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Stanford To Offer Free CS and Robotics Courses
DeviceGuru writes "Stanford University will soon begin offering a series of 10 free, online computer science and electrical engineering courses. Initial courses will provide an introduction to computer science and an introduction to field of robotics, among other topics. The courses, offered under the auspices of Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE), are nearly identical to standard courses offered to registered Stanford students and will comprise downloadable video lectures, handouts, assignments, exams, and transcripts. And get this: all the courses' materials are being released under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license."
It's not the universities that are out of touch. It's your employers that are out of touch, and the multiple-choice generation of wannabe professionals who can't see past their first half-dozen paychecks. If you get the education that you appear to want, you'll be unemployable in five years.
Take it from someone who's been in the industry for 30 years and still going strong... you can't learn too much theory because theory doesn't go out of fashion the way technology fads and acronyms do.
I'd say an in-class experience, including talking with an instructor, graded homework, and the recognition (towards a degree) is quite a bit of value that ISN'T included in the online version.
Their two different beasts.
So what is better? Something free that everyone has access to or something that only the rich and privileged can attain? I would think that most \.ers would be cheering this since its akin to open source.
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Yes, but no one goes to school for an education, they go to school for a degree. I'm not saying thats how it should be, but thats just the sad truth of this country. I can go through and learn that material, same as a student at Stanford, I could outscore them on the test, but in the end they will get the job and I will be on the street because they paid.
Except that you tend to get the reverse situation also; I've met CS majors who couldn't make a simple top level user app in a relatively generic IDE.
In principle I agree with your basic assessment, the core skills should be as you listed, but by no stretch should they be the limits of what is taught in colleges. From what undergrad programs I have seen you tend to get either one or the other, with a few exceptions here and there.
I am personally a result of an undergraduate Software Engineering program that covered a portion of the CS curriculum, and to a lesser extent CE, along with just about everything else in the realm of top level programming from an SE point of view.
In my opinion, software is one of the fields that benefits from the jack of all trades route and I believe more collegiate programs should follow this model.
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
Kid, we don't pay the fortune for fancy college's teaching materials, we pay the fortune for their paper with their stamp on it. Welcome to the real life.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Why?
What a strange response. I've read your comment three times now, and I still don't get it. That is, I don't get it because I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt; it seems like you're advocating for long-dead Social Darwinist tripe. But that couldn't possibly be the case, as you are one of those on the "right" side of the curve, right?
You act as if this is your Harrison Bergeron fantasy (in which you are the protagonist, of course). This isn't the government forcing Stanford to admit cretins! It's just a school sharing part of their curricula on the web.
If "you" are a member of "us", count me as a member of "them".
Yay Stanford. Using the web to its potential for making civilization a little better for all of us. What's not to like? And what would we possibly have to gain by preventing people from learning?
Very much like life, there is a default purpose and a self-determined purpose to a university experience.
Going to a university solely for the degree is like living solely for the purpose of having kids: you'd fulfill the purpose the system set out for you, but you'd miss out on any chance at developing and expressing your own goals.
Simply by replying, and specifically by your spelling, you are NOT "them". You can benefit by a higher education that focuses not only on the practical application of our knowledge base that would be applicable in earning a respectable living doing a productive job (ie. a tech school), but on an education that uses theoretical considerations to go beyond simple application, towards synthesis that leads to new applications, new knowledge.
A simple example is the requirement that algebra must be passed in order to get a high school diploma... I would argue that for a fairly significant portion of our society, passing an application-focused class such as auto shop is much more valuable and pertinent to graduating from high school than passing an algebra test. I grew up with a number of people who can't possibly grasp algebra, but who benefited greatly from various "tech school" high school courses, got their high school diplomas, and got decent jobs right out of school. They would have been very poorly abused by any system that required them to pass algebra to get their diploma, and they never would have graduated if the school system in place at the time had cut shop class in order to attempt to force these below average students to pass college-prep courses. They were much better served by being offered application-level courses that taught them practical skills that led directly to productive jobs.
One friend of mine was particularly affected by the current philosophy that no student is "below average", and that all students deserve a college education. He got all the opportunities anyone could imagine including a free ride to a good university based on an intercollegiate athletic scholarship, and he was completely unsuited for the academic challenge. When he failed out of college, he found himself unsuited for any job other than fast-food shift supervisor because his high school refused to recognize that he was "below average", and refused to tailor his education towards something he could have actually used. He ended up with few practical skills since they forced him into math courses that he barely passed instead of letting him take skills-application courses, and was unable to get a job that paid well enough to support himself.
That's what I'm talking about when I say as slashdotters we should temper our response to these education opportunities. They are not the answer to all our problems, because the vast majority of people in the US are incapable of benefitting from the and trying to tailor high school education to force the no-shit 50% of students who are "below average" to go to college, is a gross injustice. We need to recognize that an awful lot of people have absolutely no use for a Stanford level of education, and ensure that rather than trying to force them into a particular college-prep track that they are not prepared or capable of following, we should provide application-level educational opportunities that lead to jobs, not a future involving washing out of college and ending up on the street with a bruised ego and no practical education that they'll find useful in finding a job they can handle.
I bet you say that to all the nerds... ;)
I share some of your opinions, but I arrived at them from a different place. I've never feared greater access, but I have been saddened by our system's failures. I think these failures are more complex than the paradox of Lake Wobegon's test scores, though. Whatever the failures are, and whatever the details of the failures, it seems to me like putting material on the web is an excellent bypass.
I think that the missing great students are still a bigger problem than an abundance of under-equipped students. Coping with some more of the latter is worth it to catch more of the former. In any case, putting this material on the web can feed the lonely minds of those that didn't make it, for reasons other than lack of intelligence.
I totally agree with you about providing more of what you called application-level education; both for the lives of those who just need to learn a trade, and for the institutions who could put more effort into theoretical considerations. But I also get serious warm-and-fuzzies thinking about all humanity being able to access stuff like this someday.
So if I take the local community college welding classes levels 1-4 (which I am, just because I'd like to learn Mig/Tig/Oxyacetylene welding/cutting) but don't take the final examination where they rate my work, I can't say I've studied the material? If the material is online, you've studied it, and have it down cold, than just like in most cases, the degree/transcript doesn't matter.
This is in the spirit of a true university. A university is "supposed" to be a place for learning and furthering the knowledge acquired by humanity, not a money making scam or a means of positioning yourself in the dominance hierarchy.
I'm glad that whatever the motivation, education is being opened up to bright, eager people who can't get access to the same quality of teaching as in Stanford/MIT etc. ADUni was also an attempt to do this same thing and really deserves kudos.
Hope more comprehensive lecture material (including video lectures) are released eventually for other subjects too. Why fleece students when good universities can always earn money via grants and patents.
Wait, so university is about credits and not about *learning*!?
I think it's more about verified learning. When they give you course credits or a degree, they're saying "we know that Anonymous Coward is at least somewhat competent at X". And while knowledge may be free, verifying someone's level of knowledge takes work (if done right), and is rather expensive (partly because they can, partly because they need money just like everyone else).
The people paying get a degree. The people taking the free courses don't.
Do you get angry when you buy a book and then find out your local library loans the same title out for free?