Further Progress on AI Teaching Assistant
and listen to Tyler and Megan
After a couple more hours of work, here is the AI tutor tracking your progress on skills. The idea is that as you get answers right, it will reduce frequency of repetition. As you get answers wrong, it will increase frequency of repetition. We’re not yet using a server database. So if you change browsers it won’t recognize you.
The good news is that Claude gets this done really quickly. The bad news is that it is working hard, so I will need to up my subscription to Claude Max if I want to keep going.
Meanwhile, listen to Tyler Cowen and Megan McArdle. Megan says,
I think about the academic problem a lot in part because I can imagine ways to turn a university into a more AI hardy place. Right? If I were going to start that university, would I start with people who are selected by their ability to master the current path to tenure? Probably not.
Are those people going to be interested in doing the things that will be productive in the future? Also, probably not. [Tyler: Strong agree.] Um, and the governance of universities is crazy, right? [Tyler: Breaking anyway]. And I said this to to an academic who came I said you’ve got this huge problem which is that you are kind of selling a bundle.
You are selling all of these classes that signal various things to employers but your individual you could be really good at producing AI literate students but employers have no way of seeing that you personally are very good. They need to have a basic faith in the bundle. And I said, and the problem with this is that the the administration doesn’t have any governance way to make the university better as a whole.
And he came back and he said, I don’t think you understand. No, we design our classes ourselves. And I was like, yes, that’s the problem right [Tyler: exactly] that that in fact it is a problem that this structure that has given a massive autonomy to professors and I’m not even arguing about whether this was a good or a bad structure 20 years ago.
Professors can look at the administration at today’s universities and argue that autonomy for professors is a great thing. But what universities badly need, and will not get, is much better leadership (bureaucracy, if you will) and way less autonomy for professors.
My VP of Europe had the phrase that pays, "Recruit the attitude, train the skill." Outside of STEM jobs, many employers have no expectation that any knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) gained by undergraduates will transfer to entry-level jobs. In the US, professional KSAs are learned in business, law, or medical school. In other countries, these professional KSAs are taught at the undergraduate level. Thus, the US liberal arts degree is a luxury good that subsidies have extended to too many.
In the most recent episode of Dad Saves America, Stephen Hicks blames the education system for mis-preparing students for the cognitive and emotional rigors of the real world for ideological reasons (I'd add economic and political reasons too). Senior, experienced educators have told me about the shift to "college for all" in the early 2000s that included the shuttering of vocational programs. If we believe the bad boy of social science, Charles Murray, these students have little business in liberal arts programs. After all, my sense is that these programs were created centuries ago to train the second sons of the aristocracy for the priesthood.
Joining these thoughts shows how the education system has set up a lot of people for failure at high prices. Personally, I think government seeks to indoctrinate its subjects, hide the unemployment it creates, and fund its friends. This is done partly consciously (bootleggers) and partly as the revealed effect of its ideologies (baptists). "College for all" achieves all three aims.
It is quality measurement of professors that is most missing. How can any stakeholder, student, admin, parent, govt (loan guarantor or grantor), or even the professor himself, know if he’s doing a good job? Universal & centralized lack of standards doesn’t change this. Autonomy on a clear standard is likely better than even excellent bureaucracy.
Ivy+ college grads do better because of selection & network effects, not because of much better teachers.
Good teaching, on a subject, needs far better definition:
A) a student has some knowledge of the subject, shown by tests,
B) the student learns more in the class, dependent on the professor/ teacher
C) the student gains knowledge about the subject, maybe an improvement of critical thinking, shown thru testing,
D) the professor is graded by how much the student has learned.
This grading of professors is needed, not a loss of autonomy. Tho external grading, & external standard tests for a subject are a loss of autonomy for the professor, no longer able to claim being a great professor due to self-assessment, autonomously.
The same process should used to grade aigent tutors, and seems to be like what Alpha school is doing with human guides & ai courses & standard tests.
UATX should be pushing this or something similar.
Arnold, your reports here are great-how do you know if you are doing a good job as a teacher? And, aren’t you more able to use ai because you have autonomy, rather than lots of good old bureaucracy?
Reduce grade inflation:
C2) students get a grade, based on some bureaucratic curve for A, B, C, D, Fail %. Per professor.
Those in classes of under 20 starting students (30? 10? ) all students are ranked, 1- 20 (# students), ties give all tied the lower rank (maybe 2 are ranked second, both, or three ranked third, never 2 ranked first.)