= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Lumifer comments on Open thread, Dec. 1 - Dec. 7, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (346)
First, undergrad freshmen are probably not the right source for wisdom about what a college should be.
Second, I notice a disturbing lack of such goals as "go to awesome parties" and "get laid a lot" which, empirically speaking, are quite important to a lot of 18-year-olds.
In systems like the US, where undergraduate freshmen are basically customers paying a fee, I expect their input on what they want and expect the product they're purchasing to be like should be extremely relevant.
Yes, that is the "provide four years of cruise-ship fun experience" version mentioned. The idea that it's freshmen who are purchasing college education also needs a LOT of caveats.
Indeed, customers are usually expected to be informed about what they're buying. But in the case of education, where what the "customer" is buying is precisely knowledge, a freshman's opinion on what education should contain may be less well informed than, for example, a grad student's opinion.
Exactly which courses do you imagine do the most to help students go to the most awesome parties and get laid a lot?
Ones with very little homework and a good gender ratio.
The point is not that they need courses to help them with that. The point is that if you are accepting freshman desires as your basis for shaping college education, you need to recognize that surveys like the one you linked to present a very incomplete picture of what freshmen want.
If the desires you named are irrelevant to the discussion at hand, then can you please name the desires that you think are relevant which are not encapsulated by the survey and explain how they are relevant to what classes students are taking? Also, who is the right source of wisdom about what a college should be?
For the bit of mental doodling that this thread is, the right source is you -- your values, your preferences, your prejudices, your ideals.