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Steve Wozniak's 'Woz U' Institute Faces Blowback, Former Student Calls it a '$13,000 E-Book'
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Dancing with the Stars is my favorite show and remember that we all own a lot to the person you called ‘this guy’. He is a big genius and made many great things for the country. My full support 2 Woz.
Doesn’t it make you mad though to realize that we’re paying 1,000s of dollars to have a professor teach us who’s less committed and cares less about what he teaches than some random guy on YouTube who teaches much more clearly and effectively for FREE? If I’m paying $4000 a semester to attend school, I expect the university to put $4,000 worth of effort into MY success. It’s what I’m paying them to do. It doesn’t happen.
Exactly. During the last Udemy sale I picked up a ton of courses at $10/ea. Stuff that I won't have time to look at for a long time, but the content is thorough and well presented to make it easy to learn.
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This isn't the perfume business. And it's also not a matter of taste, like 'yeah, this looks good, let me just endorse that brand.' Education and teaching is something completely different. Being an authority on the subject you would have to be a complete ******* or extremely desperate to put your name on a random program without making sure you have a say in the matter.
We are brainwashed into thinking there's only one way to learn: our "educational" institutions. And, if you aren't adept at learning in that way, well then, you're stupid (sorry, learning impaired), i.e. it's *your* fault. In reality, the only way to learn is the way that works for *you*, and our "school" systems are just one option, and not a very good one these days.
But this isn't a school. Whether you're largely self-taught or not, spending five figures of money at an institution with such poor regulations and with the namesake not even feeling responsible for quality just seems like a terrible idea.
You don't have to go to a university to learn CS/SEng (in fact, I find that alumni are often poor programmers in practice because they lack, well, practice), but Woz U seems like a fairly poor substitute.
Would you trust a surgeon who learned how to cut from watching some YouTube videos?
College and its associated degrees serve many purposes beyond just stuffing information into students' heads, but that information is often broader and deeper than what you'll get online for free - especially for advanced programs that you absolutely do need if you want to get hired - or to keep your current job. My wife, at the Director level in a prominent hospital system, was told that if she expected to keep her job, she needed to go back and get a Masters. That's what the company requires because a degree tells the company that you know your stuff. They don't want to deal with candidates who simply say "Oh, just trust me. I can't prove I know anything, but I watched a ton of YouTube."
The college/university system is a total mess, I agree. It's a travesty that profits have been put above educating students, even at schools that are federally funded. It's sickening that at a lot of schools, especially here in Texas, the goddamn football program gets more funding than any ten other programs combined. But those problems aren't solved by burning down the system and eliminating formal education altogether. I mean, they are, but it's the perfect example of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
He put his name on it. Probably benefited. I don’t think he can say he had nothing to do with it. There seems to be culpability.
He helped support a company that would take a MacBook, remove the screen and install a touchscreen and stylus back in the mid '00s, at a cost of about $3500 or more each. It was quickly killed when the iPad was released. The guy will back any company willing to pay him money.
Yeah, he had his weird share of vanity projects. Wheels of Zeus (get it? get it? cause the initials spell out his… oh never mind) comes to mind.
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The thing is that medicine is a trade that has been tuned and reviewed over and over for millennia. Software engineering is barely half a century old.
Given two people of the same age, one with a master's degree in computer science and one self-taught but having spent the same time actually writing software, I wouldn't blindly trust the degree holder to do a better job writing software. I would not. They do have a higher chance of understanding some theoretical concepts like data structures, but odds are they can't even use version control — because they never had to, and because their school failed to teach them.
I hate to throw cold water on your "education and teaching is something completely different" ideal, but higher education has been viewed as nothing more than a revenue generator for quite some time... turning out debt laden youth by the millions. Like it or not, higher education is a "bidness". Some people's names and reputations are businesses as well.
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That's a very simplistic and in many cases untrue view.
Skyrocketing costs aside, higher education still fulfills useful purposes for many professions. Software engineering just may not be one of them.
It's simplistic intentionally. It's intentionally simplistic because I didn't want the focus of my quote to get lost in a conversation about the virtues of eductation.
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Oh I understand that. I’m just a bit surprised in this particular instance Woz got involved in something like this and went on his merry way.
I’ve seen the flip side, too. There’s one celebrity I knew of, because some people I know worked for her on a project almost 20 years ago, who worked her butt off sweating the details on this project that had her name attached to it. She did so because her name was attached and she had personal pride and integrity. I can’t speak for any other aspects of her life. There has been a lot of nasty gossip about her over her divorces. But in this one thing that I do know about, she did her best to do the right thing. She was as kind and earnest in the endeavor as she was beautiful. She still is beautiful. She was a “supermodel” in an era when models actually looked good and didn’t look starved and traumatized by fashion so hideous it can never be unseen.
Anyway, I was impressed she was more than the pretty face she was known as.
My sister-in-law also worked for a charity a celebrity was affiliated with. Again, there was pride and dedication involved on the part of this actor and his friends who lent their time and fame.
So it does happen, that people do try to be selective about what they attach their name and reputation to and work to ensure it all stays positive.
In a historic sense, no doubt. In accomplishments after the 1980s? Not so much. His most recent success seems to be ADB.
Wasn't he always?[/QUOTE]Is there really though? Not to disparage but basically Woz has his name, likeness, and connection to Apple to use as a commodity. The further away we get from his actual Apple involvement, the less value that commodity has. There a whole generation who only recognize Woz from Dancing with the Stars.
I think you're romanticizing this a bit too much. Just my opinion but Woz's legacy was cemented long ago. History, for better or worse, will view him as co-founder of Apple. Full stop. Woz U will no more affect his legacy than his stint on DWTS.
But he’s become quite the odd duck over the years.
I guess I assumed he made wise investments over the years or hired someone to make them on his behalf.
And yeah it’s one thing to become an odd duck dating Kathy Griffin and going on DWTS, but it’s quite another to take hard earned money from ordinary people and not ensuring that they get what is promised under his name, namely an education in a field for which he is an icon. He’s not exactly endorsing $8 body wash.
Steve Wozniak should be ashamed for selling his name to these people...
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ADB aside, the general consensus seems to be he never fully recovered from his plane crash in 1981.
Woz is a disgrace. Once a driving force at Early Apple…. he really should have quit while he was ahead.
Like many celebrities he selling/renting out his name for others to use and bring in customers.
Just like celebrities that have their names slapped on articles of clothing and getting paid off. they do not have anything to do with the actual manufacturing of the product. they occasionally get paid for showing up for the one-off marketing events that often have invited tame reporters.
Only when people stop falling for and buying stuff that celebrities endorse will this kind of behavior stop.
Just like celebrities that have their names slapped on articles of clothing and getting paid off. they do not have anything to do with the actual manufacturing of the product. they occasionally get paid for showing up for the one-off marketing events that often have invited tame reporters.
Only when people stop falling for and buying stuff that celebrities endorse will this kind of behavior stop.