What is the inherent value that lecturers offer anyways? All the material they teach in classes has been available online for the last 20 years. It makes sense (going by market needs) that they have been driven to such levels of poverty.
The only value universities offer is that one can meet other like-minded and driven people at universities. If some other social structures can offer the same, i.e. a place where one can meet such people, universities will be obsolete too. The only question is when? And are there any organizations out there that already offer such services?
If the value that your lecturers offered to you was that they stood there and recited course material then you are right. Also your university has done a bad thing.
For me the value of lecturers is that they respond to the needs of the group they are teaching and to the individuals on the outliers of the group. That interaction is what changes the educational trajectory of students from fail->pass and from pass->excel.
I find it hard to harden my heart to the idea that people who work to do that should be ill rewarded for the effort.
>What is the inherent value that lecturers offer anyways?
Not so much lecturers but curriculum. I can't tell you how many developers I've met that don't know much about designing relational database models, which is arguably the most important, if not the longest lasting part of business application development.
When you are self taught, the stuff you decide to learn, you can really master. It's the stuff that you decide to put off that is actually important that hurts you.
If you sit in the back of the class on Facebook the entire lecture the classroom setting still offers the invaluable information of evaluating how well you actually understand the material at the end of the class. Even in project based classes, getting guidance and suggestions of improvements from people that know a lot more about the subject than you is always invaluable.
Obviously if you engage in class you often get immediate clarity on issues that you may have had to research for hours in a different source than your online material.
If you're not taking advantage of the lecturer, then it is on you, and obviously you won't get much more out of it than an online course with little to no feed back
My dad went to a public university in the 80s for about $2k/yr back when only 20-25% had a degree. It was an incredible value back then. Now over 33% [1] have a college degree, it costs way too much, you get less and we have amazing content on the web, most of which is free.
To call professors "lecturers" is a straw man. Sure, I had classes, too, that I didn't attend because the material was straightforward and covered in a text book, but other classes were not like that. I got the most value from class in office hours (one-on-one with professors), and the most academic value out of university as a whole in research positions outside of class (again, working with specific professors).
There are different learning styles. Universities could stay relevant by offering environment for specific styles or a combination thereof, that no other place does. In other words, for some people a given university would be the best way to learn.
Second, shared resources like laboratory equipment or an auditorium can be of value. A university could develop unique offerings there, that other entities wouldn't willing to provide.
Frankly weird things to make low cost education not happen--like government making OCW illegal, ostensibly for helpful reasons(1)--raise further questions about academia.
Education is not simply a matter of exposure. The same information that's online has also been available, in books, notes, and other forms, generally, for a century or more, much of it from lending libraries at little or no charge.
If you think about it, humans are unique among all other species in that we do have a dedicated category of productive workers whose only task is to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next. Few other species have any concept of teaching, and without permanent records, no mass culture or collective wisdom that can extend beyond a particular group or tribe.
There are several schools of teaching. One, that I don't subscribe to, is that of the student as a vessel to be filled. This strikes me as all sorts of wrong.
Another takes its lead from the root of the word information itself: to inform. That is, to leave an imprint that recalls the original. This view also recognises the difference between explicit knowledge, that which can be transferred by words or writing, and tacit knowledge, which ultimately has to be experienced. Even much of the information we tend to think of as explicit has a very large element of tacit-nature to it. There are concepts I've been using, working with, and being exposed to (through writing, reading, lectures, video, and even experienc) for decades that I have only recently come up with far better understandings of.
(Example from the past week: maser and laser technology are the molecular equivalents of electronic oscillators used in radio, and achieve much the same ends: a highly uniform, high-capacity information channel. This a realisation despite having first learned of lasers and masers in the 1970s. And yes, this was an insight I'd arrived at myself, but it's taken me three decades on from Uni to reach that stage -- rather inefficient.)
What a good teacher understands is not merely the subject but the transmission of understanding of the subject -- where students get stuck, how to progress through intermediate understandings, exercises which truly cement critical concepts, or operations, or techniques, in the neural wiring of the student's brain. Teaching is itself a skill deeply founded in tacit knowledge, difficult to express in verbal form. As with a coach, or music teacher, or dance instructor, often the trick comes from hints and prompts which nudge the student in the right direction.
Another element is simply enthusiasm for the subject. I've taken classes I really had no particular interest in only to discover that the instructor was deeply immersed in, and truly loved. (I'll occasionally experience this listening to lectures or interviews on topics I'm not particularly interested in, but where the speaker has an absolutely infectious attachment.) Contrast with multiple topics I'd launched into with gusto myself only to find that a teacher, or author, or lecturer was unable to communicate, not only the material itself, but any interest whatsoever in it.
Road-side merchants live hand-to-mouth and would anyways not contribute to tax because their incomes are so low.
Every study out there suggests that demonetisation was a big blunder, causing a very severe blow to the Indian economy, including the death of 150+ civilians.
The real motive for demonetisation was to legitimize the black money of the ruling party BJP and eliminate black money of opposition parties.
If they start using banks and digital payments, one can build credit score and issue loans to them, so they can develop their business. That is not possible today.
Loans for what? Some people in many fields should NOT get a loan. It will make matter worse...broke and indebted to a bank. Not everyone is gonna make a $1 million a year.
Women from rural areas can start a small business with a loan of 1-5 lakhs INR (~10k $). You should read more. Here is one recommendation http://a.co/fAC8YSQ
This whole episode has been so disgusting and shows how regressive and authoritarian the mainstream tech community is.
People can't work with someone because he has a different point of view about injustice in the society and has the courage to voice it respectfully? They would resort to violence against someone because they have a different point of view?
If you can resort to violence against someone and get away with it, you're the oppressor in the society, not the oppressed.
Sundar, Yonatan and their likes are so privileged and delusional. These people have no issue with a war-criminal like Kissinger being invited to talk at Google but have such serious issues with a software engineer writing his views.
As a woman, I could not work with an outspoken misogynist. As a lesbian, I could not work with an outspoken homophobe. As a Jew, I could not work with an outspoken antisemite.
Forcing minorities and women to work with people who are bigoted against them is a recipe for a lawsuit.
A better example is an atheist working with an evangelical. Both the atheist and the evangelical will have very strong opinions on each others' belief systems.
Will the Evangelical write a 10 page memo "explaining" why there are naturally fewer Atheists in his profession because their biology makes the inherently less interested in it?
I'm actually not surprised that he got fired, and I do think the firing is justifiable. Writing open manifestos against company policies on controversial and sensitive issues is going to get you in trouble. It just will, whether you're at Google or 'Dave's Grill-house'.
But that's not what I was responding to. OP implied this guy is a racist or a misogynist and stated she couldn't work with someone who held his kinds of beliefs.
I've read the manifesto and it's not as strong as you make it out to be. For example, I've argued that you can't expect perfect proportional demographic representation in a free society in any field. It will not happen, for a variety of reasons that may not be nefarious. If women are under-represented in programming it may not be because of sexism.
A better statement would be: "Will the Evangelical write a 10 page memo "explaining" why there are naturally fewer Atheists in church organizations because their beliefs makes the inherently less interested in it?"
The answer would be yes. But it's not a good example.
My argument is that one's religious beliefs dictate what sort of organizations one will be a part of, just the same a person's physiological makeup will dictate his profession of choice.
I'd like you to more closely read the thrust of his memo. His main thrust is that Google should review their processes and see if they can't create a workplace that the average woman would like to work in (taking as inspiration the average personality tendencies of the average woman), without resorting to sledgehammer positive-discrimination policies that target women because they are women.
As a thought experiment, imagine a company reviewed their processes to create a workplace where the average black person would like to work.
It's kind of offensive to be judged by this hypothetical "average X person" stereotype. It more or less implies it's their fault, that they are underrepresented because they want to.
As an (actual, not hypothetical) Jew, I could absolutely work with someone who claims Jews are statistically better at banking; Especially if that statement is scientifically well-supported, but even if it isn't.
As long as that person isn't constantly soliciting investment advice from me or asking me to front them loans, I don't think it's unreasonable for an adult to be expected to tolerate opinions that do not affect their work.
Hell, I've worked with co-workers who consider Jews illegitimate occupiers of their country, yet we still got along just fine by avoiding talking about politics in the break room.
Avoid talking about something controversial is deemed self censoring by a lot of people here in HN.
You might be a forgiving person, but that is a gift not a necessity, and better not assuming people would return the favor. For more controversial stuff I choose to only talk with my inner circle which I assume I knew them well enough. The author makes the memo public to ALL employees, most of them he wouldn't even know their names. That is his freedom, however he should expect there will be reactions to his piece from them. And it is not really his business or within anybody's control to decide what reaction is appropriate or over the top at that point. This is internet, where things escalate proportional to the speed of light.
I tend to agree with your approach, but the point is that Google are apparently actively fostering the opposite atmosphere, supporting and encouraging open discussion of such topics in the workplace and in dedicated internal forums. If this is true you can hardly fault the guy for doing just that in a way that, at the very least, appears to be trying to be balanced and respectful.
My understanding is that is that the guy shared this memo among a small group of friends at work using an internal forum specifically designed for this kind of discussion. If that's true, I hardly think it's fair to hold him accountable for the reactions of Googlers he never shared the text with, let alone those of the world at large once someone else leaked the memo to the internet.
Forewarning, the following isn't an opinion that I hold:
To play devil's advocate, what makes it right for certain groups to be able to be preferred over others? How come perceived racists, homophobes, and anti-semites are pushed out and the subjects of their hate allowed to stay?
What if we flipped your statement around. "As a misogynist, I could not work with a woman. As a homophobe, I could not work with an out homosexual. As a an outspoken anti-semite, I could not work with a reverent jew."
Let's say for the sake of this example both parties are the same in efficiency. But, come due time one party starts to openly resent the other and demand they be fired from the company because they cannot work with [insert group here]. Now, I didn't say this was the anti-semite or the jew. It could be either, so let's not shut down here.
Group A says they cannot work with Group B, because Group B holds X idea. Group B can work with Group A, even though Group A holds Y idea.
Is management really right in, in this isolated fairy tale example, in firing Group B because Group A cannot work with them?
Let's reverse the roles in the Google fiasco. Let's say it was the detractors who were fired instead of Damore. Do you think this would have been unfair?
If so, why do you believe it's okay for the original situation to happen? I'm aware there are other variables, but this is what it boils down to.
So true. I got my CS degree at a top school in US, I work at a good startup and get paid very well. But I am so disillusioned with the United States, I feel like going back to India is much better than being an H1B slave.
Read the article. It's practically a death knell for iOS. If iOS can't come to grips with figuring out how to let AI get more access to the user, it could lose the AI race against Google.
Already, people are installing Google Assistant on their iPhones. You have to understand, that the future may make most apps other than games and entertainment, completely irrelevant. You just want a Web Browser and an AI Agent.
I use vim 7.4 and it segfaults atleast four-five times everyday. I suspect it's some plugin that is causing it to crash but I don't really know. Does it happen to anyone else too?
I have mapped Ctrl-C to ESC and I use it often. One specific instance I have seen vim crash is when the cursor is at np.inf and I press Ctrl-C.
Vim has never crashed for me. And I've been using it almost exclusively for almost ten years.
I don't use any plugins though. I haven't found a single usable plugin. They are terrible hacks. I figure vim must have an API that's difficult to integrate (it's too general a text editor. Look at the amount of built-in settings that hardly play nice with each other).
I agree. Vim is solid as a rock. I've been using it for about 10 years and I saw it crash 2 times. On the other hand, I had to use Atom for 2 weeks and it crashed on me exactly 6 times.
Either you have a plugin that's wreaking havoc, or you have something weird in your setup, because a stable Vim version crashing is not something I've seen often.
The only value universities offer is that one can meet other like-minded and driven people at universities. If some other social structures can offer the same, i.e. a place where one can meet such people, universities will be obsolete too. The only question is when? And are there any organizations out there that already offer such services?