Hiatus

Titus Hoyt is not here. He is currently out, putting his ideas into practice.

Virtual Mentor No. 3: Paul Otlet

Paul Otlet was a major contributor to what is now called information science. According to the Wikipedia entry, he pretty much created the Universal Decimal Classifcation system, an analytico-synthetic classification system. From my research it seems that Otlet was motivated to improve the Dewey Decimal Classification so as to improve scalability. He anticipated a system similar to what we now call the internet. UDC would be useful in retrieval from such a large collection. It's a funny story how I found out about all of this. For a few years now, I had been independently trying to figure out what a interrelated conceptual web would look like. We know for instance that if you pick a random page on Wikipedia, then click the first word that is linked, and keep doing this over and over, you will without fail end up at the entry for philosophy. This is how the analytico-synthetic classification system works. Vertical abstraction always leads towards philosophy. For example, to take a silly example:  bike -> vehicle -> machine -> tool -> matter -> nature ->metaphysics->philosophy. But even before you could start studying the history of philosophy, you'd have to have an idea of how to access various forms of media, how to do research, etc. I don't think my example is exactly how the taxonomy works but I think I've communicated my grasp of it at this point. Anyways, so this interrelatedness has lots of implications. 

The UDC scheme is as follows:

0 - SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE. ORGANIZATION. COMPUTER SCIENCE. INFORMATION...

1 - PHILOSOPHY. PSYCHOLOGY

2 - RELIGION. THEOLOGY

3 - SOCIAL SCIENCES

5 - MATHEMATICS. NATURAL SCIENCES

6 - APPLIED SCIENCES. MEDICINE. TECHNOLOGY

7 - THE ARTS. RECREATION. ENTERTAINMENT. SPORT

8 - LANGUAGE. LINGUISTICS. LITERATURE

9 - GEOGRAPHY. BIOGRAPHY. HISTORY

I was searching for a model that would allow for a framework in which autodidacts can find books and create detailed notes that would be checked with AI. People say that there are lots of MOOCs out there, but imagine if this AI-based checker existed for those who don't mind studying from books. Rather than working towards degrees, users would be required to have a mental map of the organization of human knowledge and capacity for metacognition. UDC helps first in its intended purpose to do faceted classification of potential books, but it also tells us where independent scholars must start. I find the indices 0,1 and 3 to be the fundamentals. The indexing system would also be useful to communicate what kind of experience a user has similar to how classes are numbered in a university. After covering the basics, they would be competent to go out and master anything else lower on the hierarchy. Seeing as Otlet has only been my virtual mentor for a week, these are fresh ideas. I'd like to track down his written works and take a closer look into the merits of UDC.

Virtual Mentor No. 2: Elon Musk*

I originally intended for this series of posts to emphasize those who achieved some notable feat without a traditional college degree. I've reassessed that rule and it just doesn't work as smoothly with my intended outcomes. I ultimately want to learn interested stories about that the person's life that will inspire me. Often this "interesting story" is unrelated to their educational background but more related to personality factors. So, going forward, this series includes any one at all! I'm also interested in including people that are still alive because a. I theoretically have the ability to meet them and b. I can appreciate their achievements in a culturally-immersive way.

In a compilation video, there were so many great quotes from Elon Musk that I had to feature him. His thought is inspiring in a way that a motivational video is not. The reason is that he offers use advice via explaining a model for us to think with when we go out and try do accomplish something.

Learning from the Thiel Fellows

Over and beyond the stipend given to Thiel Fellows is the access to Peter Thiel's network. While I am neither a Thiel Fellow nor do I have access to the Thiel Network, I still have benefited from the existence of the Thiel Fellowship! It's not that I secretly have access to some rotating solar panels or take some life extension pill created by any of the 20 Under 20, but rather that I've carefully looked at the smaller achievements they've made and used it as inspiration. This inspiration I've gotten from these guys is the true value of the Thiel Fellowship as a "philanthropic" effort. I mean, there are very few voices in the public discourse sending the message that Millenials are not "lazy and entitled," but instead, are capable of both taking charge of their own learning and seriously working on life-improving projects in the process.

Some of these lessons I've learnt include having the courage to take on projects that have an extended time-line (looking towards the horizon) and going out and actively seeking the community you need to realize your project. In addition, I've learnt much from reading a book written by one fellow Dale J. Stephens about life-long learning. There are other small things I picked up like from some other fellows like: getting lots of whiteboards to study and brainstorm with, building a personal website, reading more academic journals and networking/aiding peers who want to build something.

Also, consider one distinguishing feature of the Thiel Fellowship application. For many programs, after decisions have been sent out, you're either in, not-in, or on the waiting-list. If you didn't make the cut, not much becomes of all the effort involved. With the fellowship, the application is less exclusive (even if you don't get it you might still get access to various opportunities), involves building up a lasting portfolio and still has the potential for smaller grants and opportunities. Taking all of this into account, it seems to be a success.

Virtual Mentor No. 1: Nina Simone

It took a while to figure out how I was going to do this. So I'm stealing James Altucher's practice of having a virtual mentor every week. I'm adding one twist: the person must be a notable figure who didn't attend university or dropped out.

Basically, each week I study the life of a someone new - paying close attention to the challenges they overcame. I want to make include a wide spectrum of people from art to business to technology. I don't necessarily have to be familiar with the notable figure I choose but at least find their story interesting at first glance or admire the work they produced.

This week's virtual mentor is Nina Simone.

Simone at a concert in Morlaix, France, May 1982

I chose Ms. Simone because I wanted an excuse to listen to Pastel Blues non-stop this week :).

Some snippets from the Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians (www.jazz.com)

"Fiercely honest, Simone was admired for her eccentricity and individualism. She was known for her spirited personality on and off the stage, which included flirting with audience members and voicing her opinions about social topics of the time."

"Simone sought the help of a private instructor to help her audition for the Curtis Institute, but was ultimately denied after a supposedly excellent audition. Simone said she later found out from an insider at Curtis that she was denied entry because she was black. This heightened her anger over the racism which was pervasive in the United States during this period."

"In 1954, Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone. Simone changed her name because she didn't want her mother to know that she was playing the devil's music."

"In 1969, Simone renounced America and decided to live as an expatriate. During this period she lived in Barbados, Liberia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom before finally settling in Cary-le-Rouet, France."

"On April 21, 2003, Simone passed away after a battle with breast cancer, two months shy of her seventieth birthday."

"Simone also received two honorary degrees in music and humanities from the University of Massachusetts and Malcolm X College. Ironically, two days before she passed away, the Curtis Institute, the very institution that had rejected her at the beginning of her career, awarded Simone an honorary degree."

Some snippets from the Nina Simone Webpage (ninasimone.com)

“Critics started to talk about what sort of music I was playing,” writes Nina in her 1991 autobiography I Put A Spell On You, “and tried to find a neat slot to file it away in. It was difficult for them because I was playing popular songs in a classical style with a classical piano technique influenced by cocktail jazz. On top of that I included spirituals and children’s song in my performances, and those sorts of songs were automatically identified with the folk movement. So, saying what sort of music I played gave the critics problems because there was something from everything in there, but it also meant I was appreciated across the board – by jazz, folk, pop and blues fans as well as admirers of classical music.”

Review: 40 Alternatives to a College Degree (James Altucher)

By the end of the book, you think to yourself, "Huh, I've never thought of doing that! These are great ideas, but if I were opting not to go to college, would I want this to be the book I refer to when I inevitably get asked how I came to my conclusions?" 

James Altucher seems to have compiled this mini-book from blog posts. You can tell because he tells the story about how after years of studying computers in college, he supposedly couldn't even turn one on for his job. I think he's exaggerating when he says that he worked 40 hrs a week while taking 6 courses per semester, but the book isn't about him. Even if it were, the question to ask is what could motivate someone who got a full-ride into grad school to write a book about college alternatives.

As with books on this subject, Altucher makes the case that college is expensive, can sometimes under deliver on quality of education and so on. I think the benefit of the book is really more about being creative when making of life decisions - recognizing that there are way more options than you think you have. He says that the book could easily have been 100 alternatives and 40 was just an arbitrary choice.

A good takeaway point I liked was this: Even if you're interested in a profession that absolutely requires degrees, it's still a good idea to do something else before going straight to college. For example, if you want to be a lawyer, try to take the bar in California and maybe work as a paralegal for a while. If you want to be a doctor, go change bed-pans for a few weeks and see if you have what it takes to treat the sick. Doing these activities are super important because down the road you will want someone to give you a recommendation. Why should someone take their time out to support you in pursuit of a profession that you only think you want? Altucher provides the kind of thinking that helps those who want to go to college and those who want alternatives. 

Ultimately, I would not have been satisfied if I had paid the $5 for this book (I got it for free by subscribing to James Altucher's podcast). I would approach it this way: If you got the book for free, used one of its ideas and had success with it, send Altucher the $5. If not, then you still might have learned something and so your time wasn't really wasted. 

Here is the summary list of 40 alternatives: www.slideshare.net/JamesAltucher/james-altucher-40-alternatives-to-college

My favorites:

1. vipassana meditation retreat
2. become a connector
3. backpack el camino de santiago 
4. do the appalachian trail
5. virtual mentor every week

Functions of the University

Any advancement over current higher educational models must establish clearly defined institutional functions.

This table shows the structure of educational needs in abstract i.e. I haven't included the concrete instances of what kind of intentional community or what kind of training or testing or publication and so on. Age groups were split up arbitrarily, just enough to be able to make some meaningful profiling.

Research 

This function is sometimes capital intensive. It operates on a grant/proposal system, unless we're talking about R&D firms in the private sector. I think the best way differentiating the two is that academic research tends to be speculative, while the research private companies do tends to have an immediate instrumental value. In a higher education un-bundling, there could be institutions for undergraduates and graduate students that focus on deep immersion in a field with opportunities to do research while faculty also focuses on research, advising and publishing their work.


Knowledge Distribution

The publishing industry, library systems, internet databases, etc. are all a part of the distribution system, but traditional higher learning includes the additional service of the lecture with the advantage being that students can ask questions when they get stuck. In a higher education un-bundling, there would be more emphasis on face-to-face interaction for upper level study perhaps based on the seminar model. This means that content distribution would be best accessed through the aforementioned systems. For example, the Minerva project takes advantage of the internet by offering instruction online for courses earlier in the sequence. There are also plenty of tutoring platforms and question forums (e.g. Quora, StackOverflow, Reddit, etc.) that are either in person or online that serve to fill the role of office hours at a traditional university in a cheaper and more effective way. After all, few students take advantage of office hours at universities anyways. They rather ask friends first. Which brings us to another function...

Socialization Patterns

The university offers an intentional community in which students live together. Students are partially randomized and then placed in dorms to live together (unless they choose their roommates beforehand). They may or may not be studying the same material, so the dormitory functions as just that - a dormitory. Students connect through the lecture hall usually in an organic way, just like in high school. Though, if they share the same major, they will likely see each other in several classes. This allows for networked learning on assignments, studying, projects, etc. After university, people find a place to live and commute to work. Here collaboration is a must. What was a study group in university becomes the "professional network." After retirement, an emphasis on intentional communities reappear along with these learning networks as people learn new skills.

The un-bundling here comes in the increase in self chosen intentional communities dedicated to study. Even Minerva international students are encouraged to take advantage of this by co-living with other students in their home country before finally moving to California for the last two years. Other examples include HackerHouse and many other technology oriented intentional communities. There are likely many informal co-living situations between people who are independent scholars or "education hackers."

Another idea, see: Home College: an Idea Whose Time Has Come (Again) 

I also have another idea to contribute to the idea-pool. Let's say we have this thing called the "Grandma Effect" which is a phenomenon where children show their grandma some cool trick they can do or share some idea they recently learned about and grandma responds with a burst or enthusiasm, thereby encouraging the child to continue learning more. When it comes to college education, some may argue that success in learning comes from the structured environment and accountability measures set up by professors, advisers and parents. If at only 18, a high school graduate wishes to join other five other 18 y.o. high school graduates to study geography together, they can find a space to do it over the course of 3 years or less. However, this group of self-directed learners will run into the problem of accountability and structure, as well as social stigma. Since both these Millenials and the older population are suited to intentional communities there should be a matching mechanism that would match an older mentor from the retired population with these independent learners. The Grandma Effect would provide encouragement, accountability and increase the reputation of the intentional community.

These are all grand ideas, but we also need ways to learn today without relying on a sophisticated infrastructure. I will try to write a post specifically about the strategies individuals can use based on all the books I've read on the subject of self-directed higher education.

Signaling Methods (Credentialing)

Throughout formal education transcripts and standardized test scores serve as the signal that allows students to move through successive stages of the education system. There are school sponsored standardized testing as well as outside testing e.g. SATs, ACTs, GREs etc. Each level (high school, college, grad school) grants a diploma or certificate which shows that the student has met all the graduation requirements. With the implementation of sorting algorithms, some job applications are weeded out even before a person looks at the resume if they don't have a certain credential.

Alternative credential systems are still being devised but I will touch on some interesting developments.

Integrative Platforms for Life-long Learning:

While a degree signals that a student has focused on education exclusively for 4 years, imagine what signal is created when a person creates a learning profile over the course of more than 4 years. A learning profile does more to show what a person dedicates their time to learning through incorporating a variety of content from articles, videos, and coursework to books read. One such platform is Degreed. Users have the ability to add verified credits from accredited universities, but more importantly they can automatically integrate into their learning portfolio all the academic content they consume on the net using a web plugin. A similar idea is Mozilla's Open Badges which offers badges for a variety of different skills.

Talent Analytics:

More and more companies are becoming "data-driven." There is a so called Datafication of Human Resources. From the same article, here is an example of datafication of HR:

"A major customer service provider analyzed 7,240 employees over seven locations around the world and found that “relevant job experience” in the area of customer service had no impact on tenure, performance, or long term employee engagement.  They also found that candidates with many prior positions (ie. job hoppers) did not perform any better or worse than employees who had long term employment with their prior employer. The result:  a very powerful model now in use to hire and predict high performers in customer service."

Analysis of turnover and estimation of wages are all internally important processes but there are areas where populations that were disadvantaged in the past will be able to gain employment based on their own metrics. One criticism may be that

I foresee a personal analytics platform which takes key measures e.g. Distance of Daily Commute, LinkedIn Connections, High School GPA, Nutritional Targets, Sleep and Exercise Data, Test Scores, and more that will be used in a proposal system which replaces the resume. People will not just apply to jobs, but also create their own jobs by proposing how they can add to projects undertaken by existing companies. The personal analytics will be useful as a baseline for soft skills and generic abilities while a portfolio, recommendations, MOOC coursework, bootcamps and workshop experience will serve to show domain expertise.

p-e-r-e-g-r-i-n-a-t-i-o-n, Pt. 2

...more outtakes from the paper...

The Job-Market Signalling Model.

According to the work of Nobel Laureate Michael Spence, educational credentials signal to employers the value that an employee can offer to a firm. Education involves a series of tasks which prove that the student can meet deadlines, arrive on time, and handle responsibility. Most importantly, by purchasing education, the student conveys information about his or her productivity. The need for signalling arises due to limitations on the access to information in the market. Due to a phenomenon referred to as the Sheepskin Effect, the signal, i.e. a degree, can have value to an employer regardless of whether it contributes to the potential employee’s productivity. This applies particularly in domains of study which do not have a focus on "technical" training, such as gender studies, history or anthropology. This suggests, then, that undergraduates can improve their human capital by entering a technical field or actively seeking to gain skills which boost productivity. By taking on a business venture, college students can receive the best of their plan-of-study and still build human capital.

---

One of the first things I learned as an undergraduate was the idea of opportunity costs. In fact, on page 4 of my macroeconomics textbook used higher education as an example of how opportunity costs work. This was even before I knew about signalling - a concept introduced later in the course. The text defines opportunity costs of a choice as "the value of the opportunities lost."

In the context of higher education, the opportunities lost are measured by the cost of tuition, books, and potentially room and board. Although students would have had to pay for room and board if they weren't students, the cost of room and board at college is often more expensive than other living situations. In addition, though, another opportunity cost is time, which can be measured as wages foregone (which can range anywhere from 15k to 35k/year for a worker with just a high school diploma). This means that at a typical state college, the highest cost of attendance is not even the tuition students pay. I'm surprised how little this is mentioned when media outlets cover the student loan crisis and unemployment among Gen-Y.

I also found out that there is a tendency for college enrollment to increase with unemployment. It makes sense since the opportunity costs are lowered if a person couldn't have gotten a job straight out of high school i.e. no wages foregone by attending college.

The list goes on. There are plenty of statistics related to higher education as well as other economic ideas that gave me a broader perspective on the decision to attend university. Taking macroeconomics was not required for the engineering track I was on, yet that was the class in which I learned the most that semester. Does it mean I should have changed majors? It could be a reason but I don't interpret this as a sign that economics was my special, true calling. My interpretation is that (1) we do well in subjects we like, (2) we do well in subjects that are taught in an engaging way and (3) there is always an initial barrier to liking a subject so I could theoretically like anything else just the same. The signalling narrative says that colleges just put a sticker on the students that were already smart and ambitious. Likewise, since I was already interested in economics I would have learned these things over time regardless of whether I took the class i.e. my grade at the end was just a signal of that interest, prior knowledge, etc.

Understanding key ideas in the field of economics brought me one step closer in my "peregrination" towards a deep interest in the future of higher education. In Miguel Street (the book I themed this blog after), Titus Hoyt, a scholarly man in a modest Trinidadian community, helps a lost boy find his way home. Later, he helps him write a letter to the Guardian about the experience.

"This, dear Mr Editor, was my first peregrination (p-e-r-e-g-r-i-n-a-t-i-o-n) in this metropolis, and I had the misfortune to wander from the path my mother had indiciated [sic]" (Emphasis mine)

I suppose you might say that in all things college education, economics is my Titus Hoyt and American Culture is analogous to "my mother." At times it feels like it doesn't matter what the numbers say and that whatever culture dictates takes precedence. Yet, all Millenials can benefit from understanding the economics of higher education.


For more economics and stats on college, try Marginal Revolution.