mattnewport comments on Open Thread: March 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: RobinZ 11 March 2010 05:25PM

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Comment author: knb 11 March 2010 10:59:25PM 16 points [-]

Anybody else think the modern university system is grossly inefficient? Most of the people I knew in undergrad spend most of their time drinking to excess and skipping classes. In addition, barely half of undergraduates get their B.A in 6 years after starting. The whole system is hugely expensive in both direct subsidies and opportunity costs.

I think that society would benefit from switching to computer based learning systems for most kinds of classes. For example, I took two economics courses that incorporated CBL elements, and I found them vastly more engrossing and much more time-efficient than the lecture sections. Instead of applying to selective universities (which gain status by denying more students entry than others) people could get most of their prerequisites out of the way in a few months with standard CBL programs administered at a marginal cost of $0.

Comment author: mattnewport 11 March 2010 11:05:53PM *  6 points [-]

Clearly universities are grossly inefficient at teaching, but as Robin Hanson would say, School isn't about Learning.

The education system in general in most Western countries is grossly inefficient but that is largely because it is not structured in a way that rewards educating efficiently, and that is exactly how most of the participants want it.