That's what bothers me the most about this. The reason this is even an issue in the first place is because universities are aren't adequately providing what the students want.
So you want to study, say, engineering.
First you have to apply and get admitted to the university, and many people aren't admitted. The acceptance rate I can find for UW is 54% in-state, 46% out of state.
Then the university tells you that if you want to study engineering, you have to study a lot of other non-engineering things it feels like you should study. All of which are pretty costly and time consuming.
You might have to take courses in things you already know, because there are few courses you can test out of and the universities limit how many credits it can bring over.
Then on top of this, the universities don't provide anywhere near enough adequate quality classes for students, which is the whole reason why there's this level of demand in the first place.
Not only do they not provide enough, they know they don't provide enough, so their response is since it's "really competitive" they need to be "really strict about making sure that no one had an edge over anyone else." It's not about making sure students needs are being met, even for classes that the university is forcing on them. It's about restricting students, so that they suffer a roughly equal amount from the university's failures.
The attitude of the universities seems to be that since they're the only game in town, students have to suffer through all of this. Imagine a system where students could take classes from anywhere they want, and then could get a degree just by passing assessments at the university. I imagine the number of people paying huge amounts of money for inadequate classes would plummet.
Having admissions is an objective good though. Yes there's some gatekeeping aspects to it. But smart people want to be around smart people. I went to a school that I got into easily and if I could change one thing that I did in HS I would apply to more schools and try to go to the one that I barely got into.
Study other things is good too. I went to a liberal arts school for this. I studied politics, chemistry, computer science, Chinese language, South African history, Russian literature. Of course me knowing how to count to ten in Mandarin or being able to talk about the influences of Dostoevsky never helped me get a job but being well-rounded is an objectively Good Thing. I don't think you should have 60 credits of gen eds but a semester or two worth of non-STEM classes over 2-3 years is not going to hurt anyone.
> Imagine a system where students could take classes from anywhere they want...
Udemy and friends are exactly like that. The only thing the platform can't replicate is the community feeling. Sitting at home isolated is not for everyone.
excellent! nobody wants answers that a LLM can answer on SO.
to be honest, nobody wanted questions that were spelled out on all the manuals either. so maybe LLM will handle all of those and let only the interesting ones.
everyone associating Linux or the kernel, with the sleazy Linux foundation, it's wrong.
they do donate some build servers and pay some of a summit. but that's about it. it barely offsets the corporate shilling distracting actual Linux development they cause.
