Good eye. I should have caught that one. I've updated the post to indicate the correct numbers (which was more like ~35 million units in 2017) and added an editor's note about the mistake. Thanks!
That's a good point. My brother -- who until recently ran a small non-profit -- last year had a grant to build a new website and put out a RFP to a bunch of local and national design firms. I think at times he was overwhelmed with the responses and utilized me to sort through them. I spent a good deal of time going over the proposals with him and helping him understand the differences between WordPress and Drupal and PHP vs. Ruby and what sort of features he actually needed on his organization's new website.
In the end he told me that I could probably make a living doing consulting like that strictly for non-profits. There is definitely a need for that sort of guidance.
I think that's where orgs like NTEN can help, and maybe this site could also act as an information clearing house and community for those on the non-profit side to learn about what sort of technologies are available, what they need, what's possible, and how to get it done.
It's admirable to attempt to collect free resources and organize them in a way that provides a natural progression for subject matter mastery, but essays and lectures does not a college education make. For that you need teachers and peers to discuss the information, to frame it and present it in ways necessary for different types of learners to grasp it, to evaluate your understanding, to challenge you to think about things in new ways.
For most people, just reading the information or watching lectures won't bring you to the same level of understanding (certainly there are exceptions to that rule).
Don't get me wrong, it's great to organize these resources and make them more available for people who wouldn't otherwise have access, but it bothers me to imply this is the same as a college education. Ultimately, I think that just devalues the work that teachers do.
Then again, I'd say at least half of students in a typical college class could care less about what they're learning.
If someone has the initiative to go through videos and essays, chances are they're learning more than the bottom 50% in the equivalent college class.
I think initiatives like this could eventually offer valid alternatives to the 'college degree', but not a 'college education'. A degree is what you get from mastering an area of studying. A college education includes additional social and professional skills, which I think is what you're concerned with these initiatives not addressing.
Whether the term is semantically correct or not, "group buying" is how most people have been referring to those types of sites (either that, or "daily deal site" -- though even that, one could argue, is incorrect, since many of these sites have deals that last more than one day or present more or less than one day or present multiple deals in a day).
Your point is valid, I suppose, but the accepted nomenclature is the accepted nomenclature.
It is unfortunately accepted nomenclature, but still off and there exist models that are truly "group buying". This model is quite popular in China. Hundreds of people will show up in front of a big store in China in the morning and demand a 10% across the broad discount or else none of them will go in the store. That's group buying.
It seems to me that all of those arguments could be applied to Woot, which did quite well before Groupon. They're at least following a once-proven model.
(Woot has always had a tacked on community, but so does Groupon.)
Brilliant! And fitting, since baby carrots are already the sort of "junk food of the carrot world." At least, insofar as that they're the lazy alternative to buying and cutting your own damn carrots.
(Baby carrots are just big carrots that have been pre-cut and marked way up. Info here: http://www.wisebread.com/baby-carrots-the-frugal-idea-that-i... ... which also brings to mind the semi-related issue of America's aversion to non-"perfect" produce. That's one of the reasons small, local producers have a hard time selling to big grocery chains -- they can't afford to cull their produce of the "ugly" carrots, tomatoes, peppers, etc.)
This aversion to ugly fruit and veg invaded UK and Australia year ago as well. So now, when you go to a supermarket, you will have beautiful tastless food, whereas when you go to Spain or Italy, you have ugly delicious fruit and veg.
We're ridiculous sometimes. I was at the farmers market and wanted some strawberries. I noticed none at the stand but the vendor had some stacked on a table behind her. Why weren't those being sold? She said she'd forgot to wash them off and customers don't like fruit with dirt on it.
Shortage doesn't seem like the right word. That implies that there are more job openings than applicants, which simply isn't true. According to the New York Times, this is one of the weakest job markets for teachers in decades: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/nyregion/20teachers.html
The applicant pool is plenty well stocked, so there is no "shortage" of teachers. What there is, perhaps, is a shortage of qualified teachers in the classroom. In other words, due to budget cuts, layoffs and position cuts (i.e., not hiring a replacement after someone retires or quits), there are not enough employed teachers to adequately teach all the students in the states with a so-called shortage.
But there are plenty of qualified people looking for teaching jobs -- more than enough for current openings and then some. So what this is, is a money problem. There's no teacher shortage, there's a budget shortage. We're not allocating enough funds to adequately fill needs in schools across the country.
I didn't see it mentioned in the article but most of the job openings are not for class room teachers but special education and ESL (English as a second language). That means you have to have special endorsements or licensing to hold those positions. My wifes district is laying off teachers this year due to budget shortfalls yet there are still job openings. They are just all special education positions.
There are two reasons there's lots of special education positions open. The first is that many teachers don't have the necessary endorsements. The second is that many teachers have zero desire to get the endorsements. Special education in many schools is underfunded and under supported. In our overzealous attempt to prevent peoples children from being labeled as different we've hamstrung the programs. Then you have the mainstreaming of severely dysfunctional children in order to make them feel normal. This can cause greater problems for those children and negatively impact the education of every child. I'm not an expert on this topic but I've heard enough about it to see why so many teachers aren't willing to work in special education.
I'm not quite sure it's a money problem - for example in FY 2008 - Milwaukee Public schools spent $14503 per enrolled student and has a 46% graduation rate.
There are plenty of Milwaukee area private options that exceed the outcomes of the public school system for well under $14K.
I don't necessarily disagree, but the premise of the parent post was that this was simply a spending/budget problem.
Spending per pupil has risen every year over the last 20 in Milwaukee and performance & outcomes have dropped dramatically. Logic dictates that there are many other forces in play.
I don't think I'd say my premise was that this was "simply" a budget problem. I was just saying that calling it a teacher shortage is a poor choice of words to describe the current problem -- we don't have a shortage of qualified teacher candidates, we have a shortage of capital necessary to hire them.
The education system and the problems therein (i.e., issues affecting student success) are certainly far more complicated and nuanced.
of course there are, but I don't think one can draw the conclusion that private schools are better with less money when they have a biased sample of students.
If 7 female founder is reflective of the Y Combinator applicant pool, and the only thing YC is doing to structurally to "keep women out" is to favor founders who have coding skills, then the issue appears to be that there aren't enough competent female coders.
Rather than a band-aid solution (e.g., creating a separate model of startup incubator that plays the types of jobs women currently do), if we want true gender equality in the tech space we should hit at the root: getting more women interested in tech. So instead of "XX Combinator," how about more programs designed to get young girls interested in science, math, coding, and entrepreneurism -- the supposed ingredients of a successful YC applicant.
That is, it seems to me that funding a whole bunch of startups run by people who may not be technically qualified to succeed simply because they're women isn't a great idea. Instead, the better solution is to devise ways to get more women interested in the things necessary to succeed (in this case coding and design skills+) and help them develop those skills.
+If you believe the apparent YC philosophy that technically adept founders are better positioned to succeed.
I think that what needs to be addressed is the cultural idea that math and programming and "science stuff" is a male thing.
On a more abstract level, I think what needs to be addressed is the cultural idea that $FOO or $BAR are a $GENDER thing, especially considering what we're discovering about gender and sexuality. There's plenty of examples of women being pressured to not do X and men being pressured to not do Y because X or Y fall out of what are considered to be normal social behavior for their respective gender or sex.
How to address it? I don't know exactly, other than stressing the point, and making a point of not performing that type of implied discrimination yourself.
I'm a big fan of meritocracy in this regards -- if I'm looking for coders (or dancers, or drivers, or artists, or bakers, or whatever), I care about what they can and have accomplished, not what they look like or what their sex is. If I ever start my own company, I very well might make the application process (as) entirely anonymous (as possible) to enforce this.
Good eye. I should have caught that one. I've updated the post to indicate the correct numbers (which was more like ~35 million units in 2017) and added an editor's note about the mistake. Thanks!