[zulban]

It has been many years that most courses in most universities have inferior lectures than just watching a great series of YouTube videos. Many professors have no passion or training in teaching, they just want to do research. Or they have no time or pay to prepare a course. So of course they use AI slop wherever they can. Even if they record their lectures, that's almost never better than the best free ones out there.

Universities need to lean into the fact that for undergrads, they're only still good at one thing: proctured in person assessments. Also maybe community building.

Bad lectures delivered by rushed or apathetic professors is such a death march. Learning theatre.

[whstl]

I worked in the tech side of education until 15 years ago or so, and it was already clear how problematic it was getting.

Distance learning was basically a dimly-lit grainy video, recorded 5 years prior, all acquired from the same provider and being shown to hundreds of classes all over the country. Instead of teachers, "tutors" (we couldn't call them teachers for legal reasons) making barely above minimum wage answering questions of dozens of classes and grading things on Moodle/Blackboard. A real teacher would be responsible for a class but they would barely see anything happening online, as they were just figureheads already busy with real classes.

I also remember some courses having almost half of the courses being long distance, so even people choosing traditional education were pushed into doing cost-saving computer shit.

The computers in the campus were obviously miserable to use, so I did everything in my power to at least make the software light enough so that people wouldn't suffer much, but in the end I hated myself for being in that industry.

[Aurornis]

> It has been many years that most courses in most universities have inferior lectures than just watching a great series of YouTube videos.

This is too extreme of a generalization. There are obviously bad professors and universities that are not worth your money, but most professors at any halfway decent university are going to put a good deal of effort into teaching well. Getting a job as a professor is surprisingly competitive for the relatively low compensation because there are a lot of people who want to teach and teach well.

You can find some decent learning material on YouTube but it’s still mostly geared toward infotainment. I have a lot of bookmarks for excellent YouTube videos that I share with juniors on certain topics, but on average it’s really hard to find YouTube teaching resources that teach at the level of a university professor. When you do, it’s hard to get people to actually watch them as true teaching often involves slogging through some of the less exciting content as well. Most YouTube videos are designed to trigger “aha!” moments but only provide a surface level understanding. The type of learning where you think you understand a topic but couldn’t really explain it to someone else well or solve problems on a test because you haven’t gone through the full learning yet.

> Universities need to lean into the fact that for undergrads, they're only still good at one thing: proctured in person assessments. Also maybe community building.

You’re missing the biggest one of all: Accountability. We already saw with the MOOC trend that releasing high quality university lectures online from top universities is not enough to get many people to go through with learning the material. Getting them into a place where they know there will be a test and a grade and they have some skin in the game makes a huge difference.

Some people learned from MOOCs, but in general the attrition rate and falloff was insanely high from lecture 1 to the end.

[kccqzy]

In my experience some of the best courses in my college are taught not by “professors” but by “lecturers.” The distinction is that professors need to do research and teach, so they necessarily have divided focus. But lecturers only have teaching duty, are not tenured, so they are focused on teaching.

[stvltvs]

I've long argued that lecturer positions should also be tenure track, depending on metrics about effective education rather than research. Being taught by a researcher is overrated at the undergrad level. I've had lots of shitty courses taught by great researchers.

[tekne]

When I started undergrad, my father told me that university was not for learning; that was what the Internet was for, and since I was in tech; it wasn't quite for proving myself either: that was internships and portfolio. It was, rather, for the people. And a place to grow up. That matters too.

[exitb]

Given that the discussed lecture was delivered remotely, I don't think is offers much of a social experience too...

[j45]

In person lectures delivered one way can be pretty non-social and non-interactive as well.

[DerArzt]

I think @exitb is referring to how it's harder to interact with other students after the lecture is over in a remote course. There's a lot less likely hood to strike up conversation.

[j45]

That's a fair point.

Looking beyond it for a second, We see students carrying portable communication devices connected to social networks to follow algorithm curated feeds instead of interacting with humans.

Maybe there's a way to use an internet forum or something.

[lenkite]

> It was, rather, for the people. And a place to grow up. That matters too.

Now, you can "grow up" and "matter" with Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok etc. They are "people", you know ?

[HeinzStuckeIt]

It really depends what field. In some branches of history, archaeology, and linguistics, for instance, many matters of emerging consensus often reach students only through lecturers’ handouts that are not put online. What a curious person will find on the internet and in general-reference books can be a decade or more behind, and viewed within the field as horribly out of date.

[lupire]

If that information were valuable to learn, someone with access would be republishing it online.

[phatfish]

Is "published online" the bar for valuable information? At this point published online is a good signal for junk information.

[ModernMech]

This is why the first day of every semester I ask my students "why are you here, in this room with all these other people, spending $$$, instead of sitting at home at YouTubeU watching this content better produced in 4K resolution with graphics and animations?"

You always get the typical "because I was told to" or "I need it for my degree" answers, but ultimately students will bring up:

- they tried that already and they couldn't pay attention past a few lectures

- they didn't have anyone they could ask questions to. This is less true with the advent of AI but still, many students are very skeptical of AI (as they should be).

- they appreciate having a local community of peers to study with

- they are motivated when competing against other students for a top grade

- they are motivated by showing off their abilities to their peers

- they are looking for mentorship and guidance from someone in the field, whether that be in research directions or professional career advice.

- they are looking to build a network with peers and researchers which they can leverage in the future

My takeaway is that the students attend university for their education differ from those who would be fine just watching YouTube videos in that they view their education as a sort of team sport or collective activity; rather than an individualized goal they are achieving for themselves, they approach their education as a journey they are on with their friends.