Hacker News Reader

Comment by ibraheemdev | Hacker News Reader

One that I didn't find on the list, Coursera makes it really difficult to take ("audit") a course for free: https://github.com/ossu/computer-science/blob/master/FAQ.md#...

View on HN

Is the phrase "audit" a specific Americanism, or is it more widely used? I've never encountered it (beyond the context of American colleges referring to sitting in on lectures in the US system of building credits yourself towards a major) - in other countries with different (perhaps more regimented) university education, I've never encountered the phrase. And personally I haven't encountered the concept either really.

I'm wondering if the phrase itself is also designed to be understood by the fewest number of people possible, in addition to being hidden?

It’s a standard expression, not an Americanism.

I’ve never heard it in Australia in this context.

I’m Australian, and have heard this sense of “audit” approximately once before in my life, from Americans.

We used it at the University of Western Australia back in the ‘80s when I’d attend lectures and tutorials for a course without formally enrolling (bureaucratic issues meant that that was often impossible). Some academics were very positive about it, they got good participants in the room, rather than just check-the-box degree mill students.

Not in regular use in that sense in the UK either.

I've heard it very infrequently and usually with some US context in the conversation.

The first reference on the Wikipedia article is to a Australian university page, but then again, the link's broken.

It’s not standard in Ireland or Britain. I figured it was more of a MOOCism rather than an Americanism as this is the only context I’ve seen it used to refer to trying out a course for free.

I'm not sure about the "free" aspect, but I've seen it used to mean "attending classes without being enrolled in a course" in other places, that is, in the offline university context.

Kind of. To audit means to assess the quality of. This is true in British English, but hiding free access to a course behind the pretence that the student is auditing, not studying, is wholly American.

Audit is Latin for "I hear" (think "auditorium", "audience", "audition"). If you think about it an audience with a lord, a legal "hearing", and an academic lecture are in many ways similar.

Later the meaning of audit branched/changed, and one common modern sense of the word is to do a thorough examination of something, comparing results against specification. I speculate that it first became a technical specialized legal term (in a context where it was originally still about a hearing in court), and then mutated as it filtered back out to people who didn’t know the word’s origin.

The "audit" in "audit an academic course" (meaning to attend the course without obtaining a credential) branched from the original sense of the word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_audit

Glad I'm not the only one that noticed this. The link itself to 'audit' is basically as small of a clickable link as possible. I am honestly surprised they didn't just hyperlink 'a'udit at this point.

Geeez. I didn't even know that was an option. Very disappointing Coursera!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com