I agree with you on a lot of points, especially the following two:<p>1. College doesn't guarantee success.<p>2. Not everyone should go to college.<p>But here's where we diverge: I believe we'll never get to the point where everyone will "succeed". We all want our kids to succeed, but our definition of success is usually based on things like "have a high-paying job", "be important", "be powerful" or "be famous". This is because we want our kids to be happy and we come up with cookie-cutter solutions for happiness: "have a high-paying job" supplants "not have to have headaches about money", "be important", "be powerful" and "be famous" supplant "be harder to oppress by society or more powerful people".<p>To me, that seems to be a more fundamental problem than the problem of education and one a lot harder to solve. Disclaimer: Please don't take this as a criticism; on the contrary, when you have two important problems and you can see the solution to the one that's easier, it's a lot better to try to solve it than to sit down and lament the fact that you can't solve the harder one.<p>That said, I believe that we should define "success" differently for our kids. I believe we should give them a different goal: happiness. Believe it or not, you don't have to achieve greatness to be happy. As long as you can enjoy your work, your family and your life in general, you can be happy, without Leaving Your Footprints In The Sands Of History.<p>That doesn't mean we shouldn't teach our kids to strive to achieve as much as they can. It just means that we should try to encourage them to look for their own path to happiness. It shouldn't matter if theirs doesn't happen to pass through fame, power, influence or riches, as long as it leads them to happiness.
First a bit of criticism - I don't like this way of presenting. 193 slides? Each with one sentence? This is borderline maddening and if this wasn't a topic I was interested in I wouldn't have made it even 30 slides in. A tl:dr would just tell you to skip to slide 160.<p>Not only that but the parts about Skillshare itself are so disguised that I still don't have a firm grasp of why should I go there and what can I do there besides "learn" (I can just google a cupcake recipe, why should I learn through you?).<p>Now about the content itself - as someone from outside of the US, I'm amazed and frightened at this phenomenon. There were similar threads on reddit with people with over 200,000$ of debt. This is irrational and borderline irresponsible to owe someone so much money. I think education should be reconsidered and a better method tried. With the internet and the wealth of information on it, I find it hard to believe we can't optimize and improve upon the current education structures.<p>Edit: After exploring the site, I think I really like it. I'd probably like it more if I lived in NY, where most of the classes take place :) I think this idea is great and worth expanding,<p>I think, since your site is fairly young, it will benefit a user voice page, since I can think of tonnes of things I'd like to see there.
Great read. I'd like to say that I've been okay with my decision to drop out of college. Yet several years later all I've found is that 98% of companies now want a BA just to answer phones. A number of friends that I went to school with cruised their way through with C averages. I would be amazed when they'd ask me to read some of their senior level work and it would have the spelling mistakes of a 2nd grader. They spent most of their time at parties while being supported financially by their parents. Meanwhile I was attending the funeral of mine and facing homelessness, so dropping out was what was right for me at the time.<p>Now I'm the idiot for not having a degree, while those same guys I knew all have fantastic jobs. I think that many companies just use degree requirements as resume filtering tools and nothing more. It doesn't seem to matter that you can't write or that you learned nothing.
Not everybody <i>does</i> go to college; in fact, less than a third of Americans do.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_U...</a>
to do well economically in the modern world, whether as an auto mechanic, computer engineer, reporter, nurse, etc. is:
1) solid writing skills, preferably in English
2) strong reading comprehension, preferably in English
3) Basic grasp of math up through and including statistics<p>so while you don't need college/university you absolutely need 1-3. I picked up #1 in university because i went to a lousy, impoverished high school. I mostly taught myself #2 and #3. A new learning community focused on narrow skill acquisition won't help students acquire 1-3.<p>Investing in basic education will fix these problems, both investing in teachers and in pushing kids to just <i>fucking study</i> and take learning seriously.<p>This article is the "High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries" <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html?_r=1...</a>
is much more relevant in my opinion.<p>best of luck w/ skillshare but please don't think it will teach calculus to people who can't add.<p>While mikekarnj has some interesting points about education and the obvious higher ed bubble, he is apparently unaware of education concept of "scaffolding" <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructional_scaffolding" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructional_scaffolding</a>
The freakenomics podcast guys answered a listeners question regarding 'does college still matter?'<p>Worth checking out the answer just for the unambiguous the answer is. (Answer starts at 3:00)<p><a href="http://freakonomicsradio.com/does-college-still-matter-and-other-freaky-questions-answered.html" rel="nofollow">http://freakonomicsradio.com/does-college-still-matter-and-o...</a><p>[Spoiler alert: the answer is 'hell yes' (paraphrased).]
I have been seeing quite a few posts in this vein on HN and they really disturb me. While I think its clear to everyone that there are problems with the education system, I have a real problem with encouraging people to drop out of, or not attend higher education. Questioning the value of your education is one of the many privileges an education affords you.<p>The experience we have as IT people is really deeply skewed. The IT industry really barely existed ~25 years ago. Saying that education doesn't matter because a handful of high-school/college/university dropouts made it big riding the coattails of an enormous technological change is really misguided. We get away without credentials here and there simply because so much of this stuff is so new. This is a quirk of this particular moment in time. It won't last. Once that change settles down, degrees will be required for just about every IT job. Hell, that's getting to be the case already.<p>This statistic about 17 million Americans having degrees in jobs that don't require them has appeared a few times in various articles. It's said as though the people went to school _intending_ to be an overqualified waiter. If that were the case, I would agree that is a terrible waste. With years of aggressive outsourcing, the effective destruction of the manufacturing sector behind us, and a recession all around us, can we really accept that statistic just as it is offered to us?<p>If student loans have just surpassed credit card debt I agree that is a problem. But if education is to expensive then do something about the cost of education. Don't go telling people to drop out and have their world view shaped by something as meagre as a job or a bit of travel. The only way to develop your brain is to have someone push you to think. Hard. Yes there are examples of this happening outside school but not as many as you think.<p>Really I think uneducated people are social equivalent of infected PC's on a network; they make things bad for everyone. More education, not less is crucial if we are going to make any progress as a society.<p>Just my two cents.
I agree with most of what you said. I also like the idea of Skillshare.<p>But, watching the slides, jumping from "you don't have to go to college" to Skillshare gave me the impression (even though the slides didn't say) that Skillshare is a substitute for a college education, which it clearly is not. Based on the current courses, it's more like a "social tradeschool". I'm not saying you are misleading, but the presentation may be.
I was really blown away by the quality of the two minute video at the bottom of the post. Anybody have an idea about how much a video of that caliber costs?
I have a client, older guy, with 3 children - 2 older boys, youngest, a daughter is about 19 yo.<p>The 2 older boys both have degrees, the youngest dropped out despite good grades (chosen degree: English major) saying it wasn't what she wanted to do - and got a job at Panera Bread, where she is rather quickly moving from cashier to training.<p>The old guy is really stressed about it, to him and his generation, if you don't have a degree, you have no real future.<p>Given that the daughter is doing well, has essentially zero debt, is not addicted to anything, and enjoying her job and getting promoted--in contrast to many who are having trouble landing any kind of job; well, I am trying to nicely tell him not to worry so much.
This post is going to be downvoted. This is not a personal attack.<p>The basic question is, why the hell don't you learn for the sake of learning. I did that. Promise. I have an inability to study for grades. So fine, I am doing ok. I took classes, I really enjoyed them (though I struggled a lot), and I learnt a lot. I love school - its the best way to learn things in a structured way, and meet really crazy smart people doing that.<p>I'll be honest though, I went to pretty selective school - it took me a while to get in (but I did) and it was really an awesome experience. M.I.T. was an especially great experience.<p>But of course, you are entitled to your opinion, and so am I.
I wrote about this topic here:
<a href="http://altdevblogaday.org/2011/04/14/the-difference-between-a-degree-and-an-education/" rel="nofollow">http://altdevblogaday.org/2011/04/14/the-difference-between-...</a><p>I think that it boils down to more than just sharing skill sets, but that is certainly a good start. I argue that primarily, people have to become autodidacts and learn from the wealth of free information that can be found on the internet and elsewhere.
I never even finished High School, and now I earn more/do less than my college degree holding co-workers. I have the advantage of being a programmer though, where skill is at least measurable to some degree and college education isn't as important.<p>It's actually taboo, but we now assume that someone who graduated from college probably sucks but is willing to do boring tasks.
There's an essay called "College Uneducation" by Jorge Bocobo, which tackles about current social problems involving learning. He specified each problems and called it Book-worship, Misguided Zeal, Professional Philistinism, etc. If you want to learn more about the current social problems of learning, try reading his views.
Not everyone has to go to college.<p>Everyone should have a trade, though. And there needs to be some framing of background - call it 'education' - to be able to have a cultural awareness and to also ably manage practicing ones trade.
I realize the topic of discussion here is whether or not college is important/useful, but as a sidenote I just have to say that your animation was absolutely stunning! Excellent work!
I didn't finish my college degree after I got into programming professionally and I honestly am disappointed I didn't. I can write software but I feel a lot of times I know how things go together the way they do, but not the why. There are times when I wish I knew the theory behind things instead of just knowing the syntax. I think the takeaway is that unless you're going to a really expensive school for the alumni network, find a low price school with good teachers and go for the knowledge. The degree at the end is a nice bonus but having that theory to back up your practice will take you to the next level.
<i>"College is expensive. Learn how to make cupcakes and knit sweaters instead"</i>. That's the message I get after visiting your site and watching the promo video on the "About" page.<p>Why should I pay $25 to spend 2 hours with a random person who may or may not be a competent teacher? You trash college a lot, but you don't do anything to inspire confidence in the Skillshare teachers or 'curriculum' (if there is any).
The problem is that in the united states access to colleges and universities has shifted from those who are gifted to those who can pay it.<p>How long can a society afford it to let gifted people clean desks and wash cars instead of giving them the education they deserve to create benefits for the society?<p>Every educational system which expects people to pay tuitions gives a up long-term benefits for a short-term monetary gain.<p>Additionally it teaches young people that it is OK to have debts. It is not. Never. Don't buy what you can't pay.