perhaps YC should think of becoming like a business school. Most business schools charge upwards of 100k for two years, and most students borrow that from the federal government. YC could instead "charge" half that amount, teach all the major business principles that one needs to know in a few months (which could basically be teaching pg's essays to a class audience) with the caveat that all or most of the tuition charged will be returned as seed investments to the students at the end
>"YC could instead "charge" half that amount, teach all the major business principles that one needs to know in a few months"
You really think you can teach all the business principles you "need to know" in a few months, huh? But I bet if I said lets take some business guys and teach them everything you need to know about coding in a few months, you'd probably think I was crazy.
Seriously, the "what it takes to successfully run a business" is so underestimated around here it makes me shudder. But, I guess that's probably why most people here aren't actually running successful businesses.
historically, artists were sponsored by wealthy individuals or institutions to create art. Some of the great European painters of the last few centuries were sponsored by the Catholic Church. If Kickstarter can provide that, what's the problem?
I hate to be "that guy", but you misspelled a certain word three times in your comment. I leave it to you to figure out which one.
But I agree with you, in the sense that having a "deadline" is what motivates people to accomplish things. Like if your boss or teacher doubles the length of time to finish a project, it doesn't mean you'll work twice as hard, but rather that you have more time to put it off.
it really is. I only hope that eventually these credits will be recognized by employers.
would they be be willing to hire someone who completes an entire curriculum successfully through MITx over someone who took a similar education at Big State U?
The quality of the graduates will bring the employers. Employers only want a mechanism of sifting the wheat from the chaff. If MITx tests students at the rigor of regular MIT courses, there is no reason why employers won't be tripping over themselves to hire MITx grads.
Furthermore, this will annihilate the monopoly that sub-par institutions currently have on conferring degrees and other certifications. Students who have MIT level ability will no longer have to settle for second best. They can prove themselves at the top institutions without having to worry about the 10% acceptance rate.
If executed properly, this will revolutionize post-secondary education and save students and taxpayers billions of dollars. It has long since been proven that the majority of post-secondary institutions are nothing but glorified testing centers. Why not cut out all the excess, and let MIT do the teaching while a test center does the testing?
Also, this will dismantle the broken R&D incentive structure that is publicly funded academic research via tenured professors. The research scientist will be a dedicated profession unto itself, as will the post-secondary professor. Public funding of scientific research will no longer involve the ridiculous process of journal publication, and will instead focus on delivering results to the taxpayer based upon a research contract (much like privately funded research).
Structural inefficiency in academic research has caused an immeasurable slowdown in scientific progress over the past few decades. With one fell swoop, initiatives such as MITx have the ability to rectify this gross misallocation of resources.
Employers like MIT grads because MIT makes you learn 1) how to learn 2) to get shit done. Soul-crushing courseloads may not be optimal for learning, but most employers care more that you're smart, get things done, and can learn fast on your own.
By allowing people to take things at their own pace, MITx will perhaps be more optimal for learning the material, but will not provide the same intense environment in which "hardk0re" MIT students are forged (for better or worse).
You could perhaps try to imitate this by taking a soul-crushing courseload from MITx and having a support network of others doing the same. It also makes a big difference whether your support network aspires to get certified so they can get a comfortable job, or aspires to (or actually does) build brain sensors or self-driving cars or musical Tesla-coil hats that play the Mortal Kombat theme (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEgaI6WouQ0).
It's not merely about competence/rigor that leads an employer to hire a specific graduate from a specific school. If that were the case, then Harvard Extension School students would be just as highly sought after as Harvard College students, given that they complete many of the same courses taught the same instructors.
The reality is that employers can choose to be picky within the boundaries of the marketplace. While I do believe MITx is revolutionary in that it is pursuing a global, open-access education available to anyone with a high-quality brand behind it to boot, I do not think it will change much in terms of employers and hiring.
Employers will continue to hire MIT/Stanford/Harvard graduates because they simply want "the best and brightest." I do not see MITx certificates replacing this recruitment pipeline. MITx credentials are probably more appropriately regarded as something of a wildcard -- an extra edge for a job applicant over more people without evidence of continuing education or certifications.
Since MITx is not in the business of conferring full-blown degrees (yet?), the "sub-par" institutions can rest assured that their students are not going anywhere. And even if MITx did offer full degrees, as does Harvard Extension School, there is the whole other issue of how the marketplace values prestige and brand.
this fungus could end up contributing to global warming, by taking the carbon that is trapped as plastic on the ground and releasing it eventually into the atmosphere.
There is a recent Washington Post article that says they are on the verge of breaking thru.
I hope they discover some form of life in the lake. It would be amazing to discover what the evolutionary outcomes would be for organisms in such an isolated harsh environment.
yes exactly. The reason for the escalating healthcare and education costs have to do with the guilds these professions enforce to prevent newcomers from undercutting their wages.
If the U.S. were to abolish the AMA and the teacher's union, the medical and education costs in this country would plummet, and the coming medicare debt could be halved.
I'm especially skeptical about teachers; I don't know anybody who avoided becoming a teacher because the certifications or the jobs were too hard to get, but I know a number of people who didn't do it (or did it and quit) because the pay and social standing was too low compared with the difficulty of the work.
Teachers just negotiate for job stability rather than wage. For some reason, teachers are extremely risk averse and would rather be paid crappy, forever, no matter how bad they are.
The teachers associations ensure no teachers can ever be fired no matter how incompetent. Teachers get summers off and big pensions and so they lobby for these and other lifestyle perks.
Which doesn't say anything about the point I'm questioning, which is your claim that teachers are part of some closed guild that drives up wages by forcing out newcomers.
Convenience doesn't justify anything. It is more convenient for me to take a newspaper off my neighbor's lawn than it would be to contact the newspaper company and order a subscription, but that doesn't mean it's ok.
Your situation is theft - by taking the newspaper, you're precluding your neighbor from enjoying a product or service that he paid for. That's not the same as infringement - a closer newspaper-related metaphor might be you reading over your neighbor's shoulder on the bus.
Marginal cost shouldn't matter. What matters is consent. If the content creator does not consent for someone to enjoy his/her work without some level of compensation, then it is up to the customer to decide whether or not to purchase the work at the set price.
If the customer decides not to purchase it at that price, then his recourse his to purchase either a competing product or wait for the price to come down, not to steal it.
Good thing there was no concept of intellectual properties rights when fire was discovered or the wheel invented.
You are aware that the concept of intellectual property rights didn't even begin with the concept of a creator having monopoly rights over their creations. Instead the concept of government granted monopolies begun during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1 with the East India Company came first. It wasn't until later that the concept of government granted monopolies was applied to intellectual goods. However, when the concept of government granted monopolies were applied to intellectual goods it was done so with the intention of maximizing the benefit of society by providing only enough incentive to encourage innovation not profits. Intellectual properties rights today have become completely divorced from their original intention of maximizing the commons due to the selfish pursuits of individuals and companies that have distorted the laws. Most of these distortions of the law weren't even introduced by those actually doing the inventing, but by heirs and assigns trying to establish and safeguard a constant source of revenue. That constant source of revenue has permitted many people to sit on their laurels instead of innovating.
Intellectual Property rights have been completely distorted from their original intent of encouraging innovation and maximizing benefit for society. Let me tell you who doesn't innovate: heirs and assigns. If anything, intellectual property rights have enabled a lot of people to make a living by not innovating.
i agree that heirs don't innovate. But copyright laws expire after a certain number of years after the creator's death, at which point they enter the public ___domain.
My question to you is, for material that is not in the public ___domain, do you believe that the innovator has a right to determine at what price they should sell their product at? And if not, is that not dissuading innovation?
And the 64 million dollar question, if they have a right to sell their product without digital infringement, how can you prevent this, without some bill law SOPA or PIPA?
What people fail to realize about copyright in the US is that it was designed to enrich our country, and all US citizens.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to protect intellectual property with one and only one goal in mind. Enriching the United States and its citizens.
U.S. Constitution - Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 8.
"The Congress shall have power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
They have the power to "promote progress" and not the power to "enable rent-seeking", which is basically what intellectual property laws have been perverted into by private individuals seeking to increase their short term gains.
US Intellectual Property Law is a prime example of the tragedy of the commons.
Which would you rather have? Under which situation would you and 99% of all U.S. Citizens be better off: (1) the right to the exclusive income on something you have made for your entire life and part of the life of your heirs and assigns or (2) the right to free, unfettered access to every intellectual good created prior to 2004 that isn't a trade secret?
Under which of those two scenarios would more "progress in Science and the useful Arts" occur?
I don't know about you, but when I have kids, I would prefer that they inherit a large commons than rights to income from the works I have created.
P.S. To directly answer your question. What I believe about that doesn't matter. What does matter is that the laws in this country be enacted with the sole purpose of maximizing Science and the useful Arts that we all have free and open access to. If it is necessary to permit someone to temporarily restrict access to an intellectual good to provide financial incentive to a creator to create a work in the first place then that achieves the goals of the U.S. Constitution. How much restriction and for how long, should be the absolute minimum necessary to make sure the innovation happens at all.
99.9+% of all rational actors would not going to be dissuaded from creating by a copyright policy that only lasts the original 7 years. Every time copyright has been extended, it has been extended by people who have already profited handsomely off their intellectual good to the prior X years (where X is the copyright term at the time) and would like to extend that term so they can continue to earn rent. The terms would probably never have been extended otherwise, since the lawyers and lobbyists necessary to argue for the copyright extension in Congress don't come cheap.
There is nothing preventing people from selling their goods with DRM. The problem with DRM is that it makes a good less convenient for a buyer and drives the buyer to other goods or illegitimate copies. The most expensive cost for a creator is the copy left unsold.
That's just conspiracy talk. So the same U.S. government that created the internet, and opened it up to the public, is now trying to censor it? I think the politicians are acting honestly and with good intent: their goal is to prevent this tool for communication for being used for criminal purposes, and yes, digital piracy is a crime.
The government doesn't act as a collective unit. It is made up of individual actors, however, it is entirely possible that by making decisions with the best of intentions, they end up gifting certain elements a magic wand to censor any and all activity that may threaten their power.
It's true, you wouldn't call the guys who created the atomic bomb mass murderers, however that doesn't change the disastrous consequences of their actions!
