NancyLebovitz comments on Problems in Education - Less Wrong

65 Post author: ThinkOfTheChildren 08 April 2013 09:29PM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 09 April 2013 06:30:26PM 1 point [-]

"Educational scam" was my language, and may have been too strong. The author does describe Rutgers as a place where it's difficult to learn much (indifferent teaching, and a lot of institutional barriers to spending much time on learning).

Oddly, I haven't seen any complaints about something which might plausibly discredit the author-- spending much of his time drunk and/or drugged.

Comment author: Desrtopa 09 April 2013 06:39:44PM 1 point [-]

Oddly, I haven't seen any complaints about something which might plausibly discredit the author-- spending much of his time drunk and/or drugged.

Although he's fairly open about that, I don't think he particularly stands out in terms of substance use among college students. I had plenty of peers in college who graduated with good-to-reasonable grades who I suspect used alcohol and marijuana to similar degrees.

In fact, I would have to say that they probably got considerably more out of college than I did, having gotten a lot of valuable networking done socializing while high.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 09 April 2013 07:04:25PM *  0 points [-]

My impression is that heavy alcohol use tends to increase people's level of anger, obsession, and resentment.

In other words, he might overestimate the pervasiveness of administrative abuse and neglect at Rutgers. It's also conceivable that his life was going worse than it would have if he was sober more of the time.

However, I searched on "rutgers r-u screw" and found this. It looks like, at a minium, the administrative style at Rutgers is significantly unfriendly to students.

Comment author: CronoDAS 10 April 2013 09:31:31PM 2 points [-]

I was almost an RU Screw victim - some data entry clerk recorded my high school class rank as 20 instead of 2, which would have rendered me ineligible for a rather generous state scholarship if my parents hadn't inadvertently discovered this.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 April 2013 05:32:05AM 0 points [-]

However, I searched on "rutgers r-u screw" and found this.

I thought every college had something like this.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 April 2013 06:40:08AM 1 point [-]

I thought every college had something like this.

Conversely, I didn't believe this was a thing until I saw it happen during grad school (to undergrads).