Comment by charlie-83

Comment by charlie-83 a day ago

The situation in higher education at the moment does seem pretty dire. However, I do have some hope that a new system could emerge from this which would be better.

The purpose of higher education should be to learn things that will be useful to you (most likely in a career). However, the current purpose is to gain a piece of paper which will mean your job application doesn't get immediately thrown out.

People being willing to spend so much time and money on university only to deliberately avoid learning or thinking by using AI to cheat on everything suggests that the system itself is broken.

These students don't actually want to be in university but feel they have to in order to have a chance at success in the current job market. We are in a prisoner's dilemma where everyone is getting degrees just to be a more appealling applicant than the next person. You might have authored a very impressive opensource library but still not get the junior software dev job because HR never gave your CV to the hiring manager since you don't have a STEM degree and 50 other applicants did.

However, I don't really know how university's will evolve from this or what this new system will be. It seems hard to motivate a bunch of 18 year olds to actually want to learn stuff without dangling a piece of paper and exams at the end. Maybe that's just a symptom of all of the levels of education that come before university also dangling paper and exams. There were certainly parts of my degree I would have, at the time, liked to have skipped with AI but now (older and wiser) I'm very glad I couldn't.

flr03 a day ago

This is simplistic and I believe wrong. People still go to university because they are passionate and want to learn things, exchange with peers, grow as a person.

Education is not just "buying" a certification to open doors. This part I'm happy to get rid off.

Reply View 1 reply

charlie-83 a day ago

I completely agree with you. While I got a piece of paper at the end, I also learned lots of really useful things and met a lot of interesting people. There are still lots of passionate students that want to learn as much as they can.
But those students aren't going to be using AI to skip all the learning. The article and just about everyone in higher education right now are saying that a large number of students are doing that. So, there must be a large number of students who are primarily motivated by piece of paper (and the job opportunity it provides).
That doesn't mean that they must be completely disinterested in their subject. They might have some lectures they really like and where they do the coursework properly. However, the epidemic of AI cheating speaks to the inefficiency created by the need for the piece of paper. If someone is essentially skipping 80% of the learning with AI then the job market requiring you to have a piece of paper is causing someone to waste 80% of their time and money. They would be better served by a short course teaching them only that 20% of skills they actually want.
The social side of things isn't something I was really addressing in this context. To me, that's a bonus of university. Given the cost, it doesn't seem worth going to university primarily for a social experience (unless you live somewhere where it's free). I also really hope that AI isn't affecting these social aspects.

Reply View | 0 replies