[aleph_minus_one]

> If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests.

You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this.

So, as long as you are not under time pressure (which you in some degree courses unluckily are), there is simply no need to "speed up" any homework assignments.

If, on the other hand, LLMs help you with making much faster progress in understanding the subject that you study (which is only loosely correlated to homework and tests), I guess it's fine to use them. Just always keep in mind that very often the pain of attempting to understand the topic on your own often makes you smarter - something that you will miss when you take an "LLM shortcut".

[elAhmo]

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this.

This is probably not true for majority of people. Most go to school because it is mandatory, pushed by parents and society, and university gives you credentials and better job opportunities. Homework and tests are a way to get a number grade on 'how well you memorized something', it doesn't really measure a deep understanding of the topic.

[aleph_minus_one]

> Homework and tests are a way to get a number grade on 'how well you memorized something', it doesn't really measure a deep understanding of the topic.

As I said: they are goalposts.

Typically homework and tests are sufficiently easy (yes, there are exceptions) that if you fail them, you can assume that you didn't make sufficient progress in improving your understanding.

But I do agree that at least sometimes the difference between being good and exceptional at homework and tests can indeed be rote, "unnecessary" memorization.

[Terretta]

Uni grading Brownian-walks around edu trends, but misses the point that improving one's (and humanity's) lot depends on a tiny loop:

- doing - failing - discovery>learning - remembering

With learning predicated on both failing and remembering it's unfortunate uni scores on 100% successful doing but doesn't teach failing well, and scores for remembering but not for learning well.

[lee_ars]

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study.

Echoing the other comments here, at least in the US, this is generally untrue. I went because my parents made me, because the choice was that or get kicked out of the house. It was beaten into my head since I was in grade school that "people in this family go to college" and "you can't get a good job without a college degree."

I hated every moment of it and I was glad to take my BSc and never look back once it was over (University of Houston, c/o 2000). And, indeed, without the degree I wouldn't have had the jobs I've had.

But I didn't go because I was "interested." I went because it was an effectively mandatory life-path objective. I'm very happy for you if your lived experience is different, but it is also—at least in the US—both extremely uncommon and extremely privileged.

[dmd]

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study.

This has not been true for something like 70 years now. People go to university because it is expected that that is what you do after high school.

[aleph_minus_one]

> This has not been true for something like 70 years now. People go to university because it is expected that that is what you do after high school.

In Germany, many people indeed say if you are not deeply into the topic that you study, you should rather get a vocational training (Ausbildung), or attend a different kind of tertiary education than a university such as

- Fachhochschule

- Berufsakademie

(these words have no good English translation). Basically these are kinds of tertiary education that are more applied than the much more scientific training that you get at a university.

Specifically for mathematics (I guess the same holds for physics), a lot of people say that if you don't consider it to be an ideal life to think about math exercise sheets when you sit in the bathtub while other people are having fun at some party, you simply are not made for studying mathematics and should change your degree course as soon as possible.

[carefulfungi]

This situation is changing in the US but isn't well reported, in my opinion.

We haven't regained traditional apprenticeship roles (perhaps because we so weakened unions?) but 30 (of 50) States have free or heavily subsidized two-year community / vocational college programs. Affordable and accessible vocational education opportunities are increasingly present. I also think (very subjectively) that we are seeing a renewed respect for the trades.

However, there are structural headwinds outside of education - no national health insurance plan being a major one. Farming, fishing, forestry, construction and similar trades still have a 20-30% uninsured rate in the US. (The uninsured rate in white collar "professional" work is around 2.5%.)

[aleph_minus_one]

> We haven't regained traditional apprenticeship roles (perhaps because we so weakened unions?)

The reason for the traditional apprenticeship roles is not unions, but rather capitalistic:

- If potential employees are well-trained the employer doesn't have to invest resources for training them.

- The certificate of the vocational training means that the employer knows that an applicant has an established standard, and can save time testing whether he is qualified.

- Because the trainee needs practical experience, employers can invoice this additional worker to the customer. Because the trainee needs explanations and thus works slower, more hours can be invoiced to a customer.

[finghin]

It's a much more socially beneficial system and I think a large part of this is probably differences in culture regarding education and one's career. The availability of these modes of teaching is downstream from that.

[finghin]

It is really about time we thought about what universities are for in the 21st century, since there has been significant scope creep wrt labour markets, particularly roles which do not actually require university education but do require a degree for CV reasons. It is nonsense in the 21st century to require a bachelor's degree for such roles. Not to mention the huge societal pressure that you have mentioned, which no 18 year old can really be expected to see through.

With CS students this is one thing. Medical students? Air traffic controllers?

That is to say, there is a huge gap in the educational integrity of degrees, and this is probably partly driven by people who do not really want to be at university for educational reasons (and, believe it or not, there are other ways to party in your early twenties) and for whom a degree in XYZ is not rationally connected to 80% of their options after school. And there are many such people.

This really needs to be thought through, because education is expensive, and it is an enormous waste of money to pay for a couple of years of university and end up failing out or being sanctioned for AI cheating, or being educated for something you do not really want or need to be taught. That is true whether or not education is paid for privately or by the public.

ETA that when I graduated from school the idea of not going to university was really discouraged by the guidance counselor. It seemed like vocational courses were not really a worthwhile option unless you were a poor (significantly below average) student. There was a lot of emphasis on ‘getting a degree’ probably related to (nonsense) job requirements. Not a lot on what career you should pursue, or why you should consider university. It was more like why would you not consider university, since it was the de facto default. It was, I guess, unseemly for the school to end up with fewer university entrants and more apprentices.

At the time, there was somewhat of a social stigma with apprenticeships. The people that pursued them seemed to only genuinely have been set on the idea, and there were few if any that were diverted thereto. Now, of course, ‘the trades’ pay much better than a middling office job. Egg on my face.

[riddlemethat]

Universities today are seen as debt manufacturing facilities. Debt that cannot be discharged. AI is seen as an act of war against the world’s working classes. Rich people aren’t building bunkers in foreign countries and buying yachts the size of a town because we ran out of land in America. Buckle up for a wild tumultuous period of human history.

[finghin]

Sure, I think this is a major element in the States, but I have never been there and all of this applies to my country where student loans are rare and fees are paid by the State.

[caminante]

Rest doesn't make sense either with the parent's tautologies and self-counters. They seem to argue for it and raise the challenges.

~"Speed doesn't matter unless you need it."

~"LLMs can be good, but if you don't use them properly™, then they become a crutch."

It's hard to deny that "cognitive offloading" via LLMs is becoming a more acute problem [0]. The intelligentsia were supposed to be immune.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260417-ai-chatbots-coul...

[a96]

Maybe they are immune, but it's just a very small group.

[charlie90]

It wasn't even true before...

Universities have always had people not interested in the subject, but who went because its elite training school. I was reading something about Issac Newtons college in the 1600s, many of his classmates didn't care about studying and drank all the time.

[Altern4tiveAcc]

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study.

I don't think I've met anyone who fits that description. The ones deeply interested in the subject would likely skip college anyway if not for future economic prospects.

[bdavisx]

>The ones deeply interested in the subject would likely skip college anyway

Spoken like a true software engineer ;), there are jobs where you have to have a degree to get the job. "Real" engineers with sign-off responsibilities, Medical Doctors, etc.

[aleph_minus_one]

> The ones deeply interested in the subject would likely skip college anyway if not for future economic prospects.

There exist a lot of things that are much "easier" or even (currently) only possible to learn by attending a university because, for example,

- for the access to various devices and experts,

- you walk a much more "established" and "time-tested" hike for getting good in the subject,

etc.

[etiam]

Then you either really haven't tried very hard to notice them or have been in an academic environment with severe defects.

Does college even work for future economic prospects, by the way?

[Altern4tiveAcc]

> Then you either really haven't tried very hard to notice them or have been in an academic environment with severe defects.

Sure. (?)

> Does college even work for future economic prospects, by the way?

Where I live, a college degree is a legal requirement for a lot of professions that pay more than entry level jobs (although not all of them). So, people go to college to get a better paying job in a few years than they could get by immediately entering the workforce.

[etiam]

> Sure. (?)

Most of the universities I've been in have had well above the occasional one. I'm certainly not saying that has to be true everywhere, but for academic level studies it's pretty sad if the fraction is zero.

> Where I live, a college degree is a legal requirement for a lot of professions that pay more than entry level jobs (although not all of them). So, people go to college to get a better paying job in a few years than they could get by immediately entering the workforce.

Fair enough, and I guess we have that here too, with a hard requirement for certain jobs as a proper lawyer or psychotherapist, and soft but compelling requirement for stuff like real estate agent or investment banker. Most college degrees are a dead loss economically compared to starting work immediately in a craft profession with high demand, such as plumber or welder, which is the reason I question the motivation. But not everyone has the capacity for learning skills like that I guess, and it's nice if there are still places that are still willing to pay well for academics.

[Altern4tiveAcc]

> Most college degrees are a dead loss economically compared to starting work immediately in a craft profession with high demand, such as plumber or welder, which is the reason I question the motivation.

I think then the core difference could be in the places we live. Here, it's common for government jobs to require a college degree. Some of those do not require a specific degree, as the position itself doesn't need it, but you still need a degree to apply.

It's also common for pay grades to be tied to how far one went academically (graduate, masters, doctors, etc.). Again, speaking strictly about government jobs, which are a non-trivial part of the economy here.

> Most of the universities I've been in have had well above the occasional one. I'm certainly not saying that has to be true everywhere, but for academic level studies it's pretty sad if the fraction is zero.

That's fair and I believe you. I worded my post in the first person to make it clear I was talking about people I met, and others' experiences may be different.

[etiam]

Thanks for the insights.

I'd say there are a fair bit of elements of that sort of gating for government jobs here as well actually, but here that's not so important for earning prospects since they're mostly not all that well paid (exception for C-suite and equivalents, but my impression is those are almosts always awarded more on the basis of contacts and CV achievements).

Sorry if my objection came across as overly antagonistic, but what I was trying get across is precisely that while your experiences are unassailable as your experience, it may not be very representative of what's out there.

I wonder whether the guy who botted the profitability question (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48428763) could do genuine interest too, or is that inaccessible for examination over the Internet...

[j4102_]

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this.

Some students do not have this privilege and implicitly see university as first and foremost a funnel into a paying career.

[SecretDreams]

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study.

This is a bit of a naive or maybe affluent take? Like, theoretically, I agree. And I myself was curious. But most people, by and large, are going to university because they know they need a degree to get a job, unlike their parents or grandparents. And even "the degree" is quickly becoming devalued in this current AI age.

I would guess that if all basic needs were met through UBI, the fraction of individuals going to school would drop and the makeup of subjects they pursue would change. Probably more cooking and art classes and less stem. Although, if UBI existed and AI did not, we'd probably see more educated individuals in the first place so maybe there would be an uptick in stem attendance and general curiosity in such a utopian world.

[aleph_minus_one]

> > You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study.

> This is a bit of a naive or maybe affluent take?

Concerning the "naive" aspect, I wrote something at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48397759

Basically, this was really my lived experience, which might have been amplified that it was a decent university in a "boring" town where learning for your studies was one of the more exciting things that you could do.

Concerning the "affluent" aspect, I can clearly assure you that neither I am nor my parents were.

[raesene9]

I think perhaps the reason you are seeing quite a few commenters expressing skepticism to your comment "You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study." is that you appear to be extrapolating from one example (your own), without considering whether that's likely the wider experience of people going to university.

In the UK anyway, there's an acknowledged idea that many people go to university because there is a societal expectation that they should and also because many careers require a degree even for entry level positions.

There is also much less emphasis on other routes of tertiary education (e.g. vocational schools), when compared to places like Germany.

[aleph_minus_one]

> "You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study." is that you appear to be extrapolating from one example (your own)

I know a lot of people who think this way, and I can assure you that the people who realized later that university is not for them deeply would have wished that someone had given them this advice when they were younger.

[cmrdporcupine]

> If, on the other hand, LLMs help you with making much faster progress in understanding the subject that you study

My experience is that they uncomfortably do both. You can "understand" something conceptually quicker -- like you have a new brain-muscle-thing that lets you cut through the hard difficult tedious corners to get to the meat of the matter.

But then you also can become reliant on it, and have difficulty doing the mechanistic rote work of working through it yourself.

Like the really big powerful calculator that it is, really.

[SecretDreams]

It's two fold. They're learning and understanding more things, but at a very surface level and without the nuance and ability to actually use the knowledge because they have none of the muscle memory and hard work associated with learning it.

You can use AI or the internet to learn the basics of how a gas engine works in a couple of minutes. But you'd be incapable of actually working on a gas engine or designing one.

Surface level knowledge gets you surface level functionality. You don't become good at something from surface level knowledge, but you might think you're good at it.

[hirvi74]

Perhaps it was merely my degree or program, but I do not feel like I learned a lot more than surface level knowledge.

I have an accredited degree in computer science. But what does that truly even signify? For example, even with my 10 years of experience coupled with my degree, I could not create a programming language from scratch without some tutorial, nor could I create an OS, a compiler/interpreter, a basic CPU, RAM, any secondary storage, etc.. Sure, I could tell you about basic digital logic, basic OS principals, basic algorithms in a poorer explanation than a Wikipedia article, etc..

To use your gas engine analogy, if you dropped me on deserted island with all the parts I needed to make a basic, simple computer I would unlikely be able to do so with out some sort of in-depth guide. I am not talking about slotting mass produced parts on a motherboard. Rather, something like this:

https://www.instructables.com/Build-a-Computer-W-Basic-Under...

[cmrdporcupine]

If used correctly though I think the models in fact can be useful for gaining depth. With the right prompting they can actually perform a pedagogic role. One must just resist the temptation to have them do the work for you.

I've used my phone taking pictures + Codex + a PDF of my tractor manual to help me effectively diagnose and manage repairs in my tractor. (Though these models remain terrible at the physical world, getting physical orientations wrong, front back etc. Much like myself)

Likewise I had Gemini help me tear down my mower's carburetor and diagnose issues there.

(So much so that I've wondered about building some kind of "shop buddy" -- some kind of durable laptop and set of cameras ... on a cart. Running models that have access to manuals and cameras and TTS and voice input? "Hey, shop buddy, look at this fuse and tell me what is before and after it in the electrical system.")

This is helping me learn and do something I couldn't really effectively do before by walking me through steps.

My youngest has had Gemini write math questions for them, to help study. Not do the math, but write questions.

In the end it comes down to prompting, like everything.

Which makes me wonder if the answer for higher education is just to provide the students with specific coding agents they're specifically allowed to use -- ones that would push the student through problem solving and working on the problem together.

[SecretDreams]

> One must just resist the temptation to have them do the work for you.

We are in the instant gratification era of humanity where a dopamine rush drives most people. This is a systematic shift that happened through the introduction of smart phones and social media and then progressed for a good decade to what we have in front of us today.

Asking people to "resist the urge" when they've been programmed/brought up to feed the urge is not pragmatic unless you are also proposing a way to erase the damage done from the instant gratification era.

We're in the end game presently. For every one person like you and your examples, there's gotta be 100x or more who are not using the tools the way you've presented them.

[cmrdporcupine]

I'm no saint. For coding projects I am absolutely in the same boat as everyone else.

My other examples have to do with current limitations of the tools. Obviously there's no Claude Code for Meatspace that just takes over and does things for you. (Yet)

What I'm trying to point out is that the tooling has been made this way on purpose and I agree substantially with your point. But I also think human agency is involved. Dario & Boris et al didn't have to write CC the way they did. They chose to play with and push a concept which reduced human agency -- in part because Dario concretely believes it's just "inevitable" that we should be put of of work. And his investors no doubt love this concept too.

And just like Facebook / Instagram etc. it turns out it's an addictive flow.

It remains the case there are other ways of applying LLMs and generative coding models. This modality is not intrinsic to the technology. It's being deployed this way. And humans have agency in how it's applied, even if it's hard sometimes for us to exercise it.

[SecretDreams]

> And humans have agency in how it's applied, even if it's hard sometimes for us to exercise it.

It needs to come top down from CEOs and governing bodies via regulation if we want improvements. We can't rely on the individual to not use the big red button that says "do this with no effort". We're on course for a WALL-E future if we're lucky or something far less great if we're not.

I appreciate your argument for human agency, but these types of systematic issues can't be solved bottom up.

[techblueberry]

What a delightful fantasy world you live in. Doesn’t sound very predictive of actual human behavior though.

[aleph_minus_one]

> What a delightful fantasy world you live in.

I can really certify that this was my lived experience. In the math degree course, basically everyone who was not incredibly passionate about mathematics (NB: "passionate" does not necessary imply "great academic achievements") changed their major or decided for a different kind of tertiary education.

Former co-students who attended the same university and degree course had the same experience.

I guess the reason was that it was a decent university in a "boring" town where learning for your studies was one of the more exciting things that you could do.

[ndriscoll]

Another factor might just be that math pretty much is the extra depth behind a bunch of STEM fields, so people studying math specifically are more likely to be interested in that depth.

That said I generally think the take that it's somehow privileged to find school interesting to be sad. Over the last couple decades one could do pretty well with pretty much any STEM degree. Is the majority feeling among people studying engineering that they just have no interest in any facet of how the world around them works? They have no desire to understand how to create (and alter to their liking) the things they see? No interest in the fundamentals of how the universe works? How different materials come to act the way they do? How living beings work? Nothing?

[techblueberry]

1. I don’t think there’s a direct correlation between curiosity and finding school interesting. I’m endlessly curious about how the world works and always reading three books at a time, and school was often dull as paint.

2. I would optimize hiring people who display the kind of curiosity described, but if my goal was to create an education system to generate educated workers to grow an economy, I wouldn’t optimize for it. I don’t think curiosity is a privilege, it’s an undervalued right.

[el_io]

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this.

There is only one classmate in my class who came to study CSE because they are interested in CSE. And since we all enrolled after AI became somewhat good at everything none of them know how to code. After two years of study I had to explain someone how to swap two number by drawing boxes. This are the things you learn in the first week if you're interested in programming.

My point is very tiny percentage of people study something because they're genuinely interested in that subject.

[mulr00ney]

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this.

I think this was true a long time ago. Perhaps with LLMs this can become true again in the future. But definitely that was not why I went the first time, nor most of my classmates. (Second time I did post-secondary, sure, 100% -- but I was almost 30, not an average student)

[CivBase]

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study.

You must come from a wealthy background because what you described is far beyond the vast majority of people's means - at least here in the US.

Most of us go to college because it's the only reliable way to get a tollerable job that pays well. Only a few of my college courses aligned with my interests. The rest were just the price paid for the degree.

[aleph_minus_one]

> You must come from a wealthy background

You could hardly be further from truth.

In Germany, where I live, rather the children from rich families who will get some well-paid job anyway often consider getting some formal degree as an inconvenient barrier on their well-paved path towards a high-status and high-paid job.

On the other hand, if you don't come from a rich family, you better are passionate about what you study because otherwise people will "suggest" that a vocational training might be a better choice for you - then you will earn money now instead of wasting years at a university without earning money.

[etiam]

It's easy to fool oneself into thinking one knows the subject because somebody explained it well / demonstrated skills, and it made perfect sense.

Unfortunately that, on its own, very much does not translate to being able to explain it all oneself, or to having the skills.

Ease and norms of outsourcing to software invites and amplifies this trap, I think.

[confidantlake]

The main reason to go is you need that piece of paper.

[hirvi74]

I needed the structure more than anything. Nothing I learned in university was some secretive knowledge. Anyone could buy the same textbooks and learn the same materials.

However, I am not one of those people. I lack(ed) the self-discipline required to learn anything with moderate to long feedback loops, thus it was far wiser for me to outsource all the necessary planning and assessment to a structured program.

Student loan debt is a blight on society, but I'd be lying if I said the looming repayment was not a great motivator to attend classes and do well in school. Some things just hit differently when there is skin in the game.