3/30/2025 at 4:53:44 PM
If you can bear with me while i attempt a synthesis here, I think this one line captures basically the entire dynamic, but the author seems to seriously underweight its explanatory value.> The average student has seen college as basically transactional for as long as I’ve been doing this
It is a transaction. The number of students there because they want to learn a subject rounds to zero. A college degree (especially from good old State U) serves first and foremost as a white-collar job permit. The students (or their parents/lender/state) are purchasing the permit from the institution. They are the customer. Anything you, the employee, ask of them beyond the minimum to hold up the fig leaf is a waste of the students' time (from their perspective) and a violation of the implied terms of this transaction.
by jt-hill
3/30/2025 at 10:19:21 PM
As a student currently, I'll also throw in this perspective. The colleges themselves make it feel transactional and not about learning even if I'm interested in doing so.For example, I'm taking a physics course right now (electricity and magnetism). The concepts are difficult for me and I was hoping that the homework would help. So, I go to do the homework, but the homework is online. With the online homework I get five chances to get the problem correct, but there is zero partial credit, zero feedback, and every time I get the answer wrong, it negatively impacts my grade.
I have no chance to make mistakes and learn. At least with homework that was handed out back in the day, there was at least the possibility of partial credit being handed out. So my options are going to office hours (which I try to do), go to tutoring hours (which conflicts with my job's work schedule), or go to ChatGPT and/or Chegg.
Additionally, since students have been cheating, I think it gives professors a skewed perspective on how much time is actually needed to get work done, so the deadlines get moved up. This means I get even more pressure put on me when I'm just trying to learn and be a good student.
by sky2224
3/30/2025 at 11:03:20 PM
In the 90s we had the "Plato" system for chemistry. It was a question/answer terminal in the library. Our Chemistry TA advised us to use it to study for exams as it had a lot of sample questions. It was really good because if you got it wrong, it actually gave you a detailed explanation of how to solve it. It was so helpful to have that. When I used the system, I made a bunch of mistakes but ended up learning from them, and it really helped for the exams.1990, "PLATO reached it's maximum enrollment, with 4,029 course seats and approximately 30 courses and other applications." Plato was decommissioned in 1994.
https://www.umass.edu/it/it-timeline
Honestly as an engineer some of schooling was learning enough just to get by. We always envied the non-engineers who had more freedom to choose classes they were fascinated by.
For me the Masters Degree gives a better chance to dive deep into a single topic.
by acomjean
3/31/2025 at 4:10:34 AM
What I find extremely sad in the whole academic business, is that all the work that is put in creating those tools, curriculum, classes materials etc are just wasted. Systems are decomissioned, professors refuse to share their materials or to even update it when receiving students feedback or when there are new disoveries in the field. And copyright holders are threatening to bite when learning material is put online...by ta988
3/31/2025 at 2:49:23 AM
If you want to experience it again, they re-released the final version awhile back; they've got emulators for both the mainframe and terminals.by bilegeek
3/31/2025 at 3:47:25 AM
I recently read The Friendly Orange Glow and found it inspirational.Is the entire PLATO system, including courseware, available? That would be tremendous.
[Edit: it looks like there is a lot of stuff there, so ... maybe??!]
Of course I also want to play Moria[1], etc. ;-)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moria_(1975_video_game)
IIRC some of the PLATO courseware was ported to the TI 99/4A as well.
by musicale
3/31/2025 at 12:43:15 AM
> We always envied the non-engineers who had more freedom to choose classes they were fascinated by.Personally, I kind of pitied the non-STEM students.
My own problem was there were not enough slots in the schedule for all the classes I wanted to take. I figured the university knew what it was doing with the required classes, and they were right.
by WalterBright
3/31/2025 at 2:46:35 AM
> Personally, I kind of pitied the non-STEM students.The only time I've had this opinion is when I was younger and conceited, holding onto an attitude that they're all wasting their money, probably fueled by envy.
Although there are moments—largely driven by other aspects of bureaucracy—where I wish I'd completed my bachelors, I'm quite happy in retrospect that I instead chose a bunch of random off-topic interesting humanities courses and non-cs-stem stuff, some of which I failed for inane reasons. Aside from a few moments in data structures and algorithms, I barely remember anything from the CS courses, they were unbelievably dull and poorly structured. In one case I believe I got nearly 100% on all the homework but failed both exams because I just kind of zoned out and wasn't driven to write java by hand for 2+ hours, which generally shocked the profs because I was typically the most engaged, personable, and probably older than everyone else by like 4 years.
by brailsafe
3/31/2025 at 5:07:41 AM
>> Personally, I kind of pitied the non-STEM students.Well, as a STEM university graduate myself I admit being guilty of this thought and I think it's just something "hard science" thinks of "humanities" in general. Mostly due to mercantilism, most non-STEM studies have very poor job perspectives.
But ... it all comes down to numbers. The elephant in the room is that THERE ARE TOO MANY COLLEGE SEATS FOR STUDENTS. This has multiple causes but it's a societal problem and a pretty dire one.
Take one of the universities in my city: https://www.ubbcluj.ro . In 1989 (at the fall of the communist regime in Romania) it had 5,619 students. Overall, in all specialties and all years, took 4 years in general to graduate.
Today just at the admission exam were accepted 16,800 new students. Taking all years that makes about 55,000 students. 50 fucking thousand! That's 10 times the level during commies.
And that's the problem. A lot of people who have no business being in the academic environment are now funneled through it. Reason is first, because "The West" had every man, women and their dog get a college degree so we had to play catch up. Problem, as the article states, they are getting that degree on paper only, de jure, not de facto.
But the even deeper problem is the dissolution of white collar jobs. That happened both in the West and the East. Agriculture used to employ 90, 50, 30% of the population, now there's 2 to 5% working there. Industry used to employ 90, 50, 30% of the population, now there's 5 to 10% working there. And the rest? God have mercy! We're all in "services". We're fucking servicing the shit of each other.
So in order to avoid fixing the hard problem (what the fuck to do with people who don't have the skill and intellect to do academic stuff but are good enough for plowing in agriculture or operating a CNC machine), the powers be have opened the gates of colleges. Get a college degree, that will compensate for the lack of activities to do with it!
I could write more.
Bottom line, what you expecting from peasants going to college? You can take the peasant out of the village but you can't take the village out of the peasant, they say.
by MichaelRo
3/31/2025 at 6:28:22 PM
> Well, as a STEM university graduate myself I admit being guilty of this thought and I think it's just something "hard science" thinks of "humanities" in general. Mostly due to mercantilism, most non-STEM studies have very poor job perspectives.What does mercantilism have to do with that? The problem with the job perspectives of students of many non-STEM subject is rather that it is often not easy to find economic applications of the knowledge that is taught in the humanities courses (which is made even more complicated by the often "left", "woke" bias that many humanities faculties have).
by aleph_minus_one