/sci/ - Science & Math

OP here.

Another idea that is in the same vein I guess, crowsourced education. People involved gather resources and make them available to everyone. The crowd/group decides on standards which one would have to meet to ensure you know whatever it is that you study.

The answer to this is communism or socialism.

On this one particular issue, the Soviets had the right idea.

Move to a country that won't scream "SOCIALISM" whenever someone tries to create a kinder world. Most of the West has already started down the path with government contributions etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_soviet_union

>>3222715

Except with scientific standards instead of political.

Let the private religious schools do the indoctrinating.

Fuck you, it's hard enough to get a job. That's more competition.

>>3222691
I think this is beginning already. Khan Academy, Opensourceware, etc. I think accreditation should be given to the students individually. As in, you study on your own time and then take a test. If you pass you are awarded that degree or whatever. Basically have some sort of body just be a test giver of sorts. Kind of like the SATs. So it would be possible to not even step foot on a campus and get a degree. I imagine the test giver would be some sort of government body.

you'd need to allow a "personal study" government degree I think. It'd be difficult to administer testing though.

as for info, MIT is already leading the way in this regard.

>>3222732
Scientific research wasn't as nearly as ideologically censored as much (with some exceptions re: genetics, social sciences, history)
The Soviet Union was a good place to be a scientist because for the most part, nuclear physics and chemistry and math is not politically controversial the same way islam and terrorism and drug policy or whatever is. No one gets offended if you smash atoms.

>>3222691
>In the old days, college was for the privleged and wealthy.
This is historically incorrect.

>>3222748
Why would it be difficult? Just open up testing centers next to the post office or something. This is assuming it's backed by the government, which it likely never will be.

>>3222760
I can only imagine the bureaucratic boondoggle it will be if it's implemented. I agree with the basic idea though.

If a person who has no formal education beyond high school manages to ace the FE and PE exams, I'm not sure if I'd feel safe using whatever bridge or building he earmarks.

>>3222754
Really? From what I've learned the barriers for anyone besides the rich used to be too great for anyone else to overcome. I mean, fuck, the SATs were initially created to keep blacks out of college.

>>3222770
>>3222770
This is something that I believe the general public will definitely have a problem with. But, is this due just to being socialized into thinking that college = trustworthy, even if they might not have learned a goddamn thing?

> implying education has a source code
> throwing around buzzwords
> how is this science

>>3222760
Administering tests wouldn't be that hard, (assuming you get govt support for the idea), but writing the tests for these classes would be hard.
Do you use the same test for each person?
How do you determine the difficulty level?

I think it's possible but you'd have to randomize the problems on the tests from a large pool of acceptable questions.
Or else there will be massive cheating

>>3222691
The schooling isn't the problem here, it's the hiring institutions.

The fastest route is to make it more feasible to look at someones "knowledge chart" (think Khan academy representation of math subject completion) than to simply accept their degree credentials as proof of competency. This will allow open source / skills / knowledge based criteria instead of adhering to the universally non-standard idea of "coursework".

To do this, you will need a measuring system that has an acceptable level of objectivity, simplicity, and verifiability.

Then you will need to peddle this system, most likely to temp agencies at first (easy way to represent their clients) which will then propagate the system of measure throughout the rest of the job market eventually filtering into various HR departments.

>>3222799
>social/political science
>has science in the name
>if if that means it's not a real science, fuck you

>>3222799
> learning != science

ITT: a bunch of nerds who didn't get into real college and want to be in the movie "Accepted"

>>3222823
for being in a "real college" you don't sound too smart

>>3222823
Actually, if I had my way getting a degree like this would be no easy task. It would require work and dedication. This isn't your moms community college online class. This is the fucking future.

>>3222691
>main goal of this movement should be to get accredation
This is the essential factor. If this were in existence, all the other necessary factors would quickly spring up in abundance.

I think there's two issues:
1) Many industries have no alternative accreditation system simply because it is often illegal. Many industries require, by law, various state-approved certifications and college degrees and such, i.e. regulation.
2) Due to current U.S. economy status, technical certification is often not called for by many industries/businesses. Instead, a social certification of sorts is what's demanded, and a college degree meets that demand. This is sort of a round-about way of saying that many people who are in college, don't need to be there for the sort of jobs they'll ultimately be seeking, but they are there because of government so heavily subsidizing the college biz.

>>3222884
This. I fucking hate the "business" aspect to university. Where humans just become another commodity. It's really goddamn depressing.

>>3222747
This. If I had the opportunity to do this I would in a heartbeat.

Of course it doesn't work for everything some classes require lab work, expensive software and computers or access to other equipment but for things like maths, most physics, most engineering, humanities and a shitload more this would be great.

The way I envision it is there is website where you sign up for a nominal yearly or quarterly fee. (I'm talking like $100 nothing ridiculous). This website details the test(s) you need to pass and project(s) you need to complete if any to get credit for the class. It also has worksheets, practice problems and recommended reading with different levels of value such as
-Essential
-Recommended
-Supplementary

And most importantly a series of audio or preferably video lectures made by top professors in the field from around the US. More popular subjects could even have multiple series on the same class with different teachers since not everyone learns the same. People could then give input on their preferred teacher.

As far as support there could be chatrooms were students could discuss things among each other and consult with higher level students.

Tests would not be whenever you want but rather available 4-8 times a year. You would register in advance and there would be a variable fee for each test, if you miss the test for any reason you forfeit your fee.

>>3222747
It'd be like some of the certificates you can get in IT just by reading a few books and taking a test?

You people are stupid.

We require more educated people in order to maintain and further develop our increasingly complex world.

Case closed. Suck my dick. It's not a conspiracy to keep you in debt.

>>3222884
>Many industries require, by law, various state-approved certifications
interesting, why do they regulate it? You would think that if a business wanted to be successful, they'd be the ones that worry about hiring qualified people and you wouldn't need the govt to regulate it.

>>3222691
I don't think we should let the internet go to college.

>>3223512

>>3223512
but sending everyone to a "higher education" wont produce a more educated society. some people just arent meant for college. they lack the smarts, work ethic, what have you. these people should go directly into the work force instead of college. we as a society need to stop pushing the idea of "everyone must go to college." if those deemed not fit for college, be it by grades or other means, go directly into the work force from high school, it would solve a number of problems. with a new, large number of workers doing jobs that dont require a college education, most of the menial labor jobs would be taken up. then there would be less of an incentive for people to immigrate to america for work reasons, and the tide of immigrants would be slowed. this would help slow the rapid population increase in the country. on the other end, there wouldnt be thousands of people with college degrees trying to get high level jobs, and refusing to work menial jobs, as they see it as being below their education level. then the more talented students assume the higher level jobs. society moves forward.

>>3223512
Did you not understand the point of this thing? The point is to educate as many people as possible. With current technology we could be educating nearly every goddamn human on the planet for dirt cheap, but instead an "education" costs thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars. That's pretty fucked up.

>>3223547
>costs thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars
I think you meant to say 10s of thousands if not 100k+
A 4 year degree costs at the very minimum 20k+ just for tuition add in books, lab fees and other expenses and it gets really ridiculous.

The purpose of a degree is to get a piece of paper which says you indeed know the shit. If it's just for learning, anyone can do that at the local library for free.

>>3223568
>>3223568
Fucking this. University seriously costs wayyyyy too much. I would fully support a free-open-whatever higher education system. You know if it actually gets rolling you'll be facing off with powerful people with millions of dollars who want to see your project fail, right? Just sayin because it hasn't been said yet.

>>3223579
Seriously. I don't understand. If you're going to university to go into academia, I get it. But if you're going just to enter the workforce, there should be a series of tests you have to take which are equal to the difficulty of most colleges and get a certificate saying "hey, I know just as much shit as someone who went to university and studied this stuff".

Education is a lot like space travel. It could be done, and probably a hell of a lot better, for a fraction of the price.

>>3223547
>>3223538

Harharhar. Apparently you I missed the point says you two, but your clarifications contradict each other directly. Why, because you're both wrong. The first guy for example, please kill yourself. We require more people with higher education, we need a higher educated proportion of the population than we've ever had. If you disagree, which is hard to tell with your shitty argument, then you're a complete idiot. Anyways, you're just completely wrong. You said "some people should just go work", but you didn't specify how much. Obviously some should, but your opinion doesn't even come close to specifying so you missed the point.

Second guy, yes your opinion directly opposes the guy above you, you guys should fight. Anyways, education isn;t as expensive as people make it out to be. It's all these fucking asshole kids who take out loans and want to live on their own who rack up the debt. I'm still living at home, and I fucking hate it, but it's not worth the debt of living away from home. People can make choices. If you are poor as shit, and you absolutely cannot afford university, then you need to realize this at a younger age, and study to become a star student. Get scholarships and shiiiit. If you are a high 90% model student, and you demonstrate your financial need, show some ambition, then you will find a way to make it work.

I love Dr Khan.

>>3223518
>>You would think that if a business wanted to be successful, they'd be the ones that worry about hiring qualified people and you wouldn't need the govt to regulate it.

you would think that, yeah
...no not really

>>3222691
Salman Khan talk at TED 2011 (from ted.com)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk

Why is it that poor people seem to be the most elitist. It is actually funny because you can do this. The national academies just put everything they have available for download for free. The testing is relatively cheap. To test into certain classes it is often less than 150$ maximum and that is a number I pulled out of my ass. Most of the time it like 40-60. Then there is community college to get you certified not really that hard. The only really "difficult" part is finding $ so that you can get time and resources to study. The internet changed the way universities monopolize information. Once we get into the singularity everything will be different. Content created and consumed by the individual for the individual, the only money making process will be those that facilitate it. The way information used to work is that someone would read all day. Then that person would be a mini Google machine except for only for a particular field. How information will work in the future is people will not know what the question is and then they will be informed of it. Then they will decide whether or not to query and how detailed they information will be.

We need a system based on mastery so individuals from all wakes of life can take advantage of all of the resources available to them.

Going to a physical college is a waste in most respects. The students would be much better off getting the degrees from the best professors in the world at a fraction of the cost, and then creating their own networks to get together to create connections.

>>3223538

In fact, I fucking hate you. You're absolute scum. You're the problem with America. You think that people should be denied the privilege/right (tbd) of accessing education? Are you out of your fucking mind? That's been the cause of poverty throughout the entire world forever. It keeps the poor poor, and keeps the rich rich. And I also think you're trolling with your disgusting grammar and punctuation. Just because YOUR PARENTS or WHOEVER ended up being in a position to give you an education, doesn't mean you deserve it more than anyone else.

It's called asymmetric information. It's a form of market failure, and in this case it might be better described as a society failure.

>>3223538
>>3223657

well some people might actually just not be cut out for a degree... but maybe they should go into trade school instead then (not do menial labour... that's dumb)

they get a decent job, avoid shittons of student debt, and fill an important sector of the economy

if they want they can go back to university later, but for time being at least they have good work and are contributing to society

I'd have to say that the current system is fine as it is, barring a few adjustments.

At least for the engineering fields, the best way to educate a person is via classes which are in person. This includes laboratory and technical work. Try to understand an electrical motor, it's pretty hard to visualize how the thing actually works until you actually crack one open and make it work without the covering.

Also taking a test doesn't necessarily qualify a person to be an engineer. Imagine a person who barely knows much about structural engineering who by some way or another manages to pass the FE and PE tests and gets his license. I wouldn't want him building structures. This is why you need to have an accredited degree, pass both the FE and PE and have around 4 years of experience working under a licensed engineer, depending on state.

Some fields, like mathematics for instance could make good use of online courses, but others like engineering where people's safety is on the line should be a very rigorous education.

Also education shouldn't be for free. At the university I attend you can pay for tuition, rent and food for just the Pell Grant ($5,500 yearly). Since people don't have to pay they act like they own the place, pay more attention to parties than studies and they believe that "everything" is a right. An education is an investment, not a right. If it were a right then almost everyone would be in a high paying profession and then who will do the "lesser qualified" jobs?

>>3223706

Are you in university, if so what year are you in and what are you taking? Your extreme over-generalizations are painful for me to acknowledge. You don't seem very smart, just with your language and lack of foundation or any guts in your argument. And then to be arguing AGAINST freedom of access to education? Fuck, please just say, "JK I was trolling and I don't actually think that, nor am I that retarded", please; just to end this.

inb4 logical fallacies

oops, to late. Liberalfags already committed one.

>>3223726
>Also education shouldn't be for free
So if I read up on the internet, should i have to pay someone for that?
There's a difference between being taught and being self-taught.
Or even there could be group 'self-taught' groups with volunteers.

>>3223754
hey, thanks for the unsubstantial post! we hate meaningful content here at /sci/

>>>/b/

oh lawdy

> crowdsourced education

Apparently the OP doesn't know what a peer review system is.

> free education
One can get old (i.e., 3 years out of print) editions of textbooks online for next to nothing and teach himself the material.


Anyway, >>3222747 has it right. In the day of electronic media, who needs lecture classes taught by a professor anymore? In the old days, we didn't have all this immersive and interactive media, but now we do. Look at the Khan Academy. It's essentially the same thing you would get in a 1st year undergraduate setting, minus all the overhead associated with professors, TAs, university admins, etc. Plus you can run through the whole course at your own pace. You could be done both calculus courses in a month instead of a year, for example.

Offering a more self-directed approach (for lecture courses) has two main benefits. First, the motivated students will succeed, because this manner of education demands organization and attentiveness. Second, it frees up resources so that more teaching power can be directed towards lab courses and practical education that cannot be learned in a library or dormicile.

>>3223789
I don't think he meant anything like peer review with that. More like higher education being a group/online community thing from the very beginning. Peer review is really only for papers and academia and papers and whatnot, while this is everyone helping everyone else actually learn stuff.

>>3222747
>>3222747
OP here. I'd heard about Khan Academy but never actually looked into it till now. Holy shit, this is fucking amazing. I really think that this is the start of something big and paradigm changing.

I agree, people shouldn't need to pay excessive amounts for education and just for some certificate. It alienates intelligent lower class people and it is unfair on them who can't afford this, in turn be treated less fairly and more stupid just because they don't have a certificate. So I think people should be able to do the exams for low costs if they want to learn by themselves, as there are plenty of resources available for free.

job market should focus on abilities rather than credentials
4 years of your life, a pile of debt, and a large body of drunken memories are not valuable in most people's jobs
government mandates, and arbitrary benchmarks haven't helped

also this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

>>3222808
>"knowledge chart" (think Khan academy representation of math subject completion)

We have this. it's called an academic transcript. many prospective employers demand them.

>>3223726
>taking a test doesn't necessarily qualify a person to be an engineer
The test would be designed to certify qualification in all necessary areas. 'Test' does not have to mean 'fill in the bubbles'; it can be as hard and practical as necessary.

>>3226448
True. But the academic transcript is very poor in showing mastery. You can get an A and still not know major things about a given subject. I personally have gotten A's in classes that I should have gotten C's in because of extra credit and homework and the like. College is the new highschool, except it costs an arm and a leg and your firstborn.

>>3228382
This. I would hope that these would include required field experience to get a degree. This way the whole "I need experience, but in order to get experience I need a job that requires experience to get" assfuckery.

sup sci
i dont liek school and all this time wasting shits fucking retarded, so how do you skipped college?

>>3222691

"Open Source" degrees would be fine for shit tier degrees but not for science.

Online resources are fine to learn a little bit from but using it to say you know the subject is a bit stupid. If you want accredited it should be from an established and well respected institution otherwise it doesn't mean shit.

>"I don't need labs or the millions of equipment in college to make my smarts"

Fucking baby

>>3228420

In this boat right now, need field experience, though too many jobs require experience when the student has none to begin with, stupid assfuckery.

>>3226385
This, so fucking much. Also felt engineering shouldn't be taught in a purely academic setting like it is now, considering its practical nature.

Too many kids graduate without a clue, so something needs to change, no idea how to go about it myself though.

>>3230083

A lot of engineering courses are sandwiched with a year of work placement. Get a job in an engineering place even as an apprentice, you will get a ton of practical experience even if you're not sitting in the cosy office you're aiming for. A lot of places would jump at the chance to hire a graduate for fuck all over a 16 year old, just don't go in acting like you know everything.

Experience doesn't necessarily mean stuff you have learned in a job, if you work at stuff in your spare time show that.

How do you fund it?

And don't say through taxes because FUCK YOU THAT IS MY MONEY.

>>3222739
>Would rather have a more ignorant population that makes his life generally harder than have to compete for employment.

There are better ways to deal with your problem then letting ignorant people run amok.

>>3222691
The real problem is that college programs are not offered on the basis of what society needs, but on a combination of who needs work and what people are interested in. There was an article a few weeks back about how top PhD programs in the humanities are lucky if 50% of their graduates find placement in departments, even in non-tenure track positions. Why are they admitting so many PhD students if they know there's no demand for them? Why are engineering classes overcrowded and taught by people who barely speak English? Why does one even need a BS to work as a fucking nurse?

I think we should shift the burden for paying for school from students to employers. Firms could sponsor your studies, in exchange for summer internships with them and a bound contractual period after you graduate (not to exceed one year per year of studies). You get a mentor, an education, and a job, they get someone with the precise skills they ask for. If you leave before the contractual period is up, you have to pay back part of what they spent on you.

This will clear up the engineer shortage and the English glut very quickly.

>>3230178
And you're one of those fucks that isn't willing to pay for a better society, so go live in the mountains if you dislike taxes that much.

>I sincerely believe a social movement for free, open higher education needs to start.

I don't know where you are from but pretty much every civilized country already has this.

I for one get paid to go to university by the goverment.

>>3230563
Depends on where you live, in other places that can be easily justified
>>3230538
Tell us more

>Why are they admitting so many PhD students if they know there's no demand for them? Why are engineering classes overcrowded and taught by people who barely speak English? Why does one even need a BS to work as a fucking nurse?
The reason is that government frequently pumps lots of money into student loans.
Imagine if you were debating between whether you should ride a bike to work, or buy a car and drive that. You're tending towards the bike because you want to save money to buy other things. Then someone comes along and offers you a $10,000 loan specifically for buying that car. That loan would probably influence your decision, right? Not only you, but it would influence the car manufacturers too probably, prompting them to produce more cars, etc.

>Firms could sponsor your studies
I'm not against this idea but this is outside the price range of most companies. Established goliaths like say Boeing or Google could do this. They have both the money and longevity. But many companies (a startup) are simply struggling for life, and can't afford nor can reasonably promise students a job (they might be out of businesses by then).

It would be really interesting if google had a school and they taught exactly what they thought they needed. However, pedagogy is a very far-cry from their original domain of expertise.

I recall someone saying that a lot of defense contractor type companies would invest lots of teaching and money into young graduates, trying to entice them into their company. After like 20 years of benefits, they're happy because they have the sort of person with the sort of skill they need, and the graduate would now be sort of tied to the company due to promises of pension and benefits, etc. So that would be sort of similar to what you're saying, but it happens post-college.