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1/ I would say it goes way beyond this, as well. It sounds trite to say that you learn a lot in 3 AM debates with your dorm-mates, but you really do, and one reason is accountability. https://twitter.com/blakehounshell/status/1280222450253533185
2/ People are pretty good at rationalizing away challenges to their views. So you make an argument in class, someone makes a good rejoinder, but you don't change your mind, because you convince yourself that you're still right for reasons you can't articulate at the moment.
3/ But you have the same debate every few nights with your roommate or the person who lives upstairs, and after a while, you might just change your mind. I know I did on a number of things that were important to me.
4/ More generally, "networking" is an absurdly reductionist way of referring to the sort of intellectual community building that a truly great university education involves.
5/ Faculty, classes, libraries, etc. are essential to this, because (a) students learn a lot in them, and (b) they provide intellectual grist for the rest of campus life.
6/6 But other aspects of campus life are *also* essential to this. And they simply are not replicable online, even if good teaching could be done as effectively online. Which it can't.
7/6 I'll also add that being part of that sort of intellectual community inspires one to broaden one's intellectual ambitions. Being surrounded by cool, smart people interested in totally different things than you are gets you interested in those things, too.
8/6 Just to be super-clear: This sort of education is simply not available in 2020-21. It is not covid-compatible. We should not try to do it; it would kill lots of people.
But the schools that can should get back to it as soon as it is safe to do so.
But the schools that can should get back to it as soon as it is safe to do so.
