[HN Gopher] Decision for 2020-21 Academic Year
___________________________________________________________________
Decision for 2020-21 Academic Year
Author : jbegley
Score : 271 points
Date : 2020-07-06 16:12 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fas.harvard.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fas.harvard.edu)
| modzu wrote:
| looking back at all of the things i most appreciated about going
| to university, classes are near the bottom of the list. you cant
| put a price on the relationships you form, the labs, the teams
| and companies that you spin off, the hands on activities with
| tools and technology and artifacts you could never access
| otherwise, even simply being away somewhere you didnt grow up.
| you dont just put that on the internet anymore than you can
| expect cybersex to yield offspring
| pjdemers wrote:
| I have two children in college. One college announced a similar
| plan, half of students on campus at a time. If the plan is
| followed through, then, the class of 2022 will spend 17 straight
| months on campus, from January 2021 until graduation in May 2022.
| The college held an online question and answer for parents. The
| question of burn out for the class of 2022 came up. The school
| president's answer was: That's a problem we would love to have.
| Basically, the school thinks there will be several more complete
| shutdowns over the next few years.
| kolbe wrote:
| You want to know why people are having difficulty trusting
| science? Because the institutions that guide science in the
| United States seem to frequently come to self-serving decisions.
|
| In this case, Harvard is not allowing all first years to come to
| campus because it's safer; they're doing it because first years
| are more likely to defer if they couldn't go to campus.
|
| If scientists want people to listen to them, start helping them.
| Don't lie about mask efficiency, because you want the masks for
| yourselves. Don't make other people lose their jobs, while
| continuing to collect your own paycheck. Don't admonish protests
| as being unsafe when they're conservative, but bless them when
| they're liberal.
| code4tee wrote:
| COVID-19 will likely be a watershed moment for higher education
| in the US. Many colleges and universities will likely never
| return to what they had before. There will be immense pressure to
| rethink how the whole system works and the cost structures
| therein.
|
| At many schools the cost increases over the last few decades have
| very little to do with increasing the quality of education and a
| lot to do with unnecessary expenses and ever growing
| administrative bloat. It's going to be hard for schools to
| justify their cost when they're running essentially an online
| school and that's the first step towards the whole house of cards
| falling apart. Expect to see a lot of changes in the coming
| years. It will be painful but for the best in the long term in
| getting schools back to basics of providing education.
|
| Schools like Harvard will be fine but outside the top tier it's
| about to get real ugly.
| peruvian wrote:
| I graduated from an expensive-but-not-elite private school
| (with a full scholarship). By the time I graduated it was over
| half international students, particularly in the MBA programs.
|
| Not sure what they'll do now. I think these institutions have
| to massively change their priorities in the coming ten years to
| survive.
|
| That said, a friend of mine has a cousin that's an
| international student from China. Apparently her school (large
| state school) is offering online classes in China time!
| mrlala wrote:
| Feel sorry for the students right now having to face all this..
| but it's for the best overall.
|
| College needs to be massively re-imagined in this country. The
| costs are so out of control it's insane. As a parent with 2
| younger kids, trying to save to help them with college some
| seems monumental.
| flatline wrote:
| > unnecessary expenses and every growing administrative bloat
|
| This is a problem, and yet, I'm unsure how "unnecessary" that
| administrative overhead really is. If you went to college in
| the 70s you didn't have all that. But college wasn't a
| requirement, it was an entitlement (loosely speaking) and the
| people who attended largely reflected this - they were
| entitled, privileged. Even at a public school they were from
| comfortably middle class homes, white, etc. If you were poor,
| non-white, you were largely excluded. If you had mental health
| problems, you were on your own. In fact if you had any sort of
| special need you were on your own, there was no support from
| the school - they were academic institutions!
|
| So much of the work over the last 50 years has been to bridge
| these gaps. College is now practically a requirement for a
| comfortable middle class existence in the US. So we try to make
| sure everyone can go, even graduate, and this is the result. I
| still view schools as being pretty lean on staffing, for what
| they provide. All these problems with schools are symptoms of a
| larger societal issue in my mind.
| fullstop wrote:
| I certainly hope so. I have been saving education money since
| before my children were even conceived and it is truly
| disheartening to watch tuition increase by leaps and bounds. My
| wife and I both greatly value education, and I am certain that
| my children will obtain some sort of scholarship on their own
| merit, but I would not shed a tear if the University bubble
| popped before then.
|
| My oldest is enrolled in online classes at a large state
| school, and will be graduating from high school in two years.
| At worst I have saved enough money for both of my children to
| attend the school of their choice. If it all falls apart, I've
| secured education expenses for them and their children if they
| choose that path.
|
| I would love to see some sort of regulation on endowments and
| either taxing them or forcing Universities to spend at least a
| portion of them on a yearly basis.
| chrisjarvis wrote:
| I hope you are right, this reckoning is LONG overdue.
| augustt wrote:
| Finally, now the rest of us can wait for our administrations to
| copy them (at least MIT has been following their every move).
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I would hope that Harvard students could adapt pretty easily. The
| public school my kids go to will only be open 2 days per week
| next year, mostly for tech support. That is a real travesty for
| the kids, especially with Mom and Dad going to work, the kids
| will be one their own often trying to get it done. I'll be
| spending my evenings playing teacher after a full day of work. I
| refuse to let me kids fall behind, its obvious that the
| government won't do anything but send kids home and hope for the
| best. The kids need the classroom and need to be social. Not
| looking for my family to get covid but we need to do more to
| educate the next generation.
| yingw787 wrote:
| I remember one inspiring story from a few years ago, a student
| who did janitor work to pay family bills before going to Harvard:
| https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/07/us/from-janitor-to-harvard/in...
|
| Hope colleges can prioritize students from underprivileged
| backgrounds. They might even be safer on campus.
| legitster wrote:
| I recently talked to someone who worked in higher ed
| administration, and they said that Covid may sink hundreds of
| smaller private colleges across the country that have quietly
| been on the financial brink this whole time. So they are all
| focused on keeping as much revenue coming in as possible.
|
| On the other side of all of this, I am imagining a world where
| higher education is not nearly as important as we pretend it is
| now.
| fullstop wrote:
| Archive link since the site is hammered: https://archive.is/ACRGl
| Digory wrote:
| Athletics are going to be reeling.
|
| No announcement yet, but this effectively kills football, no?
| ilyas121 wrote:
| Probably the first MA college that I've seen to say only freshman
| coming back. Mine, (WPI) still has been telling every undergrad
| that everything is only optionally online, and that they would
| just convert triples to doubles and the usual covid guidelines.
| Freshman-only seems to me more realistic although disheartening
| to hear as a rising senior.
| MiroF wrote:
| > Freshman-only seems to me more realistic although
| disheartening to hear as a rising senior.
|
| I think that most schools will do most everything they can to
| ensure that the senior class still has a senior spring.
| chanmad29 wrote:
| With the new ICE Directive, I wonder how much of "this is the
| right thing to do" will change. From a physical well being
| perspective, remote is right. But with International student visa
| statuses at risk, the onus is now on Harvard to enable in person
| classes for those at risk?
| the_svd_doctor wrote:
| It seems so. If they want to have international students
| attending (from the US), it cannot be 100% online.
| ManBlanket wrote:
| Aren't healthy young adults for the most part isolated to a
| single area sort of a decent path toward herd immunity while
| minimizing the death rate of Covid-19? Wait, but Harvard, they're
| rich. I forgot it was poor and minorities charged with face risks
| for white upper class. Oh, sorry I meant, "essential" people.
| soganess wrote:
| Don't the professors who are not always healthy young people
| also deserve to not get sick?
|
| (My mom instructs chemistry at a university and she almost 65)
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Aren't healthy young adults for the most part isolated to a
| single area sort of a decent path toward herd immunity while
| minimizing the death rate of Covid-19?
|
| No, there's no such thing. "Herd immunity by infection" is a
| failure endgame, not a success goal, and the people involved in
| in-person instructivo aren't categorically young (especially
| not the instructors) or healthy, much less exclusively in the
| intersection of those two sets.
| sriram_sun wrote:
| The brand must go on.
| paxys wrote:
| It's crazy how much the entire country is outraged over Harvard's
| tuition during COVID. Maybe worry about getting in first? Or even
| better, focus your anger on your state university system's
| funding and tuition costs.
|
| The majority of Harvard students receive financial aid anyways,
| and a fifth of them pay nothing. Whether online classes are worth
| it or not remains to be seen, but it's not a decision the
| country's masses have to make.
| ralmidani wrote:
| My understanding is a lot of universities are playing bait-and-
| switch, announcing unrealistic plans to reopen in the Fall in
| order to get deposits/tuition, but secretly knowing they'll be
| 'forced' to move everything online again. I admire Harvard's
| transparency, although having a multi-billion-dollar endowment
| does make this decision easier for them than it would be for
| struggling institutions.
|
| FWIW, I personally think distance learning is underrated,
| although I have been doing it for years so I've had time to
| become accustomed to it. I can understand why some students
| (including my wife) do not like it, and may never like it.
|
| From a strategic perspective, I can see universities like Harvard
| strengthening their brand by opening up more of their classes to
| the general public (and maybe even giving credit for a bigger
| chunk of them via the Extension School). This might hurt a lot of
| the smaller institutions and lead to consolidation, but I'm
| undecided on whether that would be a bad thing.
| geophile wrote:
| The pandemic is particularly challenging for a school like
| Harvard, as it makes the implicit thing obvious: a prestige
| school like Harvard is about the social connections _far_ more
| than the education. If you get one semester on campus, maybe,
| then what's the point? You can get an online education
| anywhere, for far less money.
| jedberg wrote:
| Harvard is fairly cheap to attend, less than a state school
| for most, and free if your parents make under $65K. They were
| forced to do that a few years ago so the government wouldn't
| start taxing their endowment.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
| finance/12301...
| kbenson wrote:
| > free if your parents make under $65K
|
| Which means that in the city I live in, if both parents
| work full time minimum wage jobs, their child _might_ be
| able to go for free, since the minimum wage here is $15. It
| would even be slightly harder if the parents worked in San
| Francisco, since minimum wage is a few cents more there. I
| doubt anyone in that situation feels like that minimum wage
| is making it easy to live in the area.
|
| Programs meant to accept people from across the nation that
| peg goals/limits to specific income amounts don't seem to
| make all that much sense to me. :/
| [deleted]
| skrtskrt wrote:
| I worked in a financial aid office for some time.
|
| There are thresholds and guidelines, but in my experience
| financial aid officers have a lot of flexibility and
| discretion. They look at the complete picture, including
| assets, number of other siblings that are dependents/in
| college, etc.
|
| You can also appeal the financial aid decision, and just
| going to that trouble will often get you a bit more aid
| if you have a decent reason.
|
| The depressing part was how many people obviously lie and
| misrepresent their financial situation to try to cheapen
| their student's aid cost. Not that I can really blame
| them, even if you make enough money that your kids don't
| qualify for aid, $70,000+ per year per child is just out
| of hand. And there's basically no risk to trying, the aid
| officers just look at it and are like "obvious lie,
| rejected" or "possible lie, ask for supporting
| evidence/documents".
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I feel like very obvious lies on financial aid
| applications should be grounds for the school to rescind
| their admission.
| ericlewis wrote:
| not necessarily the kids fault, so I am not sure I would
| agree.
| gibolt wrote:
| There is a likelihood that many parents submit/falsify
| the financial aid application/documents. Hard to prove
| the student did it, and worse to rescind based on a
| parent's actions.
| danans wrote:
| > Not that I can really blame them, even if you make
| enough money that your kids don't qualify for aid,
| $70,000+ per year per child is just out of hand.
|
| At a high enough income level, is it out of hand? If the
| parents' income is, say 7 figures per year, why not
| charge even more, and in doing so increase the assistance
| to those making closer to the median household income?
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Oh I definitely agree with you in principle.
|
| I just think that
|
| 1) the price tag is inflated in the first place
|
| 2) at many income levels that are too high to qualify for
| aid, $70k per child per year still _really_ stings and I
| can understand the reaction to try to cut the corners a
| bit.
| danans wrote:
| > 1) the price tag is inflated in the first place
|
| Inflated relative to what? The cost of providing the
| education? Or relative to its perceived value? The latter
| ultimately dictates the price. Perhaps $70k is the point
| after which really wealthy people say rebel and refuse to
| send their children there, regardless of how small a
| portion of their wealth it is?
|
| > 2) at many income levels that are too high to qualify
| for aid, $70k per child per year still really stings
|
| I agree, which is why I wonder why the $70k limit for
| those well above the income level where it stings.
|
| Then again, a higher top-level tuition depends a lot on
| the distribution of very wealthy parents whose kids
| attend Harvard vs the just upper middle class (there is a
| large difference between the income/wealth those two
| groups after all, bigger than between the middle and
| upper middle-class, given the exponential shape of the
| wealth distribution curve).
|
| And perhaps the very wealthy (let's say in today's terms
| net worth in the mid 10 millions and up) already make
| significant donations to the University, so it would be
| meaningless to raise tuition to i.e. $90k in that case.
| gammarator wrote:
| There is still significant aid available with incomes
| above $65k. There's a calculator:
| https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-
| calculat...
| vmception wrote:
| "but fuck you if your parents had good jobs but not enough
| for a trust fund at no fault of your own"
| MiroF wrote:
| Not fuck you, just pay what you can? Harvard is extremely
| affordable - like among the most affordable of any
| school.
| vmception wrote:
| By the time I was applying for colleges, my parents made
| around $250,000 combined, which went to mortgages and
| other expenses, including retirement plans. I was
| therefore not eligible for any FAFSA loans, as they do
| not factor in zip code, cost of living, the kinds of
| assets or liabilities anyone has, nor inflation.
|
| Affordable, to me, was in-state tuition at $3,000 per
| semester at a state school, with a few community college
| classes. This was mixed with scholarships, and my parents
| subsidizing books and on campus living some semesters as
| that could more than double the cost of tuition.
|
| Are you saying that Harvard could have arbitrarily and
| unilaterally spit out a number close to that? And
| routinely does for people whose parents make more than
| $65,000?
|
| My comp sci degree has the same utility as anyone else
| that didn't go to Ivy League / Stanford.
| MiroF wrote:
| Your household income would be more than 96% of all
| Americans today and likely more than that when you were
| applying for college.
|
| I'm not arguing that Harvard isn't expensive for affluent
| families, but even with an income like that you would
| still probably get financial aid. Harvard doesn't charge
| anything like full tuition to families under $200k a
| year, the point is just that they charge nothing at all
| if you make under $65k.
|
| I fail to see how that is unfair.
| vmception wrote:
| My whole post was about how "income" doesn't factor in
| the liabilities and obligations or cost of living of
| anyone. Why would you respond with that reductionist
| answer? Why would a university penalize a student whose
| parents won't shift their budget, and that's assuming it
| is so simple?
|
| I also asked a specific question, which you completely
| skipped, while doubling down on a fairness argument that
| this thread wasn't even about. You act knowledgeable in
| the matter and then aren't able to dive in, only defend
| your position. Its fine to say "I don't know", but right
| now what are you doing?
|
| Were you saying that Harvard's "affordability" was
| anywhere close to the $3,000 tuition / semester I ended
| up paying? And that's because Harvard routinely makes up
| any number based on a variety of financial variables
| (which aren't as simple as "income") and ultimately
| feelings?
| kortilla wrote:
| Again, it's just a "fuck you" to students who grew up in
| an upper middle class household in a high CoL area.
|
| Harvard's assumption that the parents can shill out tens
| of thousands for their kid is just dumb. They don't
| realistically take into account parents that don't care
| much about education, large families, parents with lots
| of debt, etc.
| gammarator wrote:
| Harvard has been extremely heavily discounted for low-
| income families for more than 20 years.
| scorecard wrote:
| It is not the case that Harvard is free for students whose
| parents make less than $65K. Read the small print.
| MiroF wrote:
| If they make less than $65k and don't have significant
| college savings/assets, then yes it is free.
|
| If you're a hedge fund manager who just retired and is
| now making $0/yr, sure it's not free.
| prepend wrote:
| It's great that Harvard started their free tuition program,
| but for most students it costs $60-70k/year.
|
| Harvard is not "fairly cheap" and likely has something to
| do with their students largely coming from wealthy
| families.
| mennis16 wrote:
| 55% of students receive aid, and of those that receive
| aid the average expected contribution is ~15K. So
| technically most students do not pay that amount,
| although 45% is higher than I was expecting to be honest.
|
| https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-
| sheet
| scorecard wrote:
| "Average expected contribution" is not precisely defined
| in the Harvard document you provide, and thus does not
| commit Harvard to any particular course of action.
| MiroF wrote:
| Harvard does not cost full-sticker for most people who
| attend. Most people who go are very rich, sot hey pay a
| substantial fraction of full-sticker, but if you aren't,
| you won't.
| whymauri wrote:
| >It's great that Harvard started their free tuition
| program, but for most students it costs $60-70k/year.
|
| I think that's not quite right?
|
| "About 55% of Harvard students receive need-based
| scholarship aid with average grant totals around
| $53,000."
| prepend wrote:
| Tuition is $60k/year or 240 total. If the average grant
| is 53k, then that means the average cost is 187k.
|
| I went to a school with this weasel language all over
| their content. My kid was offered $3k/year in financial
| aid because the school said I should pay 65% of my annual
| gross to cover tuition.
|
| It's nice that they have some token poor and working
| class, but Harvard is for the rich...
|
| " According to The New York Times, the median family
| income of a student from Harvard is $168,800, and 67% of
| students come from the highest-earning 20% of American
| households. About 15% come from families in the top 1% of
| American wealth distribution." [0]
|
| [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/it-costs-78200-to-go-
| to-harv...
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Yeah I had a friend attend for like $800 a year. My
| understanding at the time was that some other prestige
| schools were similar, like Stanford.
|
| Others have followed suit - Northwestern recently announced
| that they would just grant financial aid recipients
| whatever part previously would have been loans.
|
| When I was applying to college in early 2010s as someone
| who received financial aid (parents made ~$100k total), I
| could attend:
|
| * [top 20 school - private] for ~18k a year
|
| * [top 50 school - private] for ~18k a year
|
| * [sub 200-rank school - the main in-state school] for ~$9k
| a year
|
| * [top 20 to top 40 schools - state - out of state] for
| $30k-$40k...
|
| These big state schools were the most surprising to me
| because everyone always says "if you're smart they'll have
| so many scholarships for you it'll nearly be free!"
|
| But when it came down to it the good state schools weren't
| even in the running. I took the more prestigious school
| name for half the price.
| akhilcacharya wrote:
| Yup, and the reality becomes winners take all. Really
| starts to suck for us that ended up going to a ~200
| ranked institution because we couldn't get in to the
| prestigious ones (which, in all honesty, is much harder
| than finding a way to pay for an expensive school).
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| Sounds like an r/K selection thing. If you can't afford
| an Ivy and aren't elegable for assistance, then it may be
| more worthwhile to do community college and laterally-
| transfer into a different school.
|
| I knew a dude who did community college in Northern VA
| (NVCC) and transferred to Cornell. Shaved off a lot of
| costs, got a scholarship, and walked out with an Ivy
| League diplo. All of those hills were good for his leg
| strength, too.
| MiroF wrote:
| Yeahhh outside of Cornell you're not going to transfer
| into an Ivy from a CC.
| [deleted]
| akhilcacharya wrote:
| Transferring into Ivies is nearly universally more
| difficult than getting in normally, the only exception is
| Cornell.
|
| Unfortunately, I'm still paying for being mediocre in my
| high school years!
| [deleted]
| BurningFrog wrote:
| How much of the "social connections" angle is coming out of
| University with a high status spouse?
| ativzzz wrote:
| That high status spouse uses these "social connection" to
| solidify their high status.
| asveikau wrote:
| Social connections sure. But how about simply having the name
| on the resume? You could do it online and still get the name.
| Although with enough class years of this, the name will stop
| signifying the social connections, and might start being
| worth less.
| biztos wrote:
| Isn't some part of the value just the "badge appeal" of a
| Harvard degree? If you are Harvard 2024 won't that open just
| as many generously compensated doors as usual, even if there
| was a year less networking?
|
| Might the networking value even _increase_ because now there
| is a shared bond (had to deal with 2020) connecting the less-
| connected and the more-connected?
| whymauri wrote:
| I agree Harvard grads will be significantly better off in a
| job market than peers at lesser-known schools. However, one
| point of bitterness is that the value of attending Harvard
| next year is almost surely less than attending last year.
| Despite that, tuition is not being adjusted for students.
| In fact, it will cost _more_ than last year.
| dahfizz wrote:
| This is a very naive view.
|
| A prestigious school like Harvard has all the best
| professors, all the best resources (libraries, computer labs,
| machine shops, laboratories), and all the best opportunities
| (more research positions, more interesting academic work to
| be done), etc. A small school just can't afford all that
| stuff.
|
| So you're right that a good school is much more than just the
| things you learn in class. But to boil that down to some "all
| the elites go here just to meet the other elites" is closer
| to a conspiracy theory than the truth.
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| >> _If you get one semester on campus, maybe, then what's the
| point? You can get an online education anywhere, for far less
| money._
|
| First, Harvard didn't choose this. It happened and its for
| everyone. Maybe they should offer a 25% discount and cut
| salaries as well...or just dip in the endowment. What's the
| point on having it if you don't use for these events?
|
| Second, you're a Harvard grad for life and no one will know
| or care that 2 years were online (everyone is in the same
| boat)
| jimhefferon wrote:
| > Harvard didn't choose this
|
| Yes. The grandparent post's contention that this is an
| elaborate bait and switch is silly. This is decision-making
| under vast uncertainty. It all sucks, but changing outcomes
| when some of the dozens of factors change is perfectly
| normal.
| geophile wrote:
| Harvard chose their response. All colleges and university
| have to, and anything involving in-person classes is just
| nuts now. I understand why they do it, but it is inarguably
| dangerous.
|
| About "Harvard grad for life": That's connections -- the
| ones you make in school, and the ones you can make
| afterward. But as for intellectual capability? I would
| argue that college is completely irrelevant after a couple
| of years in the work force. Or stated another way: if I am
| interviewing for your _second_ job as an adult, and you are
| trying to impress me with what you did in college, then
| something is very off.
|
| I have interviewed job applicants for many years, and the
| only time I cared about college at all is for kids who just
| graduated. You have to talk about their college experience
| because they almost never have anything else relevant. And
| even in those cases, I don't care at all whether the degree
| is from an Ivy or a lesser school. I care about what you
| know, how you think, and your potential for doing good work
| as revealed by talking about things you worked on in
| college.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> The pandemic is particularly challenging for a school like
| Harvard, as it makes the implicit thing obvious: a prestige
| school like Harvard is about the social connections far more
| than the education._
|
| I wouldn't say "far" more. There are multiple valuable
| components to a top tier education:
|
| 1. Social connections with your peers, as you mention.
|
| 2. Social connections with your professors, their graduate
| students, and their network.
|
| 3. The education itself, which should be intellectually
| challenging (more or less depending on subject, with STEM
| subjects usually moreso, especially at top tier schools)
|
| 4. The pedigree, which is a factor of the previous three, and
| should prove to employers etc that, at minimum, you can
| handle a large and difficult work load with precision and
| attention to detail, regardless who your connections are.
|
| 5. Various support services tailored to the stresses of a
| demanding undergraduate education.
|
| Of those, an online education from a top tier school still
| gets you some of #2 & #5, and all of #3 and #4. A 20-30%
| tuition discount for losing #1 may be fair, but I think it's
| still worth it for students who get into a top tier school to
| finish their degree there, even online.
| biztos wrote:
| > you can handle a large and difficult work load with
| precision and attention to detail
|
| This part may be true, but I doubt it's determinative: over
| a long career I've not found much difference between Ivy
| folks and State folks in engineering roles, and I can
| easily think of a few Ivy-Leaguers who ended up in very
| high office and whose fulfillment of your criteria was, at
| best, questionable.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| I didn't say State STEM grads couldn't perform equally,
| nor did I say "Ivy" anywhere. Only that a "top tier" (of
| which Ivy is a subset) STEM degree is reliable proof of
| ability, and implicitly that it is one of the most
| reliable proofs of ability.
| biztos wrote:
| I read your comment as saying a "top tier" STEM degree is
| a more reliable proof of ability than some other STEM
| degree, and I was using "Ivy" as shorthand for "top tier
| by American reputation" -- granted, inaccurately, but
| it's common to do so.
|
| And if you were saying that I still disagree. It's not
| that a math degree from Stanford isn't a good indicator
| of ability, but that it's not any better an indicator
| than one from Cal Poly or for that matter Arizona State.
| nud wrote:
| > 3. The education itself, which should be intellectually
| challenging (more or less depending on subject, with STEM
| subjects usually moreso, especially at top tier schools)
|
| Your implication that non-STEM fields are less
| intellectually challenging is pretty insulting. Have you
| enrolled in a non-STEM degree? Do you have evidence that
| writing a treatise on comparative literature or archeology
| is less intellectually challenging than pushing out some
| code or solving some derivatives? Please choose your words
| carefully when communicating.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| I'm comfortable making that claim, and yes I had a mixed
| education of roughly 1/3rd hard STEM (CS, math, stats),
| 1/3rd soft STEM (Econ, Law), and 1/3rd non-STEM (economic
| history, philosophy, required undergrad writing
| elective).
|
| Things like the Sokal Hoax are difficult to impossible in
| hard STEM fields. Non-STEM fields are more difficult to
| falsify and thus more difficult to apply similar levels
| of rigor. Smart and clever undergrads figure out their
| professors' biases and are constantly submitting lesser
| versions of the Sokal Hoax for their writing assignments
| (been there, done that). You can't do that in hard STEM
| fields, and its more difficult in some logically rigorous
| soft-STEM ones like law classes. Non-STEM fields tend to
| be held in the fuzzy-logic-based natural language you
| grew up with and know intimately, while STEM fields
| require learning an entirely new language (math, code)
| where fuzzy logic does not work and precise logic is
| required. It's more difficult for a variety of reasons.
| archagon wrote:
| If you have the aptitude for it, I'd argue that being
| constrained by clean, cold, infallible logic makes STEM
| subjects much easier, not harder, than the messy human
| whirlpool of the humanities and social sciences. Sure, it
| might be easier to get away with BS in those fields --
| but what if you actually want to learn something or make
| a tangible impact? No matter how you slice it, humans
| live in the world of "fuzzy-logic-based natural
| language," not bits and bytes. (Incidentally, this might
| reveal why some engineers struggle with things like UX,
| technology ethics, or algorithmic bias.)
|
| I also have a mixed education of 1/2 CS and 1/2 Music. I
| found some of my music classes way harder (and often way
| more enjoyable) than many of my CS classes, despite the
| fact that the CS classes dealt with well-defined problems
| and solutions.
| victorhooi wrote:
| Whilst I agree the wording could have been better, I
| think the parent has a point.
|
| I did a double-degree in Commerce (Finance and
| Economics), and Computer Engineering at Sydney Uni.
|
| English is my first language, and I've always liked
| economics/finance. However, I found the commerce side of
| things much easier to cruise through (I was working full-
| time as well). The material was easier, contact hours
| were much less, you could fluff your way through essays
| (to a degree), and it was obvious many of the students
| there (i.e. international students) just wanted to
| finish, and get their degree (nothing wrong with that in
| itself). Many people didn't bother showing up, and just
| studied online, and sat the final exam.
|
| Engineering...oh man. The material was tough, the maths
| was tricky, and there was _many_ mandatory contact hours
| or mandatory tutorials ( > 20 a week). If you didn't show
| up to weekly classes, you got marked down, which is
| basically a fail. And while you can fudge an essay in
| commerce (assuming some basic grasp of first principles),
| try fudging an answer on Fourier transforms, or gradient-
| descents. However, many people genuinely had a passion
| for the subject, and the lecturers/tutors really did push
| you hard.
|
| Also - look at the dropouts rates for fields - a lot more
| people dropped out of engineering degrees by year 2/3
| versus say, Commerce. I can't speak to other
| fields/areas.
|
| This experience may not apply to everybody - but as
| somebody who did a degree in both fields, I think it's
| telling.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > 2. Social connections with your professors, their
| graduate students, and their network.
|
| This isn't going to hold for most undergraduates, since
| you're not going to interact with professors enough unless
| you're participating in undergraduate research. And getting
| sufficient attention to get into those programs is probably
| going to be harder in an online-only environment.
| MiroF wrote:
| Many students at Harvard interact quite a bit with
| professors.
| dicomdan wrote:
| Students will still be on campus, while teaching is done
| online. Sounds like a win win for students who get to interact
| with their peers, and professors who get to stay safe.
| Octoth0rpe wrote:
| It sounds like a win for Harvard's residency fees and that's
| about it.
| peruvian wrote:
| Aren't endowments for elite colleges mostly tied up in hedge
| funds or real estate to make them even bigger? Weird for me
| that they could have billions in the bank and still ask for
| tuition.
| notatoad wrote:
| >Weird for me that they could have billions in the bank and
| still ask for tuition.
|
| if you make something free, people don't value it. Harvard
| has a lot of financial aid for students who legitimately
| can't afford the tuition, and charges a lot for students who
| can.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Sure, they're managed investment funds. You couldn't run a
| university just on the income from bank interest. Also, most
| endowment funds are not unrestricted. Donors often attach
| strings to what can be done with the money; it's donated for
| specific purposes. Harvard is even more restricted in a way
| because each school has its own endowment. FAS (most
| undergraduates) has the biggest, but they can only spend
| their own money.
|
| Also, income from the endowment doesn't cover the whole cost
| of operating the university.
|
| Harvard is actually managing a little better than they did in
| 2008. When Larry Summers was president, he made some skeezy
| deals to finance the Allston campus expansion, and it went
| _way bad_ when the market collapsed. Now they do have some
| emergency cash set aside.
| moksly wrote:
| I work as an external examiner for CS students, and one year I
| was assigned first semester exams. To brush up my knowledge on
| freshmen CS stuff I completed the CS50x course from Harvard on
| EDX.org and I can easily say that it was taught so much better
| than my own freshman year in a Danish university.
|
| I wonder how much that plays into universities wanting to keep
| physical attendance. Once you go digital, you don't really need
| a lot of lecturers. You still need someone to answer questions
| and mentor of course, but you could frankly have a handful of
| professors teaching the entire world.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _I personally think distance learning is underrated, although I
| have been doing it for years so I 've had time to become
| accustomed to it. I can understand why some students (including
| my wife) do not like it, and may never like it._
|
| The ingestion of facts is actually only a minor part of the
| college experience. Exploring concepts with your peers in
| organised and ad-hoc groups is a huge, huge part. Not to
| mention if you go to a name-brand college like Harvard the
| networking opportunities, and at every college, the social side
| and the experience of living away from home for the first time.
|
| It is absolutely not worth paying the tuition at Harvard to get
| what you could get on EdX or Coursera.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I admire Harvard's transparency, although having a multi-
| billion-dollar endowment does make this decision easier for
| them than it would be for struggling institutions.
|
| I think a lot of this comes from their having waited until now
| to make a decision (which they feel comfortable doing because,
| as you say, they're sitting on a billion-dollar endowment). My
| university has been engaging in a lot of mixed messaging, but I
| think a lot of that came from feeling rushed to make a quick
| decision, not so much from an attempt to deceive people
| (although I'd be surprised if there weren't also some tacit
| understanding that it's easier to tell people what they want to
| hear now and change it later than it is to tell them to wait
| until later and then give bad news).
| rwmj wrote:
| Their endowment is $40 billion and they have 22,000 students
| (both figures from Google). That's about $2m per student, which
| is surely enough to offer free tuition to all undergrads from a
| small fraction of the interest payments?
| takeda wrote:
| > FWIW, I personally think distance learning is underrated,
| although I have been doing it for years so I've had time to
| become accustomed to it. I can understand why some students
| (including my wife) do not like it, and may never like it.
|
| When I was a student after first time I took I immediately did
| not like it. Online courses should instead be called "study
| yourself" courses, because that's what they really are. In many
| cases teacher uses services where s/he doesn't even grade
| submissions. Why teacher is even needed, in fact why paying for
| the tuition, you could get almost the same experience by just
| purchasing a book and studying on your own.
|
| The online classes could be a better experience if teachers
| would have to actually teach.
| m0zg wrote:
| In a way, distance learning is a much more valuable skill
| though. Young people have this illusion that they go to college
| and in 4 years be "done" with learning. In STEM fields today
| that's simply not true. The learning doesn't end when you get a
| diploma, and college is just the beginning.
|
| Self-paced, asynchronous learning is where things are going to
| go, IMO. MOOCs aren't quite it, but they are a move in the
| right direction.
|
| Also from the page:
|
| > Tuition will remain as announced for the 2020-21 academic
| year.
|
| LOL. $50K/yr for a glorified MOOC.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I cannot comment fully on remote learning - I haven't done it
| in a way that is "forced", in other words, being held to
| account by studying and taking exams and having remote sessions
| with TAs, etc. I am having a hard enough time focusing on
| remote work, and I am being held to account daily.
|
| Also recall that the University is, among many other things, a
| social and growing experience that provides expansion of the
| mind, a new location to experience the world away from home,
| and an opportunity to build social networks and connections for
| friends and work. It _also_ fulfills the mission, hopefully, of
| a well rounded education in civics, arts and sciences, and your
| field of expertise.
|
| I therefore understand the drive to do as much as possible to
| provide some of that, and it is telling they give Freshmen and
| Seniors the priority (to experience campus life, and to say
| goodbye and push through, respectively).
|
| We hope this will only last until mid 2021. Philosophers and
| leaders need to be thinking about what the world may need to
| look like when this happens to us again.
| brentis wrote:
| Exactly what I've said. Top 10 schools have tons of untapped
| brand equity they can unleash for 30% of on prem education. Get
| a premier remote education for $20k/yr or get state school with
| risk of Covid for $27k+....
| owenshen24 wrote:
| My friend who goes to USC says that this sort of bait-and-
| switch happened, with them updating their plans very close to
| the deadline when people had to make housing decisions.
| e40 wrote:
| _My understanding is a lot of universities are playing bait-
| and-switch, announcing unrealistic plans to reopen in the Fall
| in order to get deposits /tuition_
|
| Yes, they are. You nailed this. UCSD forced my son to choose
| classes at the beginning of June, with the selection being in
| two piles: in-person and remote. He called their bluff and
| chose remote.
|
| I will say that UCSD had really crappy online classes,
| according to my son's experience. He didn't like it at all. I
| think he would prefer well-run remote classes, but many of the
| professors were just terrible at it.
| noddingham wrote:
| I'm not sure your anecdote matches the reality that for
| traditional college-aged students, remote/online/distance
| learning yields a poorer result. There's a lot of maturity that
| has to exist prior to enrolling in online courses that the
| majority of traditional students don't yet possess. [1][2][3]
|
| Calling plans to reopen 'bait-and-switch' is a bit unfair. I
| sincerely hope you don't think campus administrators are
| sitting in backrooms with dollar signs in their eyes thinking
| about 'pulling one over' on all these students and their
| families.
|
| [1] https://www.brookings.edu/research/who-should-take-online-
| co... [2]https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/03/23/how-
| effective-... [3] https://www.al.com/news/2020/07/tuscaloosa-
| students-held-par...
| colechristensen wrote:
| There are also many many soft skills and experiences you get
| at a proper university which you aren't going to get through
| zoom.
|
| In fact, it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that the
| things you learn out of books and are tested on are secondary
| to everything else you learn and experience at university.
| ghaff wrote:
| Basically, schools and school systems (and students/parents)
| at almost all levels of education are being forced to make
| decisions between alternatives that are mostly pretty crappy
| across multiple dimensions, won't be easy to pull back once
| they get moving, in conditions of extreme uncertainty.
|
| If financially viable to do so, I likely would not enter
| college as a freshman this year and I'd probably hesitate
| period unless I thought I could graduate after fall term.
|
| And wait until the debate about K-12 heats up.
| AgloeDreams wrote:
| It's Harvard. It doesn't matter how they accounted it, they
| have not changed the Tuition cost with this announcement so
| it's the same money and they are not hurting for students.
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| Many students would be much less willing to go to college if
| it was online only, and would instead take a gap year or do
| something else. If you can keep them hooked until after the
| tuition is billed and after the refund period expires, and
| then transition online, then you get that money which you
| would not otherwise get (now). This entire thing seems a bit
| like a conspiracy theory, but American universities are
| pretty greedy so idk. I've just accepted that I'm paying for
| the diploma so I personally won't mind if the classes are
| online for the same price - less time wasted in useless
| lectures, and I've already done much of the networking &
| connection building part of the experience in past years.
| thspimpolds wrote:
| The average student at Harvard doesn't pay even close to
| actual tuition, most of the endowment is earmarked for
| student aid.
|
| If I remember right, something like under 90k earned by the
| student's family, they pay nothing. I haven't worked there in
| 2 years, so the math is a bit fuzzy but the concepts are
| accurate.
| huac wrote:
| while most students do pay much less than sticker price,
| saying 'most of the endowment is earmarked for student aid'
| feels misleading. in fy2019 harvard spent $193M on student
| aid (https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy19_harva
| rd_fin...) -- compared to a $5.2B operating expense spend
| and a $41B endowment size.
| tylerhou wrote:
| Endowment paying operating expenses is essentially
| financial aid, because it's a cost that is not passed on
| to the students.
| brain5ide wrote:
| A conservative 3% of endowment would be the expendable
| return. So about 1.2B? Wouldn't be surprised if 193M is
| the largest distinct chunk of that.
| huac wrote:
| they have other operating income, e.g. tuition from
| everyone else, and are consistently doing capital raises.
| the single largest chunk of spending goes to employee
| wages (approx $2B); in fact, the $193M number is the
| smallest of all the line items in operating expenses.
|
| as another comment points out, some of the salary and
| wage spend could be considered part of 'financial aid.'
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > in fy2019 harvard spent $193M on student aid
|
| That is only undergraduate aid applied directly to
| tuition. Per Note 12 on page 43, "Total scholarships and
| other student awards" was $613,243k, of which $457,639K
| was in direct credits to expenses.
|
| That said, I don't know where the GP got the idea that
| most of the endowment is earmarked for financial aid. Per
| page 11, that earmark is specifically 19%.
| nwsm wrote:
| > From a strategic perspective, I can see universities like
| Harvard strengthening their brand by opening up more of their
| classes to the general public
|
| The most important part of Harvard's brand is the prestige of
| their exclusivity
| protomyth wrote:
| _My understanding is a lot of universities are playing bait-
| and-switch, announcing unrealistic plans to reopen in the Fall
| in order to get deposits /tuition, but secretly knowing they'll
| be 'forced' to move everything online again._
|
| I don't know about big universities, but we (a small TCU -
| Tribal Community College) do expect to open in the fall. The
| problem is going to be if we see a spike or get directions from
| the federal, state, or tribal governments late in summer.
|
| The second problem a lot of people don't talk about is if the
| institution is accredited for 100% online courses. We got an
| exception that allowed for the summer, but we would need it
| extended into Fall. Being an accredited institution doesn't
| automatically mean you can teach 100% online courses.
| goatherders wrote:
| Honest question: yesterday the US saw the most cases in a day
| since this started. If that doesnt constitute a spike then
| what does? Or is the planning more about anticipated levels 6
| weeks from now as compared to now.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Honest question: yesterday the US saw the most cases in a
| day since this started. If that doesnt constitute a spike
| then what does?
|
| A spike would be an isolated short-term jump, this is just
| continuous increase in cases.
|
| Of course, from a "should we open things" perspective,
| that's worse than a spike, not better.
| protomyth wrote:
| Those are national stats, and we are very rural. Plus, we
| have a whole set of problems that can make it worse if
| certain events happen. Add to that we've been under a
| travel ban for months which requires people to self
| quarantine at home for 14 days if they leave the state or
| go to certain cities. And yes, figuring out what is going
| to happen 6 weeks out is a problem.
| staplers wrote:
| At this point we have seen cases dramatically spike, yet
| deaths have not. I think if/when we see deaths start
| spiking, then the decision to force closures will start
| happening.
| latchkey wrote:
| Simpson's Paradox.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebEkn-BiW5k
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| The prevalence varies from state to state, and
| Massachusetts is doing pretty well, right now.
|
| https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-
| visualization/?chart=states...
|
| Presumably students coming from high-prevalence areas will
| be forced to quarantine for the first two weeks, and high-
| frequency testing and contact tracing will be mandatory. It
| might be manageable.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| What you say is true, but you can't directly compare the
| numbers of confirmed cases today to the numbers from 3
| months ago. We are currently testing 600-700k people each
| day. At the beginning of April we were only testing less
| than a quarter of that, around 125-150k people per day.
|
| There has certainly been community spread. But the average
| age of a confirmed case has also dropped enormously.
| nostromo wrote:
| More testing = more cases.
|
| Actual deaths are down and have been trending down for
| months.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/83sw5pd.png
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
|
| I have no idea why this isn't front page news.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Deaths are trending upwards, however, in Florida, Texas,
| Arizona, and all the other Southern hotspots.
|
| This is an example of Simpson's paradox. You're looking
| at the sum of two different timelines, the virus in the
| Northeast (deaths declining) and the South (rising, but
| slow).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox#/media/Fi
| le:...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/arizona-
| coronavi...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/florida-
| coronavi...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/texas-
| coronaviru...
| josephcsible wrote:
| Isn't Simpson's Paradox when something is true of both
| parts but not of the whole? Wouldn't that make it not
| apply if the death rate is falling in the Northeast but
| not in the South?
| nostromo wrote:
| Correct, this isn't Simpson's Paradox.
| zzleeper wrote:
| Because you are being misleading?
|
| 1) Avg age of infected is 36-37 now instead of 60+ as in
| April, so there is a lower death rate (plus, infections
| today will only translate into deaths in three weeks or
| so)
|
| 2) Test positivity rate is UP, so testing has gone up "a
| little" while cases have gone up a lot.
| nostromo wrote:
| This is bad analysis.
|
| It was impossible to get tested unless you were high-risk
| in April because there were so few tests. High-risk for
| Covid-19 means old.
|
| Now we have more tests than we know what to do with -- so
| the average age is of course going to trend lower.
|
| Also, test positivity is not up -- it's down:
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eb7_BMOU4AEdrLm?format=jpg&na
| me=...
| jcranmer wrote:
| By your own source, test positivity is up over the last 4
| weeks.
|
| > Now we have more tests than we know what to do with
|
| A coworker related about a month ago that when his wife,
| who works in a hospital and showed some symptoms of
| covid-19, asked to be tested, she was told that the
| nearest place with available tests was a 2.5 hour drive
| away.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| No. Stop spreading disinformation and inform yourself.
|
| It's pretty easy to compute normalized infection rates
| for populations based on samples of data, which haven't
| changed materially with the testing ramp up.
|
| Additionally, antibody testing allows for an assessment
| of past infection rates at a community level.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| And yet, test positivity goes up? That makes no sense.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Younger people aren't locked down and are more likely to
| be social ATM. Since they are more likely to carry
| without showing symptoms, test positivity going up makes
| some sense, it is plausible at least.
| jlangemeier wrote:
| You're completely skipping over the positivity rate; many
| countries are testing a heck of a lot more than the US
| is; and they're showing positivity rates in the 1-5%
| range.
|
| If your hypothesis is correct, and infection rate is
| going up just because of more testing, then we should be
| pacing with other countries that are also testing more.
| We're seeing positivity rates of almost 25% in Arizona
| and 19% in Florida and Texas; which way out strips
| countries that have this more under control. At that rate
| of 15% or more, how many people are being missed (or are
| you also assuming we're catching 100% of all cases)? The
| more likely interpretation of the data is that not only
| are we testing more, but there are more cases; which fits
| with the overall data trend of BOTH more tests AND more
| infections.
|
| I'm going to nip your goalpost moving in the bud here -
| since I'm sure you'll come back with "yeah, but deaths
| are going down."
|
| Just because mortality has been going down doesn't mean
| that it isn't affecting the younger group and they're
| just magically recovering back to baseline. There's good
| evidence that there are lasting lung and immune response
| issues post "recovery" if it doesn't kill you. Further,
| deaths are a lagging indicator, and unfortunately what
| timeframe on that is unknown now because the age group is
| skewing younger and a large portion of our dataset is
| skewed towards the 65+ group due to how the initial wave
| of the disease spread.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >>More testing = more cases.
|
| Please for the love of god stop repeating this extremely
| misleading claim. The increase in new cases cannot simply
| be explained by the increase in testing.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/22/no-
| more-te...
|
| >> Deaths, which happen regardless of how many tests you
| run, are down and have been trending down for months.
|
| Deaths are a lagging indicator. Cases started to spike
| recently. Deaths will start to increase soon, especially
| when ICUs fill up and non-covid patients can no longer be
| treated in intensive care either.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Doesn't this indicate that the information we used in
| weeks and months past to open up and make decisions about
| the fall was flawed, since we may not have understood the
| full severity of the infection rate?
|
| I'm glad that death rates are down, but unless
| universities completely waive all attendance policies
| (and adjust grading systems accordingly) infections can't
| be ignored. Additionally, not dying doesn't mean a quick
| infection: there are long-term effects.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Not really. We've known the cases were much more
| widespread for months now from anti-body testing. Some
| estimates are 10-20x higher. CDC now quotes an infection-
| fatality-rate (IFR) of 0.3%, or about 3x the flu.
|
| Initially the lockdown was enabled to flatten a curve of
| a disease we had little information about. Months later,
| we have lots more info about it. Treatments are better.
| Flattening the curve won't change the area under the
| curve, and the majority of the US did not sign up to
| lockdown until a vaccine was released.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| "Treatments are better" very much means the area under
| the serious illness/death curve is smaller.
|
| And deaths are a lagging indicator. It takes up to two
| weeks, median around one week to show symptoms, and then
| another two weeks, median a week and a half or so, to
| become seriously ill.
|
| The outcome after that depends on predisposition and
| quality of care. But one developer I know spent forty
| days on a ventilator.
|
| So if lockdown isn't being observed and masks aren't
| being worn, it's going to take 4-6 weeks for that to
| start significantly increasing deaths.
|
| There are rumours in the UK of another national lockdown
| in September/October, but I suspect local lockdowns will
| become a thing long before then.
| bdcravens wrote:
| > the majority of the US did not sign up to lockdown
| until a vaccine was released
|
| False dichotomy. Responsible mask-wearing allows many
| (admittedly not all) areas of society and the economy to
| function without a full lockdown.
| ykevinator wrote:
| Maybe a few months ago but not anymore
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's not "front page" news because it is inaccurate.
|
| Deaths have declined for various reasons, including
| improved treatment (rolling patients and avoiding
| ventilators). Also we have not had the overwhelming of
| hospitals that took place in NYC and Italy repeat yet.
| Between the protests and people cutting loose over the
| holidays, I certainly hope we don't see a repeat of that.
| adjkant wrote:
| For what its worth, NYC had large protests through all of
| June and saw no spike. Mask usage was also high through
| them + regular use of hand sanitizer (handed out by
| organizers in some cases). It would appear that spikes
| are a function of either indoor activity or large crowds
| without masks.
| Spellman wrote:
| Because the number of positive cases is rising faster
| than the increase in testing.
|
| Also, make sure to split out the data per state/region.
| The decline from NYC for example made up a huge amount of
| the decline. Otherwise you run into Simpson's Paradox.
|
| Miles Beckett did a decent Twitter thread on the topic:
| https://twitter.com/mbeckett/status/1278750652160634880
| sgustard wrote:
| More young people going out = more cases. Those people
| infecting their parents and grandparents may lead to more
| deaths in due time.
|
| And it has been news.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/health/coronavirus-
| mortal...
| nostromo wrote:
| "just wait two weeks!"
|
| People have been saying this for months now, and it
| hasn't been true at any point. Daily deaths have been
| falling as cases rise.
| freehunter wrote:
| That's a particular challenge with this virus: it takes a
| long time between being exposed and actually suffering
| from the disease. Which makes it really easy to dismiss
| the impact because the side saying "it's a big deal" has
| to wait two weeks or more while the side saying "it's not
| a big deal" gets to claim victory for two weeks before
| being proved right or wrong.
|
| The fact is we don't know a lot about how this virus
| operates or why it does what it does. What we do know is
| that there are fates much worse than death that come from
| this disease (reduced lung/heart/organ function, long
| hospital stays with very expensive bills at the end,
| etc). We know it spreads quickly and we know it's
| spreading uncontrolled right now. We know at least
| 130,000 people in the US have died and many more will be
| permanently injured. We know the countries who handled
| the response right, because they are opening back up. We
| know the countries who handled it poorly because their
| cases are still going up.
|
| All of the things we don't know are problems and we need
| to keep learning. All the things we DO know tell us this
| is bad and it's going to get worse before it gets better
| unless people start taking it seriously. Unfortunately
| many people are taking the opposite approach and claiming
| victory based on the unknown factors we still don't know
| answers to.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| As far as I can tell, nothing you wrote addressed the
| post you responded to.
|
| The claim was that deaths having been going down. They
| have for 90 days. We know that deaths lag diagnosis by
| 7-14 days.
|
| The out of control growth "side" has lost it's
| credibility.
|
| >All the things we DO know tell us this is bad and it's
| going to get worse before it gets better unless people
| start taking it seriously.
|
| Deaths is the most accurate data we have and it shows us
| things have been continuously getting better for 90 days.
| Of course we are not out of the woods, and should
| continue to implement reasonable controls.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| They will continue to say "just wait two weeks!" two
| weeks from now.
| vxNsr wrote:
| > _yesterday the US saw the most cases in a day since this
| started._
|
| More positive tested cases.
|
| They also tested more people yesterday alone than they did
| in any given week in April(the previous spike) while seeing
| a similar number of cases. The truth that no one wanted to
| talk about 2 months ago is that we can't reopen fully until
| we get a vaccine or natural herd immunity. a vaccine is
| likely still 6-10 months off from mass production, so if we
| wanna open up normally in anyway we need to go for natural
| herd immunity.
|
| Or we can just stay 50% open, that works for countries
| where people respect the government (like most of the EU)
| but here in the US everyone thinks they know better, so
| there's no way to to enforce something like that.
| efdee wrote:
| It hasn't been shown yet that achieving natural herd
| immunity is even an option. Even in countries where they
| have been very lax on measures there hasn't been enough
| build-up for HI and it also seems that the antibodies go
| away quite quickly.
| ggreer wrote:
| Herd immunity would require that over half of the
| population get the disease.[1] (Probably closer to 70%
| based on the virus's R0.) With an IFR of 0.5%, that would
| mean around 0.25-0.35% of the population has to die
| before we get herd immunity. No country has come close to
| that many deaths yet, so we shouldn't expect any of them
| to have herd immunity.
|
| 1. See figure 2 in this paper for a graph of the
| relationship between R0 and herd immunity thresholds:
| https://academic.oup.com/cid/article-
| pdf/52/7/911/847338/cir...
| ShroudedNight wrote:
| > Herd immunity would require that over half of the
| population get the disease.
|
| Doesn't this also assume that those people remain
| inoculated to further viral infections after being
| infected the first time? From my limited understanding,
| that is not a given for SARS-CoV-2.
| ggreer wrote:
| Correct. This is an optimistic scenario for herd
| immunity. It assumes low mortality (probably true), no
| permanent damage to those who survive (unclear, but
| probably untrue), and immunity lasting a couple years
| (long enough to remain immune until a vaccine is
| available).
| briandear wrote:
| > a vaccine is likely still 6-10 months off from mass
| production
|
| What vaccine?
| akiselev wrote:
| The new cases aren't evenly distributed. California just
| saw over 11,800 new cases yesterday but New York saw a few
| over 500 new cases - despite having a record of 11,400 in
| one day at its peak two months ago. Some regions have it
| under control and can begin to reopen slowly.
|
| However, I think it's pretty clear that those regions have
| it under control only because they've shut almost
| everything down. The second schools begin reopening and
| pupils start criss crossing the country, it'll bring the
| "second wave."
| vondur wrote:
| Well, from what I read here in Orange County CA, the
| state forced the county to count people who have tested
| positive with Antibody tests to now be counted as a
| positive COVID-19 test, even if the tests were done long
| ago.
| akiselev wrote:
| You should check your sources [1]. Every single time
| someone has claimed that a federal or state government
| has "forced" someone to inflate COVID numbers, it's been
| blatant nonsense.
|
| [1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-02/e
| rror-le...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Not calling GP out specifically, but generally asking
| someone hell-bent on re-opening to check their sources or
| facts is pointless. They will just go out and find
| another rationalization. This isn't just about this
| school--it's happening all across (at least) the USA. We
| should be coming up with objective, measurable milestones
| that support re-opening, tracking towards them, reviewing
| periodically and then making a decision to re-open based
| on whether the criteria were met.
|
| Instead, people are simply starting with a foregone
| conclusion of "We must re-open!" and fishing for any
| nugget that might justify this pre-ordained decision. So
| far in this thread we've already seen:
|
| 1. The cases are not uniformly distributed, therefore
| it's OK to re-open in areas that currently seem good!
| [many variants of this one]
|
| 2. Cases are spiking but deaths are not up, we should
| ignore the non-fatal consequences of the disease and re-
| open!
|
| 3. Cases only look like they are up because testing is
| up, therefore the numbers are in question, so re-open!
|
| 4. Governments are conspiring to inflate case numbers,
| therefore the numbers are in question, so re-open!
|
| We are already starting to see the disastrous effects of
| prematurely re-opening, but the public just won't accept
| any story that doesn't end with "...and we re-opened
| everything as soon as we could!"
| khuey wrote:
| Part of calling this stuff out is to not let bad
| arguments (or outright disinformation) go unchallenged to
| people who are just reading along and haven't formed an
| opinion yet.
| Zach_the_Lizard wrote:
| NYC had a 20% antibody rate back in April; the disease
| being under control in NYC may be due to having built up
| some level of immunity and (sadly) having the vulnerable
| population die off.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > NYC had a 20% antibody rate back in April
|
| NYC had a 20% antibody rate in a sample of people who
| were out shopping and consented to giving their blood for
| the study. That is enough potential sources of bias that
| assuming the general population had a 20% antibody rate
| strains credibility.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| I don't know how this misinformation started spreading
| but I'm pretty sure 20% is nowhere near enough for herd
| immunity and I have not seen anything authoritative to
| the contrary. Barring something compelling to the
| contrary I see no reason to believe that the disease
| couldn't spike in NYC again.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The herd immunity threshold is relative to behavior and
| transmission opportunities.
| adtechperson wrote:
| There is no compelling evidence proving that the disease
| cannot spike in NYC.
|
| There are small hints that it MIGHT not be possible. The
| antibody tests measured the infection rate around April
| 15 or so, the number should be higher now. Second, there
| is some evidence that a percentage of people don't
| develop antibodies (only T cells) but are immune.
| Finally, we don't really know what is required for herd
| immunity.
|
| None of this is to say you are wrong, just why it MIGHT
| be possible that NYC cannot have a second spike.
|
| (herd immunity question):
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-tricky-math-of-
| covid-19-h...
|
| (T cells and immunity) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10
| .1101/2020.06.29.174888v1
|
| (peer reviewed article on NYC antibody testing). https://
| www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104727972...
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Yesterday (and the day prior) had the lowest corona deaths
| since late March.
| jerf wrote:
| The media isn't inclined to pitch it this way ("DOOM!
| GLOOM! FIRE IN THE SKY! News at 11!"), but technically,
| the ideal outcome is essentially everybody has already
| had it and deaths (and serious hospitalizations) are at
| zero.
|
| Remember "flatten the curve"? It's not "eliminate the
| curve". We're pretty much all going to be exposed to it
| at some point. Lots of people testing positive without
| ever having had to go to the hospital or even having been
| aware they had it is a _good thing_ , not a reason to go
| shutting everything down again. It means the crisis is
| nearly over, not the worst it's ever been.
|
| After all, consider what that would imply; for all
| infectious diseases, the level of crisis starts low, then
| monotonically goes up and never goes back down? Clearly
| that does not describe the real world we see, which is
| not still in crisis over the Spanish Flu, Black Death,
| and every other plague ever. The level of crisis can't be
| solely a function of the number of people testing as
| positive.
|
| Hospitalizations and deaths are the bad numbers, not
| number of positives.
| ericb wrote:
| > Hospitalizations and deaths are the bad numbers, not
| number of positives.
|
| Sort of, but the fact that "deaths are lower" is likely a
| cohort problem.
|
| Let's say I am looking at the bread in my cupboard and
| trying to figure out what percent goes moldy. I've got
| one moldy loaf, and I buy 9 fresh new ones. Boom, current
| moldy-rate is 10% what a relief, looks like mold is less
| of a problem than I thought--only 10% of bread goes
| moldy! Looks like the previous estimates of mold-rate
| were misleading.
|
| If a vaccine is forthcoming, it is not at all inevitable
| that we will all be exposed to it.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| I don't understand what "deaths are lower is a cohort
| problem." What cohort? We've known for months that -
| corona is not dangerous for people under 85 except with
| pre-existing conditions - corona is widespread, 10-20x
| higher than reported cases - infection-fatality-rate
| ~0.5%
|
| It's harder to fudge death numbers compared to case
| numbers.
| ericb wrote:
| That's not the cohort I'm talking about--I'm not talking
| about age based cohorts.
|
| The cohort I'm talking about is the number of days since
| a positive test result. When you have many new cases
| (loaves of fresh bread) and you use simple math,
| bread/moldy you get the wrong idea about death rate.
| Click-baity articles, and those with motivated reasoning
| for "it's just a flu" get breathlessly excited about this
| as if it were some sort of useful data. See ops assertion
| that the level of crisis "is independent of the number of
| people who test positive" for an example of what I mean.
|
| People testing positive _is_ a leading indicator for the
| size of the crisis.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| The beginning of the increase in positive cases happened
| 4 weeks ago. We should have already seen leading
| indicators of deaths.
| roywiggins wrote:
| COVID hospitalizations in Texas Medical Center are at 350
| and rising. https://www.tmc.edu/coronavirus-updates/tmc-
| daily-new-covid-...
|
| In NYC, there were 358 hospitalizations on 3/17, at 8
| deaths. On 3/31, there were 383 deaths.
| https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page
|
| Deaths in Texas have been trending upwards since June.
| https://www.us-covid-
| tracker.com/?field=newDeaths&state=Texa...
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Many Asian countries as well as Europe have managed to
| get cases down to levels where it's entirely within reach
| to completely eliminate the virus. And they did so with
| less disruption and costs than the US.
|
| Except for high-risk activities such as nightclubs, life
| has mostly returned to normal. In the US, however, retail
| sales (as just one indicator) are stagnant at 50% of
| previous levels. Economic activity will be far from
| normal until people feel safe again.
|
| As to hospitalisations and deaths: hospitals in Arizona,
| Nevada, Florida, and Texas are quickly filling up and/or
| full already.
| latchkey wrote:
| Vietnam has 100% control over the virus. No new
| infections in 80+ days. No deaths, at all.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Hospitals are filling up because hospitals are opening
| and allowing work / surgeries to be scheduled and done
| again.
| roywiggins wrote:
| COVID hospitalizations in Texas Medical Center are at 350
| per day and rising sharply.
|
| https://www.tmc.edu/coronavirus-updates/tmc-daily-new-
| covid-...
| jerf wrote:
| You seem to be arguing with someone claiming the virus
| isn't a bad thing, not me. None of that is relevant to my
| point.
| surfmike wrote:
| Their point was that Asian countries are more in the
| "eliminate the curve" camp that you are arguing against,
| and that they are doing much better economically and
| health wise as a result.
| tomp wrote:
| > Many Asian countries as well as Europe have managed to
| get cases down to levels where it's entirely within reach
| to completely eliminate the virus
|
| I can't speak for Asian countries, but as far as Central
| Europe, e.g. in Slovenia, cases are spiking again (most
| positives since April - the point about low deaths from
| GP still stands but deaths used to follow positives with
| a delay)... probably precipitated by tourism & economy-
| driven reopening of borders and relaxation of most
| counter-measures (opening restaurants, etc. as well as
| unofficial parties & gatherings).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| >>The media isn't inclined to pitch it this way ("DOOM!
| GLOOM! FIRE IN THE SKY! News at 11!"), but technically,
| the ideal outcome is essentially everybody has already
| had it and deaths (and serious hospitalizations) are at
| zero.
|
| That's literally the worst case endgame, where everyone
| vulnerable has received the full brunt of the disease
| lessened only by medical care.
|
| The _ideal_ outcome is that the spread is minimized by a
| mix of general and targeted social distancing and
| containment measures until a vaccine, effective
| treatment, or both are deployed widely enough to
| eradicate the disease.
| anoncake wrote:
| Quite a lot of people do want to eliminate the curve
| until we've produced and deployed billions of doses of
| the vaccine we don't have.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| The majority don't, though. The country did not sign up
| for a quarantine until vaccine was released, if ever.
| People are free to quarantine until vaccines are out, but
| please don't force this oppression on everyone else.
| freehunter wrote:
| Do you have numbers to back up the claim that the
| majority of people don't approve of the quarantine?
| Because the numbers I have shows 74% of Americans approve
| of the quarantine: https://thehill.com/changing-
| america/well-being/prevention-c...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That is not what the poster said at all.
| freehunter wrote:
| Can you or they explain to me what was meant then,
| because I've read the two comments over and over and the
| only conclusion I can reach is exactly what I replied
| with.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >The country did not sign up for a quarantine _until
| vaccine was released_
|
| Approval of quarantine until vaccine was released =/=
| approval of social distancing in any form.
|
| The poster claimed that most people are not in support of
| quarantine until vaccine, not that they oppose any
| quarantine.
|
| The poll you linked did not ask about quarantining until
| the vaccine was available. In fact, 50% of the poll
| respondents expected social distancing to last no longer
| than 2 months. Note the poll was taken in March.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| How many more people would additive if they received the
| kind of financial aid that companies are receiving? For
| example, even a freeze on rents would probably
| significantly reduce the number of people who are
| desperate for work at the moment.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| And what will happen when these people get infected a
| second or a third time? Will they still be symptom less,
| or are they likely to start gassing problems?
| Unfortunately, we don't know yet. That's why we need to
| err on the side of caution.
|
| Please remember that we still know little about this
| virus, about long term effects, about how long immunity
| lasts, about the risk of auto-immune responses etc.
|
| It's never, ever a good idea to let a new disease spread
| along the population of you can help it at all.
| jerf wrote:
| To you, and some other repliers, I suggest reading this
| carefully again: "but technically, the ideal outcome is
| essentially everybody has already had it _and deaths (and
| serious hospitalizations) are at zero_. "
|
| If the long term effects put a lot of people in the
| hospital, than that would not be the ideal outcome. You
| can't just drop clauses out of my definition of "ideal"
| then turn around and tell me about how that's not ideal.
| I agree, actually! Something other than the ideal I
| described would in fact be less than ideal!
|
| The point remains; on its own merits, the _ideal_ would
| be that it turns out everybody 's already had it, because
| that would prove that the currently-known negative impact
| is also the total final negative impact. Since the total
| known negative impact is basically a given and can't go
| down and is thus a minimum, finding out that's also a
| _maximum_ would be _good news_. On the whole, _more_
| people having been exposed _without hospitalization or
| even awareness_ is _good_ news. Maybe earlier in the
| cycle that wouldn 't be the case, but with where we are
| now, it is.
|
| At least, for _this_ pandemic, for a disease that happens
| to affect a small set of people badly but, to all
| evidence, most people not at all. In terms of weathering
| a pandemic in which it was actually bad news for a
| majority of people, this has been a rather disheartening
| experience. That 's a problem for another day, though.
|
| (Which is not a synonym for "not a problem at all". But
| it's a problem for another day. Trying to solve COVID-19
| with measures appropriate for EvenMoreBubonic-2022 is not
| a win.)
| claudeganon wrote:
| Deaths are a lagging indicator. 2-4 weeks behind case
| counts.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| I'm not sure why a child-comment got killed: >>> Not
| true. Deaths only lag cases by 5-10 days. For example, in
| Italy daily new cases peaked on March 21st and daily
| deaths peaked on March 27th.
|
| This is correct. People are expecting a step function of
| deaths exactly 4 weeks from the peak of cases? This is
| not statistical. Peak of deaths lag peak of cases closer
| to 1-5 days. If case growth is a matter of true rise of
| infections we would see modest increase of deaths about
| 2-3 weeks ago (cases started growing 4 weeks ago). We've
| only seen deaths drop on a exponential decay trend.
| kube-system wrote:
| Isn't it plausible this could be affected by other the
| changes in infection demographics, testing capability,
| and treatment options we've seen since then?
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Yes, it's related to all those things including the
| never-talked-about problem that the lockdown is
| ineffective at suppressing the inevitable spread of
| corona
| eanzenberg wrote:
| Cases started increasing above norm 4 weeks ago.
| karlakush wrote:
| Not true. Deaths only lag cases by 5-10 days. For
| example, in Italy daily new cases peaked on March 21st
| and daily deaths peaked on March 27th.
| elihu wrote:
| Doesn't that depend a great deal on testing capability?
| If testing is quick and widely available, then I'd expect
| the lag to be larger as people get diagnosed earlier.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Exactly. It takes 3-14 days for symptoms to appear and
| 10-14 for happy path resolution.
|
| The big protests were about two weeks ago. Hence the
| spoke. The holiday just passed. So two weeks from now
| you'll see a big wave of deaths and increasing caseloads.
|
| If we are fortunate, the hospitals in the south will keep
| up with the surges in caseload and limited beds. If not,
| you'll have the freezer trailers with stacked corpses
| like you saw in Queens.
| CivBase wrote:
| Honest question: if there is really an increase in cases
| across the US, shouldn't we see an increase in positive
| test result rates (# confirmed / # tested)?
|
| The positive test result rate continues to decrease across
| the United States, albeit more slowly as of late.
|
| I really do mean this as an honest question.
| hansvm wrote:
| Not necessarily.
|
| (1) It's important to make sure the numbers you're using
| are directly comparable -- e.g., if #confirmed is the
| count of unique individuals who are confirmed to have the
| virus and #tested is the number of tests administered
| rather than the number of people who have been tested
| then you won't get the expected results.
|
| (2) There can be confounding variables like choosing to
| test people with milder symptoms.
|
| (3) False positive/negative rates can be a factor (though
| they shouldn't be in a halfway decent test). If your
| false negative rate is x and your false positive rate is
| greater than 1-x then your positive test result rate will
| fall as your true positive rate rises.
|
| (4) Etc. The problem is that the numbers you're measuring
| (reported test results) aren't the numbers you care about
| (true infection rates). They might align, and they will
| mostly align with good tests and unbiased data that are
| correctly and honestly reported, but they don't have to.
|
| Caveat: I haven't been closely following covid news and
| have no idea how much any of those potential
| discrepancies might apply IRL.
| jfim wrote:
| It varies by state, see for example
| https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-cases-testing-
| growth-62d62...
|
| Looking at only the US numbers hides some of the picture.
| For example, there's this chart from about a month ago
| showing that only looking at US numbers without breaking
| them down can be misleading: https://www.axios.com/us-
| coronavirus-new-cases-second-wave-n...
| vkou wrote:
| > The problem is going to be if we see a spike or get
| directions from the federal, state, or tribal governments
| late in summer.
|
| The US is well into a second wave of infections, which is
| dwarfing the first wave. The US is stuck between state
| governments making noises about lockdown fatigue (When the
| first lockdown wasn't even implemented correctly) and a
| federal government that is doing absolutely nothing.
|
| I do not foresee a future where things are going to look any
| better in September.
| formercoder wrote:
| Why would opening up Harvard's instruction to more of the
| genera public help their brand? They operate on a scarcity
| basis.
| asdff wrote:
| Because it's Harvard's network and not the lectures that make
| the brand.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Without being on campus and making friends / contacts with
| these people how is the brand useful?
|
| "Oh man that looks like dilhead3112 from my M&A, I thought
| e worked here and that is definitely their green poomoji
| face, we should go talk to him! Probbably saved this
| company!"
|
| But seriously if their brand is networking, having a tight
| well filtered network I think would be a lot better for
| them. And if no one meets in person isn't that also bad for
| their brand? Everyone essentially becomes 2nd contacts (via
| harvard) on linked in.
| asdff wrote:
| Campus will be back the year after.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Then what's the point of expanding to online beyond the
| capacity of their campus to support next year (beyond
| typical attrition)?
| ralmidani wrote:
| Harvard divides its credentials into "tiers", if you will.
| There are students who go through the competitive admissions
| process, and there's the Extension School which is basically
| open enrollment, even if you want to take courses for-credit.
| You only have to apply if you want to pursue a full Bachelors
| or Masters, and even then you're given the chance to prove
| yourself by doing good in a handful of courses.
|
| I personally never thought I could experience Harvard before
| I found out that CS50 (and tons of other CS courses) could be
| taken for-credit and even lead to a degree.
|
| Harvard also has online-only, non-credit programs like
| Harvard Business Online (formerly HBX) and HMX (Medical
| courses).
|
| Harvard can, and does, strengthen its brand by opening itself
| to the public. There's a huge spectrum between being a
| totally-closed institution and being completely open
| enrollment.
| SillaDeRuedas wrote:
| Just offer free tuition like in Europe and everything will be
| just fine.
| justinmeiners wrote:
| You pay a larger percentage of income tax your entire life
| for this "free" benefit. You could argue the costs and
| outcomes are better, but it's not free. In addition Harvard
| is a private institution and not a government school.
| mmm_grayons wrote:
| Opening up to a larger group of students will weaken Harvard's
| brand. Many of these top institutions are valuable because
| rich, well-connected people go there, so going there allows one
| to meet them. There are companies where it is an unspoken rule
| that they hire only from Harvard, law offices that recruit only
| from Yale, etc.
| ralmidani wrote:
| I doubt "Harvard-only" companies and "Yale-only" law firms of
| any considerable size exist. Sure, 3 Harvard friends might
| start a company, or 4 Yale lawyers may start a firm, but
| eventually they will have to venture outside their bubble. If
| you have evidence of an organization with, say, 35+ employees
| maintaining that kind of exclusivity, please post a link.
| nickbauman wrote:
| Maybe "Harvard is different" but a friend went back to school
| (Metro State U in MN) a few years ago to get his comp sci
| undergrad after practicing for over a decade professionally.
| They were trying out online learning for full time students for
| many intro and secondary classes for the major, saving only the
| most "keystone" classes for live lectures held weekly.
|
| The key thing was they required the students to respond to
| three questions for each class for each of the five days of the
| work week and those were graded. He loved this and excelled at
| it. He didn't want to sit in a lecture hall. The vast majority
| of the undergrads hated this and often blew off the questions.
| Many of them failed. Some A students were getting Cs.
|
| There was a revolt, the students were angry and they decided to
| ditch the online learning and go back to traditional classes...
| mahaganapati wrote:
| I'm confused why there is still so much fear and abnormal life in
| the US when the US CDC says the mortality rate is miniscule, e.g.
| [1]. We're not completely back to normal yet in Vietnam, but a
| lot closer.
|
| [1] https://reason.com/2020/05/24/the-cdcs-new-best-estimate-
| imp...
| DanBC wrote:
| That number isn't something the CDC have said.
|
| The CDC report lists a number of planning scenarios.
|
| > Are estimates intended to support public health preparedness
| and planning.
|
| > Are not predictions of the expected effects of COVID-19.
|
| > Do not reflect the impact of any behavioral changes, social
| distancing, or other interventions.
|
| The number you're quoting is derived from (but not quoted in)
| one of the scenarios, which is described:
|
| > Scenario 5 represents a current best estimate about viral
| transmission and disease severity in the United States, with
| the same caveat: that the parameter values will change as more
| data become available.
| paxys wrote:
| 1. There isn't much trust in what the government is saying at
| the moment, especially since their communication is usually
| mismanaged, incorrect or contradictory. For example, some
| states have passed laws/orders blocking the public release of
| COVID data.
|
| 2. People are also afraid of simply getting COVID, not just
| dying from it. It has been shown to cause permanent health
| issues even in young people.
| hartator wrote:
| > It has been shown to cause permanent health issues even in
| young people.
|
| Can you point to a study showing that?
| brewdad wrote:
| You can use Google. It's not hard to find. As for true
| studies, there probably aren't any. We're talking about a
| virus that has only been known about for less than a year.
|
| The horrific death totals early on have completely skewed
| people's opinions of the severity of this disease. It's not
| a binary live/die, there are all kinds of other
| complications associated with it and too many people seem
| to think that spending 3 weeks in the ICU is no big deal
| because "hey, you survived".
| celticninja wrote:
| Not OP but a quick Google search found this. I have also
| read plenty of articles of a similar nature. It doesn't
| take much work to find a reputable source for this type of
| information.
|
| https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-
| diseas...
| djsumdog wrote:
| Nothing in this suggest any permanent damage
|
| > Even after the disease has passed, lung injury may
| result in breathing difficulties that might take months
| to improve.
|
| You know what that's called? Pneumonia! All pneumonias
| cause that type of injury and take months to recover
| from.
| celticninja wrote:
| Long term may be a better description than permanent. But
| we don't know and won't know for a while what long term
| complications are caused. Look at HIV, you get a cold and
| then nothing maybe for years, then everything falls to
| pieces. It may not be as severe as HIV and it may be more
| severe than pneumonia. Why do you want to take that risk
| when you can avoid it with some simple precautions? If it
| turns out that these aren't permanent then you can go and
| catch it next year, no need to rush in now is there.
| djsumdog wrote:
| It really has not at all. How can we show "permanent"
| issues for something less than half a year old? Anyone
| who's had pneumonia before knows it causes a lot of upfront
| damage. I had it back in University and it took a week
| before I could get out of bed and nearly a month before my
| lungs didn't feel like bricks. I was still coughing for 2~3
| months after.
|
| Today I am 100% recovered. Everything I've seen in the
| fear-mongering "permanent damage" news articles looks to be
| the same effects as any non-covid pneumonia. We won't KNOW
| if any of this is permanent until March 2021, but I think
| it's highly unlikely.
|
| But it's important to note, permanent damage is literally
| impossible to determine right now. Simply not enough time
| has passed.
| celticninja wrote:
| You can work it out if you read the article. It says the high
| infection/death rate estimates were based on no interventions
| and no change of behaviour i.e no voluntary social distancing
| and working from home. Looking at the reaction to the lockdown,
| from some sections of US society, it is pretty obvious that
| without the lockdowns enough people would have made no changes
| to their behaviour and would therefore contribute to higher
| infection levels and desths. Further, plenty of employers would
| not have allowed working from home and would have expected
| people to attend work or lose their jobs. So infected people,
| predominantly poorer people, would have had no choice but to
| work when ill and with the atrocious healthcare system would
| have been unable to access help even if they didn't have to
| work. So those huge numbers we saw estimates of at the
| beginning could easily have been achieved in the US, and
| possibly still could. Florida saw over 10k cases a day this
| week. This isn't tailing off or going away, it was slowed.
|
| Vietnam had a quick response to the problem, but it also
| doesn't have the same level of international travellers passing
| through it so it is easier to contain. The US could have
| contained it but that means shutting 150 airports, as opposed
| to Vietnams 3 airports.
|
| Vietnam gets about 45k visitors per day, in comparison the
| US/Mexico border crossing in California/Tijuana has 75k
| crossing per day. That's one border point and there is also the
| US/Canada border too.
|
| So it is in part because Vietnam handled the pandemic better
| than the USA, but that was also more easily achieved due to the
| size and complexity of each nation.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| American media is spreading fear in pursuit of views and
| clicks.
| hartator wrote:
| And a certain election coming up.
| mahaganapati wrote:
| Yes it seems so
| celticninja wrote:
| This is incredibly disingenuous comment mahaganapati. You
| have many responses to your initial statement, most of
| which explain why your simplistic comparison of Vietnam Vs
| USA is not valid, but you have replied to the one commenter
| who confirms your own opinion. I hope you read the other
| responses and understand why I am calling you out on this.
| mahaganapati wrote:
| When I made that comment there were not many other
| replies yet. However I still remain unconvinced that this
| is not just another product of American hype media.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| IFR isn't the whole story. There's evidence that it causes long
| lasting complications (lung damage, chronic fatigue) as well
| umanwizard wrote:
| Are there any good quantitative estimates of how common this
| is?
| barkerja wrote:
| We've had nearly 3 million cases with over 130k fatalities. If
| the numbers are being grossly underreported, then it's
| certainly possible the mortality rate is < 1%, but given the
| numbers we have now, our mortality rate is closer to 4.5%.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Both infections and deaths are undercounts, the former
| certainly by much more than the latter.
| djsumdog wrote:
| There are a lot of overcounts. People who die of gunshots
| are COVID-19 deaths if they test positive. A huge number of
| people have died from secondary effects: being unable to
| get essential heart surgery, suicide, some people have even
| died of Malaria because doctors assumed it was COVID and
| told them to not come in.
|
| I was wondering if we were undercounting too, but the more
| I look at the data, to more it's likely we're overcounting
| fatalities by a large amount.
| celticninja wrote:
| >People who die of gunshots are COVID-19 deaths if they
| test positive
|
| Citation needed, because that sounds like nonsense.
| nostromo wrote:
| And yet... it's true.
|
| https://www.freedomfoundation.com/washington/washington-
| heal...
|
| "Our (DOH COVID-19) dashboard numbers do include any
| deaths to a person that has tested positive to COVID-19."
|
| "We don't always know the cause of death for a death when
| it is first reported on our dashboard. That is true. Over
| the course of the outbreak, we have been monitoring and
| recording the causes of death as we know it. We currently
| do have some deaths that are being reported that are
| clearly from other causes. We have about five deaths --
| less than five deaths -- that we know of that are related
| to obvious other causes. In this case, they are from
| gunshot wounds."
| catalogia wrote:
| > _We have about five deaths -- less than five deaths --
| that we know of that are related to obvious other
| causes._
|
| That's a strange phrasing. Less than five? Did they
| forget the word "four"? Or is it three, two, or one? Why
| beat around the bush if they have a number?
|
| I get it for bigger numbers, if somebody refers to 997 of
| something as "about a thousand, less than a thousand", I
| get that. _" nine hundred ninety seven"_ is a mouthful.
| But _" about five, less than five"_? Give me a break.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| That section of the article is a quote of someone
| speaking. It could have been phrased more accurately, but
| reading that sentence as a quote of someone speaking it
| just sounds like they did not quite remember the exact
| number when they were asked the question, and their word-
| for-word response was written down.
| devalgo wrote:
| It's virtually certain that Covid deaths are undercounted
| in the US. Excess deaths are nearly 30% higher than
| expected. Belgium has used extremely strict counting for
| deaths, their per capita death numbers are likely the
| most accurate in the world and are ~2 times higher than
| the US' numbers.
|
| Your comment is either intentionally dishonest or ill
| informed. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalme
| dicine/fullar...
| [deleted]
| pphysch wrote:
| With that very dubious estimate, that's still over a million
| deaths and millions more occupied ICU beds if everyone in the
| US got infected (which we are trying hard to do, apparently).
| woeirua wrote:
| Even at 0.3% IFR you're still talking about ~700k total
| fatalities in the US alone, assuming 70% of the population
| needs to be infected to achieve "herd immunity" without a
| vaccine.
|
| It's premature for anyone, anywhere, to declare victory over
| the virus at this point because: 1 - there is a very high
| likelihood that we will have at least one more major global
| wave of the virus before we get an effective vaccine, 2 - we
| still do not know how effective said vaccine(s) will be, 3 -
| it's entirely possible that we will never get an effective
| vaccine (or it will arrive too late to mitigate most of the
| damage), at which point the only option will be to let the
| virus run its course.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > Even at 0.3% IFR you're still talking about ~700k total
| fatalities in the US alone
|
| Yes, there are a lot of people in the US, so even things with
| a very tiny chance of killing you will cause large numbers of
| deaths in absolute terms.
|
| On the other hand, to be fair, if you're considering absolute
| numbers of deaths, you _also_ have to consider absolute
| quantities of suffering from the lockdown. Take the
| probability of a person being thrust into poverty, or
| developing serious mental health problems, or just spending
| some of their precious time on earth unable to socialize
| normally... and multiply that by 300,000,000.
|
| There would be many ways of saving 700,000 or more lives that
| are much less invasive than the current lockdowns, like
| heavily restricting meat consumption or driving. However, we
| don't implement them because the per-capita increase in life
| expectancy is judged not to be worth the decrease in life
| quality.
| woeirua wrote:
| No one is denying that the lockdowns are having serious
| repercussions throughout all of society. There will
| definitely be many unintended deaths from other causes that
| would not otherwise have happened without Coronavirus.
|
| That said, you are just flat out wrong about how many
| people die in the US from driving and Coronary Heart
| Disease each year. Together, those two account for ~400k
| fatalities each year. In the best case scenario, Covid may
| cause almost double that number in less than 12 months. In
| the worst case scenario, it could be many times that
| number. Also, we need to keep in mind that while covid
| predominately kills the elderly, some younger people will
| still die from it. CHD pretty much _only_ kills the
| elderly.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I never said "per year". I am comparing the total
| lifetime impact of Covid on some cohort of people to the
| total lifetime impact of other ailments.
| mmm_grayons wrote:
| The elderly have a massive hold on the American political
| system that outweighs the fraction of the population they
| represent. They are typically consistent voters, and if you go
| to a polling place, it will likely be an elderly lady or
| gentleman running it. Given that they represent they vast
| majority of casualties, putting them at risk is a political
| non-starter, even if the most logical realpolitik solution.
| ratfaced-guy wrote:
| This has been my thought as well for some time now, but a lot
| of the most strident voices for "control it all costs" seem
| to be coming from the young (at least online), maybe it's
| different in real life?
| dharmab wrote:
| Severe COVID cases cause permanent disability, ranging from
| permanent respiratory disability to rendering the patient
| diabetic.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIJYfsOyO4M
| umanwizard wrote:
| Anecdotes exist, yes, but is there any data on what the
| probability of this happening is?
| dharmab wrote:
| The link in my comment has no fewer than 13 peer-reviewed
| sources for you to check out in the description pane.
| viklove wrote:
| But not to me, I'm impervious to any disability or death,
| therefore everyone else should just suck it up
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Abnormal does not even begin to describe it. At least on the
| West Coast. No one is doing anything, most people remain in
| their houses all day, every day. The few people I see out are
| simply buying groceries or going for a walk.
|
| A lot of bars and restaurants where I live have SELF ELECTED to
| re-close even after the county allowed them to open back up
| under very strict regulations.
|
| It's a nightmare. There's really no other way to describe it.
| Either the West Coast is entirely different from the East Coast
| or we haven't even begun to realize the economic impact this
| situation is going to bring. Anything short of a complete
| collapse will be a miracle.
| mrlala wrote:
| (1) Why are you ONLY looking at the fatality rate?
|
| I don't have all the links here, but just because you don't die
| doesn't mean there aren't other serious consequences
| (especially for people with existing conditions). People are
| losing their taste/smell etc. There's a lot of unknowns but it
| doesn't seem like it's that benign. You are treating it as
| binary either you live or die.. seems like it's more
| complicated than that.
|
| (2) A fatality rate of 0.3% to 0.4% might not seem to bad, but
| you can't look at that alone. The contagion rate is HUGE
| compared to other viruses. So while the rate alone might not
| seem terribly bad, the fact is that with how contagious it is
| the vast majority of the population will/would have ended up
| getting it if proper precautions are not taken.
| djsumdog wrote:
| Because the case rates are almost entirely worthless. They're
| combining PCR AND antibody tests into the case rates!
|
| A lot of people who are finally able to get elective
| procedures (some which are critical health procedures) are
| getting tests because everyone is required to now when you go
| into some hospitals. If they test positive for antibodies,
| they're counted AS A NEW CASE!
|
| That's insane! They may have had it at one time and never
| even realized it. Even now, the fatality rate is 0.001% for
| all Americans and it's much lower if you're under 40.
|
| This is absolutely, 100%, mass-hysteria.
|
| Let us look at the numbers and decide our own risks!
|
| Go to the beaches of Indiana or Florida or Texas. 1000s of
| people have been out there every week for over a month, and
| there are no massive increases in fatalities. The Texas
| numbers are skewed because people are coming in for normal
| accidents, happen to be CoV2 positive, and then suddenly
| someone in a car wreck in an ICU is now a Covid19 case as
| part of the "Second wave" bullshit.
| mrlala wrote:
| Ok I guess just ignore what I said and spout off random
| stuff.. great response.
|
| >Even now, the fatality rate is 0.001% for all Americans
| and it's much lower if you're under 40.
|
| Uh, 0.001%? Are you dividing like deaths by the full
| population? Not sure what you are trying to infer from
| that. Maybe if the country had done _nothing_ in response
| then looking at the death rate like that after a long time
| makes some sense.. but that 's not the case.
|
| Think about it this way. Let's say there is a virus with
| 100% death rate. It starts killing people, but then we are
| able to quarantine the people that have it and stop the
| infection. You would be like.. omg the death rate is only 3
| / 330,000,000 it's sooooo low!
|
| Well no, it's because we stopped the outbreak early. Are
| you going to sit here and tell me that locking down a lot
| of the country for months did nothing to vastly reduce the
| death rate, and you are going to act like lockdown
| deathrate = death rate of doing nothing?
|
| >Go to the beaches of Indiana or Florida or Texas. 1000s of
| people have been out there every week for over a month, and
| there are no massive increases in fatalities
|
| It's a beach. Outside. People are not packed right next to
| each other. It's windy. People bring their own things, they
| aren't going around constantly touching things other people
| are, etc. A beach is probably one of the sanest things you
| can do right now.
|
| Have you noticed that since things like bars have opened up
| now cases are rising like crazy in Florida/Texas because
| people are packed in breathing the same area and touching
| all the same stuff?
|
| Look- we have LEADING EXPERTS in the fields who basically
| dedicate their lives toward this kind of virus and what
| should be done.. but oh you are claiming it's 100% mass-
| hysteria. I guess you are the smartest person in the world
| who no one listens too. Must be hard to be you every day.
| airstrike wrote:
| The mortality rate so far has been under the assumption that
| those who need to be hospitalized _can_ be. If everyone catches
| it at the same time and we can 't treat them, the mortality
| rate is bound to rise significantly.
| djsumdog wrote:
| Except that none of the hospitals in the US have been
| overrun. Instead people have died because they couldn't come
| in for essential surgeries.
| airstrike wrote:
| > Except that none of the hospitals in the US have been
| overrun.
|
| ...so far
| asdff wrote:
| Considering that COVID has killed nearly two Vietnam War's
| worth of Americans in 7 months and is surging by the day in
| many areas, I think we could stand to have a bit of fear and
| spool some things down for now.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Do you have anything more recent? We're about 45 days past that
| estimate and the fatality rate for people who test positive is
| holding steady at 4.5% if you divide it out. Clearly that
| doesn't include anyone who never got tested (and likely people
| w/o symptoms didn't), so I'd like to see if the CDC still
| stands by the numbers here from May.
| jwlake wrote:
| nyc said 21.6% antibody on 6/13. 32k deaths, 8.4M ppl => 1.8%
| IFR. CFR is much more complicated because policy changes on
| testing and hospitalization will make cause CFR to bounce
| around. Anyone argue that's a worse case scenario?
| devalgo wrote:
| Why is there this laser focus on Fatality rate as a talking
| point for anti-mask anti-lockdown types? Is death the only
| undesirable outcome? Polio had historic mortality rates around
| 5% in children, would you want your children to catch polio?
| Would you push for herd immunity for polio and have >60% of the
| children in the country catch it? It's simply absurd! There are
| other health risks besides death to consider. How does no one
| see that?
|
| Half of the US seems to think this is just a GLOBAL conspiracy
| to hurt Donald Trump, like are you dense? You think the entire
| world would torpedo their economies just for the chance to hurt
| Trump? These people need help.
|
| I am consistently disappointed by the lack of critical thinking
| in HN comments.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Fatalities is the best data we have, has common definition,
| and can be used to set policy. Everyone in the US knows that
| there are other undesirable outcomes besides death, but there
| is a lack of data on the rates, duration, or importance.
| devalgo wrote:
| >Everyone in the US knows that there are other undesirable
| outcomes besides death
|
| You can't really believe that. Maybe a small fraction of
| the population seems to be aware of this. The rest parrot
| some version of: "95% of people survive, its just the flu!"
| umanwizard wrote:
| > Polio had historic mortality rates around 5% in children,
| would you want your children to catch polio?
|
| No, nor would I want my children (or anyone) to get covid.
| This is a separate question from whether the current lockdown
| measures increase life expectancy and if so, whether they're
| worth it.
|
| > There are other health risks besides death to consider.
|
| Yes, there are. Again, a reasonable person might think the
| probability of those occurring is either (1) low enough to
| begin with or (2) not much decreased by the lockdown, that
| the negative effects of the lockdown outweigh it. Do you have
| any non-anecdotal discussion of (1) how common permanent
| disability from Covid is, and (2) how many severe covid cases
| are prevented by lockdowns?
|
| > Half of the US seems to think this is just a GLOBAL
| conspiracy to hurt Donald Trump
|
| Nobody in this thread said that covid is not serious or that
| it is a conspiracy, or anything about Trump, so this is a
| complete non sequitur. Certainly, there are people in the US
| who believe that covid is a global conspiracy to hurt Trump,
| which is absurd, but it's an obvious fallacy to argue like
| "some people make absurd arguments for proposition P,
| therefore P is wrong".
| devalgo wrote:
| >Again, a reasonable person might think the probability of
| those occurring is either (1) low enough to begin with or
| (2) not much decreased by the lockdown, that the negative
| effects of the lockdown outweigh it.
|
| If you think your average anti-mask anti-lockdown American
| is making that kind of analysis then frankly I think you
| are disconnected from reality...
|
| >Do you have any non-anecdotal discussion of (1) how common
| permanent disability from Covid is
|
| Permanent disability is obviously impossible to prove at
| this point.
|
| Perhaps the best microcosm we've had to learn from so far
| is the Diamond Princess cruise ship. The Japan Self-Defense
| Forces Central Hospital did an in depth study: "Of 104
| cases, 76 (73%) were asymptomatic, 41 (54%) of which had
| lung opacities on CT. Other 28 (27%) cases were
| symptomatic, 22 (79%) of which had abnormal CT findings."
|
| 54% of asymptomatic cases had lung opacities, and 83% of
| those were ground glass opacity. That usually indicates
| pretty nasty lung damage. Symptomatic cases as expected
| showed more and worse damage.
|
| Here's an analysis, what is the expected economic cost of
| achieving herd immunity? If you expect 60% infection rate
| to provide herd immunity thats 196 million cases in the US.
| Play with the numbers, 1-5% mortality rates, 50% of
| asymptomatic and 80% of symptomatic cases had some degree
| of lung damage. We're talking 500K - 1M+ deaths and tens of
| millions of people with lung damage. Have you actually
| factored that into your "The stonks must go up so lets
| sacrifice grandma" argument?
|
| https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/ryct.2020200110
| slugiscool99 wrote:
| Here's Cornell's email to students if anyone was curious:
|
| https://www.scribd.com/document/468208772/Cornell-Mail-Plans...
| otoburb wrote:
| I hope they and other universities increase vision
| insurance/benefits. From experience, staying glued to a Zoom
| screen for over >6hrs a day for an extended period of time places
| tremendous strain on the eyes.
| rurban wrote:
| Preferring seniors to attend the campus and all you fees to stay
| at home and learn remote is illogical. Seniors can finalize their
| exams much easier from home than juniors who do need the campus
| and direct contact with many. Seniors only need their advisor.
|
| But I never thought that Harvard can think logically.
| MiroF wrote:
| This will be Senior's last impression of the school before they
| become alumni (and donors).
| gringoDan wrote:
| I left college for a semester, then re-enrolled and graduated.
| It's incredibly easy to do.
|
| If I were a current Harvard student, I'd drop out for the next
| year. Take some community college courses, work, travel (in a
| COVID-responsible way...maybe road trips only).
|
| This is a unique opportunity to get off of the well-trodden path
| and far preferable to sitting in front of a computer in your
| parents' house for a year.
|
| There is a huge safety net once you've gotten into an Ivy or
| other top school. Best case scenario, you start a business and
| _no longer need Harvard_ , a la Zuckerberg or Gates. Worst case
| scenario, you graduate broke at 23 (with some great stories),
| rather than broke at 22 (without the stories).
|
| The value of a college degree is:
|
| 1) Signaling/exclusivity (the diploma)
|
| 2) The connections you make
|
| 3) The subject matter that you learn
|
| 4) The social environment - all of the benefits of adulthood with
| none of the responsibilities
|
| Distance learning only hits #3 on that list. Harvard can get away
| with charging full tuition for its classes because...it's
| Harvard. So it also hits #1. But the majority of schools are in
| for a rude awakening when they realize that students were paying
| for the social environment and aren't willing to, in the words of
| Good Will Hunting, _" Waste $150,000 on an education you coulda
| got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library."_
| dylan604 wrote:
| gap years, if done responsibly as you say (not in front of the
| tv), can be extremely life enriching. i'd highly suggest
| spending some time abroad. getting out of your "only lived at
| home, now in college" bubble can expose you to other things
| when you're still young and impressionable while being open to
| new things.
| woeirua wrote:
| Bingo, this is what every college student should be doing right
| now. Most colleges have a well established process for
| deferring your education for a year or more due to various
| exigencies that can arise during those years.
|
| I would also argue, that this is what most parents should be
| doing for their younger kids too. We all know that remote
| learning sucks for young kids. You basically have to sacrifice
| one parent to just sit at home and help the kids through their
| online coursework. At that point, you're better off putting
| them in daycare for a year, working, and then re-enrolling them
| for the next year. Will they be behind a year? Sure, but
| they'll also have a big advantage over their peers who got a
| half-assed education from the past year and were forced into
| the next grade.
| thekyle wrote:
| I would do this except I would lose my $12,000 a semester in
| scholarship from my university. Most scholarships do seem to
| require continuous enrollment.
|
| Also, students with deferred loans would need to begin paying
| those back.
| woeirua wrote:
| I think it really depends on the specifics of your
| situation, which no one online will be able to help you
| with... At the very least, you could probably drop to a
| part-time student, which would maintain your scholarships
| and student loan status, while avoiding the full financial
| commitment.
| opportune wrote:
| Unless you urgently need to start a business right now, I don't
| see how this has a higher expected value compared to doing the
| same after you graduate.
| albntomat0 wrote:
| I'm not the original commenter, but I'd bet their logic is
| that the value of being at Harvard for 2020-2021 is less than
| that of Harvard for 2021-2022.
|
| The expected value of a startup (heavily dependent on what
| type of startup...) is the same either this year or next, but
| the opportunity cost is less.
| gringoDan wrote:
| Original commenter, I endorse this reply :)
| asdff wrote:
| It does if the in person version of your classes are more
| engaging than the online versions you would be stuck with
| otherwise.
| qntty wrote:
| Hopefully you're being metaphorical with the use of the term
| expected value, or are you really suggesting that a young
| person plans their education based on what's more profitable?
| Not that money isn't something to consider, but the "value"
| you get out of your education and other formative experiences
| isn't measured in dollars.
| gringoDan wrote:
| It doesn't have higher expected value and I wouldn't
| necessarily advise going down this path in normal times. But
| calculating the expected value only takes into account the
| diploma and learning subject matter, none of the other
| benefits.
|
| The decision right now is between a) paying full price for a
| watered-down college experience (graduating earlier) and b)
| gaining some life experience and potentially getting "the
| full" college experience in a year or two for the same price
| (albeit with the drawback of a later graduation date).
| mirthflat83 wrote:
| > I'd drop out for the next year. Take some community college
| courses
|
| Harvard students have better things to do other than taking
| community college courses... it is absolutely a waste of time
| to take classes that are a joke.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I went to Harvard, and I've taken classes at community
| college. You're either vastly overestimating Harvard or
| vastly underestimating community college.
| mirthflat83 wrote:
| During highschool, you mean.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I took classes at community college both during high
| school and after I graduated from college. You can learn
| a lot of practical skills at community college that
| higher education looks down on. I learned to weld at
| Harvard through the physics lab and didn't realize how
| much I sucked at it until relearning it from a community
| college instructor. The person who taught me at community
| college was far more qualified.
| mirthflat83 wrote:
| Wow, your peers must have been very impressed that you
| got an A in those rigorous classes
| nkurz wrote:
| Coincidentally, I first learned TIG welding at Williams
| via the physics machine shop. One of the memorable pieces
| of advice from my earnest instructor (the Buildings and
| Grounds guy who did the necessary welding) was something
| like "Only weld galvanized at the end of the day because
| you'll feel like shit afterwards. It helps if you go home
| and drink lots of milk."
|
| The wisdom of his health advice aside, he was a decent
| welder taught me useful techniques. But when I later took
| a community college TIG course from a former nuclear
| welder, I was astonished by the precision the instructor
| demonstrated. I got a lot better, not exactly because of
| the quality of instruction, but just from having seen
| what excellence looked like.
| JauntTrooper wrote:
| I went to Princeton, and after graduating I spent 2 years
| in community college studying accounting (night school).
|
| The coursework was rigorous and excellent.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Yes - there's unfortunately some notion that as you move
| lower down the "prestige ladder", the easier / less
| rigorous the academic content becomes.
|
| I've studied at both good and "poor" schools, and my
| experience has been that both have their strengths and
| weaknesses. I've taken classes that were extremely
| rigorous and in-depth at the low-prestige (or rather, no-
| prestige) school, pretty much identical to the same
| classes offered at the big-name school. Only difference
| was that the first school had a 50% failure rate, whereas
| the latter school had much better pass-rate, along with
| grade distribution that was shifted more towards the A.
|
| This is probably due to the caliber of students, the work
| was the same.
| asdff wrote:
| It's not a waste of time to get done with some general
| classes that you don't care about at all yet need to
| graduate. In fact you will be saving money. Do I need the
| harvard version of Calc I when they teach the same exact
| rehashed AP calculus stuff at the community college _and_ the
| credit counts the same as taking Calc I Harvard?
| mirthflat83 wrote:
| Saving money? You know Harvard doesn't charge by the number
| of credits you take, right?
|
| Also, community college credits are generally not counted
| towards graduation. Why do you think they do that?
| spankalee wrote:
| What classes would be a joke?
| mirthflat83 wrote:
| All courses offered at community colleges
| spankalee wrote:
| I guess you're just woefully uninformed then. There are
| community college classes that could help with that.
| asdff wrote:
| Seeing as they still count for course credit, I don't
| think Harvard considers them to be jokes. I will take the
| highly paid accreditors at Harvard's opinion over yours,
| sorry mate.
| mirthflat83 wrote:
| You have no clue what you're talking about. Research more
| before claiming that they count for course credit
| buwka wrote:
| While in I high school, I always held the impression that
| college would be full of immensely enriching educational
| experiences. Courses, primarily those by world renown
| universities, would be so transformative that they would
| compensate for the substandard education system of the United
| States. However, after living with students at various
| universities and eventually attending an Ivy League
| University, I found that many of the courses were quite
| comparable to any simple online course I found on the topic,
| no matter if it was being taught by another top 50
| university, top 100, or random high school teacher. Many Ivy
| League students worked incredibly hard to attend their
| respective universities, however, like any other school,
| there are many that exist far from that stereotypical
| characterization. Likewise, I know many brilliant people who
| attended lesser known universities of far less prestige.
| Harvard students are probably better than average students
| but definitely not special enough to think they have nothing
| more to learn, no one is. I would highly encourage everyone
| to keep an open mind and look for what others can teach you.
| divbzero wrote:
| In fact, students admitted to Harvard this year will not need
| to drop out to pursue the plan you lay out. Harvard is giving
| new admits the option to defer admission until the following
| year. This decision was made, I believe, with recognition that
| the value of Harvard is in large part the social environment
| and connections you experience in person.
| gz5 wrote:
| So first year students can live on campus in the fall semester
| but not attend classes in person.
|
| I understand all classes having an online option, but am
| surprised they aren't mixed modality so the students on campus
| can be in person.
|
| Is it more difficult/expensive to make a classroom safe than the
| rest of the campus? Or professors have pushed back on mixed
| modality (due to health and/or logistics concerns)? Or something
| else?
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Imagine paying the fee for a Harvard MBA and missing out on
| arguably the most valuable aspect of it - nepotism and
| networking.
| ss2003 wrote:
| That can be done online too.
| pphysch wrote:
| A lot of the aforementioned things happen spontaneously and
| not within the confines of a scheduled 1-hour seated
| meetings.
|
| Has Harvard even announced that they are using more "mingly"
| online conferencing tools?
| andygcook wrote:
| I'm friends with quite a few Harvard MBAs now (think what you
| will, but the ones I know are all great people :) because my
| partner is a Harvard MBA. Without a doubt, they all said they'd
| take a gap year if they were in the current situation. Half the
| value is the credentialing, but the other half is the
| experience and network you build through it.
| shuckles wrote:
| Unfortunately, Harvard's offer to admitted MBAs was to defer
| til 2021 or 2022, but the specific year would be up to
| Harvard. That's not uncertainty that many people with
| families and advanced careers can or should plan around.
| People in their mid-20s should definitely defer regardless.
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| Almost 90% of admitted HSB students are under 30.
| 015UUZn8aEvW wrote:
| It's even more than that. The classroom experience is
| absolutely central to the program.
| Anon4Now wrote:
| Nepotism means showing favoritism towards family members, e.g.,
| a nephew hired or promoted instead of a more qualified person.
|
| Sorry to nitpick. I just see that word misused a lot online. I
| doubt that you're implying that a person would be effectively
| disowned by family members for taking a semester of their
| Harvard MBA program online instead of on site.
| bartread wrote:
| It's not just Harvard. I feel bad for anybody who was due to go
| to pretty much any university this year because they're going
| to miss out on so much of the experience.
|
| If it were me I'd be looking to defer and reapply later, but
| then I went to the University of Nottingham and, if they'd
| chosen not to accept me when I reapplied, I'd probably have
| been just as happy in Bristol or London. If you're due to
| attend a high prestige institution like Harvard or Cambridge,
| where demand far outstrips supply, it becomes a much more
| difficult decision. Attending those schools is an end in itself
| and if your heart is set on that end you might feel you're
| risking a little too much by deferring.
| aardvark1 wrote:
| This decision does not apply to HBS though
| screye wrote:
| I find it completely absurd that so many people are happy about
| remote classrooms.
|
| Online videos and assignments at most top universities have
| been available for free for years now. Universities are
| entirely about the advantage of learning in person, peer groups
| and signalling.
|
| If the value of university when remote remains the same for
| your major/university, then it is a scathing indictment of the
| in-classroom experience the major/university offered.
|
| If I found myself in such a situation, the first thing I would
| do is un-enroll and reflect on the stupid financial decisions
| I've made.
|
| I hope this is a wake up call for middling private universities
| and non-lucrative majors that can be easily made remote. A
| $100k+ fee for something that can be accessed online for free
| without any real loss in value is highway robbery.
| albntomat0 wrote:
| There is some amount of capture of returning students. Due to
| the difficulties of transferring, it may be easier and
| collectively cheaper for a senior to return for their final
| year.
| mberning wrote:
| I think people selfishly like many aspects of the covid
| lockdown. But they may regret it later. I know many school
| teachers that have enjoyed a very light workload this spring
| and are rooting for something similar in the fall. It may go
| on for a while, but at some point administrators and tax
| payers will realize there is no reason to pay for so many
| teacher salaries. It's going to be rough.
| vkou wrote:
| > Online videos and assignments at most top universities have
| been available for free for years now. Universities are
| entirely about the advantage of learning in person, peer
| groups and signalling.
|
| If anyone seriously doubts this, consider that pretty much
| any young person in America can just walk into a university
| lecture hall, and sit through all the classes they could ever
| wish for, without paying a cent. [1] Nobody takes attendance,
| and if you look like a student, nobody's going to notice that
| you're not actually enrolled in the class.
|
| And yet, _nobody actually does this_! Instead, millions of
| people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition, so
| that their attendance will be officially recorded.
|
| Those people aren't stupid. They aren't paying for the
| education, they are paying for everything besides the
| education.
|
| [1] Okay, it may cost you a few hundred dollars per year to
| buy second-hand, old-edition books, if you can't be arsed to
| study at the university library. This is much less of a
| financial hurdle than having the luxury to devote 20-40
| hours/week on attending classes, and doing classwork.
| hansvm wrote:
| > Universities are entirely about the advantage of learning
| in person, peer groups and signalling.
|
| As long as "learning in person" includes one-on-one time
| with your professors and access to a university library I
| agree with you 100%.
|
| > without paying a cent
|
| It's pretty easy to get into hot water with the university
| if you have any legal ties to them (e.g. by having been a
| student). It's common to require some fraction of ordinary
| tuition to sit in on classes.
|
| > Nobody takes attendance, and if you look like a student,
| nobody's going to notice that you're not actually enrolled
| in the class.
|
| Enough people do take attendance, or at least take a look
| at the roster ahead of time (in smaller classes). I had a
| better success rate speaking with the professor ahead of
| time and asking if they minded. It's also worth mentioning
| that not all professors are willing to put in extra one-on-
| one time with an unofficial student.
|
| > nobody actually does this
|
| Admittedly the slip of paper at the end was important to
| me, but I saved a little money taking some of the classes I
| wanted unofficially, and I wasn't the only person in my
| university peer group to do so. It was also a nice way to
| sidestep some bureaucratic prerequisite issues for classes
| outside my major.
| vkou wrote:
| Many university libraries don't check ID at the door, and
| many paying students don't take advantage of 1:1
| professor or TA office hours.
|
| Yes, this sort of thing is discouraged - but my point is
| that anyone who wanted to learn what is being taught in
| CALC 405, or what-have-you can currently do so, under the
| table, for essentially free.
| hansvm wrote:
| I totally agree that anyone who wants to learn the
| contents of most courses can do so for free, including
| the 1:1 interactions, networking, and library access
| (many universities not only don't check ID but actively
| encourage the broader community to visit and research).
|
| My argument was a mild push-back, pointing out that it's
| more difficult in some respects (e.g., you might not have
| access to some of your preferred professors), and that it
| _does_ actually happen occasionally.
|
| Do you have any insight into why more people don't take
| advantage of that opportunity? Anecdotally, before I
| attended university I didn't value a college education
| beyond the slip of paper at the end, and even if I had
| wanted just the education without the degree I wouldn't
| have known that I could just sit in on my classes.
| vkou wrote:
| > Do you have any insight into why more people don't take
| advantage of that opportunity?
|
| Because they correctly value the learning to be worth
| ~$X,000, but the accreditation to be worth ~$YZ,000.
|
| When you put things that way, the 20-40 hours/week of
| time that goes into getting an education becomes a lot
| less of a good investment, if the only payoff is that you
| get to learn.
| ativzzz wrote:
| I would say any class that's big enough to where you just
| blend into the crowd, meaning just a lecture class, is
| pretty much useless to attend and the same content can be
| found for free online and with the textbook.
|
| The academic value of college comes from small class
| discussion (you don't get this in large lectures), direct
| 1:1 access to professors/TAs, and the ability to work
| together with other students. If you don't get these, then
| there's no benefit of attending a lecture in person.
| hartator wrote:
| This. You can also learn everything taught there and better by
| just buying and reading the books.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Beyond nepotism, there's a lot of actual learning experiences
| you can gain from your peers by debating them in case study
| lessons, working with them on projects and participating in
| simulations etc.
| ideals wrote:
| Could you gain the same experience by finding people like
| that in an online community and debating case studies among
| them?
|
| Doesn't that happen in an informal way on a lot of
| subreddits and even here?
| otoburb wrote:
| I think determined individuals could, but it's much
| harder without ready access to pre-designed course
| material (e.g. case studies) and a learned facilitator,
| ideally one who has a mix of hard won industry
| experience, academic/research rigour and is a great
| teacher to boot.
|
| This doesn't come close to describing every single
| professor, but I imagine (albeit without any sources to
| back this up right now) that the ratio of such unicorn
| professors is higher at Tier 1 univerities vs. non-Tier
| 1.
|
| Perhaps with a larger supply of determined students
| willing to tackle this on their own, this is the year
| where a larger number of focused case-study groups could
| be formed and sustained online.
| 015UUZn8aEvW wrote:
| I didn't get an MBA from HBS, but I did cross-register
| into a class there while getting a different degree. The
| classroom experience there is sui generis, and it
| definitely couldn't be translated into an online format
| without diminishing its value. It's not just a matter of
| transmitting and absorbing information. If I were an
| incoming MBA student, I'd defer a year rather than going
| online.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| Online communities self-select and self-censor. A student
| with a contrary, incorrect, or controversial viewpoint in
| a classroom has a voice and can spark discussion given
| they operate with best intentions and have a decent
| instructor. They can be wrong one day, come in the next
| day and continue to speak. Such a user in an online
| community gets downvoted, muted, banned, ignored, hidden,
| or any of those things that keep the chamber full of its
| own echoes.
|
| In theory these communities can exist online. In reality,
| the vast majority of online communities are not open to
| being a classroom setting.
| wegs wrote:
| Plenty of other schools in the area offer better, more
| rigorous instruction. If that were central to the value
| offering, no one would go to HBS.
| tengbretson wrote:
| > And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin'
| education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges
| at the Public Library.
|
| > Yah think yah so smaht? How do you like them apples?
| wycy wrote:
| > plans to bring up to 40% of our undergraduates to campus,
| including all first-year students, for the fall semester.
| Assuming that we maintain 40% density in the spring semester, we
| would again bring back one class, and our priority at this time
| is to bring seniors to campus
|
| I'm not sure what exactly is achieved by having 40% density if
| that decreased density isn't evenly distributed. Unless I'm
| misreading, the incoming Freshman classes will all be at 100%
| density.
| ksml wrote:
| Why would the density need to be distributed across classes? I
| think the idea is to have fewer people in the dorms, so that
| e.g. no one shares a room, to reduce potential for spread of
| disease.
| Traster wrote:
| You want to have fewer people in each class so that they
| don't have to be in such close proximity to each other.
| mennis16 wrote:
| I think the classes are going to remain mostly online
| though, the frosh coming in person is more for orientation
| type stuff.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| I think it's pretty transparent that it's just because they
| need the Freshman class to pay that first year tuition so
| they're hooked.
|
| After their first semester on campus they're much more likely
| to deal with remote learning for the remainder.
| ksml wrote:
| I think you make it sound more ill intentioned than it is.
| Freshman year is crucial to forming new connections, finding
| organizations to join, and adapting to a new environment.
| It's not just about "dealing with remote learning"; it's also
| very much about meeting new people face-to-face and making
| friends they can lean on over Zoom for the semesters to come.
| shuckles wrote:
| Unfortunately, much of the social substrate that builds
| freshman bonding is facilitated by older students, from
| dorm events and parties to students groups and office
| hours.
| MiroF wrote:
| not at Harvard
| hpoe wrote:
| So here's a question how are they going to prevent people from
| sharing the online courses? Like is there anything that stops
| someone from sharing or restreaming their classes?
|
| I mean given what the value of a Harvard education is considered
| I would think there would be a lot of people interested in
| getting access to these courses.
| dublinben wrote:
| Harvard already provides many of their courses for free on
| EdX[0], so anyone who wants to access them already can. The
| lectures themselves are only a small part of the value of a
| Harvard education, so they don't seem concerned about "piracy"
| of their courses.
|
| [0] https://www.edx.org/school/harvardx
| murgindrag wrote:
| They're not free. That was a lie. Right now, most edX courses
| have switched to models where homework (the key value of the
| courses) is paid.
|
| A lot of people supported edX with time and money, including
| much of the early team and course contributors, based on this
| lie. Coursera was at least honest about it.
|
| Aside from that, most Harvard online courses have amazing
| production value (fully staffed video teams), and preciously
| little learning value. That's reflected in the hiring too.
| How many Harvard professors care about teaching-and-learning,
| much less online.
|
| I predict ASU, SNHU, Georgia Tech, and other schools which
| try to do online well will eventually eat Harvard's lunch
| unless something changes. With "eventually" being 50-100
| years, since that's how long university reputations last :)
|
| That's lots of time for even a Harvard to change.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| I was listening to a Radiolab the other day talking about
| college in the time of the pandemic. Not surprisingly,
| colleges like ASU, SNHU and Georgia Tech, who already had
| online degree programs set up saw their enrollment rise in
| the time of the pandemic, while other schools were
| scrambling and dipping into their rainy day funds, worrying
| about sports boosters and admissions. They were piece
| mealing together online classes, with poor security and
| having to charge more for classes to cover the costs and
| the lost revenue from the loss of sports.
| ponker wrote:
| What we really need is online courses from Reed, Davidson,
| Amherst, and similar.
| blendo wrote:
| They'll have had an entire summer to improve online
| course work; I expect last spring's online semester was,
| at best, scattershot.
|
| Somewhat related, Amherst is bringing back 60% of
| students; Reed wants all back, but is limiting to one
| student per dorm room (and is encouraging nearby
| apartments for others.)
|
| Bottom line, it seems the small liberal arts schools
| (less than 5,000 students or so) are bringing students
| back. The big unis (Harvard, Stanford, Cal), not so much.
| ralmidani wrote:
| I don't think edX was deliberately misleading people about
| the "free education" aspect. They are a non-profit, and I
| think they genuinely wanted to open up education to people
| around the world. They tried that for over 5 years, only
| charging for verified certificates. The switch to charging
| for full course content happened after many years of trying
| to compete with Coursera (and to a lesser extent, Udacity).
| vxNsr wrote:
| Whether intentional or not, it's a pretty frustrating
| experience to not able to do all the course work, and for
| many courses you can't even pay to do it. bec they're
| archived the course that's it. You get just the partial
| class.
|
| Additionally despite being an online platform that
| ostensibly allows you to work on your own schedule, they
| still cut off access after some arbitrarily predetermined
| amount of time and there's nothing you can do to extend
| it. Again, for many courses, you can't even pay bec
| they're archived. the only way to finish the course to
| create a new account.
| wegs wrote:
| All the execs make for-profit salaries, and profits flow
| back as investments of the MIT/Harvard endowments. They
| qualify as a not-for-profit on paper, but they're no
| different than any other investment of the MIT/Harvard
| endowments.
|
| Virtually everyone at edX who was mission-driven left in
| the great purge of 2017 (or was it 16? or 18? I might be
| off by a year). More than a third of the organization,
| including the author of the platform, left around that
| time.
|
| The CEO walked around, publicly announcing he'd switch to
| paid models as soon as Coursera did. If that's not an
| attempt at market collusion, I don't know what is.
| efxz wrote:
| How's "homework (the key value of the courses) " ? Homework
| is homework, You do it or not. They don't teach You how to
| do the homework, homework is just an assignment /exercise.
| [deleted]
| shiado wrote:
| It wouldn't matter if the courses are shared. Anybody in the
| world can now get access to the very highest tier of
| educational materials from sites like MIT OpenCourseWare.
| Universities sell credentials.
| mmm_grayons wrote:
| MIT has been doing that with a big chunk of its courses for
| years and yet the value of its degrees have yet to depreciate.
| The value is in 1. the people you meet there and 2. the value
| of "MIT" on a piece of paper. The same is true for other elite
| institutions.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| I think most people would say the value of a Harvard education
| is in the name on your degree, not the content of the courses.
|
| That said, there's a quote from Good Will Hunting that seems
| appropriate here: "You wasted $150,000 on an education you
| coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library."
| qntty wrote:
| Most of the value is the friends you make and the informal
| relationships you develop with professors and other people at
| the university. For someone who already has friends to talk
| about academic things with, and who doesn't need the
| structure of a curriculum, Will is right.
| nick_kline wrote:
| I don't think it matters if people share.
|
| Half the value of attending at least if not more is the famous
| name on your resume. Everyone knows it's extremely hard to get
| into. It's not hard to point to famous people in tech from
| there like Bill Gates, but Harvard on your c.v. is vastly more
| important if you aren't an engineer.
| amiga_500 wrote:
| So they are not deluding themselves about how transmissible covid
| is, nor how serious it is.
|
| Meanwhile the rest get told to get back to the office.
| num3ric wrote:
| Wise decision, but this renders the cost of education (in US
| universities) even more unjustifiable.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| I would think the majority of non-rich Harvard students don't
| pay much. For undergraduate studies if you want to attract the
| best students you have to offer very generous scholarships.
| Otherwise they would lose students to other top schools. This
| is true for all schools, but the rich schools like Harvard have
| the funding to actually do it. I've met a couple of students
| who paid full tuition at Harvard, but both came from very
| wealthy families so it wasn't an issue. Schools know in advance
| the financial situation of applicants and plan accordingly.
| affyboi wrote:
| The Ivies tend to have pretty generous aid since they have
| massive endowments
| asdff wrote:
| I'm sure no small number of people will defer next year.
| Looking back at college me, I would lean on the side of not
| signing my college town lease, deferring for the year, and
| living with my parents in my hometown for a year along with the
| rest of my local friends (many of which have in fact escaped
| NYC and other cities rents and returned to their parents home
| for this work from home period).
|
| Maybe you could work on something on github for your resume
| during this gap, but I'm anticipating given the absolute chaos
| this pandemic has caused worldwide, employers aren't going to
| care if you've failed to secure an internship in a time when no
| one is hiring, or that you preferred to take more engaging in
| person coursework rather than watch live action youtube
| lectures for exorbitant fees.
| [deleted]
| vincentmarle wrote:
| On the other hand, if there are a lot of students deferring,
| there is a huge line behind them willing (and able!) to get
| into Harvard. Harvard and other elite institutions will not
| suffer for students for quite a while.
| asdff wrote:
| If you want to take a year off you can come right back the
| next year if you've already been admitted. I'm not sure
| what incoming freshman are thinking, but for current
| students, why the hell would you not take a year off?
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, some can't afford it.
|
| If anything, I'd think the choice of incoming freshman is
| even clearer assuming they can defer--including financial
| arrangements. I'm sure they could find _something_ better
| to do than severely compromised campus activities that
| might revert to full-on remote a month into the
| September.
| wpasc wrote:
| Agreed entirely, but the cost of a US college degree is often
| more about the credential level signaling and showing that you
| were tenacious enough to win the college entrance competition
| than it is about acquiring skills.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| That is extremely contrary to my experience. I could code a
| little bit before college but I learned more math,
| abstraction, theory of computation. I have never encountered
| anyone from my school professionally, but it was a modest
| state school. I did a ton of programming and that always
| mattered the most when I interviewed for jobs - what could I
| do and demonstrate right then. I have to ask, were you in
| engineering, where your connections mattered?
| catawbasam wrote:
| If that was it, they could just copy their acceptance letters
| and start applying for jobs.
| itg wrote:
| Also about networking and friendships formed during college
| which will be harder when it's entirely online.
| winter_blue wrote:
| > Also about networking and friendships formed during
| college
|
| I've never been as lonely as I had been during my first few
| years of college. I had no friends basically. People always
| got up and left the classrooms after classes were over --
| no one hung around to socialize. I was depressed and
| extremely lonely, and rarely talked to any human beings,
| and mostly spent my free time on my laptop filled with an
| ocean of sadness. In my later years in college, I did make
| some friends, a few of which (like around 3 or 4 friends)
| have turned into life-long friends. And I'm extremely happy
| about those.
|
| But people seriously need to stop selling/touting college
| as some great social place. _It emphatically was not_
| during my first two years). The "social aspect"
| _absolutely does not justify spending hundreds of thousands
| of dollars_ on college. You can find friends through events
| on meetup, or joining a social group (like a club that
| teaches to code, or a writer 's group, or a music/singing
| group, or a church/religious group, etc). There are plenty
| of groups like this that are open to anyone in most major
| metropolises in the US. I've also made online, on Reddit
| and other sites. People randomly start chatting with me
| after seeing one of my comments.
|
| You absolutely don't need to and shouldn't spend hundreds
| of thousands just for the social aspect of college.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Genuine question as I haven't been to college (yet?): is
| this actually a thing? I've also heard it doesn't help with
| that.
| affyboi wrote:
| Yes, it's absolutely a thing. I don't know how
| experiences vary, but Alex Azar, the current secretary of
| health and human services, former president of Eli Lilly,
| was an alumni of my frat.
|
| I've also hit up random alums at various companies who
| have given me referrals, there are a lot of friends of
| friends who are in pretty good positions, such as
| founder/CEO/partner at various companies and VCs that
| will be willing to chat with you if you happen to know
| someone they're connected to that can vouch for you. I
| was actually interviewing with a company, and I found out
| the CEO was an alum of my school, and we had a lot of fun
| talking about college.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Yes, 1000% -- _but_ it depends on your college and
| specialty.
|
| Harvard/Yale for Law/Government/Policy - yes
|
| Stanford/Berkeley/MIT/CMU for venture funded startups -
| yes
|
| Cornell for Hotel Management / Veterinary Sciences - yes
|
| Georgetown/Princeton for Diplomacy/Government/Fed/Policy
| - yes
|
| Georgetown for venture funded startups - questionable
|
| Stanford for journalism - probably neutral
|
| Most US unis for Investment Banking - __* not a chance
| __*
|
| Most US unis for Strategy Consulting Top-3 - not a chance
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| I think for the 99% university contacts are not a useful
| "network". What good are a bunch of entry level employees
| to you? By the time anyone you've graduated with is in a
| position to help you out you've already been working for
| at least 10 years, and your more recent professional
| network is where the value will be.
|
| So unless you are in the Skull and Bones and your frat
| bro's uncle is an executive at Goldman Sachs, and that
| uncle was a frat bro with your Dad who's an executive at
| Morgan Stanly, no.
|
| But, a college education is still a valuable thing for
| getting a job. Depending on what classes you take anyway.
| bradlys wrote:
| > Genuine question as I haven't been to college (yet?):
| is this actually a thing? I've also heard it doesn't help
| with that.
|
| As someone who DIDN'T network in college and compares to
| peers who did - it is utterly devastating. It is hugely
| influential.
|
| Admittedly, your networking won't matter as much if there
| isn't high movement from the school to your work
| region... In my case, I went to a school where most of
| the student body had no intentions of leaving the region.
| I was also in an extremely anti-social department that
| was overly competitive.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| Sure. Read bios to research career trajectories. For
| example, read the bios of billionaires of who made a lot
| their money via renumeration. Cheryl Sandberg, for
| example. Steve Ballmer. Made their connections in
| college.
| adamcharnock wrote:
| Speaking as a UK university grad (14 years ago), this was
| absolutely not a thing for me. I made some friends, but
| went into web development at a small company rather than
| a large grad training scheme. I spent a year there and I
| have been self-employed ever since. I think precisely
| none of my career development has been due to my
| university-related network.
|
| But perhaps it is different at US colleges (or for others
| in the UK). I personally couldn't wait to put academia
| behind me and get into the real world.
|
| I now live off-grid in Central Portugal. I have clients I
| still work for, and I get referrals to new clients too.
| I'm also starting a wireless ISP here, which is great for
| networking and meeting people :-)
| asutekku wrote:
| You can learn almost everything you can learn in
| university outside of it. The true value are the people
| you'll meet that share the same interests as you do. Life
| is hell a lot of easier if you know the right / enough
| people.
| vvpan wrote:
| My connections helped me little. If I just worked during
| that time I think I would have been way farther up on the
| hard metrics of career progress. Not to say that I didn't
| get anything out of college. The campus radio stations
| introduced me to people who have had a tremendous amount
| of influence on me.
| pizza wrote:
| In most cases, you participate in the world through other
| people. How much you use your connections is up to you,
| but such connections allow you to traverse quickly and
| deeply through the space of opportunities.
| Meekro wrote:
| All 9 members of the Supreme Court went to either Harvard
| or Yale. I'd say that yes, signaling matters.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| 8/9 went to _law school_ at Harvard or Yale (the
| Notorious R.B.G. went to Columbia Law).
|
| For undergrad, 3 went to Princeton, 1 to Columbia (not
| RBG, interestingly), 1 to Harvard, 1 to Yale, 1 to
| Cornell, 1 to Stanford, and 1 to Holy Cross.
|
| That's evidence that signaling matters in a law degree,
| but the larger context of this discussion is of an
| undergraduate degree and I don't think the signalling is
| as strong there.
| Meekro wrote:
| I agree regarding undergrad mattering less than law
| school, but as long as we're splitting hairs about RBG,
| let's split them correctly! =)
|
| She and her husband both went to Harvard Law, though the
| husband started and graduated one year earlier. He then
| got a job at a New York law firm and RBG transferred to
| Columbia to stay near him. She completed her third year
| at Columbia and received their law degree.
|
| Harvard Law actually has a rule (adopted later) where you
| can complete your third year elsewhere and still receive
| a Harvard degree. They offered this degree to RBG, who
| refused it[1]. So _technically_ you 're right that she's
| a Columbia Law grad, though it's not a stretch to call
| her a Harvard Law grad as well.
|
| [1] http://www.wikicu.com/Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg
| ativzzz wrote:
| So 8 of them went to elite/prestigious undergraduate
| schools (don't know about Holy Cross). Looks like a
| pretty strong signal to me.
| otoburb wrote:
| The UK is not much different -- a majority of senior High
| Court barristers[1] and UK Supreme Court justices[2] are
| Oxbridge[3] educated.
|
| [1] https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/new-high-court-
| judges-all-...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_of_the_Supreme_
| Court_o...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxbridge
| asdff wrote:
| Everything I have in life is from networking effects in
| college, from landing my first research position in
| undergrad. Grades don't matter, I was an average student.
| Networking effect is everything in life, in any field.
| Maximize your ability to network.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Agree that one should maximize networking, but college is
| not required to do so. Find like minded people where ever
| you are, always be seeking opportunities (learning,
| revenue generating, and all others) and avoid credentials
| and their associated costs. Be able to get the work done,
| learn how to when you can't, and be enjoyable to work
| with, that's most of what a job is.
| adamcharnock wrote:
| This is my experience too. I haven't exactly avoided
| credentials as a principle (I have a BEng), but I totally
| agree with "Be able to get the work done and enjoyable to
| work with".
|
| Do a good job, be secure in your abilities, have empathy
| for others. I'm a freelancer of 13 years with a lot of
| happy clients and - before I started living off-grid -
| I'd earn a month's rent in half a day. Now I don't have
| rent or mortgage.
|
| Sure, I haven't climbed any corporate ladder, but I hope
| that in a decent company you can be those things and also
| do well.
| mrep wrote:
| Interesting. Did you go to an Ivy league, cause I went to
| a state school and I haven't used networking for anything
| ever. Granted, I've only worked at GAFAM and they hire
| tons of people so that could be part of it.
| asdff wrote:
| I went to a state school, albeit R1 which has a lot more
| funding and therefore opportunities, but I believe every
| state flagship is R1 anyway. Actually this in state
| school was cheaper than some other in state schools that
| were considered party schools/easier academically. Were
| you recruited at a career fair? fangs always had a big
| presence at our biannual fairs and people I knew seemed
| to have no issues finding internships coast to coast.
| mrep wrote:
| I went to purdue so we had absolutely massive career
| fairs and I got my first CS internship at GAFAM through
| one. After that, it hasn't been hard getting interviews
| at the other ones.
| panopticon wrote:
| I went to a state school, and my entire professional
| career is due to the friends I made there. College was a
| very rough time for me, and I wasn't getting many
| interviews with my resume (really poor GPA, no
| internships, no extracurriculars, etc). A friend hooked
| me up with a job at a startup and landing interviews
| since has been no problem.
|
| This isn't a glamorous story where my network made me a
| millionaire, but my life would be much worse having not
| made those friends back then.
| mrep wrote:
| Internships definitely help (GAFAM uses them like
| extended interviews for full time offers). I also think
| it helps that my gpa was ok (3.05) and the school i went
| to (purdue) was highly ranked enough and big enough that
| we had entire recruiting teams come out to our career
| fairs which is where I got my first internship. Some
| companies even sent out employees for an entire week to
| our campus to do interviews for internship and new grad
| hiring.
| Frost1x wrote:
| >Networking effect is everything in life, in any field.
| Maximize your ability to network.
|
| Networking isn't _everything_ but it 's definitely the
| lion's share. Anyone who paints the world as a
| meritocracy is disillusioned, but it helps to have merit
| to fall back on. There are many who get through life and
| succeed financially almost entirely through networking
| and situation.
| jkaptur wrote:
| I'd add some nuance to that - in my experience,
| networking is a multiplicative (not additive) effect to
| your actual skills. You can get a letter of
| recommendation from a Nobel Prize winner, but even then
| it has to say something other than "Liz Lemon numbers
| among my employees", you know?
| snarf21 wrote:
| Just like the job interview screening game.
| giarc wrote:
| I tend to agree but online courses allows school to admit
| more people. Therefore the value of that limited resource
| should go down, along with the price. Although Harvard hasn't
| announced an increase in first year admittance, I suspect if
| this is succesful they will start to increase enrollment and
| therefore should bring the cost down.
| tdumitrescu wrote:
| Not without increasing capacity of professors, TAs, and
| administrators, and then the facilities to support all that
| new staff. Campus facilities for students is only one part
| of the cost structure.
| shuckles wrote:
| Stanford's all-online CS106A ("Code in Place") in the
| Spring quarter was organized in about two weeks and
| fairly successfully scaled all aspects of instruction to
| ~1000 online learners.
| asdff wrote:
| Curious how they scaled. Just threw money/TAs at it? The
| limiting factor in my department with expanded online
| offerings is the number of people willing and able to
| sacrifice currently strictly limited on campus research
| hours to TA. There are a finite number of students that a
| given TA can handle, and it quickly can be an
| overwhelming amount of work responding to emails and
| grading.
| staycoolboy wrote:
| Wow, that's wickedly cynical.
|
| I don't know how I would have learned how to become an RF
| engineer if it weren't for a four year BSEE that focused
| heavily on DiffEq, Complex Math, Fields & Waves, and Discrete
| Systems... and access to patient and friendly (mostly)
| professors for help during open office hours, which were a
| necessity (for me, anyway).
|
| I'm pretty sure I would not have been able to teach this to
| myself with YouTube videos. But maybe you've had better luck?
| anoonmoose wrote:
| Some fields are exceptions to this rule. Those fields
| represent a small fraction of all degrees awarded per year.
| Yours (and mine) are part of that exception.
| p1esk wrote:
| I'm pretty sure many people would be able to learn it much
| faster if they didn't have to sit through countless boring
| lectures:
|
| https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-
| challenge-2/
| sushisource wrote:
| That is really amazing, but I'd just like to point out
| how amusing it is that he looks _really tired_ in the
| thumbnail of that video.
| Kaveren wrote:
| > RF engineer if it weren't for a four year BSEE that
| focused heavily on DiffEq, Complex Math, Fields & Waves,
| and Discrete Systems
|
| You can learn all of this by yourself.
|
| > I'm pretty sure I would not have been able to teach this
| to myself with YouTube videos.
|
| YouTube videos suck for serious learning of non-visual
| activities. Written resources, particularly books, are
| optimal. People like to pretend that it's hard to figure
| out what you need to learn, but just taking a look at
| syllabuses and assigned readings and what the "best" books
| in the field are will get you plenty far.
|
| > access to patient and friendly (mostly) professors
|
| For many majors you can find decent help online, but often
| crossreferencing between different books will provide just
| as good results as talking to a professor.
|
| Lectures are extremely inefficient.
|
| The hardest part is not being able to find answer manuals,
| particularly with graduate-level books. Usually you can
| find alternatives.
| staycoolboy wrote:
| > You can learn all of this by yourself.
|
| No, and I know this for a fact because I'm me, and you're
| not. But thanks for telling me I'm wrong that I can't
| learn something without a tutor. That's a new twist on
| mansplaining. I guess I'm happy for you that you are so
| smart.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| I agree with you. I learn by listening and collaborating.
| That is an environment you don't get online or learning
| by yourself. I learned best when I went to school and
| even though I totally had access to all the resources
| outside of school, just reading something doesn't mean
| you understand at it. Having an expert being able to sort
| of validate your way of thinking (or invalidate if you
| are stuck on an issue) is really valuable to me.
| amiga_500 wrote:
| The price isn't set on the cost to deliver, at all.
|
| It's based on ability to pay, which is based on available
| credit, which is based on whatever bankers can get away with
| saying lifetime earnings will be.
| fullshark wrote:
| The cost is incredibly justifiable, it's just you are paying
| for access to future opportunities not an education.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| No it's not. Knowledge should provide access to future
| opportunities, not prestige. The system is the problem.
| fullshark wrote:
| In a world of imperfect information, how do you prove to a
| stranger that you are knowledgable, in less than a full day
| of interaction?
|
| That remains the problem, and credentials/prestige remain
| our best way of dealing with it. In other fields you
| develop portfolios (e.g. github repos) perhaps that's what
| education will evolve to, developing a student work
| portfolio to prove you are knowledgable.
| asdff wrote:
| With any knowledge worker job posting, there are hundreds
| of perfectly qualified candidates, maybe thousands. The
| knowledge taught at Harvard is already disseminated. You
| don't learn anything different with an undergraduate degree
| at Harvard than you would with a degree at directional
| state. The difference is now you know professor X, who lets
| you work on his super cool project Y, then employer Z sees
| you did project Y with well known professor X, who wrote a
| letter with nothing but high praise of your intimate
| accomplishments on project Y and why you are therefore
| extremely qualified, and you get a great job.
|
| To break the system would be to snap your fingers and will
| more knowledge worker jobs into existence to meet the
| oversupply of qualified candidates, but given our free
| market society and increasing disfavor of public
| engineering and public research, that just isn't ever going
| to happen. So you try and play the game as it is the best
| you can, and apply to schools like Harvard with faculty who
| can push your life forward.
| bdcravens wrote:
| It's not (or at least, doesn't have to be) a binary question;
| it's a sliding scale of ROI.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| A programming course on coursera might have a higher return
| than a degree in History from Harvard. (assuming
| return=money)
| bdcravens wrote:
| As someone without a degree and making market rate or
| better, I agree (and I started when there weren't so many
| online options)
|
| Of course the hard part is getting hired without that
| rubber stamp, but there are many options (many have an
| idealized idea of what your career will look like, but
| that's often disconnected from reality)
| fireflux_ wrote:
| Apparently ICE won't let international students stay in the US in
| an "online only" school [0]. Makes me realize that as convenient
| as it is to be able to get education online, having fast internet
| speed is a privilege.
|
| [0]:
| https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/12802074875730698...
| the_svd_doctor wrote:
| You're correct. Original press release is
| https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-ex...
| the_svd_doctor wrote:
| Interestingly, DHS just decided today that international students
| cannot maintain their legal status with a 100% online education
| https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-ex...
| zekrioca wrote:
| It would be good to emphasize this applies to the Faculty of Arts
| and Sciences.
| omot wrote:
| I personally think the value of a Harvard education is not
| necessarily what you learn, but who you meet. That's why it's
| critical for majority of the student body to be in close
| proximity to one another. I wonder if they could crack the
| challenges of building rapport between students remotely.
| foodigger wrote:
| I doubt you would contribute more if you went to Harvard but this
| is probably a bro-post, so rock on
| pwthornton wrote:
| Having taught a semester online, I think you can do really good
| teaching online, but you need a few things:
|
| 1) Small class sizes. Mine was under 15. Otherwise, very little
| discussion happens 2) A lot of work & learning assigned outside
| of class 3) Time each class for sub-groups
|
| I do think they will have to adjust the tuition. It is hard to
| justify paying 60k or whatever Harvard charges for online
| education. It is objectively much, much cheaper to deliver.
|
| Schools will need to invest in a lot more online tools and
| training, however.
|
| I don't understand how larger class sizes will happen, unless
| they are going completely lecture.
|
| The other thing I did with my small class was set up a Slack
| channel. I was available daily to chat about whatever and give
| feedback and work through concepts.
|
| I spent a tremendous amount of time chatting with students on
| Zoom and Slack inbetween classes when I taught online last
| semester.
|
| The idea that good online teaching is just like some free MOOC is
| not reality-based. It needs to be very hands-on.
| ksml wrote:
| I had a very similar experience teaching a class of 23,
| including the Slack, which students found very helpful. I was
| also a student in a class of 60 and quality of discussion
| suffered, although I'm not sure it's 100% because of the online
| format (I think the instructors could have done a better job
| facilitating discussion)
| screye wrote:
| My friend just did a full course load remote summer semester it
| was significantly more taxing.
|
| Group study is harder. Keeping attention in class is harder.
| Having your eyes stuck to a screen the whole day is harder.
|
| > The idea that good online teaching is just like some free
| MOOC is not reality-based. It needs to be very hands-on.
|
| Kudos to you. From what I've seen, online courses continue to
| be MOOC-esque or even worse. At least MOOCs have mature systems
| in place that facilitate learning through their system, however
| inefficient.
| vmchale wrote:
| Consequences of an utterly inept pandemic response.
| nick_kline wrote:
| What would be a good strategy? I think this makes sense for
| students and for professors, think of vulnerable people, the
| cost of going there and then the later canceling.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| If I'm reading this correctly, all incoming Freshman will spend
| Fall semester living on campus and all graduating Seniors will do
| likewise for Spring semester, however all courses will be online
| only. I can't imagine doing online coursework from the dorm and
| I'm not sure what kind of safety is being gained by just avoiding
| the classroom while social interactions continue.
| aphextron wrote:
| I love seeing all of these random meaningless "safe limit"
| numbers with regards to reopening things. Yeah, 40%, that sounds
| good right? Sure why not! Is this based on anything at all but an
| arbitrary bureaucratic decision? Nope!
| kolbe wrote:
| Well, it was going to be a minimum 25% to allow all the first-
| year students in, because Harvard saw that they were going to
| defer in droves if they couldn't go on-campus.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-07-06 23:00 UTC)