Website Lets You Bet On Your Grades 204
crimeandpunishment writes "College students who expect to get good grades can get a good payoff, if they're willing to put their money where their mouse is. A website is taking wagers on grades from students at 36 American colleges. Students have to register, upload their schedule, and give the site access to official school records. The site, called Ultrinsic, then calculates odds and the students decide whether to place their bets. Ultrinsic's CEO Steven Woldf insists it's not online gambling, since these wagers involve skill. He says 'The students have 100 percent control over it, over how they do. Other people's stuff you bet on — your own stuff you invest in.'"
In other words... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now cheating pays two-fold.
Fine (Score:2, Insightful)
Bet $1Billion you will get an F, then don't show up for the exam. For that kind of sum I won't bother repeating the year - in fact, I won't bother even going back to school.
Re:Skill? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good idea or bad idea... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm more torn as to the idea that I make the "safe" bet that I get a B and then I get an A. If this means I 'lose' the bet, what'll I do?
If I know that I'll be getting an A, but if I bomb my final I'll get a B BUT also gain $200, I might bomb my final for the strict purpose of winning the bet. This is due to the fact that immediate pleasure, ie $200 right at the end, is far more desirable by most people then some ambiguous future benefit due to having an A over a B.
Hopefully, the way the system works is that bets are minimum levels of necessity to pass and, if you surpass your bet, you get a smaller, but still existent bonus payoff. For example, if you bet on a B grade for $200 but got an A, you'd get $220 but if you'd bet straight for an A you'd have gotten $300.
But then, this is fairly greedy too. At very least, getting a grade above your bet should allow you to gain what you'd have had if you'd forcibly lowered your grade for the purpose of winning the bet. Once you get into "bonuses" for going above safe bets, it'll lead to difficulties.
Anyhow, this just means I'd have put into a ton of cake classes for extra money and to fulfill core requirements. Sup Phil 100, Math 100, Eng 100, etc. Little too late for me though.
Re:Skill? (Score:2, Insightful)
You go to school to buy a piece of paper to impress employers. Learning plays no factor in so-called modern education.
Re:Skill? (Score:5, Insightful)
Before I went to college for computer science, I knew everything. Then I learned otherwise. Now I owe my success to the skills I gained in college. You can't prove that with a piece of paper like a diploma, but there's some pretty damn good correlation, and I'll keep playing the odds with my hiring decisions, but thanks.
Are large numbers of stupid people graduating who don't deserve their degrees? Yes. Has higher education, to some degree, become commoditized and devalued?
Yes, but it does not follow that no learning occurs at universities.
Re:Skill? (Score:4, Insightful)
But this is from the perspective of somebody who went into University pursuing interests in the first place. And I'm glad I did. Maybe you'd have been happier if you did the same thing.
Re:Skill? (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who makes hiring decisions, you've proven the OPs point.
Re:Skill? (Score:3, Insightful)
You go to school to buy a piece of paper to impress employers. Learning plays no factor in so-called modern education.
I assume you majored in popsicle stick collection, then. In the sciences, a college education is absolutely necessary and conveys an enormous body of information. Looking at recent hires in my organization, GPA and the number of relevant courses completed correlates quite well with job performance. I'm confident that's due to a causative mechanism. Why hire people who'd need a year of background training before they can understand the job-specific training, especially when you don't know whether they'll be able to learn the subject at all? A good college record shows that the student can learn new things and usually carries with it a vast body of useful knowledge that doesn't need to be retaught.
Re:Skill? (Score:3, Insightful)
You go to school to buy a piece of paper to impress employers. Learning plays no factor in so-called modern education.
I'm sorry your college career sucked so much. What a waste of time.
People who want to learn in college have no problem doing so. If you don't get anything from it, it's because you suck as much as anything else. Seriously, if you're going to sit through hours of a biology class or a math class, why not take the time to learn something? If you sit there ignoring the professor and surfing facebook that's your own stupid fault.
Re:Skill? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying it's absolutely crucial for everyone to attend college, but it's mandatory for certain professions. For example, a mechanical engineer will have to know calculus, physics, and a lot of design principals. Are you seriously suggesting that this can be taught on the job? If so, you clearly don't know what you're talking about. There is a lot of stuff that you need to know before you can actually do certain jobs, just because you don't have one of these jobs doesn't mean no one else does either.
I find that most people that rail against college are one of two types of people:
1. People that dropped out of college because they weren't smart enough or because they couldn't manage their time properly.
2. People with a job that doesn't require any college education.
The first type of person is just bitter that they couldn't handle it, the second type of person is too short sighted to see that there are jobs that require more book learning than theirs. They assume that because they learned how to wire a house on the job that an engineer can learn how to build a bridge on the job.
Re:Skill? (Score:2, Insightful)
+5 insightful for a complete lack of reading comprehension skills? Neato.
Re:some people don't have the cash for degrees or (Score:5, Insightful)
Computer Science:
It is not what you think it is. They were learning algorithms and theory, mathematics and data structures.
You were doing MIS based things.
What if they were using IRIX or Solaris? Would you have been at home on those systems?
Re:Skill? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Skill? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would mod you up if I could. Far too many people go to school with the idea that anything that they could learn that isn't directly applicable to what they perceive as being their dream job isn't worth learning. In actuality, learning new and different things exposes you to the possibility of pursuing a career doing something truly exciting.
Shouldn't boggle your mind (Score:4, Insightful)
It boggled my mind that people who have no idea how to use a computer were getting degrees in computer science.
"Computer Science is as much about computers as Astronomy is about telescopes." --Edsger Dijkstra
(something you might know if you'd taken more CS courses)
Re:Skill? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, even if the comprehension was a little off for that comment, it's because a lot of people here want to demonstrate the OP to be wrong.
Re:Fine (Score:3, Insightful)
We hoped you enjoyed studying Media and Advertising!"
Re:some people don't have the cash for degrees or (Score:4, Insightful)
Practical stuff is learned on the job because one employer's method is different from another employer's method.
Perhaps a good example would be a simple job of "programmer". If you want a code monkey to crank out code based on your designs and existing codebase, someone from college/university wouldn't fit. You'd want someone from a trade school who's basically trained in whatever lanugage you want to do it.
The college/university student will handle codemonkey, but will take longer as they'll have to learn the language first (very rarely do they come out with more than one of C/C++, Java or .NET, while your trade school graduate can come out with a combination of C/C++, Java, .NET, PHP, Perl, Python, etc.).
Perhaps a car analogy is more appropriate. If you want a mechanic to work on your car, you hire someone who's gone to a trade school and become a certified mechanic. However, if you want a new type of car, you have to hire automotive engineers who can design a car and understand all the physics and the like of cars to make a safe, fuel-efficient etc car. That automotive engineer probably can't rebuild an engine, but he'll know all the parts and what they do. Just like the mechanic can rebuild the engine, but won't have insight into why things are done the way they are (e.g., why the engine has so many sensors and is completely computer-controlled).
Re:Shouldn't boggle your mind (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is to say (albeit inadvertently), a HUGE fscking part. Please show me an expert astronomer who doesn't know a shitload about telescopes -- not the least of which is how to use them -- because I'm pretty sure there's no such creature.
At any rate, ignorance should be neither encouraged nor excused. Most CS grads are trying to become *programmers*, not computer scientists, and not understanding how to install software is, at the very least, indicative of either gross incompetence, or an utter disregard for your profession. It's like a plumber not understanding that water doesn't magically appear in the supply line, or what to do if it's not there.
Unless your sole task is answering whether P=NP, then learn about one or more computer architectures, as well as one or more operating systems... preferably *before* you apply for a job, or else as a part of personal development or, as R. Lee Ermey would say, " You had best unfuck yourself or I will unscrew your head and shit down your neck!"
Dismissed.