Give autodidacts and independent learners a chance

[lightfire22000]

I'm a pragmatic skeptic. I don't think much of magical thinking. However, I don't like how often autodidacts in many fields, at least in Europe and the US, have no avenue to get recognized for licensing.

A lot of people label autodidacts as pseudoscientists. The truth is that lots of them are better scientists than most accredited college graduates. College classes consist of listening to a professor, or possibly a TA, yack on and on for an hour and a half about minutia that has nothing to do with the material you're supposed to learn to solve problems. Never, has institutionalized education benefited me. If anything, it hurt me because it put me in a lousy learning environment and made me listen to people whose advice was terrible for me.

The fact is, on standardized tests, lots and lots of people could potentially outperform students from any place on the globe through self study and they could have been harmed by institutionalized education. You could score around, say, a 32 to a 40 on the MCAT. There is documented evidence of this. Many of the best physicians in the world today have a D.O. degree. This degree was blacklisted for decades by licensing organizations and boards who refused to scientifically test their competence. Also, there have been many like Vivien Thomas in medicine, who were discriminated due to guild like licensing policies.

In Engineering, it is worse. There have been excellent engineers who never had a college diploma. Today, there are still some out there like Dean Kamen. However, many others are legally discriminated against because P.E. certification requires an ABET accredited degree regardless of one's test performance in most states. They aren't testing merit. They aren't protecting the public. All they are doing is sanctioning and subsidizing monopolies to deny education to millions of people. It is just a bunch of bureaucrats persecuting the population. To get teaching certification, one has to take a bunch of mickey mouse classes that definitely don't help students.

Certifications and such should function as endorsements. They should exist. But when people can become competent in a profession, they shouldn't be denied access to it.

 

[lightfire22000]

Since no one has replied, I guess my debut post hasn't gone over too well. Let me just assure you all that encouraging independent learning and autodidacts will help purge pseudoscience and quackery. The current nature of our institutionalized licensing and accreditation system largely monopolizes real science and forces lots of people to trust pseudoscience.

 

[arthwollipot]

I think it's more that no-one has quite found anything in your post to disagree with - hence, no need for discussion.

I don't think anyone has any beef with the idea that some autodidacts can become extremely good in the fields that they choose to excel in. I think that much is obvious. However, I would not go as far as you in valuing a university education as worthless. There are many extremely clever university graduates as well.

 

[lightfire22000]

Perhaps I exaggerate a tad,
I attend a University and I'm transferring because I didn't like it. I'm not pretending to be unbiased. There are many clever college graduates. I'm not even arguing that Universities don't ever help people. I'm arguing that their accreditation and licensing processes detract from their success and the bureaucracy is hindering the educations of millions of people.

 

[arthwollipot]

Perhaps I exaggerate a tad,
I attend a University and I'm transferring because I didn't like it. I'm not pretending to be unbiased. There are many clever college graduates. I'm not even arguing that Universities don't ever help people. I'm arguing that their accreditation and licensing processes detract from their success and the bureaucracy is hindering the educations of millions of people.

I would take the other tack and say that universities help to educate millions of people. I came to the same conclusion you did - I completely failed to be able to deal with getting a university education and I now remain ultimately undegreed. However, I don't think that universities are a bad thing in general. On the contrary I think that most worthwile progress that we have in our society ultimately comes from universities.

So just because it isn't for you doesn't mean it's worthless. There's no need for floccinaucinihilipilification.

Yay! I used that word correctly in a sentence again! I'm getting good at this.

 

[lightfire22000]

Accreditation is worthless, not organized education. Whose better than the free market and standardized tests to determine qualifications? There are a lot of more effective ways to teach and to learn than what you'll find at a college right now.

 

[arthwollipot]

Not having a great deal of experience with university education, I can't make a value judgement.

 

[lightfire22000]

Look at what these people accomplished without college degrees.
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-wor...Without-College-Degrees?mod=career-leadership

Apologies for pounding this in, but...

If people can acquire education in true science without having it sanctioned by some body, why should they be blocked from professions? Shouldn't they at least have an opportunity to show what they can do? Shouldn't new schools be allowed to compete on a fair market that can adapt?

 

[arthwollipot]

Anyone else want to weigh in here? Perhaps someone with a university education?

 

[gambling_cruiser]

which one of this success list is a scientist?

 

[Aepervius]

What university taught me, is how to properly use a method, how to properly learn, and meet various type of people and different reasoning I would never have met. I am an autodidact when it comes to I.T. programming , but a university guy when it comes to QM (master degree). It might be that *SOME* autodidact can learn all that methodology on their own, but my experience is that the majority have a problem recognizing their own limitation. University education has its limitation, particularly if you don't profit from the possibility it offers (I know of colleagues which for example learnt for the test, instead of learning from themselves) but such person would also make bad autodidact ! It all boil down personality and willingness to learn too.

All in one, I would not see the autodidact as inferior or less knowledgeable, but I have seen a lot of them (myself included) not realizing their limitation, and that is something which you can learn in university in a quicker/better way IMHO. And a LOT of people need university/school to reach a certain degree of maturity in their learning, degree of maturity they are often unable to learn on their own.

PS: from that list of autodidact, compare then to a list of NON autodidact... And sa gambling cruiser said, none are scientist.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Since no one has replied, I guess my debut post hasn't gone over too well. Let me just assure you all that encouraging independent learning and autodidacts will help purge pseudoscience and quackery. The current nature of our institutionalized licensing and accreditation system largely monopolizes real science and forces lots of people to trust pseudoscience.

Accreditation is worthless, not organized education. Whose better than the free market and standardized tests to determine qualifications? There are a lot of more effective ways to teach and to learn than what you'll find at a college right now.

Well your OP came across to me as a standard "ain't got no time for book larnin'" diatribe, which was only spoiled by missing out "school of hard knocks" and "University of Life". Perhaps you are saving those for later posts.
In order to further the discussion you could:
1) Provide some evidence of your assertion in the first quote above, since I'm not inclined to believe your assurance alone.
2) Explain who will design and administer the standardised tests from your second quote in your free market system, and how you will ensure that they allow only highly talented autodidacts to, say, practice open heart surgery, but keep out the more barking talentless autodidacts.

 

[Robster FCD]

If I have a student that can grasp the material without coming to class, I make allowances, but require weekly meetings to ensure comprehension.

A fair amount of graduate level classes require that you do some level of self teaching, but in order to compare one program to another for ranking purposes (which we need to be able compete for grants), we still need the standardized tests.

 

[drkitten]

I think it's more that no-one has quite found anything in your post to disagree with - hence, no need for discussion.

Quite the contrary. I think I disagree with more or less every syllable in it. But my disagreement will have little effect on the opening poster, because he knows better than I.

I'm quite familiar with (what appears to be) his type; I fail students like him on a regular basis, almost precisely because they regard my lectures and assignments as "[yacking] on and on for an hour and a half about minutia that has nothing to do with the material you're supposed to learn to solve problems," and then are completely unable to solve problems at the end of the course.

Self-assessment is largely worthless; the people who are absolutely incompetent generally don't know it. EVERYONE, in their own mind, is an unsung and unrecognized genius. And even when they're presented with contrary evidence about just how unskilled they are, they rationalize it away.

If you really are good enough that you don't need formal schooling, challenge the class(es). Every university has procedures in place to accept performance-based credits; there are even a few reputable (e.g. regionally accredited) colleges that will award entire degrees based on performance-based credits. (One such school is Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, NJ.)

If lightfire really is as good as he thinks he is, he can have a degree in his hand from TESC in less than a month, and he'll have all the "credentials" he could desire.

A total non-issue -- except for the fact that so few of the student with this particular attitude have the skills to pass the necessary tests....

 

[lightfire22000]

Thanks for the response. You make a good point about TESC and I had only vaguely heard of it and I knew nothing of its nature. What do you teach? If you doubt me, I bet I can answer most problems you ask if they are in math or science. My grades are decent, but I was derailed and hampered by a series of seizures, or so the doctors think. Also, I defend my description of lectures. Professors in classes often spend a disproportionate time on minutia. For instance, all of analyzing circuit schematics depends upon determining relationships between sources and elements and equations. It has nothing to do with capacitor manufacturing as far as the problem is concerned.

There are a few things wrong with your post drkitten. One, the biggest reasons for wanting to allow legal recognition based on open testing are time and money. It's not that I want to just cut class and sleep in all day. Two, you avoid the issue of accreditation all together. Accreditation creates an extremely bureaucratic environment in academia. Without it, many effective schools would emerge and many people who don't presently have skills to pass necessary tests would if there could be more schools and no restraints on trade. Don't forget that a lot of people can still learn "independently" without learning by themselves. Likely, this is how many lab based classes would work(and would work much better than current lab classes.)

Three, I could have a degree from TESC, which I had only vaguely heard of before thanks, but I think many or most trades would still be blocked with that degree. I am considering it though. A degree from TESC is not “all the credentials could desire.” Many accreditation laws either directly or indirectly ban the use of degrees of TESC(except for the BS in Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, in which I'm not well versed.) I don't know about Nursing. However, in light of your information I must concede that Nursing is not as protected as I had previously thought.

 

[Cavemonster]

Self-assessment is largely worthless; the people who are absolutely incompetent generally don't know it. EVERYONE, in their own mind, is an unsung and unrecognized genius. And even when they're presented with contrary evidence about just how unskilled they are, they rationalize it away.

Oh, I though you were going to link to this,

 

[lightfire22000]

which one of this success list is a scientist?

Dean Kamen is indisputably a scientist. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, John Paul DeJoria, and Michael Dell have all used science considerably.

I personally agreed with most of the video except that the Bible clearly doesn't state that Sodomites have been society's filth for sixth thousand years since God destroyed Sodom a long time ago(according to that book.)

What university taught me, is how to properly use a method, how to properly learn, and meet various type of people and different reasoning I would never have met. I am an autodidact when it comes to I.T. programming , but a university guy when it comes to QM (master degree). It might be that *SOME* autodidact can learn all that methodology on their own, but my experience is that the majority have a problem recognizing their own limitation.

Francis Bacon and Charles Peirce's writings are all available online. Those two wrote the vast majority of the works on method of inquiry that hold relevance today. You're right about a lot of people not knowing their limitations, but that's because of the present system. If TESC was the academic standard bearer, everyone would know their limitations.

 

[drkitten]

Two, you avoid the issue of accreditation all together. Accreditation creates an extremely bureaucratic environment in academia. Without it, many effective schools would emerge and many people who don't presently have skills to pass necessary tests would if there could be more schools and no restraints on trade.

Possibly,.... but the would be swamped by the number of snake-oil mail order "degrees" that would emerge out of the woodwork. We've done that experiment, extensively. Indeed, the modern trend is actually to strengthen accreditation requirements precisely because the current system is demonstrably inadequate to controlling the number of scam artists peddling phony degrees, as a glance at your spam filter will no doubt tell you.

If you're one of the free market theologians who also thinks that eliminating the FDA would improve the quality of medicines available because no one would possibly buy a medicine that is ineffective or dangerous, then no doubt you also discount the possibility of people buying ineffective and dangerous degrees. For the reality-influenced, the FBI's recent experience with operation DIPSCAM should be evidence enough.

Many accreditation laws either directly or indirectly ban the use of degrees of TESC(except for the BS in Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, in which I'm not well versed.)

Really? Interesting that despite the fact that until ten minutes ago, you hadn't heard of TESC, you're nevertheless confident that the existing accreditation laws "ban the use of degrees of TESC." I feel confident that you can support this broad claim.

Please bear in mind, for instance, that TESC is regionally accredited, which is the only form of accreditation that the US government mandates or requires for acceptance of its degrees. (The accrediting body in this case is Middle States, the same one that accredits Princeton and UPenn.)

I believe you specifically mentioned the PE as one credential where a degree is "required." This is, not to put too fine a point on it, false. Here, for example, are the rules from Delaware. If you have no degree at all, you can still sit for the PE exam with twenty years experience. If you have a degree in engineering or engineering-related sciences, you can sit for the exam after eight years of experience. Having an ABET-accredited degree does save you some trouble; you can sit the exam after only four years. The rules for New York are similar.

So if you want to be a professional engineer, the BSAST from TESC will do you just fine.

 

[shadron]

Since I earned an MS degree in 1972, most all the learning I've done since has been self taught. That is no mean statement when your field is Computer Science; what I learned about such in the "dawn times" of the previous century has undergone many changes in detail; what has lasted is methods and history. I have no idea how many hours of re-invention of the wheel has been saved due to the study of the simple shell sort method in the Kernigan/Ritchie, and in Knuth's Art books. Hundreds, I think, conservatively.

In the areas where I have had to put in time learning new things, such as languages, libraries, object oriented programming and such, the biggest bugaboo, and that which I miss the most from organized classes, has been the completeness of what I've studied. I generally never learned well from reading a book; rather I learned by doing - classically, finding a project on which I could make use of learning a new tool or language, and then diving in. This worked for me, but I'm forever running into examples of programming where I say to myself, "Hey, that's slick. Why didn't I do it that way? Why don't I know that that library call existed, and would have saved me a lot of re-invention?" I also find that during the learning curve I visit forums and ask questions a lot - looking up the answers to my questions is possible in the materials available to me, but that would often take hours or days to do. I attribute this to the fact that I never learned the language systematically.

That, I think, at least for me, is the value in learning from someone else. I could learn it myself, but getting it systematically results in very much more efficient usage. If I had to do it over again, I would have spent less time moonlighting and more in school, even without a degree as a goal.

 

[lightfire22000]

drkitten,

What do you teach?

Many, many laws specify a "BS/AB/BA/BE" degrees in tons of trades. In Massachusetts, those designations are required for teaching. That's how I can tell the degree won't count. Take law for example. One needs a J.D. from a recognized law school to practice law. If all of the law schools only accept BA/BS undergraduate degrees, such designation is a legal requirement to become a lawyer. A policy of a sanctioned monopoly is a law.

I was unfamiliar with EVERY state's rules for PE certification, but the state in which I live requires an ABET accredited degree. The laws you provide in other states also considerably hamper non-ABET accredited degree earners.

Quacks and degree mills are actually assisted by accreditation and the FDA. Watch a Kevin Trudeau infomerical(I know it's unbearable so try to laugh at them.) How many times does he go after the government and the FDA? They give quacks an excuse. As for DIPSCAM, I am quite familiar with that. In a free market system, regulatory agencies would be companies that give consumer reports and endorsements. Stephen Barrett would be a prominent business owner. No one would buy pieces of paper since there would be no significance attached to them.