h a l f b a k e r yWhat's a nice idea like yours doing in a place like this?
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And did I mention it's free?
Paid for by donations and advertising on the platform. "Your free lesson in computer science 1.01 will begin after these messages."
Elon, call me. I'll run the whole thing. My curriculum vitae is Costano Elementary School, East Palo Alto, ranked #4151 out of 5534 schools.
That's better than almost 10% of the schools in California.
Although my math might be off because I went to Costano Elementary.
Free Courses at Stanford
https://online.stan...ype%3Acourse&page=1
[zen_tom, Mar 10 2024]
Free Courses at MIT
https://ocw.mit.edu/about/
[zen_tom, Mar 10 2024]
Free Courses at the Open University
https://www.open.ed...rses/full-catalogue
[zen_tom, Mar 10 2024]
Free Courses at the Santa Fe Institute
https://www.complexityexplorer.org/
[zen_tom, Mar 10 2024]
Those aren't degrees, they're courses.
https://www.uopeople.edu/
This is the only one I found [doctorremulac3, Mar 10 2024]
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Annotation:
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Isn't it the other way round? If the school ranked no.1 is the best, then no.4,151 out of 5,534 is in the bottom 15%. |
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And scoring 6% in Computer Science means that you can usually switch the thing on and off again. |
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But suppose it is ranked with the stupidest people at the top and the best at the bottom? |
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Sure, as long as we're consistent, but you'd have to have some premise. |
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Like "The smartest and most capable are the base, the foundation, the pillars of society so they're at the bottom holding everybody else up." |
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Hmm. That's more interesting than I thought it would be. |
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So why no likey? Have a big social media site give free education? Is it the anti Elon thing going on now? |
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I'll put up Facebook as well, see if that gets a bun or so. |
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And what organization better to link people up to study together than social media sites? |
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//So why no likey// Because free online schools are well baked and all you've done is say, "do that but in a worse place" |
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Those are courses, not degrees. |
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Only found one free degree program. (link) |
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Disregard, it's not free. |
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Why focus on the external validation you get from accreditation? If you genuinely want to learn something, many institutions will give you a leg-up for free. What does a degree give you that you can't achieve with hard work and dedication? (OK, if you want to be a Doctor, or a Lawyer, or some externally regulated professional, there are gates you have to pay to get through, but for most professions, hard work still gets you where you want to go) |
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Actual university courses are 95% self-learning anyway, just with the additional benefit of cohort of people who are learning the same stuff at the same time. |
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"Hi, I'm applying for the nuclear engineer job. I don't have a degree but darn it, I've got gumption, verve and enthusiasm!" |
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Yes, I granted that part, if you missed it, here it is again //(OK, if you want to be a Doctor, or a Lawyer, or some externally regulated professional, there are gates you have to pay to get through, but for most professions, hard work still gets you where you want to go)// |
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But assuming you don't want one of those types of jobs, my advice would be to stop whining. |
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So since you didn't read the idea, here it is again: |
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//From Twitter, Facebook or TickTock, a diploma anybody can understand. "Computer Science: Top 6%" The person holding this degree graduated in the top 6% of their class.// |
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//Paid for by donations and advertising on the platform// |
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A degree, not a course. And it could theoretically be in anything from law to engineering to various branches of medicine. |
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Based on the logical assumption you cogently make that we don't want nuclear engineers to rock up having scraped their degrees from Facebook or Twitter - I don't see a logical connection here, it's just wish fulfilment "Why can't I get validation for free without doing any hard work?" |
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What you're saying doesn't make sense with itself, it just seems to be expressing an entitled wish for stuff you want without any of the normal effort you'd normally expect to make anything meaningful. |
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If you read the other post about this idea you'd see that these degrees would be much much much harder than one from any elitist university and correspondingly shown as such. The idea, for the final time, is to have free degrees. You had to change the idea to //scraped their degrees from Facebook or Twitter// |
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So to criticize a free PHD that beats the shit out of the top degrees from Harvard or Yale, you shoot at the idea by using the word "scrape". And that's it. That's your argument. The word "scrape". Other than the word "scrape" you're not even saying anything. |
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//I don't see a logical connection here// |
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"No, I clearly said pour hot water over roasted beans, and yes that's baked. But I also said do it in a sauna wearing a tutu and singing in Dolphinese. You're clearly not even reading the idea" |
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Great, except the idea isn't baked unless there's a free degree offered someplace, and not only haven't I changed it, I'm having to cut and past it for the third time: "From Twitter, Facebook or TickTock, a diploma anybody can understand. "Computer Science: Top 6%" The person holding this degree graduated in the top 6% of their class. And did I mention it's free? " |
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And yet again, the long list of courses aren't degrees. So to use your analogy, |
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"Here's the idea: A free diploma offered by social media sites paid for by advertising." |
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Your criticism: "Your idea is to pour hot water over roasted beans in a sauna wearing a tutu and singing in Dolphinese." |
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Rather that poetry, you might try posting a site that offers free education and degrees. Wanna make me say "Oh no! It's baked! I'm gonna cry my eyes out!"? Just post where it's baked. I'll say "Oh, looks like it's baked. Thank you." |
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Weird, this idea seems kind of triggery. If I were intent on shooting it down I'd just find where it's already been done and post a link. Maybe it really has never been done. Suprising. |
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Just find where it's been done, and actual accredited degree program that's free and victory will be yours. I'll even drop the "paid for by advertising" just to make it easier for you. |
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The baked part is the free courses. "make it into a whole degree" is not the least bit innovative, and would obviously be done by the places offering free courses if it wasn't impractical for myriad reasons. And to prevent further pedantry if it were possible the people offering ultra-low-cost online courses would do the same. |
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Like MIT, which was already linked, and anything you can find by typing "free Youtube courses" into a browser. |
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//if it wasn't impractical for myriad reasons?// |
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Is it baked or impossible? Can’t be both. |
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And again, a course and a degree are two different things. |
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This idea is for a free degree offered on a social web site paid for by advertising. Maybe I forgot to say that. |
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The part about online courses is baked. The part about making it into a degree is impossible and also unoriginal. I'll let you get the last word in now. |
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//impossible and also unoriginal.// |
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So it’s impossible and it’s already been done. Got it. |
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A course is not the same as a degree. All the additional stuff, like accreditation of the institution, staff and teaching materials, the need for stricter student assessments, tutorials and everything else like monitoring of student welfare, an appeals procedure, etc. is difficult and expensive. I don't see why a social media platform would be incentivised to set any of this up. Advertisers would require a pretty heavy placement of ads within the teaching materials and tests and would also acquire a vast amount of personal data on the students, neither of which would make for idea teaching conditions. |
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Finally, thank you for actually reading the post and understanding the difference between a course and a degree. |
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This has gotten kind of interesting. There seems to be reluctance from the crowd for this, I can only imagine what the educational institutions would say when it comes to accreditation of a degree from such a system and I think we may have the answer why we don't have this already. Courses aren't the bread and butter of the collegiate system, the degrees are and this would threaten their livelihood. In fact, courses can act as samples to get people to enroll in the degree programs that can cost six figures so free courses aren't a threat, free degrees might be. |
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In other words, I don't know how a degree is "accredited", a brief look up says it's private institutions, but what's the process? For instance I can't assume to offer the world's shortest degree right here: |
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Remulac University Degree In General Knowledge |
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Course: How do you spell "photosynthesis"? |
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Did you spell it: photosynthesis? If so here's your PHD in General Knowledge. Congratulations, wear a black towel and throw a flat cardboard hat in the air. |
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As for the other issues listed, seems like those are slam dunks for AI based solutions. |
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- //Accreditation of the institution// - That's only done once. |
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- //staff and teaching materials// - Teaching materials are all on line, staff is AI. |
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- //Stricter student assessments// - This is currently handled by AI for the most part. If you send your resume to a company, an AI program is likely evaluating you, at least for the first round. |
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- //Tutorials// - Nothing would be an easier task for AI, online courses already do this. Let's be clear, you put enough online courses together until you have a degree program. |
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- //monitoring of student welfare// - Tell the student "This is a degree in mechanical engineering, if you're feeling depressed or having addiction issues please seek help from something other than an AI based mechanical engineering program." |
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- //An appeals procedure, etc.// is difficult and expensive.- What appeals procedure? You take the tests and pass, you get a diploma. You don't, you don't. |
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- //I don't see why a social media platform would be incentivised to set any of this up.// - To bring free education to the masses like never before. |
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- //Advertisers would require a pretty heavy placement of ads within the teaching materials// - So the ad model doesn't work? - Guess nobody spends any time on social media then. Might want to ask Youtube how they make 15 billion a year of nobody goes there because of ads. |
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- //Tests and would also acquire a vast amount of personal data on the students// - I work in the internet biz, believe me. They have your data already. |
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I'm wondering if the main problem is inertia. Colleges are these bastions of respect I guess. Replacing it would be replacing a tradition thousands of years old. That's not gonna be embraced easily. |
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So I do think that's the biggest hurdle. I'll put in the biggest problem for this idea right here: |
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"Oh, you got a Facebook degree? How embarrassing." |
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I think that's it right there. |
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Anyway, don't bother reading the rambling above statement, here's the problem with this idea: |
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University educations may be the one single cultural link almost all civilizations share in a tradition that goes back thousands of years. This idea overturns that and would be accepted about the same as would a suggestion that we declare a robot god. I don't think any amount of selling the idea "Hey, let's all make the robot really godlike and awesome." would turn people away from their traditional cultural belief systems. |
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Plus the academic world has a lot of money and power, somebody saying "Hey, how about if we offer your product for free?" is going to go over as well as somebody opening a "Free Gormet Food!" restaurant next door to a regular restaurant. There's gonna be pushback. |
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But my response is still: So what? Let's do it anyway. |
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//- //I don't see why a social media platform would be incentivised to set any of this up.// - To bring free education to the masses like never before// - and why would they want to do that? Fundamentally, social media companies (and Google too) are advertising companies. They're not philanthropic organisations, and there are easier ways of getting advertising revenue than starting an online university. |
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// - To bring free education to the masses like never before// - and why would they want to do that? |
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To make the world a better place? Is that really something that doesn’t matter anymore? Benevolence has become such a scam industry the real thing isn’t even considered anymore? |
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Of course it matters, and of course there are people and organisations that want to make the world a better place, but this group does not include social media companies. |
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