Why should such research opportunities for undergrads be limited to, for example, MIT students?
It brings to mind an anecdote (though a telling one). A friend of mine is a HS science teacher. They had a summer internship at SUNY-Stonybrook for HS students, and one of his better students attended it one summer. While there she discovered a wind pattern around Hawaii that no one else had noticed. The prof who was supervising these interns gave a talk at a meteorology conference in San Diego, where the new wind pattern was of particular interest. I've gotta give it to the prof for not being a credit stealer. Someone in the audience asked the prof how he had discovered this, and he said it was not him but a student. A grad student you're supervising? No. An undergrad? No. Then what? High school.
Thrun’s cavalier disregard for the SJSU students reveals his true vision of the target audience for MOOCs: students from the posh suburbs, with 10 tablets apiece and no challenges whatsoever—that is, the exact people who already have access to expensive higher education.
That's trying to turn an educational issue into a class/economic issue. MOOC's have the potential to do just the opposite - allow good students to get a good education, regardless of how much money they have. What makes the author think that all good students come from "posh suburbs"? People from working class and poor families can't be smart? Talk about condescension and prejudice.
With the already exorbitant and fast rising costs of college, we're probably moving away from a meritocracy. In the early 20th century and before, usually only the rich kids went to college. Then low cost public universities increased, and after WWII there was the GI bill. Then you had people from not-so-well-off families going to college, competing more on academic ability than ability to pay. That's how you create a meritocracy, and it works much better than a plutocracy.
But traditional classrooms will remain for the first group.
Then let them pay for the extra help that brick-and-mortar colleges and hand-holding instructors offer those who have difficulty learning on their own. I question whether the lower pass rate of the MOOC's is really an indication of inferiority. Maybe what it's bringing out is that some students shouldn't pass. At a university level, it's not enough to learn the material in the course as though it was HS. You should also be able to take the basics from that course and learn more on your own. If you can't learn the basic material without hand-holding, what confidence is there that you'll be able to learn more on your own?
OTOH, good lecturers can be very important. I can remember several I had. However, I mostly sat there and listened to them. There was very little personal interaction, even with comparatively small classes. Record the best people and use those as the standard lecture material, like the Feynman lectures. Offer a variety of lecturers too. I accept that a style that's good for one student may not be for the next. And fix those damn textbooks! There are some excellent texts in various fields, and often they become classics. However, there are other texts that are so bad that I couldn't understand them, even after I learned the material by other means!
There's a human need for attention and face-to-face interaction that MOOCs don't fill.
In grade school? I completely agree. Somewhat in HS. After that, if you can't learn largely on your own, especially with online and other material available (and fellow students if you want) you shouldn't be in university. People shouldn't expect to be spoon fed the rest of their lives.
We have a lot of second and third tier universities who can be superseded by MOOCs with no loss of functionality for our culture.
It's ironic that you limit it to "second and third tier universities" when edX was founded and is largely run by MIT and Harvard.
What do undergrad courses at the most prestigious universities offer that undergrad courses at the less prestigious universities don't? The material may be covered in greater depth, and the tests harder, but I don't see what that has to do with MOOC vs. in-person teaching. Just have different levels of MOOC. An additional advantage is that people who couldn't get into the most prestigious universities could prove themselves by taking the more intensive MOOC's.
Grad school is where the top universities matter, and the work done there is why many US universities are considered amongst the best in the world. You can get a very good undergrad education in many countries. For example the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey has excellent undergrad programs. But, while they have Ph.D. programs, the university doesn't do the sort of cutting edge research that distinguishes a top university.
Do you have any evidence that this is for H1B workers, and not for promotions, or head hunting someone within the states?
Do you have any evidence that they are for promotions, or head hunting someone within the states? Nice try insisting that the burden of proof is entirely on my end, but it makes no sense in this case.
Do you have any evidence that this only happens in the states?
No, I'm afraid I'm only familiar with abusive and discriminatory hiring practices in the US.
Do you even have any evidence that people on H1Bs are cheap?
I've also hired at least 50 programmers... all but one turned out ok.
What a shame you don't play baseball - that's a 0.980 average. Either you are the world record holder for successfully hiring people, or your standard for "turned out ok" is that they didn't go postal.
All the posters here talking about proving that a company "can't find an American" are confused.
Then the H-1B program is even more abusive than most people here realize - companies don't have to even pretend they first tried to hire an American. It's useful to know we're getting screwed even worse than we realized.
I'd like to ask this immigration law professor how many of these supposed targeted job listings actually end up hiring an H-1B visa, because chances are there aren't many at all.
So the 135,991 visas issued in a year (forget the 65k headline number - 136k is the actual number for 2012) is not significant? Then why not just end the complaints of the people who think it is, by eliminating the program?
H-1B dependent employers... must attest to the following three elements addressing non-displacement and recruitment of U.S. workers... The employer, before applying for H-1B status for any alien worker pursuant to an H-1B LCA, took good faith steps to recruit U.S. workers for the job for which the alien worker is sought... Also, the employer will offer the job to any U.S. worker who applies and is equally or better qualified than the H-1B worker.
Bill, Zuck, Here's an alternative approach. Take your money out of offshore tax havens and pay your taxes so that voters can determine school policy. That may mean public schools, school vouchers, or any other approach with widespread support. Zuck, you've still got majority voting power, so you can even do that with your Face(whatever it is) company.
Take it that way and they're both hearsay. At least the OP had a credible explanation for why he knew that, as opposed to a blatant assertion without any reference to why he has such expertise. Could the OP be FOS? Sure, as can anyone on the Internet. If you assume that everyone is FOS, instead of limiting that assumption to those who display the usual signs of it, then why are you wasting your time here?
That must have either been a long time ago, and/or for a very small outfit. Intelligent, flexible and discriminating hiring practices? Not in 21st century corporate America.
But it was not always done that way. See my more detailed explanation here. Why have companies switched to less effective hiring practices? It may not be for the most upstanding reasons.
Repeating above response because you effectively repeated the above top-level post (not saying you meant to):
That would be fine if the specific person was someone they knew to be good for the job, as opposed to a (possibly specific but likely not) H-1B whose strength is cheap indentured servitude.
That would be fine if the specific person was someone they knew to be good for the job, as opposed to a (possibly specific but likely not) H-1B whose strength is cheap indentured servitude.
Agreed. Companies may engage in some pretty sleazy and obvious tactics, but rarely are they stupid enough to be that blatant about it. It lacks the plausible deniability of absurdly specific and/or irrelevant job requirements.
And when you were a child, your parents probably told you there was a Tooth Fairy. The difference is that what your parents told you is a harmless childhood myth.
Do you think companies would be stupid enough to admit that's what they're doing, other than to a handful of people who have to know? Even if you're writing the requirements, you don't need to know that's the purpose. You may simply be "encouraged" to ask for "very specific skills" because they want someone who can "hit the ground running".
Slashdot Mirror
Why should such research opportunities for undergrads be limited to, for example, MIT students?
It brings to mind an anecdote (though a telling one). A friend of mine is a HS science teacher. They had a summer internship at SUNY-Stonybrook for HS students, and one of his better students attended it one summer. While there she discovered a wind pattern around Hawaii that no one else had noticed. The prof who was supervising these interns gave a talk at a meteorology conference in San Diego, where the new wind pattern was of particular interest. I've gotta give it to the prof for not being a credit stealer. Someone in the audience asked the prof how he had discovered this, and he said it was not him but a student. A grad student you're supervising? No. An undergrad? No. Then what? High school.
Thrun’s cavalier disregard for the SJSU students reveals his true vision of the target audience for MOOCs: students from the posh suburbs, with 10 tablets apiece and no challenges whatsoever—that is, the exact people who already have access to expensive higher education.
That's trying to turn an educational issue into a class/economic issue. MOOC's have the potential to do just the opposite - allow good students to get a good education, regardless of how much money they have. What makes the author think that all good students come from "posh suburbs"? People from working class and poor families can't be smart? Talk about condescension and prejudice.
With the already exorbitant and fast rising costs of college, we're probably moving away from a meritocracy. In the early 20th century and before, usually only the rich kids went to college. Then low cost public universities increased, and after WWII there was the GI bill. Then you had people from not-so-well-off families going to college, competing more on academic ability than ability to pay. That's how you create a meritocracy, and it works much better than a plutocracy.
But traditional classrooms will remain for the first group.
Then let them pay for the extra help that brick-and-mortar colleges and hand-holding instructors offer those who have difficulty learning on their own. I question whether the lower pass rate of the MOOC's is really an indication of inferiority. Maybe what it's bringing out is that some students shouldn't pass. At a university level, it's not enough to learn the material in the course as though it was HS. You should also be able to take the basics from that course and learn more on your own. If you can't learn the basic material without hand-holding, what confidence is there that you'll be able to learn more on your own?
OTOH, good lecturers can be very important. I can remember several I had. However, I mostly sat there and listened to them. There was very little personal interaction, even with comparatively small classes. Record the best people and use those as the standard lecture material, like the Feynman lectures. Offer a variety of lecturers too. I accept that a style that's good for one student may not be for the next. And fix those damn textbooks! There are some excellent texts in various fields, and often they become classics. However, there are other texts that are so bad that I couldn't understand them, even after I learned the material by other means!
There's a human need for attention and face-to-face interaction that MOOCs don't fill.
In grade school? I completely agree. Somewhat in HS. After that, if you can't learn largely on your own, especially with online and other material available (and fellow students if you want) you shouldn't be in university. People shouldn't expect to be spoon fed the rest of their lives.
We have a lot of second and third tier universities who can be superseded by MOOCs with no loss of functionality for our culture.
It's ironic that you limit it to "second and third tier universities" when edX was founded and is largely run by MIT and Harvard.
What do undergrad courses at the most prestigious universities offer that undergrad courses at the less prestigious universities don't? The material may be covered in greater depth, and the tests harder, but I don't see what that has to do with MOOC vs. in-person teaching. Just have different levels of MOOC. An additional advantage is that people who couldn't get into the most prestigious universities could prove themselves by taking the more intensive MOOC's.
Grad school is where the top universities matter, and the work done there is why many US universities are considered amongst the best in the world. You can get a very good undergrad education in many countries. For example the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey has excellent undergrad programs. But, while they have Ph.D. programs, the university doesn't do the sort of cutting edge research that distinguishes a top university.
Do you have any evidence that this is for H1B workers, and not for promotions, or head hunting someone within the states?
Do you have any evidence that they are for promotions, or head hunting someone within the states? Nice try insisting that the burden of proof is entirely on my end, but it makes no sense in this case.
Do you have any evidence that this only happens in the states?
No, I'm afraid I'm only familiar with abusive and discriminatory hiring practices in the US.
Do you even have any evidence that people on H1Bs are cheap?
Take a look at what this statistician says.
Hint, I'm on an H1B
Then clearly you have an open mind on this subject.
I'm certainly not underpaid, even by bay area standards
Always cite an anecdote when no data bolsters your claim.
I've also hired at least 50 programmers ... all but one turned out ok.
What a shame you don't play baseball - that's a 0.980 average. Either you are the world record holder for successfully hiring people, or your standard for "turned out ok" is that they didn't go postal.
All the posters here talking about proving that a company "can't find an American" are confused.
Then the H-1B program is even more abusive than most people here realize - companies don't have to even pretend they first tried to hire an American. It's useful to know we're getting screwed even worse than we realized.
I'd like to ask this immigration law professor how many of these supposed targeted job listings actually end up hiring an H-1B visa, because chances are there aren't many at all.
So the 135,991 visas issued in a year (forget the 65k headline number - 136k is the actual number for 2012) is not significant? Then why not just end the complaints of the people who think it is, by eliminating the program?
I'll see your immihelp.com and raise you a United States Department of Labor:
H-1B dependent employers ... must attest to the following three elements addressing non-displacement and recruitment of U.S. workers ... The employer, before applying for H-1B status for any alien worker pursuant to an H-1B LCA, took good faith steps to recruit U.S. workers for the job for which the alien worker is sought ... Also, the employer will offer the job to any U.S. worker who applies and is equally or better qualified than the H-1B worker.
Bill, Zuck,
Here's an alternative approach. Take your money out of offshore tax havens and pay your taxes so that voters can determine school policy. That may mean public schools, school vouchers, or any other approach with widespread support. Zuck, you've still got majority voting power, so you can even do that with your Face(whatever it is) company.
In other words you're not willing to do your job (or your spouse is in HR).
Don't worry about minor grammatical errors - distorting Time and Space are more important.
That's still how we do it...
You either work for a very small outfit (it has plusses), or fell through a time warp. If the latter, how do I get through it?
Take it that way and they're both hearsay. At least the OP had a credible explanation for why he knew that, as opposed to a blatant assertion without any reference to why he has such expertise. Could the OP be FOS? Sure, as can anyone on the Internet. If you assume that everyone is FOS, instead of limiting that assumption to those who display the usual signs of it, then why are you wasting your time here?
If you're so confident of this, provide a cite.
Some things are beyond your comprehension.
tl;dr
Your thinking is strictly short term.
Employers are facing a glut of software engineers/IT/etc.
True, which explains the need for more H-1B's.
That must have either been a long time ago, and/or for a very small outfit. Intelligent, flexible and discriminating hiring practices? Not in 21st century corporate America.
But it was not always done that way. See my more detailed explanation here. Why have companies switched to less effective hiring practices? It may not be for the most upstanding reasons.
Repeating above response because you effectively repeated the above top-level post (not saying you meant to):
That would be fine if the specific person was someone they knew to be good for the job, as opposed to a (possibly specific but likely not) H-1B whose strength is cheap indentured servitude.
That would be fine if the specific person was someone they knew to be good for the job, as opposed to a (possibly specific but likely not) H-1B whose strength is cheap indentured servitude.
Agreed. Companies may engage in some pretty sleazy and obvious tactics, but rarely are they stupid enough to be that blatant about it. It lacks the plausible deniability of absurdly specific and/or irrelevant job requirements.
as employers themselves have told me
And when you were a child, your parents probably told you there was a Tooth Fairy. The difference is that what your parents told you is a harmless childhood myth.
Do you think companies would be stupid enough to admit that's what they're doing, other than to a handful of people who have to know? Even if you're writing the requirements, you don't need to know that's the purpose. You may simply be "encouraged" to ask for "very specific skills" because they want someone who can "hit the ground running".