.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| Most software programmers say that certifications have
| little to no value, so the decoupling doesn't seem to be
| working.
| hilux wrote:
| I was once excited about Udemy. I bought a lot of courses,
| most of which I never started.
|
| But the few times I started a Udemy course, every single
| one was terrible, once I got past the first 20% or so. And
| contrary to their advertising, they did not allow me to
| return the course, because I had "completed too much" or
| something. IIRC I was around the 30-35% mark.
|
| Totally different from Coursera, which can be hit and miss,
| but best stuff is very good.
|
| Have you had a different experience? Which courses did you
| complete that were good?
|
| TLDR: Udemy - cheap, and you get what you pay for.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| There are some people there who are good; but most of the
| courses there are quite bad. Which ones you tried, if I
| may ask? I'm curious.
|
| I remember being both Neil Cummings and Max
| Schwarzmueller courses to be good, but I did them some
| time ago and when I was never to web development.
| hilux wrote:
| You mean - on Coursera?
|
| There was a Python course offered by three profs at Rice
| University that was A+.
|
| Similar for Dan Ariely's Behavioral Economics class - of
| course, maybe it was all lies (now it turns out), but
| entertaining nevertheless.
|
| Andrew Ng's course is quite math-heavy (I haven't done
| it), but it gets rave reviews.
|
| So many Coursera tech/CS courses are offered by profs at
| elite universities - there's no way they could be the
| kind of crap that is standard on Udemy.
|
| What Coursera lacks (compared to the university
| experience) is personal interaction with a real
| professor, group projects with smart and focused
| classmates, and personalized feedback.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Udacity pivoted from seeking to be a new way of giving
| university level education to the masses to job training.
|
| I think the market spoke. There are still universities that
| also offer online degrees, but generally on their own platform,
| with live streaming - not in own-paced, pre-recorded MOOCs.
| mitjam wrote:
| The best MOOC I've attended was Balaji Srivivasan's Startup
| Engineering, 10 years ago. Like many, I dropped out in the
| middle - in my case I wanted to spend more time with my little
| daughter. I still think it was the right decision, but I
| probably would not have dropped a presence course.
| WWWWH wrote:
| Check out the Open University then. It's the real thing and
| online. It costs and there are time constraints but they are
| the experts in remote teaching
| pfortuny wrote:
| Not trying to be harsh but the operative word in your post is
| "I".
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| you want to spend 5000 $ on a mooc about plato?
| ecshafer wrote:
| I absolutely would. Spending a couple hundred for a class to
| read through Plato/insert interesting topic here with an
| expert and a few other interested colleagues is well worth it
| in my mind. If after a few of those I get a degree to show
| off I completed this and have some baseline knowledge is
| worth it. I enjoy school for the most part.
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| I suppose you are quite rich then. Well, good for you and
| good luck with your studies of ancient Greek philosophy.
|
| And you might want to check this out:
| https://truthofyoga.com/p/knowledge. Not affiliated with
| it. Would like to do it but can't justify almost 2000 Euro
| for this course. For you on the other hand it is maybe even
| too cheap. The guy is teaching at Oxford. Take a look at
| it.
| paganel wrote:
| > and I think my issue is that they are not run like
| universities, they are run like job training centers.
|
| It is my understanding that that's how most of the universities
| are now also run.
|
| Granted, I haven't set foot in an university in almost two
| decades now, so maybe my view is skewed from I what I've read
| online and based on the not so numerous interactions I've had
| with people who attend university.
| mlsu wrote:
| It's because the primary purpose of these institutions is
| cultural filtering. The only reason we have name brand unis is
| to sort and filter people into a very small (i.e. 1%)
| cultural/economic elite. The point is for you to go "ooh,
| stanford" or "ooh harvard" when you meet a partner at a big law
| firm, VC, or hedge fund.
|
| In order for there to be a 1% there must necessarily be a 99%.
| The percentages are fixed; they always will be. Acceptance
| rates (public, reported) tend towards the filtering rate
| (implicit, hidden) as the college educated in the broader
| population tends towards 1.
|
| Look at the endowments of these institutions. They are
| comparable in magnitude to elite hedge funds and VCs.
|
| Of course they do top research and learning as well -- but only
| because they must. Under the old system, which worked simple,
| you'd be selected for an Ivy based on your blood relations and
| receive no education at all (for a recent example of this,
| Brett Kavanaugh: Supreme Court Justice).
|
| I guess it is an improvement on the old system that these
| places offer a "world-class education" ** to at least some of
| their students; and that some of their students are pleased to
| receive it.
|
| ** whatever that means. My degree isn't printed on vellum Ivy
| league stationary, only the coarse public Ivy stuff (public
| Ivy: isn't that an interesting turn of phrase?); but I received
| the finest education of my academic career from a California
| community college. My classmates were navy veterans, part time
| auto mechanics, and young single parents.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| A bit harsh on axim I think. I'd like to see some details about
| where the money has gone other than "grants" before declaring it
| a failure.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| I agree it could have been more detailed, but sitting on 7/8ths
| of your money with seemingly no plans does not inspire
| confidence.
| grobbyy wrote:
| I don't. The place is full of worst thieves and con artists
| from edX, and very few people who are competent or care.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I'd like to hear more about this and how you know it.
| chis wrote:
| MOOCs have provided incredible value to society and it's
| unfortunate that we're only able to view them through the lens of
| profit/loss. I wish that universities would have committed to
| providing these products despite cost just as a halo project to
| improve their public image.
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| time for Axim buy back edx for 5 cent on the dollar
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| if the original eDx can take the $800M and make a new open and
| free ed content platform (like the original idea of MOOCs before
| vultures like 2U starting trying to monetize it), then I'd say
| its a win for Harvard and MIT. 2U going bankrupt may also be a
| win.
| kapitanjakc wrote:
| Open edX is available.
|
| Although it's just a platform, you'd need to create your own
| courses.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Yeah, they'd have to use the $800M to repopulate it with
| content.
| DanielVZ wrote:
| There is a ton of content in multiple platforms powered by
| Open edX. Huge initiatives and universities around the
| world are using it.
| tkgally wrote:
| Can anybody who has enrolled in an online-only degree program
| comment on the experience?
|
| I retired last year from teaching full-time at a conventional
| university. All of my teaching was in-person until the last few
| years, which were online because of the pandemic. My impression,
| after I got used to the new format, was that online is fine for
| small discussion-based seminars but that it is harder to keep
| students engaged in larger classes, especially students who are
| new to university study.
|
| I really liked the potential of online at first--it was exciting
| to lead meaningful academic discussions among students located in
| several countries--but as time passed I started to wonder about
| how well it can really work for university education.
| 2snakes wrote:
| I am halfway through an online degree in ICT. We had a
| Instructional Design course that went over the differences.
| There is a textbook that has a chapter on it called Trends in
| Instructional Design but it is pricey. My position is adult
| learning works better online to reorganize cognitive schemas
| but children benefit from social learning theory. It is
| something like 1-5% complete MOOCs, they really need some kind
| of personal feedback. But generative AI may change this too.
| Look at Math Academy for example (Skycak has a book about it)
| (and they don't use gen AI for the tutoring either).
| https://www.justinmath.com/books/
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I didn't know edx was bought by a company that went on to go
| bankrupt. I have two courses on edx that I consider exceptional,
| and worry I might lose access to them.
|
| What are your thoughts on that?
| hintymad wrote:
| I used to take a lot of courses on cousera and EdX. I still take
| some here and there, but not as many as before. Some of the
| courses are amazing and unbelievably rewarding, like Daphne
| Koller's Probabilistic Graphical Models, Robert Sedgewick's
| Analytical Combinatorics, and Gerald Sussman's course on system
| optimizations. I'm very grateful for such learning opportunities.
| Unfortunately over time, I also found that these courses had
| diminishing returns for the following reasons:
|
| - Due to the nature of MOOC, the assignments are largely either
| multiple-choice questions or programming assignments that merely
| asked students to fill in some blanks in some functions (there
| are a few exceptions of course). What a descent US university
| does really well is challenging students with tough yet
| insightful and inspiring assignments. That's how students learn
| deeply and retain the knowledge, at least for me. Merely
| listening to lectures and ticking off a few ABCDs hardly helps
| real learning.
|
| - Lack of feedback. A university course assigns TAs, gives
| tutorials and office hours, grades assignments with detailed
| feedbacks, and it is so much easier to form study groups and have
| high bandwidth discussions. MOOCs try their best to offer such
| help, but they don't work as well or at least not as
| conveniently.
|
| - Many courses are watered down. For instance, Andrew Ng's ML
| course on Coursera is far less rigorous than that (229? I forgot)
| offered in Stanford? The course is great for students to gain
| some intuition, but I'm not sure if it's good enough for one to
| build solid ML foundations.
| mFixman wrote:
| I completely agree that trying to get an
| education/certification model with no feedback and simple,
| robotic questions is completely useless.
|
| What's even worse is that almost none of the MOOCs used the
| strengths from online classes. There are other ways to learn
| than a hour-long video of a person talking to a webcam.
|
| It's funny how a big part of Andrew Ng's classes is waiting for
| him to write text with mouse as if he were using the world's
| worst whiteboard; he could have prepared properly-drawn figures
| in advance.
| mannycalavera42 wrote:
| students are more engaged with the lesson when the teacher
| handwrites compared to when teacher uses slides / ready-made
| material
| mFixman wrote:
| They could at least use a Wacom.
| passion__desire wrote:
| To be honest, instead of wasting time on writing, the
| professor could share anecdotes from history, his life,
| industry, and other aspects i.e. the social aspect of doing
| science and research. I really find those interesting than
| mere cut and dry exposition of concepts.
| nightski wrote:
| Worthless is greatly exaggerating imho. I learned quite a bit
| from these courses even though they were far from optimal.
| hobs wrote:
| Many studies have shown watching things happen over time is
| much more useful for the human mind than being presented it
| completed.
|
| That being said, one way to achieve this is to play things
| backward or occlude detail while you get to the final
| creation.
| hintymad wrote:
| > It's funny how a big part of Andrew Ng's classes is waiting
| for him to write text with mouse as if he were using the
| world's worst whiteboard; he could have prepared properly-
| drawn figures in advance.
|
| My personal experience actually showed otherwise. It was more
| effective for me to learn if instructors write on a
| whiteboard to gradually develop what they teach. I guess
| that's because when an instructors writes a whiteboards,
| students will know exactly what she focuses on all the time,
| and the writing speed matches the speed of understanding. In
| contrast, a professor in my university was a big shot on
| operating systems. He used well prepared slides and he talked
| fluently, yet I got lost in almost every class.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Coursera got enshittified like crazy. The first couple of years
| had legit college courses on it. Then it became all about micro
| degrees and courses with twenty minute lectures.
| aetherson wrote:
| Feels like LLMs could be used to scalably grade more
| complicated assignments than multiple choice tests.
| legel wrote:
| I remember taking Andrew Ng's (delightful) Coursera ML and
| believing I knew ML.
|
| Then I took a Columbia ML graduate course IRL: it was like
| being hit by a train.
| azemetre wrote:
| How would you rate the prerequisites of each course and level
| of material covered? I've never taken Andrew Ng's ML class,
| but the impression I get online is that it's great but it's
| always hard to tell from these positive reviews if the course
| is just an introductory exploration or something more in-
| depth.
| lupire wrote:
| 229 is an intro class for students with no AI or CS theory
| experience, and basic multivariable calculus and linear
| algebra.
| lupire wrote:
| 229 is a 2xx class for advanced undergraduates and beginning
| graduate students. It's a first course in machine learning
| with no AI prereqs.
|
| What grad class did you take?
|
| https://www.cs.columbia.edu/education/ms/machinelearning/
| tazolp wrote:
| Do you remember the name of Sussman's course on system
| optimizations? Can't seem to find it online
| hintymad wrote:
| I forgot the name. It may be called system engineering or
| something like that. The focus of the course was on
| parallelization. The instructors spent great deal time on
| work stealing queues and parallel divide and conquer.
| samvher wrote:
| There's still some really good stuff out there. I just finished
| the General Chemistry courses on EdX and they're really good
| (with a very quiet discussion forum that's still visited by MIT
| staff). The Finance MicroMasters was also excellent and had
| active TAs on most courses. Exercises on all these courses were
| generally very high quality.
|
| Another great online course that I recently took is this one on
| parallel computing [1]. It's not on Coursera/EdX but uses a
| custom platform, and I would say it goes beyond "fill in the
| blanks", the assignments are really challenging and have a lot
| of depth.
|
| Compared to 5-10 years ago the trend is unfortunately
| definitely downwards though. A lot of great courses are
| archived and far fewer are being added than there were in the
| past.
|
| [1] https://ppc.cs.aalto.fi/
| lynx23 wrote:
| And, almost to demonstrate the digital divide, almost every MOOC
| there is lacking true Accessibility, therefore making it even
| harder for blind and visually impaired people to piggy-back on
| existing education infrastructure.
| mdavid626 wrote:
| Not suspicious at all. Buying it for 800M and then going out of
| business. Good deal for edX.
| alecco wrote:
| Attention span is dropping like a stone. I think MOOCs should re-
| format more like Tik Tok and web video games. Maybe have an
| interactive AI professor as a guide.
| jakozaur wrote:
| The title is misleading, it may suggest Harvard or MIT lost
| $800M.
|
| In fact, Harvard and MIT invested $30M each and sold EdX for
| $800M to 2U: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-06-29-2u-buys-edx-
| for-800m...
|
| So, likely, Harvard and MIT made some money.
|
| It's 2U who lost the money. It's the public that suffered from
| the loss of EdX.
|
| <sarcasm>As hedge funds with schools attached, they are doing
| extremely well.</sarcasm>
| whoitwas wrote:
| RIP. I always wondered what was going on with edX. They were
| great back in the day. I was introduced to the Stanford CS
| curriculum through them. At least MIT OCW lives on! Don't see
| that going anywhere ... unless somehow they sell to some shitty
| private company and invest the profit into nothing.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| MitX math and science classes are (were?) outstanding. The few I
| tried from other participating universities were a grade below in
| quality. Then EdX/MitX just... stopped publishing new content. I
| learned (re-learned?) math and science from these and Khan;
| fundamentally changed my life. Too good of a resource to last? At
| least Khan's still kicking.
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