ASU: The New American University (2021)
nadia.xyz
nadia.xyz
I am active duty military and was able to earn a $102k Software Engineering degree without touching my GI Bill benefits because of ASU. They have an automatic military (to include reservists) scholarship that essentially makes the school the cost of US military tuition assistance ($250 a credit hour). The process for applying for TA through the military is simple enough, and then you only have to email a pdf to the requisite ASU email.
Because of this, I was able to transfer my full GI bill to my daughter.
You graduate debt free, eligible for Pell grants, you get paid BAH (monthly housing stipend) and you don’t have to rush 4 years of school but can take your time. Military service + engineering skills after graduating at, say, 26 years old and you’re set up for a good ride. Plus the VA loan when you’re ready to buy a house.
But if you don’t have a Purple Heart or you aren’t really old you better not park in those “veterans parking” spots I see at Lowes.
Parents divorced when I was 16 and I was sort of left to fend for myself. No abuse or trauma in a direct sense but I would wake up, no one would be at the house and I would drive myself to school at 17.
Tried community college after high school but was working 50 hours as a fast food manager so that didn’t work as well as I planned. Eventually joined the military on a 5 year contract. When I got out I went back to community college, Theron was free and I got close to 2k per month stipend. Transferred to a UC for CS and graduated around 30.
Got a short term job and eventually ended up at a large Silicon Valley tech company.
It was a late start but I feel like I got to see a snapshot of society that none of my peers have seen, especially the American born ones. The immigrants mostly have unique paths of their own that are interesting.
GI bill was truly awesome and helped me achieve a salary and position I never thought possible for me.
The signs at Lowe's say "Veteran Parking Only", not "Purple Heart Recipient Parking Only" or "Retired Service Member Parking Only".
The class of total US veterans represents 6.7% of all US adults 18 years and over on a trend that's been consistently declining for at least the past 2 decades[1]. There's no moral hazard here and Lowe's is kind enough to extend enough privileged parking to go around.
The 10% off everything in store? Yea I'll use that one though but I sure as hell feel weird doing it!
That's certainly on you, and to each his own (a freedom we once swore to defend, right?), but this 10-year, 2-tour vet wouldn't dare deny the privilege to the lowest ranking prior junior enlisted desk jockey who served a single term and never once deployed, or even some civilian poser who has yet to internalize the core value of integrity.
The mission requires service of all forms; surely the preservation of pride and honor isn't predicated on taking a bullet or losing a limb or surrendering 20+ years of adult life for country.
> The 10% off everything in store? Yea I'll use that one though but I sure as hell feel weird doing it!
Why? Lowe's rakes in a handsome 33% gross margins and billions in net profit every year[1]. In exchange for extending a mere 10% retail discount to 6.7% minority class, the company receives the intangible benefit of community association, positive PR, and share of a growing homeowner customer base (thanks in large part to the VA) with recurring needs...in other words, it's a calculated business decision and marketing expense, not charity.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/60667/00000606672300...
To me, parking your car in a "veterans" spot at Lowes or anywhere requires exactly that. I'm not a charity case. My legs work just fine thank you.
Obviously we disagree here, but I say no thanks to the "privilege" to park closer to a suburban hardware store and have a shorter walking distance than my grandma.
> Why? Lowe's rakes in a handsome 33% gross margins and billions in net profit every year
I get that, and I use it, but it still feels awkward to me.
I'm not some hippie peacenik but the US government (and every gov I've seen) does a very poor job of picking its battles and avoiding civilian casualties. I decided not to volunteer because I can't trust them to tell me who to kill.
Congrats, that is the coolest thing I've read today. Had no idea you could transfer GI bill! Not only are you able to improve yourself, but that gift you're giving your daughter will give her a GIGANTIC head start in young adult life.
Awesome job, very cool!
One thing I liked about going there is that it was easy for me to get exposure as a programmer by working for researchers at its public/private research ventures. The professors weren’t world famous but they were solid and always seemed to have some paid extracurricular coding for me to do for one of their research projects.
On the administration side, I agree with this article that Crow’s vision has been basically validated. Despite its increasing size, ASU’s academic stature via research output and reputation among academics has continued to improve in the last 15 years. For example, ASU was just added to the prestigious Association of American Universities.
Watching ASU transform over the years as Crow realized his vision has been very cool.
https://tucson.com/news/local/arizona-ag-sues-to-block-universities-from-leasing-land-to-commercial-businesses/article_c1210c2f-da3f-5a35-9678-6aa10f2efb9a.htmlAnd yet, there's still no proper grocery store in orbit of the campus; there was a sketchy IGA back in the early 1990s, but they gradually drove all the tenants out of the strip mall, claiming it would eventually be built into a wildly-needed parking structure; instead they built a 25-story retirement home on campus.
I feel like the weirdest angle on it is the entire Shady Park scuffle: they built the retirement tower largely during the pandemic, and people kvetched to the point of a legal dispute when the club across the street started having noisy concerts again. How do you have a large mainstream college WITHOUT things loud college bars nearby? What exactly did they expect?
Some amazing work is coming out of a public state university and that is exciting, in sustainability, in technology, in space exploration (Rovers) and many other things.
ASU and community colleges, which recently are able to give out bachelors degrees, are some of the best parts of Arizona and bright spots on how education can be competitive both in quality and cost, as well as available to all that want to pursue. [2]
[1] https://president.asu.edu/watch/obama-at-asu-commencement-sp...
[2] https://www.maricopa.edu/degrees-certificates/bachelors-degr...
> the cost of a respectable degree is *spiraling upwards*, while the value of that degree is spiraling downwards.
The phrase "spiraling downwards" is common for something falling out of control, and is the correct usage here in terms of a degree's value. But can something also "spiral upwards"?
Maybe it can, maybe it can't. I've never heard someone use the "spiraling upwards" analogy. The phrase originates from planes that lose their ability to maneuver and control themselves so they fall out of the sky in a spiral corkscrew fashion while trying to re-gain control, which fits with the general usage of the phrase. But spiraling upward is just funny to me, within the same anology it isn't probably possible or realistic. "Shooting upwards" is better probably.
I really don't mean this as a critique to the author, i find the article very interesting. However, the writer inside of me just couldn't ignore the opportunity to discuss this usage.
Now, shifting gears to the author's original point so I am actually adding value here. I agree that tech really degrades against academia right now. To the point of even praising or glorifying those who drop out of school. But there really is some incredible research happening in academia right now within tech. I wish more attention was spent on favoring this work and those who participate in it instead of focusing on silly algorithm puzzles and memorizing programming language syntax oddities. This stuff really isn't useful while being able to produce thoughtful technical reports and being able to effectively spread and share good ideas (which academia emphasizes) are positive traits that actually benefit any company and make your workplace better.
Birds on updrafts do this.
Agree with your other point though :)
[0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Upward+spiral&...
[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Upward+spiral%...
Absolutely, especially in economics. The cost of American college degrees is a great example, or the cost of American real estate. Both are rising and quite literally out of control.
Something that’s falling rapidly is being likened to an aircraft that’s spiralling towards the ground. Is there a physical analogy of something that spirals upward?
I believe this is the point. The author did not use the phrase in isolation, he used it alongside the normal usage. It's like the archaic use of "without" in "attacks came from both within and without". Or describing a difference in ambition as "Alice wanted to run a marathon, but Bob wanted to run to the Moon".
ChatGPT identified it as a form of semantic inversion, which I think is basically right:
> An interesting aspect of this antithesis is the unconventional use of the phrase "spiraling upwards". While "spiraling downwards" is a common phrase used to signify a situation getting out of control or deteriorating, "spiraling upwards" is less common and might seem contradictory because spiraling is usually associated with descent, not ascent. However, this incongruity serves to enhance the impact of the contrast. This can be seen as a form of semantic inversion – using language in a way that is structurally parallel but semantically opposite or unexpected, to underscore a point.
More common forms of semantic inversion are oxymorons, irony, and paradoxical phrases.
It's a great model for churning out highly educated workers. We need that, and there is a place for higher educational institutions that do that well. But for all of its graduates, ASU doesn't produce many thinkers, founders, philosophers—people who are going to move the needle of our society. To see this, compare the notable alumni lists of, say, ASU and Stanford (both founded in the same year). Look at Turing Award recipients, Nobel Laureates, etc. It's not a new American university - ASU is the same as it's always been.
When I look at the largest universities in the US by enrollment, I think the closest university to a true "New American University" is UIUC (no affiliation) in Illinois. Enrollment is in the top 10, similar in size to ASU. They have multiple programs ranked in the top 10 including computer science. While past success doesn't predict the future, there are some heavy hitters on the UIUC alumni list - Marc Andreessen, Steve Chen, Max Levchin. Would love if anyone happend to attend both ASU and UIUC and could compare the two.
You bring up Stanford, a school with a sort of comparable start historically would be Clark University (which might surprise some it's notability has somewhat waned in this century). I think Clark's trajectory would demonstrate the importance of location. Both UIUC and Stanford have enough nearby schools where it doesn't really compete heavily for resources, but also enough where you get strong collaborative efforts. There's also a technology bias in both who we're looking at as notable alumni, as well as where both schools are pretty much best known for. If we were talking about financiers, we'd probably see more UMich and UVA I'd hazard.
[1] https://www.admissions.illinois.edu/apply/freshman/admit-rat...
At least according to my quick reading of the article, ASU has a significant focus on inclusion as a core value. Overall Illinois does admit a large percentage of applicants: about 50% over recent years. (The number dropped a bit after we began participating in the Common App, which makes it easier for students to increase the number of institutions they apply to.)
However, that number hides the fact that admission to top programs like computer science is extremely selective and exclusive. Admission rates to CS have been around 7% recently. And while we've made a CS minor somewhat more accessible, we've also closed down pathways that allowed students to start at Illinois and transfer into a computer science degree. (At this point that's pretty much impossible.) We do have blended CS+X degree programs that combine core studies in computer science with other areas, and those are less selective, but they have their own limitations—specifically, having to complete a lot of coursework in some other area that may not interest you.
I think what's fooling you about Illinois is the fairly odd combination of a highly-selective department (CS) embedded in a less-selective institution. I'm sure that there are other similar pairings, but overall this is somewhat unusual. If you think about other top-tier CS departments—Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, CMU—most are a part of an equally-selective institution.
So with Illinois you're getting the cache of an exclusive department combined with the high acceptance rate of an inclusive public land-grant university. But on some level this is a mirage created by colocated entities reflecting different value systems. And, unlike places like Berkeley and Virginia, which have been trying to admit more students into computing programs, no similar efforts are underway here at Illinois. (To my dismay.)
Overall, unfortunately it's still very obvious to me that exclusivity is part of what we're selling to students as a core value of our degree program. You're special if you got in—just because a lot of other people didn't. Kudos to anyone moving away from this kind of misguided thinking.
ASU was a stand out and rolling online admissions meant she could start a year sooner than at a UC. I have a BA and MS in computer science and I have been very happy with what they are teaching her. From good CS progressions to math classes that primarily use Matlab.
They seem well tied into industry (defense) and teach practical skills.
My understanding is that they are still ramping up their online offerings. There isn't a CS specialization for data science online yet, for example. If they keep going in the same direction though, it will be amazing.
Now, with degrees sold to asia for $18b a year (Australia) and a complete distortion of the public interest in study (degrees once expensive, then free, now expensive again) We're in a place where as this article says, the cost/value disfunction is extreme.
Tenure track chasing is it's own whole nightmare too
People who call ASU a degree mill (I've honestly never even heard anyone say that) should realize that the programs are accredited just like any other university. Don't confuse it with University of Phoenix. I have since gone on to get a Master's degree from a top 10 engineering school and can safely say that ASU was just as rigorous. Anecdotally, all of my classmates have had excellent outcomes, and all for < 10k a year at the time.
Exclusivity in education is a relic of an earlier time and just doesn't make sense today.
The number of lecturers in the CS department that disregard pedagogy for research is astonishing, and makes the undergrad experience horrible.
I still think ASU is doing good with the New American University model and I have benefitted from it immensely. I just don't want anyone to get the idea that it's even in the same ballpark for CS as more popular CS programs.
I could see it as a legitimate use case-- in a real business environment, even in a software-centric organization, you might have a need for light-duty database stuff where the UI is 90% of the value, and Access could give you that while trying to tape together an interface atop SQLite or MySQL is a lot of extra effort.
The prof even had an appendix for "if you want to do this on a CLI or with MariaDB..." and had links to other DBMS alternatives. I used DBeaver with Maria and got an A in the class.
But to the parent poster's point -- as someone who has done a lot of hiring on the entry-to-mid level there is a NOTABLE difference in quality from the brick-and-mortar schools vs. online, even if they didn't have a STEM degree (e.g. an English major who turned Network Engineer). I suspect it's more about selection bias and some limited competing with peers.
It is funny to hear that they are still using MS Access. I took that same class, nearly a decade ago though. We thought that it was weird even back then. But, if my memory serves my correctly most of the class was about theory, it's not like the goal was to learn how to use MS Access beyond projects trying to apply theory.
I found the assignments to be pretty comparable to other schools, but it very likely depends on which professors you ended up getting. I know for a fact that certain classes had very different content/projects based on your professor.
That's why it's especially pleasing to read about success stories, where the trend is bucked and the results are positive.
For me, success is determined by the graduates. Did they graduate? Did they go on to be successful? Are they functioning as valuable members of society? Are they happy with the outcomes?
The article suggests that this is the case. More graduates, lower costs, good outcomes.
I'm sure there are exceptions, and I'm sure there are complaints, but overall it seems positive.
Call it a degree-mill all you like, but if it's serving the masses and those folks are finding their degree useful, then grind away...
To you first question about what did Crow do differently, a lot and also not much. Consider, he was chosen by the regents because his vision aligned with theirs and the direction the school was already headed.
Regarding how faculty have regarded the changes, the short answer, it depends. I distinctly remember hearing of opinions on both sides during those first few years. What I can say is the quality of the faculty, the rankings of the various colleges, and research grants and outcomes have improved beyond anyone's wildest dreams.
WGU: fully online, you can go faster and thus reduce total tuition costs, targeted to those whose work experience can justify college credit (competency-based, you can test out of things quickly, and tuition is by semester, for as many classes as you can take or test out of, I believe). Around 130k students, accredited by 4 different regional bodies, and affiliates in a number of US states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wgu
BYU Pathway Worldwide: also fully online (I think), and very religious (though membership not required, just an "affiliation" or such, last I knew), but tuition is far cheaper, especially as it is adjusted based on the student's country of residence to be very affordable, and even has a program to learn English before joining the main curriculum (which is all in English), with ~ 61k students worldwide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYU%E2%80%93Pathway_Worldwide
It may be that ASU provides good value for the dollar; it is not realistic that they provide to 76k students the experience that a smaller university can offer to 5k students or even 15k students.
Most jobs and careers do not require a 4-year university education. Even most "tech" jobs don't, because for every job that needs a mathematician there are 10 that need a narrow-skilled technician, either trained by a boot camp (coding) or an apprenticeship (sysadmin/ netadmin).
I had no idea i didn't go to a "real school"
Can anyone summarise it from a ROTW point of view?
General summary on the issue, Ivy League schools created a model of exclusivity and became more about who they didn't let in and many sub-Ivy League tier 1 schools followed. Crow's New American University model was more about creating the capacity and providing greater access to quality education for many.
FWIW here's part 1 of the podcast I mentioned S1E4: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/carlos-d...