College Is Much More Than a Means to a Higher Salary

Re:College Is Much More Than a Means to a Higher Salary by rdudekul on Tuesday June 02, 2015 @11:49PM (#9650468)

Author is making biased observations, probably based on his experience. Parental pressure, peer pressure, shame are all wrong reasons for going to college to get a degree. The lectures I watched on Khan Academy, Coursera or EdX beat almost all lectures I attended at college. For me there isn't a "big difference between watching a video online and actually being there". Many times I learned more from watching Youtube videos than attending lectures at universities/colleges. Hands-on learning courses on codecademy or codeschool are much better than in-person corporate trainings I attended, that companies I worked with spent thousands of dollars on.

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Re:College Is Much More Than a Means to a Higher Salary by tjl on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @12:17AM (#9650555)

Most of the Coursera and EdX lectures are actually college lectures, just put online.

I know as a TA, it can be hard to answer some questions via e-mail, so I'm assuming it would be difficult to do in a web forum as well. I once spent several e-mails trying to explain something to a student and after failing, asked them to come to my office and explained it in five minutes in a way they understood. So, while there might not be the difference for a lecture, it's the things around the course that can make the experience better.

I know Khan Academy has some problems (at least in the past) with some of its material. One example is discussed in,

http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2012/12/khan/

I can verify what he's saying is correct as I used to be involved in teaching the same material.

I first learnt C++ in an in-person corporate training session and it was excellent. I think it all depends.

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