This reasoning doesn't hold up because all of the information is already available through course descriptions and syllabi on course webpages. You don't even need to attend a school to get at that information.
I really enjoy MIT's free course material. I loaded every lecture pdf onto my iphone and slowly but surely have been making my way through their mba program. Based on my experience, I do not think a dedicated school program would work based on this material, and I am someone who is ALL for reform in higher education.
The main reason is the nature of the content. Anybody can work their way through a management psychology or communication class, but you'd have to be very far out on the bell curve to teach yourself optimization models and statistical data mining based on this material alone. You could be familiar with how to do it based on lecture notes, which is my goal, but without help not one of your 18-year-olds could correctly solve these problems in the real world. They could educate to a degree, but their ability would be nowhere near traditional students. The pedigree's value will be preserved.
Most of the classes have missing or incomplete material since OpenCourseware is clearly an afterthought. Someone would really have to go through the course reading list to be able to say they took the class.
Course catalogs tell you nothing. They're stuffed with appealing descriptions of courses which may or may not end up on the schedule, and when they do, may or may not resemble the description in the catalog. Not to mention the teachers' knowledge level; I once attended a cryptography lecture by a professor who didn't know the difference between public and private keys...
It's a curriculum, not a compulsory work load. Also, the curriculum would be updateable. I think it's often the case that somebody wants to go farther into a subject and would like to know what the standard knowledgebase is for that subject.
It's less than a single semester of content, and you don't really practice it, since you're pretty much guaranteed to be spoonfed authoritative information anyway.
How does one get the material without attending? Where I studied, the courses were not simply following the course text as the course. Perhaps at lower tier schools that’s all they do.
Agreed. I understand what this article presented, but in no way was this any different or better than how this material was presented to me in college. At least in school I could go bug the professor after class to explain to me why I didn't get it.
"The course prerequisite list is, I think, usually a good balance of the right amount of information."
I strongly disagree with this statement. I see many college curricula as hugely time inefficient. Especially when you want to learn deeply on a specific topic. I personally disregarded the prerequisites for many elective engineering classes because of scheduling constraints. And anecdotally I found you only needed small pieces of the prereq's.
You can argue for a 'foundation' all you want. I was simply stating that I would like a detailed list of knowledge required to take a course instead of a generic 'you need a 100 level linear algebra course.' A detailed list would then allow people to decide if they know/remember enough info or need to learn/brush up on a topic. Speaking of linear algebra, seems like a struck a nerve with my made up example.
I also think it is a disservice to say that you need 'understanding [of] those subjects deeply if you want a high ROI.' These kind of statements discourage learning. I have seen many people struggle with so called necessary prereq's only to flourish in more advanced classes.
Essentially, this is impossible for anything that’s not easily explainable all at once- so it’s useless for any advanced domain.
You can’t just give people a firehose of information. When you learn acoustic engineering, you have to first learn the prerequisite math needed to understand later concepts such as room architecture. It simply does not make sense to jam pack it all in at once, because 1) it won’t make sense and 2) nobody has that kind of memory.
Next, if you want to cover all possible use cases, that could take forever in certain domains.
Last, some of this stuff is objective as to what’s necessary, or what cases need to be covered.
No, what’s better is to give general knowledge as needed, and the student can seek out knowledge for various corner cases. It would be ridiculous otherwise.
In my post I asked for situations that these courses would enable a person to deal with significantly better.
I agree that a person could be placed in a situation where they were asked to do something against the public welfare. But I don't see how reading this rule in a course would actually help the person making the decision.
For example, I've been in situations where security issues came up. Like most real life matters, it was a matter of judgement, and the tradeoffs were complex. But I went above and beyond what was expected, to do things the best way possible. I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do, and because I take pride in my work. But I didn't need to take a course or get a certificate to know this.
I never implied they were. They're designed exactly to let you test out of those introductory classes you think "won't teach you anything" you don't already know.
no. every course should incorporate significant written and oral components because if you cannot adequately synthesize and communicate the information you're meant to be learning, that course is functionally useless. one of the important things i have learned is nobody cares what you know unless you can communicate it well.
This is completely misleading. Just because a course is offered at a 100 level, doesn't mean it's an introductory course. These numbers don't mean a thing... (in case people cared, yes I did go to one of these schools and at least state for that given school, this data is complete bs)
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