The other problem of course is attention span due to social-media erosion.
The big tech has really done a number on society already and they’re just getting started.
One option… They can do homework just test them every week in class. Homework doesn’t count for grade anymore. But test questions based upon homework.
Another… kids do reading at home in textbook, then work together in class to finish. Adjust hours accordingly.
There’s a very interesting problem space here though, to “disrupt” education by going back in time and applying a modern spin on education.
Like we'd been doing for literally hundreds of years.
The part that is more difficult is take-home work, and I think the solution is that instead of being something that you turn in for credit, it needs to move to being more of a chance to practice for in-person exams.
What about essays? I've taught classes where students had to write essays in class, in person. On paper, with a pen (this may no longer be allowed on many campuses because of access and perceived fairness reasons, which IMO is a shame, but it is what it is). I think the traditional assignment of "write a 15 page paper on XYZ" is probably done. Instead students will have to prepare to write an essay in class by reading the source material (books, papers, etc) and converse with AIs that are hopefully not hallucinating, to get an understanding of the material and then come to class and be prepared to write about it.
It's a new world, but one we can adapt to.
The only thing that mattered were the exams, be it pen and paper or coding/electronics labs, in person and proctored. No matter how much slop I could have access to back in the day I would have failed the same subjects I did.
There are problems: Having students attend lectures is great but they have to work with the material and prove they understand it - how to do that without homework? I'm sure there are ways. Have them work in a building full of computers cut-off from the internet maybe, but how to keep them from using their phones?
Another option is just severe comprehensive testing in heavily inviglated rooms long after they finished the class involving the material to prove they know it. Perhaps you could do this for the first few years of knowledge in a discipline and then assume the student actually is serious and take the leash off after they passed the tests. I know some disciplines already do this kind of thing, even before AI. Basically everyone has to pass a bar-exam type thing, even if they're studying art - but things like art can't really be condensed into an exam and it would certainly restrict and narrow what can be taught and learned, that's a big problem in my mind. Also what if there are new ideas in the study of physics and they can't really be taught because the exam is too difficult to change quickly? What if there's a big split in the philosophy of buisness, but the exam only asks about one side of the split? What if you have an ingenious professor who wishes to talk about a new branch of philosophy he's created - not on the exam though.
Edit: I guess if professors designed their own exams, instead of some distant exam-comittee it would alleviate most of my concerns about them.
Tests. Many of my university courses only graded on tests. They strongly encouraged you to do the homework to better understand the material, but didn't consider homework completion when calculating your grade.
Consider that universities are educating adults who are -often- paying to be there. If we assume competent course design and instruction, if an adult chooses to not work on the material until they understand it, then the only person they're harming is themselves... which -as an adult- is a thing that they're usually fully entitled to do.
Actually, give them internet why not. But they have to use a 56k modem. Mwhaaha
Unfortunately that's way more expensive to do.
I studied maths, and spending time alone trying to solve problems and redoing the proofs from memory was important for my learning.
I don't think I'd have learned as much had those moments been replaced with more in class discussion.
Internship / coop programs at places like Waterloo already look a bit like this.
If we want to teach students to use AI, it should just be a separate course, not shoving it in every possible nook and cranny to the point it is teacher AI talking with student AI with light supervision from both AI handlers
The reason it doesn't happen for the rest of the system is scaling. The US awards about 60k PhDs per year, compared to about 2M bachelors. There simply are not enough faculty and it is not realistic to hire enough (if there are even enough qualified people in existence)
And that's ignoring all of the problems with "not giving out grades" or "ending credentialism" - I guess people are supposed to just get hired on vibes?
Schools will adapt, as they have already, by weighing grading more towards in-class quizzes and tests . I think the humanities will continue to struggle, but I see the AI boom making STEM more relevant, even if AI can automate a lot of code or math.
The piece discusses blue book tests where students were still cheating with their phones providing AI responses
That's telling in and of itself.
More precisely, the people motivated enough to actually do the online MIT version were often already on a high-performance trajectory, and for the people who were not, few people took the online credential seriously, despite whatever skills they acquired.
Logic 101 changed the clarity of my thinking markedly.
Modern education is like that, even before AI. Check this https://www.jstor.org/stable/25006902
Higher education needs reform more intensive than a simple defense against LLMs (as does the legal system and profession, as does the software engineering field, as does the field of psychology/psychiatry, as does-).
You're not supposed to make more money, or be happier, or really become anything other than a better version of yourself.
I wonder if they still do this.
For me when I teach, no laptops or phones in class along with in-class handwritten paper quizzes on course readings and concepts has helped a lot.
And if I want to do something interesting I need the skills and knowledge which are learned at a college level.
Not really, you need cooperation with other people in this complex world to live. No necessarily a job. You could be self-employed or a member of a cooperative or an elected official.
But yeah, the capitalist default is to have a job, sure.
> And if I want to do something interesting I need the skills and knowledge which are learned at a college level.
Not really, no. You need the skills and knowledge and for some professions you do need the official certificate of education and for a subset of those that's actually warranted, because you cannot get your hands on the training other ways. Doctors kinda need the official system, self-taught appendectomy would not be ideal. English literature? Not so much.
Why shouldn't universities switch to examinations where no technology (apart from say calculators) are allowed; and this is strictly enforced? This was certainly the norm when I went to university.
I agree that A.I. trivializes (or changes how you approach) a lot of take home work; but people who wanted to cheat could more or less always do so for that to some degree. I guess it makes it easier to do so; however my expectation would be a greater reliance or weighting on in person examinations as a response; as opposed to a normalization of cheating.
One way in which A.I. could be seen as contributing to this is that it is devaluing the importance of what were seen as 'intellectual' pursuits; as we now have automation for them that is at the very least often surface level effective for undergraduate work.
EDIT: I meant writing in blue books before this era of copying words out of the claude app on your phone
Otherwise your suggestion makes sense.
If you penalize people who use AI but in the process have learned the required information you make the problem even worse.
These problems are all because of a culture that favours the measurement over what is being measured.
Spot on. I am teenager going to college soon and I feel like the same way about the education system (and in extension, the job market but I suppose that the job market might be more understanding probably over all of it), part of my comment was as follows.
I do feel a bit like coding/a lot of fun-ness out of life is also like this, quantified, measured, transactional (posting for social-media?) [as I wonder if I am writing this comment for hackernews karma or relevant discussion talking points..]
This feels to me the most irreversible consequence because it might be hard for the generation (myself included) to see value in non-measurable things as everything has to be measured and transactional-ized.
(...) I would like for humanity to be more nuanced and less measured but more varied (grey rather than black or white) but I feel like that there is enough noise on the internet that maybe even this ends up becoming noise and I am not sure if anyone who might benefit from reading this actually does end up reading it.
From one of my comments that I had written sometime ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47559013
Hear, hear!
What other kind of culture is there? A culture of not measuring?
40pp is massive. Take homes are pretty much dead at that point. And not just in schools, but also for interviews. I don’t see how you can get a meaningful signal, it’s guaranteed they will be made using AI
In this world, what are the benefits of a humanist education? The only reason we care so much about education is that it's how to determine merit in meritocratic societies, and therefore a key part in how people gain social status. In a world where AI does all the knowledge work and robots do all the physical work, with an 'elect few' owning everything and everyone else in a 'permanent underclass', why do the elect few even need to keep the permanent underclass alive?
ls612•1h ago
dorianmariecom•1h ago
josemanuel•1h ago
Will Universities still be centers of knowledge and exploration? or will that be more disseminated through society, and so Universities not so important?
What courses will exist? Are those vastly different from today's courses?
Animats•49m ago
Computer-assisted instruction been amazing unsuccessful. Why is that?
A_D_E_P_T•1h ago
And, anyway, the point the article is trying to make is obvious. What's absolutely not obvious, and what it sheds very little light on, is what the University is going to look like in 10 years. Not what it should look like, but what it is most likely to look like.
raincole•46m ago
Mostly like they look like now, probably. With slightly more strictly enforced rules around exam.
I fail to see why it won't be like that.
djeastm•1h ago
nimonian•58m ago
I'm confident this is human.
ls612•43m ago
dj_johnsonMid•32m ago
npinsker•20m ago
Today, the demonic vice of the old is not that they are hard and demanding on the youth — instead they do not demand enough from us, and they cannot quite believe that we have not lived up to the little they have demanded. They think too well of our generation.
Without defending the quality of the rest of the essay, it's a great start. LLMs today could never match it.
curiousllama•30m ago