[ZenoArrow]

I see it as another sign that colleges are ripe for a shake up.

Colleges offer five things (from an academic point of view):

1. Access to information. 2. Directed learning. 3. Time to explore your own interests. 4. Research facilities. 5. Qualifications.

Access to information is easy enough outside college (books, Internet, etc...). Lack of research facilities is only really a hindrance if you're trying to study a hard science or engineering. Time to explore your own interests is easy enough without college, in the worst case you could borrow money, not pay college tuition fees, and study just as long.

So that leaves two remaining benefits (and arguably only one benefit to real learning); directed learning and qualifications. The college system directs you towards the ideas in a field that are deemed as key to understanding the subject more fully. Having access to mentors gives the students guidance and reassurance. Qualifications are seen as the reward for the work (not by everyone, it's possible to study for the fun of it too, but that just preaching to the choir on a site like HN).

The requirement for colleges for certain qualifications would be easy to fix. The main factor that is lacking from non-college learning is the directed learning aspect. It can be fun to learn a little bit of everything, but colleges can bring you up to speed in something quicker because of this guru-led focus. If/when mavens from a field are simple to interact with, efficient learning is unlocked. The "hacker" community is a great example of this, we have all the resources at our disposal, including access to the leading lights, no other group has it quite as good. Now imagine how other fields could grow with the same blend of learning opportunities that our group has.

[dalke]

You left out physical access to peers. We formed study groups, and meeting in person to discuss and work through problem sets can be much more effective than mediated through telepresence. It would have been harder for me to graduate without that.

It's also hard to get a degree in most arts (eg. fine arts, dance, drama, and music) without physical interactions and without access to the physical resources that a university can provide. Yet that doesn't fall under any of your 5 categories. Perhaps #4 is the closest, but you argue that it's only really relevant to hard science or engineering.

Your last bit sounds more utopian than with basis in reality. I don't see why it's any harder to contact leading lights in chemistry, biology, mathematics, philosophy, history, or poetry than it is hackers. Nor do I believe many of those leading lights - hackers included - really want to engage in much unpaid "learning opportunity" to strangers.

[ZenoArrow]

> Nor do I believe many of those leading lights - hackers included - really want to engage in much unpaid "learning opportunity" to strangers.

Perhaps 'leading lights' was a bit of a stretch, but the reality is there are many people in the hacker community that spend a good amount of time helping others to learn. Whether that's through blogs, hackerspaces, IRC, sites like StackOverflow, etc... there's a wide range of people helping others out.

Why does this happen? Beyond feeling good about it, there's another benefit, a good question from a novice can help a more experienced practitioner deepen their own understanding. These benefits need not only apply to hackers, they can apply to any skillset. The potential for resources that facilitate this exists, and in fact such arragements do exist elsewhere in more chaotic forms, but I'd argue the path for development as hackers is clearer than in many other fields (at the moment).

> fine arts, dance, drama, and music

What physical resources do you need to study such subjects? Do you think organising practice space and meeting likeminded individuals would be hard outside college?

> You left out physical access to peers.

Yes I did. I see the social benefits of learning with peers, and I'm sure that makes learning more fun, but why pay huge sums of money for that privilege when it's possible to arrange in a more straightforward way (hackerspaces being a good example)?

[dalke]

My point is there's a bunch of non-hackers which also spend a good amount of time helping others to learn. There are quilting clubs, and hiking clubs, and bee keeping clubs. Some of these organizations are over a century old. There are science cafes, and book readings, public lectures, and temperance organizations. I don't think hackers are notably more organized than other skillsets.

For example, near where I live are two rowing clubs, both with their own clubhouses and storage areas. I used to be a member of a tango organization, with its own membership structure and bank account. It would organize events, and bring in guest teachers. And so on. What is special about hackerspaces?

> What physical resources do you need to study such subjects?

Are you asking me because you don't have any experience with those programs, nor have any friends who participated in them? If so, that would suggest a large gap in your understanding of how colleges work.

A music program will have a large range of instruments, including large instruments like a pipe organ and more exotic instruments like a gamelan (and people who can build/maintain/tune the instruments), practice spaces, and performance spaces. An art program will have equipment ranging from paints and brushes to kilns to welding equipment and perhaps even a foundry. Some of these require support staff. A theater program will have performance spaces, costumes and props, plus again support people (eg, a licensed carpenter for stage building, someone to oversee the electrics, etc.)

This is not something that every small town will have, which is why people go somewhere else where those resources can be concentrated.

> Do you think organising practice space and meeting likeminded individuals would be hard outside college?

Umm, yes? That's my point. In my town of 70,000 people, there probably aren't enough like-minded individuals interested in, say, early medieval music. Certainly not enough to have the instruments on-hand. While "[t]he Early Music Institute at the Jacobs School of Music [at Indiana University] provides a comprehensive program in the study of historical performance on original instruments of music before ca.1800." (See http://www.music.indiana.edu/departments/academic/early-musi... , which also points out that commuting faculty and students "makes it difficult to offer such a well-rounded educational experience and to have major ensembles of such caliber".)

Or take the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, which has "theatrical spaces outfitted with state-of-the-art intelligent lighting systems to animation studios equipped with the latest 3D computer graphics software." How does one get access to that sort of equipment, and put on a play which uses it, in a hackerspace model?

> why pay huge sums of money for that privilege when it's possible to arrange in a more straightforward way

You've changed the topic. You originally said "Colleges offer five things (from an academic point of view)", while I said that physical access to peers is a sixth.

Physical peer proximity, in the hackerspace model, is hard to arrange for many subjects. I studied physics. There are some 5,000-6,000 physics graduates each year. (See http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201112/backpage.cfm and http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2008/04/13/the-extr... ).

How does one establish a "physics space" when there are so few others in one's immediate neighborhood who are interested in learning particle physics? This seems like a prime reason to concentrate physics studies in one geographic area, and have people move there to study and to teach. In other words, college. Isn't that more straightforward than what you propose? (If not, how would your model be more effective than what we have now?)

I feel when you said "I'm sure that makes learning more fun" that you didn't get the point. This wasn't for fun, this was peer education. A few years ago a friend told me "I don't think I could have graduated without your help." And I know myself well enough to know that I do better with physical proximity than telepresence. There are educational benefits of learning with peers.

Focusing now on "why pay huge sums of money for that privilege".

That's also a different topic, and you didn't bring it up earlier. I agree with you - college should not cost huge sums of money. I think higher education is a social good and should be supported by the state, either free or highly subsidized. Where I disagree with you is the idea that hackerspaces provide a more straightforward way than what we have now, which includes geographically co-located studies, and colleges with a strong distance learning component like the Open University in the UK.

[ZenoArrow]

> You've changed the topic. You originally said "Colleges offer five things (from an academic point of view)", while I said that physical access to peers is a sixth.

I didn't change the topic. The reason I mentioned the five factors I believe colleges contribute was in order to explore how they could be found without the financial burdens that college can bring. I mentioned them in order to find how colleges could best be disrupted from their position as gatekeepers to knowledge.

> How does one establish a "physics space" when there are so few others in one's immediate neighborhood who are interested in learning particle physics?

Let's take your town of 70,000 people as an example. How many people would you guess that would be interested in learning about physics? Would you say less than 20? More than 5? How many people would you envision is required for a decent physics meetup group?

[dalke]

And I assert that geographical proximity to peers is a sixth contribution.

The change in topic was when you said "pay huge sums of money" - that's a negative to colleges, and then the question becomes a cost benefit analysis. Previous you were mostly focused on the benefits of college, which is all that I addressed. Hence "change of topic." (Perhaps I should have said "widening of topic"?)

I take it by the absence of a response that you are convinced that arts programs can require more than what a hackerspace-style organization can provide?

> How many people would you guess that would be interested in learning about physics?

"Learning about physics" is uselessly broad. Classical mechanics, electricity&magnetism, thermodynamics, particle physics, astrophysics, and solid state physics are very different aspects of physics. A meetup can't be "learning about physics" but "learning about a specific topic in physics", and likely even "and at the same level of understanding", since an introductory quantum mechanics student likely won't make heads or tails of Cohen-Tannoudji or Sakurai.

(For that matter, my school didn't even have a solid state course for undergraduates, while some other colleges do.)

Why didn't you work out the math yourself? Assuming 6,000 new B.S.s in physics per year out of a US population of 317 million, times 70,000 students in the city => 1.3 students at a senior level.

Obviously at least two are needed for a study group, and some people prefer to work independently, giving a high likelihood that a small city cannot support a decent peer-based physics meetup group. FWIW, our study group had about 5 physics majors, out of 15 in the graduating class.

To put it another way, I grew up in Miami. The Miami metropolitan area has a density of 890 people/sq. mi. That's 1 physics student for each 60 square miles. For two nearby students to meet requires a minimum average of 5 miles of travel. More likely there's 30+ minutes of travel for each hackspace-style meeting with 5 people. While on campus, when most people live on or very near to campus, the commute time is a lot smaller. Thus, moving to be close to peers can increase the amount of time available for studying and practice.

You then added a new thesis to the mix, which is that "colleges are the gatekeeper to knowledge."

They most certainly are not. Colleges are the gatekeeper to certification in some fields (as your #5 points out; and as a real-world example, a Master of Library and Information Science is required for most professional librarian positions).

But "gatekeeper to knowledge"? Nonsense! How did you get that idea? What does it even mean? What knowledge is prohibited or withheld from those without a college education? Are you sure you aren't just using that term as a scare tactic?

So, ways to disrupt the expensive college education system of the US:

1) free or highly subsidized college education for anyone who wants it, in any field whatsoever.

2) minimize the importance of a (semi) classical liberal arts education and promote trade, craft, and technical colleges as the better route for certification-based skills training.

3) subsidize adult continuing education for those who have done #2 and still want a general liberal arts education. (A town of 70,000 people can easily have a few people interested in a common sophomore level course every other year.)

4) set up something like the Open University, that is, a state school/non-profit which has distance learning for those who can't attend a physical college for all classes, and with research/lab space for those courses which need it.

Is that disruptive enough for you?

Like I said, I see education as a general social good, and not a simple cost/benefit analysis for a single person's own career.