Golf carts in the maze of academe... Will this be on the test?
April 25, 2005 1:22 PM Subscribe
"Declining by Degrees:" Five Univeristy of Arizona students try to survive the megauniversity
A provocative NYT article summarizes an upcoming PBS special (1, 2) on undergraduate education at large public universities. The average time to complete the BA is 4.7 years. Students describe acquiring "maze smart" skills for navigating institutions where they are completely anonymous. Professors are castigated for striking a grade-inflating "bargain" with underachieving students so they can attend less to teaching and more to research. Assistant coaches patrol the campus in golf carts looking for student athletes playing hooky. Millions of high school grads humiliated every year across the country--should they even bother with the "paper"?
A provocative NYT article summarizes an upcoming PBS special (1, 2) on undergraduate education at large public universities. The average time to complete the BA is 4.7 years. Students describe acquiring "maze smart" skills for navigating institutions where they are completely anonymous. Professors are castigated for striking a grade-inflating "bargain" with underachieving students so they can attend less to teaching and more to research. Assistant coaches patrol the campus in golf carts looking for student athletes playing hooky. Millions of high school grads humiliated every year across the country--should they even bother with the "paper"?
This paper just reminds me why I chose to go to an undergraduate-only institution; most of the staff know me on a first-name basis, and I would not hesitate to talk to any professor in my major department. Every one has an open-door office-hours policy; I've even had profs respond to my emails at 3 in the morning.
posted by muddgirl at 1:39 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by muddgirl at 1:39 PM on April 25, 2005
And how is this "racket," assuming that it is one, getting exposed? I take it ratemyprofessors.com thinks it's doing this, but it's only being incredibly irresponsible and . . . I guess assholish is a good word for it. And it's a wrongheaded assumption that the only schools facing a grade inflation problem are large research schools. At some of those, I would think there's less less pressure to be Mr. or Miss/Mrs. Entertaining Professor, the one who might not teach the students anything in the long run and isn't particularly challenging but sure is pleasing, and never gets any complaints served to the chair or dean (THE biggest problem - the consumerist model). The entertaining/theaterical prof and the one who teaches students something are surely not always the same.
posted by raysmj at 1:45 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by raysmj at 1:45 PM on April 25, 2005
I agree with you, muddgirl. My school isn't only undergrad, but primarily so. I'm applying to go on a spiritual retreat this summer and I was able to get one of my profs write me a recommendation letter. That's not something you would get at a megauniversity.
posted by arcticwoman at 1:48 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by arcticwoman at 1:48 PM on April 25, 2005
How do you get the same quality as private schools without the same price?
posted by smackfu at 1:49 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by smackfu at 1:49 PM on April 25, 2005
Millions of high school grads humiliated every year across the country--should they even bother with the "paper"?
well, considering that college is the new high school, yes.
but megauniversities have simply become taxpayer financed research for the military.
posted by 3.2.3 at 1:54 PM on April 25, 2005
well, considering that college is the new high school, yes.
but megauniversities have simply become taxpayer financed research for the military.
posted by 3.2.3 at 1:54 PM on April 25, 2005
I went to a "mega" public school, the University of Minnesota. My first few years were pretty much anonymous classwise, although as freshmen we had special advisors that caught up with us on occasion and asked how we were doing. I made a solid group of friends in the dorms as a freshman. Once I was into my major program (EE) as a junior, the class sizes were much smaller, I knew everyone in my program, and I knew a lot of the profs. Most were accessible, a few were not. I graduated in 5 years, loved every second of it, and graduated with no student loans. Oh, and there was certainly no grade inflation. It was a very competitive program.
posted by MillMan at 1:57 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by MillMan at 1:57 PM on April 25, 2005
You really have to get your own back in college. You can't just drift through the system and expect to graduate like in a high school.
"megauniversities have simply become taxpayer financed research for the military."
Which for me was lucky. Boy did having military experiance in being sissy-slapped by bureaucrats help me thru college.
(oh you mean I have to take the basket weaving class in order to fufill my particle physics requirements....ok.)
posted by Smedleyman at 2:35 PM on April 25, 2005
"megauniversities have simply become taxpayer financed research for the military."
Which for me was lucky. Boy did having military experiance in being sissy-slapped by bureaucrats help me thru college.
(oh you mean I have to take the basket weaving class in order to fufill my particle physics requirements....ok.)
posted by Smedleyman at 2:35 PM on April 25, 2005
Having been to both a large state university and a very small private college, this stuff reminds me of that wretched I am Charlotte Simmons crap where only the foolish will believe that this story knows what it's talking about.
posted by fleacircus at 2:52 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by fleacircus at 2:52 PM on April 25, 2005
You really have to get your own back in college. You can't just drift through the system and expect to graduate like in a high school.
Exactly. You just have to take the initiative to do things such as getting to know your professors. Most professors only get visitors during office hours either right before an exam or after the semester, from students begging for a passing grade. There's an opportunity there to get to know your professors that is rarely taken advantage of.
posted by gyc at 2:57 PM on April 25, 2005
Exactly. You just have to take the initiative to do things such as getting to know your professors. Most professors only get visitors during office hours either right before an exam or after the semester, from students begging for a passing grade. There's an opportunity there to get to know your professors that is rarely taken advantage of.
posted by gyc at 2:57 PM on April 25, 2005
I blame a lot of this on a system that tells everyone that after the graduate high school they need to go to a four year college or they'll amount to anything.
I'm a college(not a big state school) and it was the right choice for me. It wasn't the right choice for a lot of my friends, and some of them have dropped out as a result. What do we expect if we send people to school without ever really telling them it's okay if they need to wait, or maybe they should really go to a technical school?
Under these sorts of pressures, of course schools will eventually cave and make life easier for the students, after all high drop out rates don't look good.
What we really need to do is make sure everyone in our four year colleges really belongs there.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 3:03 PM on April 25, 2005
I'm a college(not a big state school) and it was the right choice for me. It wasn't the right choice for a lot of my friends, and some of them have dropped out as a result. What do we expect if we send people to school without ever really telling them it's okay if they need to wait, or maybe they should really go to a technical school?
Under these sorts of pressures, of course schools will eventually cave and make life easier for the students, after all high drop out rates don't look good.
What we really need to do is make sure everyone in our four year colleges really belongs there.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 3:03 PM on April 25, 2005
Speaking as an English instructor, I have to say that grades are percieved very differently by different teachers, and are used differently by different teachers. Students and nonteachers tend to view them as a "score" earned by performance in the class, but many teachers I know (including myself) see them as a necessary evil - a motivator to get students to do work they often would not otherwise do.
Different students relate to grades differently - smart students expect A's, and so I often withhold them until the student has demonstrated s/he is going to work extra hard and not coast on his/her smarts and agility at navigating the educations system.
Other students, especially bright students who are not good at manipulating the educations system, are better motivated by being given grades based on what I expect from them (i.e., with these students, if I give them a B in faith, they will often be inspired that I believe in them and work for the B.)
In short, "grade inflation" is an alarmist cry usually made by people who have an agenda with regard to the education system - a motivator that plays on the American sense of fair play, but always a disingenous tactic, since grades are based on an implicit unfairness. I can not, for example, give every student an A, even if I think they all genuinely deserve one - there's no rule against it, but the institution would take some kind of disiciplinary measure in some way. Likewise, I cannot fail every student, even if I think they all deserve to be failed.
Grades do not reflect intellgience, nor do they reflect whether the student has learned anything. I would prefer we didn't need or have them.
posted by eustacescrubb at 3:10 PM on April 25, 2005
Different students relate to grades differently - smart students expect A's, and so I often withhold them until the student has demonstrated s/he is going to work extra hard and not coast on his/her smarts and agility at navigating the educations system.
Other students, especially bright students who are not good at manipulating the educations system, are better motivated by being given grades based on what I expect from them (i.e., with these students, if I give them a B in faith, they will often be inspired that I believe in them and work for the B.)
In short, "grade inflation" is an alarmist cry usually made by people who have an agenda with regard to the education system - a motivator that plays on the American sense of fair play, but always a disingenous tactic, since grades are based on an implicit unfairness. I can not, for example, give every student an A, even if I think they all genuinely deserve one - there's no rule against it, but the institution would take some kind of disiciplinary measure in some way. Likewise, I cannot fail every student, even if I think they all deserve to be failed.
Grades do not reflect intellgience, nor do they reflect whether the student has learned anything. I would prefer we didn't need or have them.
posted by eustacescrubb at 3:10 PM on April 25, 2005
I think an issue that was less exposed, but hinted at in these comments and in the article, is that different programs at the same school can have vastly different results. I went to a 1000 student liberal arts undergrad and now attend a megaU for grad school (Michigan). But at Michigan I am in the School of Art & Design, which only has 600 students for approximately 60 faculty (about 45 tenure-track). I've observed this sort of anonymity in some of my outside classes, but the art school can function more personally because of the ratio above.
More commercially-oriented degrees, such as business, accounting, some health, primary/secondary education, some engineering etc. are always going to have more students. And while there are plenty of people in those fields who genuinely love them, often there is more pressure to exchange the time spent on the degree for a job, which I think exacerbates some of the issues raised in the article.
posted by Slothrop at 3:12 PM on April 25, 2005
More commercially-oriented degrees, such as business, accounting, some health, primary/secondary education, some engineering etc. are always going to have more students. And while there are plenty of people in those fields who genuinely love them, often there is more pressure to exchange the time spent on the degree for a job, which I think exacerbates some of the issues raised in the article.
posted by Slothrop at 3:12 PM on April 25, 2005
Heh, and I missed the same typo twice when editing. I'm an English teacher in the educations system!
posted by eustacescrubb at 3:12 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by eustacescrubb at 3:12 PM on April 25, 2005
eustacescrubb you just explained why I love math teachers. Why do you use grades to promote an agenda?
posted by knave at 3:17 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by knave at 3:17 PM on April 25, 2005
An agenda? How can you call an attempt to get students to work harder an agenda? And what makes you think math teachers do not do the same?
posted by cali at 3:40 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by cali at 3:40 PM on April 25, 2005
arcticwoman writes "I was able to get one of my profs write me a recommendation letter. That's not something you would get at a megauniversity."
Are you kidding with this? I'm at an enormous university, and everyone I know who has applied to something (job, law school, whatever) that asks for a letter of rec has gotten one from a professor. All you have to do is go to office hours, get to know the person, and do well in the class. Then they are very happy to recommend you for anything. There are problems with the big U's, but getting to know profs isn't one if you just put in a few extra hours outside of class.
posted by PhatLobley at 3:49 PM on April 25, 2005
Are you kidding with this? I'm at an enormous university, and everyone I know who has applied to something (job, law school, whatever) that asks for a letter of rec has gotten one from a professor. All you have to do is go to office hours, get to know the person, and do well in the class. Then they are very happy to recommend you for anything. There are problems with the big U's, but getting to know profs isn't one if you just put in a few extra hours outside of class.
posted by PhatLobley at 3:49 PM on April 25, 2005
megauniversities have simply become taxpayer financed research for the military
So all those english and history majors were secretly
developing lasers in the basement? I thought they were just preparing for years of unemployment.
The medical school is training military doctors, and the law school is clearly pro-military (despite kicking JAG recruiters off campus). And the football team is really a training ground for the military elite...
Big state universities are a lot of things, but I'd say that "military research lab" would be about 50 items down my list of descriptions.
posted by thedevildancedlightly at 3:51 PM on April 25, 2005
So all those english and history majors were secretly
developing lasers in the basement? I thought they were just preparing for years of unemployment.
The medical school is training military doctors, and the law school is clearly pro-military (despite kicking JAG recruiters off campus). And the football team is really a training ground for the military elite...
Big state universities are a lot of things, but I'd say that "military research lab" would be about 50 items down my list of descriptions.
posted by thedevildancedlightly at 3:51 PM on April 25, 2005
I go to the University of Georgia. We have around 40,000 students. I've had 2 lecture classes of over 150 students in my time here. Most of my classes were around 15-20 students. I can't walk a block without running into three or four people I know. I've never felt anonymous here.
The mega institutions are what you make of them. The faculty is generally going to be top-notch. I've taken the time to befriend several professors and grad students and have had the opportunity to go to Hong Kong, deal with international political issues at the actionable level, and have even been invited to go to North Korea because of this.
A lot of the people at my university probably don't belong here. A lot of people drop out. I'm willing to bet a lot of those drop-outs might have achieved my level of success here if they had understood what it takes to get by. Yeah, the professors can be a little intimidating; perhaps making them more overtly accessible could be the key to a higher success rate at the mega-Us. Perhaps money should be allocated toward mentorship programs that pair students with professors. Profs can get reimbursed for taking their mentees on excursions and the like. Students can learn that it's ok to talk to professors.
posted by TheGoldenOne at 4:10 PM on April 25, 2005
The mega institutions are what you make of them. The faculty is generally going to be top-notch. I've taken the time to befriend several professors and grad students and have had the opportunity to go to Hong Kong, deal with international political issues at the actionable level, and have even been invited to go to North Korea because of this.
A lot of the people at my university probably don't belong here. A lot of people drop out. I'm willing to bet a lot of those drop-outs might have achieved my level of success here if they had understood what it takes to get by. Yeah, the professors can be a little intimidating; perhaps making them more overtly accessible could be the key to a higher success rate at the mega-Us. Perhaps money should be allocated toward mentorship programs that pair students with professors. Profs can get reimbursed for taking their mentees on excursions and the like. Students can learn that it's ok to talk to professors.
posted by TheGoldenOne at 4:10 PM on April 25, 2005
cali Grades are supposed to be a somewhat standard measure of performance. If one student achieves a given performance with less effort than another, why penalize him?
"Ordinarily this work is worthy of an A, but since I think you are capable of more, it gets a B."
posted by knave at 4:12 PM on April 25, 2005
"Ordinarily this work is worthy of an A, but since I think you are capable of more, it gets a B."
posted by knave at 4:12 PM on April 25, 2005
"An agenda? How can you call an attempt to get students to work harder an agenda? And what makes you think math teachers do not do the same?"
The math teachers I know wouldn't make a smart student work harder for an A or give out an undeserved B to encourage B work. They'd just grade the test, maybe curve or normalize it in some universal way, maybe not, and give out grades based purely on the test.
For example, there's at least one class where I have only a final left and if I looked everything up I could calculate my exact class grade for any given score I may get on the final.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 4:14 PM on April 25, 2005
The math teachers I know wouldn't make a smart student work harder for an A or give out an undeserved B to encourage B work. They'd just grade the test, maybe curve or normalize it in some universal way, maybe not, and give out grades based purely on the test.
For example, there's at least one class where I have only a final left and if I looked everything up I could calculate my exact class grade for any given score I may get on the final.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 4:14 PM on April 25, 2005
And what makes you think math teachers do not do the same?
It's much harder to pull this off when the material being graded has objective right and wrong answers. If I got 95% of the questions correct, I get an A, even if it was "easy".
posted by knave at 4:15 PM on April 25, 2005
It's much harder to pull this off when the material being graded has objective right and wrong answers. If I got 95% of the questions correct, I get an A, even if it was "easy".
posted by knave at 4:15 PM on April 25, 2005
I have to agree with TheGoldenOne. I went to a similar, though vastly superior, MegaU and never felt this way. You might point out that I was a grad student, but the fact is I spent almost no time with my fellows, and I still knew people all over the place.
posted by absalom at 4:35 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by absalom at 4:35 PM on April 25, 2005
I wouldn't lay it all at the feet of "The Faculty." Indeed, I think the article (and I wonder about the TV special) find convenient scapegoats in supposedly aloof teachers and uncaring bureaucrats. How many recent undergrads took large lecture courses from adjuncts or non-faculty "instructors" or "lecturers" who would have justifiably no committment to the institution or its curriculum. Certainly its hard to imagine that education isn't corrupted by overly large classes, even with the most sensitive astronomy professor. Why are classes allowed to be so large anyways?
I have my own scapegoat: the students. Certainly some megauniversity students are wise enough to see they need to seek out on their own the resources they need to really develop their minds. Most seem perfectly content with their own low expectations of passive, uncritical knowledge consumption. They only get frustrated at the obstacles of sheer size and people not sharing their view of education (To wit, Noindoctrination.org
and its ilk. I read these as one expression of basic alienation from intellectualism itself.)
I think what the article should force students (and their parents) to consider is how out-of-whack the expectations of the public university--elite education and qualification for the masses--are, especially since these same people continually support slashing money for higher education. (Notice also the supiciously uncritical mention of the current administration's support for accountability measures of public institutions.) We should expand higher education to include as many people as possible. But without political support for proper investment, we diminish any benefit of expanded educational access.
Since liberal arts purists and student-consumers are equally dissatisfied with the current broken system, I've been considering what it would be like to design an institution that actually met most students expectations of higher education (qualification for entering the white-collar, middle-class labor market. Not an unworthy goal in itself!). Necessarily, it would have radically different standards and curriculum content; perhaps resulting in a different degree altogether. High school graduates, armed with all the facts about the differences between the two models, make a choice and hopefully are content with what they get. What trips me up is how such an imaginary "alternate" university could be also considered equal but different to the liberal arts model of education. Aren't the student-consumers' vision of education just plain wrong? Shouldn't high school students be educated on the difference between college and high school early on?
posted by rschram at 4:46 PM on April 25, 2005
I have my own scapegoat: the students. Certainly some megauniversity students are wise enough to see they need to seek out on their own the resources they need to really develop their minds. Most seem perfectly content with their own low expectations of passive, uncritical knowledge consumption. They only get frustrated at the obstacles of sheer size and people not sharing their view of education (To wit, Noindoctrination.org
and its ilk. I read these as one expression of basic alienation from intellectualism itself.)
I think what the article should force students (and their parents) to consider is how out-of-whack the expectations of the public university--elite education and qualification for the masses--are, especially since these same people continually support slashing money for higher education. (Notice also the supiciously uncritical mention of the current administration's support for accountability measures of public institutions.) We should expand higher education to include as many people as possible. But without political support for proper investment, we diminish any benefit of expanded educational access.
Since liberal arts purists and student-consumers are equally dissatisfied with the current broken system, I've been considering what it would be like to design an institution that actually met most students expectations of higher education (qualification for entering the white-collar, middle-class labor market. Not an unworthy goal in itself!). Necessarily, it would have radically different standards and curriculum content; perhaps resulting in a different degree altogether. High school graduates, armed with all the facts about the differences between the two models, make a choice and hopefully are content with what they get. What trips me up is how such an imaginary "alternate" university could be also considered equal but different to the liberal arts model of education. Aren't the student-consumers' vision of education just plain wrong? Shouldn't high school students be educated on the difference between college and high school early on?
posted by rschram at 4:46 PM on April 25, 2005
You really have to get your own back in college. You can't just drift through the system and expect to graduate like in a high school.
I learned that the hard way. And I feel doubly bad about it, for blowing opportunities and for taking up space that could've been occupied by someone who deserved it.
posted by jonmc at 4:46 PM on April 25, 2005
I learned that the hard way. And I feel doubly bad about it, for blowing opportunities and for taking up space that could've been occupied by someone who deserved it.
posted by jonmc at 4:46 PM on April 25, 2005
"the basket weaving class"
You mean underwater basket weaving. Normal basket weaving is high school level.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 4:52 PM on April 25, 2005
You mean underwater basket weaving. Normal basket weaving is high school level.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 4:52 PM on April 25, 2005
I'll try and find a paper my advisor (chemical engineering, University of Kansas) once referenced to me, regarding grade inflation.
Without the citation: the paper more or less described grade inflation as a shifting of grade distributions based on newer drop policies--not actual inflation. Apparentally 30 years ago you couldn't drop a class three weeks before finals--at least we can now. Cause History of Rock and Roll really is that difficult.
posted by hototogisu at 5:18 PM on April 25, 2005
Without the citation: the paper more or less described grade inflation as a shifting of grade distributions based on newer drop policies--not actual inflation. Apparentally 30 years ago you couldn't drop a class three weeks before finals--at least we can now. Cause History of Rock and Roll really is that difficult.
posted by hototogisu at 5:18 PM on April 25, 2005
How do you get the same quality as private schools without the same price?
This is a false choice. Mediocre huge public schools generally do not meet all of their students' demonstrated need (often somewhere in the 60's-70's% range). Elite private schools do (100%). Therefore, for truly needy students, education at a place like University of Arizona costs more. My Ivy League alma mater (which I attended with help from a Pell Grant), since my graduation, has only expanded its financial aid, to where now a student of my background would not even have to borrow. (By the way, it's hard to be specific with Univ. of Ariz. since they have not bothered to report their statistics to U.S. News, where virtually every peer institution's stats are readily available — I doubt they're anything to crow about.)
Mr. Bhalla, 22, a psychology major with a minor in business (grade point average 3.0, on a 4.0 scale), says he stopped going to most of his classes after sophomore year and drank excessively four nights a week ... He has just started working for a pharmaceutical sales company (base salary: $30,000).
...She somehow got a C in one course: "How I managed that, not even taking the final, I still don't know."
...The professor gives out reasonably high grades as a way of camouflaging that this bargain has been struck
I've seen all this. I taught for a year at a Big Ten university, where every nasty thing said in this article about the money-grubbing, drunk students who were born with a right not to work or show an interest in learning was true. It was very unpleasant to see a great public institution overrun by students were more interested in money, SUV's, beer, and Burberry bags than in anything human. Of course I taught plenty of exceptions, but, without exception, they had worse things to say about this atmosphere than I do.
posted by Zurishaddai at 5:21 PM on April 25, 2005
This is a false choice. Mediocre huge public schools generally do not meet all of their students' demonstrated need (often somewhere in the 60's-70's% range). Elite private schools do (100%). Therefore, for truly needy students, education at a place like University of Arizona costs more. My Ivy League alma mater (which I attended with help from a Pell Grant), since my graduation, has only expanded its financial aid, to where now a student of my background would not even have to borrow. (By the way, it's hard to be specific with Univ. of Ariz. since they have not bothered to report their statistics to U.S. News, where virtually every peer institution's stats are readily available — I doubt they're anything to crow about.)
Mr. Bhalla, 22, a psychology major with a minor in business (grade point average 3.0, on a 4.0 scale), says he stopped going to most of his classes after sophomore year and drank excessively four nights a week ... He has just started working for a pharmaceutical sales company (base salary: $30,000).
...She somehow got a C in one course: "How I managed that, not even taking the final, I still don't know."
...The professor gives out reasonably high grades as a way of camouflaging that this bargain has been struck
I've seen all this. I taught for a year at a Big Ten university, where every nasty thing said in this article about the money-grubbing, drunk students who were born with a right not to work or show an interest in learning was true. It was very unpleasant to see a great public institution overrun by students were more interested in money, SUV's, beer, and Burberry bags than in anything human. Of course I taught plenty of exceptions, but, without exception, they had worse things to say about this atmosphere than I do.
posted by Zurishaddai at 5:21 PM on April 25, 2005
I don't know. I'm going to graduate from Auburn in a few weeks, and I've hardly drifted through, I've done a lot of work, but I can't help but feel that I didn't really learn anything. Don't know. I'm a software engineering student, my grades have always been "good," but about my junior year I just stopped caring very much about them. I would have been pissed if I had been given, say, a D, but the choice always seemed to be B or A. I'm in all the honor societies, mostly from my freshman/sophomore GPA which was very close to 4.
It seemed like it completely stopped being a measure of how much I knew or learned or anything in the course. I even had professors that created their classes to pretty much give everybody Bs, then offered enough extra credit to push good students to an A if they participated in some Grad student research project. Screw you. Give me a B, I don't freaking care at this point. I'm not helping your lazy grad student test a UI that breaks down every other click.
I just don't know what the point in this is, you know? I never felt called to any particular profession, I just chose this cause I "liked computers and stuff." Seems in general whenever I try and figure out what I want to Do, I try something new, and I invariably find out that whatever it is I want to do, it sure isn't that.
And (this is going to get a little technical), it isn't like I just don't want to be a software engineer, (I really really don't if it is anything like it was while I was a student), it's that I think they have left me dangerously unprepared to do it. I mean, I don't know C. They taught Java and that's what I know. I don't know anything else at all, nor do I have the first clue how to go about learning it. I know basic array usage in C, and maybe I could do some hello worlds, but my knowledge of pointers in C is that they "have something to do with asterisks or something". I know what a pointer is in terms of computer theory, that is well covered, but practical application is near nil. And all the jobs that I see out there require things like "experience with Apache" or "working knowledge of Perl", and they ALL require C programming skills. I don't even know what Perl is, and my knowledge of Apache can be summed up as "related to servers or something." I mean what was the point in all that work? What was this preparing me to do?
I don't know, I'm sorry for using your thread to dump a personal rant, but I've been wanting to say this for a while. I can really empathize with the people in the article who say they feel disconnected. It's my senior year and I can probably count the number of students whose first names I know on one hand. I just really really want to get out of this place, get a decent job I can do and maybe get enough money so that I can comfortably attend Grad school in Mathematics someplace very far from here so that I can find out I hate math too.
posted by SomeOneElse at 5:24 PM on April 25, 2005
It seemed like it completely stopped being a measure of how much I knew or learned or anything in the course. I even had professors that created their classes to pretty much give everybody Bs, then offered enough extra credit to push good students to an A if they participated in some Grad student research project. Screw you. Give me a B, I don't freaking care at this point. I'm not helping your lazy grad student test a UI that breaks down every other click.
I just don't know what the point in this is, you know? I never felt called to any particular profession, I just chose this cause I "liked computers and stuff." Seems in general whenever I try and figure out what I want to Do, I try something new, and I invariably find out that whatever it is I want to do, it sure isn't that.
And (this is going to get a little technical), it isn't like I just don't want to be a software engineer, (I really really don't if it is anything like it was while I was a student), it's that I think they have left me dangerously unprepared to do it. I mean, I don't know C. They taught Java and that's what I know. I don't know anything else at all, nor do I have the first clue how to go about learning it. I know basic array usage in C, and maybe I could do some hello worlds, but my knowledge of pointers in C is that they "have something to do with asterisks or something". I know what a pointer is in terms of computer theory, that is well covered, but practical application is near nil. And all the jobs that I see out there require things like "experience with Apache" or "working knowledge of Perl", and they ALL require C programming skills. I don't even know what Perl is, and my knowledge of Apache can be summed up as "related to servers or something." I mean what was the point in all that work? What was this preparing me to do?
I don't know, I'm sorry for using your thread to dump a personal rant, but I've been wanting to say this for a while. I can really empathize with the people in the article who say they feel disconnected. It's my senior year and I can probably count the number of students whose first names I know on one hand. I just really really want to get out of this place, get a decent job I can do and maybe get enough money so that I can comfortably attend Grad school in Mathematics someplace very far from here so that I can find out I hate math too.
posted by SomeOneElse at 5:24 PM on April 25, 2005
It was very unpleasant to see a great public institution overrun by students were more interested in money, SUV's, beer, and Burberry bags than in anything human.
Hey, beer is about as human as it gets, man.
And I'll be honest with you, the higher mind is nice, but the vast majority of people I've known veiwed college as a means to an end: being able to work in a higher paying career than working at Wal-Mart. And that's got to be taken into account in academia, too. And I know plenty of liberal arts grads from elite schools who are bookstore clerks and bartenders.
posted by jonmc at 5:27 PM on April 25, 2005
Hey, beer is about as human as it gets, man.
And I'll be honest with you, the higher mind is nice, but the vast majority of people I've known veiwed college as a means to an end: being able to work in a higher paying career than working at Wal-Mart. And that's got to be taken into account in academia, too. And I know plenty of liberal arts grads from elite schools who are bookstore clerks and bartenders.
posted by jonmc at 5:27 PM on April 25, 2005
Knave and OnlyCoolTim, point taken regarding math. And yes, I do understand the point of an objective standard. I just don't think it has much value to the individual attempting to become an educated person. Grades seem to be primarily for the educational institutions, to quantify the work they do in order to justify the money they take in from government, alums and charities.
I did not receive letter grades until late in my educational career, and they still seem to me to encourage competitive test-taking strategies as opposed to in depth study.
posted by cali at 5:49 PM on April 25, 2005
I did not receive letter grades until late in my educational career, and they still seem to me to encourage competitive test-taking strategies as opposed to in depth study.
posted by cali at 5:49 PM on April 25, 2005
Grades are supposed to be a somewhat standard measure of performance.
Like I said, that's the way students (and parents) and most non-teachers see grades, but it is not the way many teachers see them.
Regarding math - I think one's grade on a math test is actually the least likely to indicate whether one has learned anything in the class than a grade in pretty much any other kind of class - precisely because the test is "objective." That's because in the end, grades on tests show how well someone can take a test, and depending on the kind of material, how good their short-term memory is.
Not that I'm knocking math - I'm just pointing out that tests test test-taking ability more than anything else.
And I know plenty of math teachers who do more than just run scantrons through the machine when they grade.
Like I said, I wish there were no grades - I wish students could be taught the way my momma taught me: I did it over and over until I got it perfect. That's why I know how to bake damn good cookies but I can't remember anything about Trigonometry, which I "earned" an A.
posted by eustacescrubb at 6:01 PM on April 25, 2005
Like I said, that's the way students (and parents) and most non-teachers see grades, but it is not the way many teachers see them.
Regarding math - I think one's grade on a math test is actually the least likely to indicate whether one has learned anything in the class than a grade in pretty much any other kind of class - precisely because the test is "objective." That's because in the end, grades on tests show how well someone can take a test, and depending on the kind of material, how good their short-term memory is.
Not that I'm knocking math - I'm just pointing out that tests test test-taking ability more than anything else.
And I know plenty of math teachers who do more than just run scantrons through the machine when they grade.
Like I said, I wish there were no grades - I wish students could be taught the way my momma taught me: I did it over and over until I got it perfect. That's why I know how to bake damn good cookies but I can't remember anything about Trigonometry, which I "earned" an A.
posted by eustacescrubb at 6:01 PM on April 25, 2005
Well, my heart will always be with the liberal arts grads tending bar, not the philistine yahoo who wants a mcmansion. My assumption, perhaps naive, is that there exist many unserved people for whom a degree would be something more than a $$$ credential, but who don't get the chance. It'd gladden my heart to give Mr. Bhalla F's, rather than a 3.0, to reward him for his four weekly nights of heavy drinking. I said I was disappointed with it qua public education because (naively) I'd hoped the polite farmkids and scary-smart lower-middle-class wouldn't be so outnumbered by the assholes preprogrammed to need a lexus.
posted by Zurishaddai at 6:19 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by Zurishaddai at 6:19 PM on April 25, 2005
Zurishaddai: "I taught for a year at a Big Ten university, where every nasty thing said in this article about the money-grubbing, drunk students who were born with a right not to work or show an interest in learning was true. It was very unpleasant to see a great public institution overrun by students were more interested in money, SUV's, beer, and Burberry bags than in anything human. Of course I taught plenty of exceptions, but, without exception, they had worse things to say about this atmosphere than I do."
TheGoldenOne: "A lot of the people at my university probably don't belong here. A lot of people drop out. I'm willing to bet a lot of those drop-outs might have achieved my level of success here if they had understood what it takes to get by."
rschram: "I wouldn't lay it all at the feet of 'The Faculty'... I have my own scapegoat: the students. Certainly some megauniversity students are wise enough to see they need to seek out on their own the resources they need to really develop their minds. Most seem perfectly content with their own low expectations of passive, uncritical knowledge consumption."
jonmc: "I learned that [that 'you have to get your own back in college'] the hard way. And I feel doubly bad about it, for blowing opportunities and for taking up space that could've been occupied by someone who deserved it."
Here's the thing. If so-called 'teachers' are really teachers, isn't it their job to show students how to get by at college? If undergraduates are new, shouldn't teachers be showing them the ropes, and helping them along? And if the students don't come to office hours on their own, shouldn't professors be doing something else to make this work?
Yeah, I know it isn't that easy. But people that say 'kids aren't being educated, and it's their fault,' seem to be missing the point of education. Of course they don't know this stuff yet; that's the point of education. My experience is that the very best students, the ones that are incredibly thoughtful and have a philosophic spirit about them, are usually the ones who won't schmooze around with professors or kiss up to department heads; and the ones that will, are usually the worst kind of students. There are a few who combine the ambition needed to do so with real thoughtfulness, but they're rare.
So it makes sense that there are so many kids walking around like the ones being deplored here. I blame no one but the system for this. It's not always professors, but it often is. Take this with a grain of salt, but I'm surrounded by professors who simply don't care about the students they teach; they would rather spend time complaining about "kids these days" than actually do something for them, and are usually too wrapped up in working on their next book to spare time.
Granted, it's not even their fault; many of them started at this in the sixties and the seventies, so this is what they know. But they're to blame far more than kids who are supposed to be getting educated and are instead being left to their own foolishness.
posted by koeselitz at 6:34 PM on April 25, 2005
TheGoldenOne: "A lot of the people at my university probably don't belong here. A lot of people drop out. I'm willing to bet a lot of those drop-outs might have achieved my level of success here if they had understood what it takes to get by."
rschram: "I wouldn't lay it all at the feet of 'The Faculty'... I have my own scapegoat: the students. Certainly some megauniversity students are wise enough to see they need to seek out on their own the resources they need to really develop their minds. Most seem perfectly content with their own low expectations of passive, uncritical knowledge consumption."
jonmc: "I learned that [that 'you have to get your own back in college'] the hard way. And I feel doubly bad about it, for blowing opportunities and for taking up space that could've been occupied by someone who deserved it."
Here's the thing. If so-called 'teachers' are really teachers, isn't it their job to show students how to get by at college? If undergraduates are new, shouldn't teachers be showing them the ropes, and helping them along? And if the students don't come to office hours on their own, shouldn't professors be doing something else to make this work?
Yeah, I know it isn't that easy. But people that say 'kids aren't being educated, and it's their fault,' seem to be missing the point of education. Of course they don't know this stuff yet; that's the point of education. My experience is that the very best students, the ones that are incredibly thoughtful and have a philosophic spirit about them, are usually the ones who won't schmooze around with professors or kiss up to department heads; and the ones that will, are usually the worst kind of students. There are a few who combine the ambition needed to do so with real thoughtfulness, but they're rare.
So it makes sense that there are so many kids walking around like the ones being deplored here. I blame no one but the system for this. It's not always professors, but it often is. Take this with a grain of salt, but I'm surrounded by professors who simply don't care about the students they teach; they would rather spend time complaining about "kids these days" than actually do something for them, and are usually too wrapped up in working on their next book to spare time.
Granted, it's not even their fault; many of them started at this in the sixties and the seventies, so this is what they know. But they're to blame far more than kids who are supposed to be getting educated and are instead being left to their own foolishness.
posted by koeselitz at 6:34 PM on April 25, 2005
I mean "take this with a grain of salt" because I'm a bitter graduate student. But maybe that's the best vantage point to have on this.
Things might be better on this if they ended the god-damned tenure system and started administrating schools better.
posted by koeselitz at 6:37 PM on April 25, 2005
Things might be better on this if they ended the god-damned tenure system and started administrating schools better.
posted by koeselitz at 6:37 PM on April 25, 2005
Oh cool. I'm moving to Tucson in 2 months to go into U of Arizona's PhD English program!
posted by papakwanz at 6:43 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by papakwanz at 6:43 PM on April 25, 2005
I don't know about u of arizona professors, but if they're anything like professors anywhere else, they'll be quite nice to you. Professors tend to love graduate students, not least because they can use them for whatever they want. They only dislike undergraduates because they're afraid of what they don't understand, and because, when they look at those students, they get a vague impression they should be doing something, like, oh, I don't know, teaching. But before they get far enough to do that, they'll call you and tell you to do it for them.
posted by koeselitz at 6:50 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by koeselitz at 6:50 PM on April 25, 2005
Cali and eustace, the fact of the matter is, you don't get to decide what grades intrinsically are. The fact of the matter is that people believe grades to be standardized measure of performance, with A being a very good performance, B being a decent performance, C being mediocre, and D being barely acceptable.
If you are using them as anything else you are cheating the student. Professors who grade significantly more harshly or easily than is expected are bad enough (because it means grades are not standard throughout a department), but if you grade two different students by two different standards, in my opinion, you should be fired.
You think you can make everything fair by making everyone do the same amount of work (by your estimation) to get the same grade, but if a student is used to doing a certain amount of work for a certain result, it will be nearly impossible to convince him to do more, because habit is as strong a thing as talent, and you as a lone crusader are not going to change his habits. Someone who usually has to spend six hours studying for a test/writing a paper knows how to cope with this -- how to arrange his schedule, how to psychologically deal with the work, how to effectively study. Someone who's used to spending fifteen minutes on the same task will go into psychological shock if he's suddenly (without his permission or any tangible benefit to him) forced to expend that sort of effort on a regular basis.
And honestly, if you want to talk about "education" as something having a real/lasting effect is to make it interesting and/or useful. If it's not that, none of your little schemes will mean a single goddamn thing.
posted by dagnyscott at 6:58 PM on April 25, 2005
If you are using them as anything else you are cheating the student. Professors who grade significantly more harshly or easily than is expected are bad enough (because it means grades are not standard throughout a department), but if you grade two different students by two different standards, in my opinion, you should be fired.
You think you can make everything fair by making everyone do the same amount of work (by your estimation) to get the same grade, but if a student is used to doing a certain amount of work for a certain result, it will be nearly impossible to convince him to do more, because habit is as strong a thing as talent, and you as a lone crusader are not going to change his habits. Someone who usually has to spend six hours studying for a test/writing a paper knows how to cope with this -- how to arrange his schedule, how to psychologically deal with the work, how to effectively study. Someone who's used to spending fifteen minutes on the same task will go into psychological shock if he's suddenly (without his permission or any tangible benefit to him) forced to expend that sort of effort on a regular basis.
And honestly, if you want to talk about "education" as something having a real/lasting effect is to make it interesting and/or useful. If it's not that, none of your little schemes will mean a single goddamn thing.
posted by dagnyscott at 6:58 PM on April 25, 2005
zurishaddai: from what I've seen, the Lexus/McMansion lusting crosses class borders, as does it's opposite number. People are scared of poverty, and go to great lengths to put distance between them and it. And there's plenty of upper-middle-class and rich kids I've known who are naive enough to think that "money doesn't matter." YMMV, but don't think it's quite so cut and dried.
posted by jonmc at 6:59 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by jonmc at 6:59 PM on April 25, 2005
Koeselitz - gotta say I disagree. I really don't think that it's the professor's responsibility to help the kids in their classes through college. I do think that a good university should have a system in place where *someone* is responsible, but it's not the guy who's teaching you Math 101. It's your RA, your academic advisor, your resident faculty member, etc. Your Math 101 prof is only responsible for teaching and making himself available to you academically via well publicized office hours, emails and if you're lucky, individual appointments.
I think personal responsibility is an important issue. I don't think college is an inappropriate time to learn it. In any school of any size you will do better if you take some initiative - I don't know any university that has NO form of student support. How old are you supposed to be before you figure out how to take care of yourself? Of course there will be wasted time and mistakes, but hopefully that's what freshman year is for, right? That's why core undergrad requirements exist - to give you a little academic guidance while you're screwing up.
And as far as personal anecdotes, I was at home during spring break of my second year at a smaller ivy caliber school and trying to decide between two majors. I was wondering if a funky interdisciplinary course of study would be sufficient if I wanted to later go into a career in science. I went to the campus of a megauniversity near my house, and picked up a faculty directory. Out of the 5 emails I sent to people who did cool research, 2 resulted in tours of labs and internship offers, and one got me a 1 hour chat about grad school and careers in science with the head of the neuroscience department. I wasn't even an enrolled student. I later scored a paid research internship the same way, and believe me, they remembered me when I applied to grad school.
posted by synapse at 7:02 PM on April 25, 2005
I think personal responsibility is an important issue. I don't think college is an inappropriate time to learn it. In any school of any size you will do better if you take some initiative - I don't know any university that has NO form of student support. How old are you supposed to be before you figure out how to take care of yourself? Of course there will be wasted time and mistakes, but hopefully that's what freshman year is for, right? That's why core undergrad requirements exist - to give you a little academic guidance while you're screwing up.
And as far as personal anecdotes, I was at home during spring break of my second year at a smaller ivy caliber school and trying to decide between two majors. I was wondering if a funky interdisciplinary course of study would be sufficient if I wanted to later go into a career in science. I went to the campus of a megauniversity near my house, and picked up a faculty directory. Out of the 5 emails I sent to people who did cool research, 2 resulted in tours of labs and internship offers, and one got me a 1 hour chat about grad school and careers in science with the head of the neuroscience department. I wasn't even an enrolled student. I later scored a paid research internship the same way, and believe me, they remembered me when I applied to grad school.
posted by synapse at 7:02 PM on April 25, 2005
synapse: I somewhat agree. I generally wanted to argue above that it's professors who create the environment, not the students, and that therefore they can't complain about it.
I note further that core undergrad requirements exist less and less every year, and I think this is disappointing. Moreover, at these larger state schools, they hardly have enough people to teach more than lecture courses. Lecture courses do not work with undergraduates. There are sometimes discussion courses, but these are watered-down, and I've never once known a professor to be present rather than the T. A.
Everyone should be able to take care of themselves. But I'm a student, and hardly do anything but take care of myself. All that time spent memorizing details, reading summaries, dozing through bad lectures, trying to schedule time with professors, et cetera, is time that you could be learning, thinking, working.
I know a lot of people who care about books and about learning. At this point, it would almost be more beneficial for them to skip school and spend time at a library-- they'll get more out of it. To do that, yeah, they'd have to learn to think on their own; but they'd have to do that at a university too, with no help, and be paying big bucks for nothing on top of the deal.
Undergraduates aren't prepared to 'pick a major.' They aren't prepared to wade through class lists, to weigh the options, to know what they want to be when they get out, to know how to take notes during lectures and make professors happy. If they learn all that stuff as undergraduates, then they'll get to go on to graduate school. Sadly, it will have taken so much time that they won't have learned about anything else.
posted by koeselitz at 7:18 PM on April 25, 2005
I note further that core undergrad requirements exist less and less every year, and I think this is disappointing. Moreover, at these larger state schools, they hardly have enough people to teach more than lecture courses. Lecture courses do not work with undergraduates. There are sometimes discussion courses, but these are watered-down, and I've never once known a professor to be present rather than the T. A.
Everyone should be able to take care of themselves. But I'm a student, and hardly do anything but take care of myself. All that time spent memorizing details, reading summaries, dozing through bad lectures, trying to schedule time with professors, et cetera, is time that you could be learning, thinking, working.
I know a lot of people who care about books and about learning. At this point, it would almost be more beneficial for them to skip school and spend time at a library-- they'll get more out of it. To do that, yeah, they'd have to learn to think on their own; but they'd have to do that at a university too, with no help, and be paying big bucks for nothing on top of the deal.
Undergraduates aren't prepared to 'pick a major.' They aren't prepared to wade through class lists, to weigh the options, to know what they want to be when they get out, to know how to take notes during lectures and make professors happy. If they learn all that stuff as undergraduates, then they'll get to go on to graduate school. Sadly, it will have taken so much time that they won't have learned about anything else.
posted by koeselitz at 7:18 PM on April 25, 2005
Here's the thing. If so-called 'teachers' are really teachers, isn't it their job to show students how to get by at college? If undergraduates are new, shouldn't teachers be showing them the ropes, and helping them along? And if the students don't come to office hours on their own, shouldn't professors be doing something else to make this work?
Koeselitz, a university is not a high school, and people who attend it are not kids. There is a thing called personal responsibility. If your "kid" doesn't give a shit about learning anything, I sure as hell am not going to try to persuade him otherwise. Neither any other graduate student I know. We, and the professors have research to do, that's what we're there for. We have to have something to show for the PhD and they for the grant money and there is just not enough time in a day to be a guidance counselor to several hundred 20 year olds. If your "kid" does not understand why work and learning is important or what exactly he wants out of his life, he does not belong in a university in the first place.
I've been teaching same beginning biology labs for the last 3 years, and I'm becoming convinced that the quality of students is constantly going down. The question is not even whether they belong in a university, it's how in the hell did they graduate from high school.
I'm grading the final exams now. Again, just like every other thing they turned in, there are several papers with no names on them. That's after a whole semester of me bitching and reminding them to write their names down. Again, I'm talking about a universtiy biology lab.
posted by c13 at 7:21 PM on April 25, 2005
Koeselitz, a university is not a high school, and people who attend it are not kids. There is a thing called personal responsibility. If your "kid" doesn't give a shit about learning anything, I sure as hell am not going to try to persuade him otherwise. Neither any other graduate student I know. We, and the professors have research to do, that's what we're there for. We have to have something to show for the PhD and they for the grant money and there is just not enough time in a day to be a guidance counselor to several hundred 20 year olds. If your "kid" does not understand why work and learning is important or what exactly he wants out of his life, he does not belong in a university in the first place.
I've been teaching same beginning biology labs for the last 3 years, and I'm becoming convinced that the quality of students is constantly going down. The question is not even whether they belong in a university, it's how in the hell did they graduate from high school.
I'm grading the final exams now. Again, just like every other thing they turned in, there are several papers with no names on them. That's after a whole semester of me bitching and reminding them to write their names down. Again, I'm talking about a universtiy biology lab.
posted by c13 at 7:21 PM on April 25, 2005
Hmmm.. something didn't work. The last sentence was a response to this:
Here's the thing. If so-called 'teachers' are really teachers, isn't it their job to show students how to get by at college? If undergraduates are new, shouldn't teachers be showing them the ropes, and helping them along? And if the students don't come to office hours on their own, shouldn't professors be doing something else to make this work?
posted by c13 at 7:33 PM on April 25, 2005
Here's the thing. If so-called 'teachers' are really teachers, isn't it their job to show students how to get by at college? If undergraduates are new, shouldn't teachers be showing them the ropes, and helping them along? And if the students don't come to office hours on their own, shouldn't professors be doing something else to make this work?
posted by c13 at 7:33 PM on April 25, 2005
c13: "We, and the professors have research to do, that's what we're there for."
Agreed. There ought to be a place for you to do this-- and I know they probably don't exist-- that isn't called a 'school,' as that implies 'education.' If they're such a burden to you, they, and their money, ought to be somewhere else.
"If your "kid" doesn't give a shit about learning anything, I sure as hell am not going to try to persuade him otherwise. Neither any other graduate student I know."
Well, here's one. (And I don't have any "kids.") Now you can say you know a graduate student who wants to make people give a shit about learning something. Maybe because that's what "educating someone" means.
"I've been teaching same beginning biology labs for the last 3 years, and I'm becoming convinced that the quality of students is constantly going down. The question is not even whether they belong in a university, it's how in the hell did they graduate from high school."
You're right, the quality of high schools is down. Go teach high school then.
I'm not the parent who's mad about their kid not getting attention. I'm a grad student who's finishing up another year of phoned-in classes by professors who think they know everything already and would rather not teach anyhow. Look, I know how hard it is to T.A., and I know how sad it is that kids are the way they are. And, as I said above, I blame the system more than I blame the professors. But I blame the professors more than I blame the students. Why exactly have you had to teach the same beginning biology lab three years in a row if there are professors around?
posted by koeselitz at 7:34 PM on April 25, 2005
Agreed. There ought to be a place for you to do this-- and I know they probably don't exist-- that isn't called a 'school,' as that implies 'education.' If they're such a burden to you, they, and their money, ought to be somewhere else.
"If your "kid" doesn't give a shit about learning anything, I sure as hell am not going to try to persuade him otherwise. Neither any other graduate student I know."
Well, here's one. (And I don't have any "kids.") Now you can say you know a graduate student who wants to make people give a shit about learning something. Maybe because that's what "educating someone" means.
"I've been teaching same beginning biology labs for the last 3 years, and I'm becoming convinced that the quality of students is constantly going down. The question is not even whether they belong in a university, it's how in the hell did they graduate from high school."
You're right, the quality of high schools is down. Go teach high school then.
I'm not the parent who's mad about their kid not getting attention. I'm a grad student who's finishing up another year of phoned-in classes by professors who think they know everything already and would rather not teach anyhow. Look, I know how hard it is to T.A., and I know how sad it is that kids are the way they are. And, as I said above, I blame the system more than I blame the professors. But I blame the professors more than I blame the students. Why exactly have you had to teach the same beginning biology lab three years in a row if there are professors around?
posted by koeselitz at 7:34 PM on April 25, 2005
...and, on reflection, I see that I've been running on adrenaline the last few posts. It's the end of the year, but that's no excuse; I shouldn't be throwing blame around all over the place.
But I'm tired of fighting against the current to get anything done. The present environment works against scholarship and against learning. That's more the fault of 'the university system' than of any group of people.
Sorry about the edginess.
posted by koeselitz at 7:41 PM on April 25, 2005
But I'm tired of fighting against the current to get anything done. The present environment works against scholarship and against learning. That's more the fault of 'the university system' than of any group of people.
Sorry about the edginess.
posted by koeselitz at 7:41 PM on April 25, 2005
Why exactly have you had to teach the same beginning biology lab three years in a row if there are professors around?
koeslitz: Why would the professor teach a biology lab to begin with? How many lab sections are there? (ie, general chemistry at KU, ~800 students for the lecture? ~20 students/lab?...you can see where that leads, obviously). Maybe the professor could or should teache the lecture course, but it's preposterous to suggest she or he teach a lab section--under even the most ideal of conditions.
Mind you, this isn't exactly pertinent to the overall argument, but...Maybe I'm misreading you, but that doesn't make any sense.
posted by hototogisu at 7:46 PM on April 25, 2005
koeslitz: Why would the professor teach a biology lab to begin with? How many lab sections are there? (ie, general chemistry at KU, ~800 students for the lecture? ~20 students/lab?...you can see where that leads, obviously). Maybe the professor could or should teache the lecture course, but it's preposterous to suggest she or he teach a lab section--under even the most ideal of conditions.
Mind you, this isn't exactly pertinent to the overall argument, but...Maybe I'm misreading you, but that doesn't make any sense.
posted by hototogisu at 7:46 PM on April 25, 2005
It is *not* called school. It's a *university*. These are different things, at least they have been traditionally. People who attend the latter are expected to understand that the lectures they listen to and the homework that's assigned is there for their own benefit. That we don't make them do it (the homework) because we have nothing better to do than to sit home and grade their sorry abortions of a thought. (As I said, I'm grading right now, so I'm kinda pissed)
As to why I have to teach if there are professors around, I've been told this by my PI: the tuition that the undergrads pay is not even enough to cover the professors salaries. The money for everything else, from lines in the parking lot to mass spectrometers comes from the state and from the research grants. I don't know how it is in other places, but here in TN it's this way. Who's fault is it that the universities has been turned into grades 13-17? I don't know. But what pisses me off is that the undergraduates, instead of realizing that they are being screwed and doing something about it, or at least trying to get as much from the system as they can, actually seem to like it. The less I lecture, the less homework I assign, the more they like me. It's so weird to me. These people will rip your head off if you forget to put an extra pickle on their burger, but if you screw them out of many thousands of dollars and an education, they will actually like you..
posted by c13 at 7:52 PM on April 25, 2005
As to why I have to teach if there are professors around, I've been told this by my PI: the tuition that the undergrads pay is not even enough to cover the professors salaries. The money for everything else, from lines in the parking lot to mass spectrometers comes from the state and from the research grants. I don't know how it is in other places, but here in TN it's this way. Who's fault is it that the universities has been turned into grades 13-17? I don't know. But what pisses me off is that the undergraduates, instead of realizing that they are being screwed and doing something about it, or at least trying to get as much from the system as they can, actually seem to like it. The less I lecture, the less homework I assign, the more they like me. It's so weird to me. These people will rip your head off if you forget to put an extra pickle on their burger, but if you screw them out of many thousands of dollars and an education, they will actually like you..
posted by c13 at 7:52 PM on April 25, 2005
koeselitz : "If so-called 'teachers' are really teachers, isn't it their job to show students how to get by at college?
No.
If undergraduates are new, shouldn't teachers be showing them the ropes, and helping them along?
No.
And if the students don't come to office hours on their own, shouldn't professors be doing something else to make this work?"
No.
Don't get me wrong; if they want to help, that's great. If they want to improve things, that's great. But by the same token, if they want to help take out the trash, that's great, but it sure as hell isn't their job,
By that token, I'm an operator. Should it be my job to cut someone open and remove a cancerous polyp? No, because I'm a help desk operator.
Physics teachers are physics teachers. Their job should be to teach Physics.
History teachers are history teachers. Their job should be to teach History.
Taking half of their job title (teacher) and then using it to imply that their job is to teach anything you think would be a good idea to teach is silly.
koeselitz : "Lecture courses do not work with undergraduates."
Eh?? What?? I learned more in my lecture courses than I did in any discussion based courses. Where on earth do you get "lecture courses do not work with undergraduates"?
posted by Bugbread at 7:53 PM on April 25, 2005
No.
If undergraduates are new, shouldn't teachers be showing them the ropes, and helping them along?
No.
And if the students don't come to office hours on their own, shouldn't professors be doing something else to make this work?"
No.
Don't get me wrong; if they want to help, that's great. If they want to improve things, that's great. But by the same token, if they want to help take out the trash, that's great, but it sure as hell isn't their job,
By that token, I'm an operator. Should it be my job to cut someone open and remove a cancerous polyp? No, because I'm a help desk operator.
Physics teachers are physics teachers. Their job should be to teach Physics.
History teachers are history teachers. Their job should be to teach History.
Taking half of their job title (teacher) and then using it to imply that their job is to teach anything you think would be a good idea to teach is silly.
koeselitz : "Lecture courses do not work with undergraduates."
Eh?? What?? I learned more in my lecture courses than I did in any discussion based courses. Where on earth do you get "lecture courses do not work with undergraduates"?
posted by Bugbread at 7:53 PM on April 25, 2005
koeselitz: If it's more the fault of the "university system," why did you go off on faculty? Why not administration? Or the state? Or the gods or the One Eternal Divinity? And a teacher isn't there to hold your sorry ass hand. Everyone saying that here is right. Learning is participatory. You should know that before you get to college. A teacher should not act as a one-way conduit of information to passive globs of tissue, but that's what some students expect. It's definitely not all, but the one who screams, "I shouldn't have had to come by your office for help on the paper" and goes on and on about how it wasn't clear that you had to have seven peer-reviewed sources (stated on a two-page handout which was gone over in detail), blah blah, can make teaching extremely tiresome and tiring. Then, after this student is done screaming, you get a negative rating on some shameful online whine site, in which the student spelled "definitely" as "definately" or something to that effect, as in,"Definately a loser."
posted by raysmj at 7:57 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by raysmj at 7:57 PM on April 25, 2005
c13: I understand your frustration. I've seen undergraduate papers, and they're not pretty. And I grant that I was being a little irrational further up.
I still believe, however, that it isn't the fault of those dumb kids out there. Ignorance is never anyone's fault, sadly. You don't sound as if you really want to be teaching. People should be able to get money to do research without teaching. I really mean that.
"These people will rip your head off if you forget to put an extra pickle on their burger, but if you screw them out of many thousands of dollars and an education, they will actually like you..."
I think that's because they just don't know any better. I know that a biology teacher, or a math teacher, or a chemistry teacher, or what have you, can't teach them that, but someone has to. Else this whole thing is in vain anyway. I've met a few teachers who were able to do this for me, and I'm very grateful to them; but hardly any of them exist.
On preview:
bugbread: it was someone's job to create a system that didn't completely destroy the possibility of education. Since that person failed, it's the job of the academic community to change it. I know a lot of professors who want to, but damned few compared to the vast majority who'd rather complain about their students than help them.
raysmj: "If it's more the fault of the 'university system,' why did you go off on faculty?"
Well, because I just got out of another shitty class taught by a professor who doesn't care. I grant that it's not his prerogative to care, and I understand that I was being unfair.
However, Socrates' mockery of the sophists still applies: he pointed out how absurd it was for them to take on students promising to teach them justice and then complain that they weren't paid. I know that a lot of professors out there are just doing their jobs. I wish they would do more that just stay in line; or perhaps they should be doing other jobs. Hell, other lines of work seem to pay more, anyhow. Sure, they're not morally obligated to care about the souls of students; but no one else will.
posted by koeselitz at 8:21 PM on April 25, 2005
I still believe, however, that it isn't the fault of those dumb kids out there. Ignorance is never anyone's fault, sadly. You don't sound as if you really want to be teaching. People should be able to get money to do research without teaching. I really mean that.
"These people will rip your head off if you forget to put an extra pickle on their burger, but if you screw them out of many thousands of dollars and an education, they will actually like you..."
I think that's because they just don't know any better. I know that a biology teacher, or a math teacher, or a chemistry teacher, or what have you, can't teach them that, but someone has to. Else this whole thing is in vain anyway. I've met a few teachers who were able to do this for me, and I'm very grateful to them; but hardly any of them exist.
On preview:
bugbread: it was someone's job to create a system that didn't completely destroy the possibility of education. Since that person failed, it's the job of the academic community to change it. I know a lot of professors who want to, but damned few compared to the vast majority who'd rather complain about their students than help them.
raysmj: "If it's more the fault of the 'university system,' why did you go off on faculty?"
Well, because I just got out of another shitty class taught by a professor who doesn't care. I grant that it's not his prerogative to care, and I understand that I was being unfair.
However, Socrates' mockery of the sophists still applies: he pointed out how absurd it was for them to take on students promising to teach them justice and then complain that they weren't paid. I know that a lot of professors out there are just doing their jobs. I wish they would do more that just stay in line; or perhaps they should be doing other jobs. Hell, other lines of work seem to pay more, anyhow. Sure, they're not morally obligated to care about the souls of students; but no one else will.
posted by koeselitz at 8:21 PM on April 25, 2005
Oh, crap. A little thing: when I said "a biology teacher, or a math teacher..." can't help people learn to know better, and to care about learning, I only meant, they couldn't do that because they have to spend their time teaching biology, or math, et cetera. I didn't mean to imply that those teachers can't do that stuff at all. Sorry if it sounded like that.
posted by koeselitz at 8:24 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by koeselitz at 8:24 PM on April 25, 2005
A lot of them do care, but student attitudes don't help quite a bit. A couple of my favorite professors are consistently rated as "boring" online. I've seen teachers get horrible evaluations who challenged profs - I've heard students *say* they were going to give poor evals for having to do so much work. There are crappy teachers and professors, but they're innocent until absolutely proven guilty, to my mind, given such childish behavior.
And what makes a good teacher anyhow? You sometimes don't know until years later. I say this knowing that some of my best teachers, sometimes in hindsight but other time not, were frequently not the most popular or seemingly concerned.
posted by raysmj at 8:39 PM on April 25, 2005
And what makes a good teacher anyhow? You sometimes don't know until years later. I say this knowing that some of my best teachers, sometimes in hindsight but other time not, were frequently not the most popular or seemingly concerned.
posted by raysmj at 8:39 PM on April 25, 2005
And teaching justice and teaching you, in college, that learning is participatory are not comparable things.
posted by raysmj at 8:40 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by raysmj at 8:40 PM on April 25, 2005
My point is that professors are NOT teachers. They are learners. They study things. And traditionally people who knew less then them would come to the university and try to get some of their knowledge. Some would become apprentices and eventually, if they were good enough, their peers. Somewhere things got screwed up and now they are expected to be babysitters and entertainers. But that's not their job, never was. And they are not good at that. (Some maybe are, but they are exceptions)
Automechanics schools are not expected to "get people interested in learning how to replace a headgasket" or "introduce them to the wonders of an automatic transmission". Or, as another example, if someone want to loos weight or bulk up, they can pay and join a gym. But they have to go there and work out, themselves, and noone is expected to drag their ass away form a TV and MAKE them do pushups. Why are we (grad students and professors) are expected to get someone interested in biology (my major) and struggle all year long to MAKE them learn it? We didn't want to be teachers , we want to study how living things work.
posted by c13 at 8:52 PM on April 25, 2005
Automechanics schools are not expected to "get people interested in learning how to replace a headgasket" or "introduce them to the wonders of an automatic transmission". Or, as another example, if someone want to loos weight or bulk up, they can pay and join a gym. But they have to go there and work out, themselves, and noone is expected to drag their ass away form a TV and MAKE them do pushups. Why are we (grad students and professors) are expected to get someone interested in biology (my major) and struggle all year long to MAKE them learn it? We didn't want to be teachers , we want to study how living things work.
posted by c13 at 8:52 PM on April 25, 2005
eustacescrubb - I had written up "stuff" agianst your posts, point vs. point in this thread, but I deleted them all because it was inflammatory, to say the least, so I'll sumarize.
I disagree with your method of grading. If it's a "midterm warning," then making up for the forced underperformance evaluation at the final/paper, ... maybe.
You are not doing the brightest of your students a favour if you're going to systematically undergrade them, *especially* if you overgrade students of lesser ability who you feel have worked harder, which is also doing the less able students a tremendous disfavour (and the rest of us - these people will have an overinflated view of their writing ability).
Yes, it's customized teaching and if the brightest/dimmest only have 1 or 2 classes with you or are in another deptarment, it's not treacherously harmful but it's still a disservice, on both extremes, given how HR/admissions-peeps in industry/post-graduate schools are short on time and patience and thus uses grades to cull their applicant pools.
Please tell me that you are open to getting to know your students and write 'real' recommendation papers instead of rote "so&so attend x classes and spoke w/ me y times and s/he is SUPER DUPER!"
posted by PurplePorpoise at 8:55 PM on April 25, 2005
I disagree with your method of grading. If it's a "midterm warning," then making up for the forced underperformance evaluation at the final/paper, ... maybe.
You are not doing the brightest of your students a favour if you're going to systematically undergrade them, *especially* if you overgrade students of lesser ability who you feel have worked harder, which is also doing the less able students a tremendous disfavour (and the rest of us - these people will have an overinflated view of their writing ability).
Yes, it's customized teaching and if the brightest/dimmest only have 1 or 2 classes with you or are in another deptarment, it's not treacherously harmful but it's still a disservice, on both extremes, given how HR/admissions-peeps in industry/post-graduate schools are short on time and patience and thus uses grades to cull their applicant pools.
Please tell me that you are open to getting to know your students and write 'real' recommendation papers instead of rote "so&so attend x classes and spoke w/ me y times and s/he is SUPER DUPER!"
posted by PurplePorpoise at 8:55 PM on April 25, 2005
And I think this is why there is a difference between large universities and small. In the former, most of the faculty is interested in doing actual research, while the latter tend to attract people who are mainly interested in teaching.
posted by c13 at 8:56 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by c13 at 8:56 PM on April 25, 2005
c13 - that's my dilemma - I want to *teach* but poverty money from the gov makes it possible to live...
posted by PurplePorpoise at 9:00 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by PurplePorpoise at 9:00 PM on April 25, 2005
sorry... that should be teach *and* do research... but the teaching (is supposed to) cover living expenses
posted by PurplePorpoise at 9:03 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by PurplePorpoise at 9:03 PM on April 25, 2005
I understand your point. Unfortunately, this sorts of concerns appear only to bother the graduate students and the professors (well, some). The things that most undergrads care about tend to revolve around how they can have more fun and do as little as possible and most administrators seem to care only about getting more funds and keeping everybody happy. That's what bothers me.
posted by c13 at 9:13 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by c13 at 9:13 PM on April 25, 2005
I teach an upper-level English Department writing course as an adjunct at a NY university. Every semester, I am stunned anew by the fact that a quarter (to a third) of the students cannot consistently produce an adequate sentence.
Students who should never have graduated from their (Westchester or Long Island, usually) high schools with such appalling language skills -- and then make it through three years at university before running into me -- are sometimes struck dumb looking at their returned work. I mark everything, all the misspellings and improper punctuation, capitalization, use of quotes, missing words, misused words, obvious hyperbole and other factual errors.
"My teachers always told me I was a good writer." I hear that a lot. Politeness forbids me from replying: "They lied."
I'm supposed to teach advanced interviewing, research and advanced non-fiction writing. If I stopped to focus on subject-verb agreement, indefinite pronouns, and the difference between it's and its, I would fail to deliver on my course's promises.
You know what helps keep me going? (Besides the cash.) The two or three students every semester that really get it, and blossom over the course of the semester. Sometimes they're the ones who started out with the most editing marks.
One time one of them actually said: "I never had a teacher care enough to point out everything I did wrong."
That made me ponder a bit.
posted by sacre_bleu at 9:14 PM on April 25, 2005
Students who should never have graduated from their (Westchester or Long Island, usually) high schools with such appalling language skills -- and then make it through three years at university before running into me -- are sometimes struck dumb looking at their returned work. I mark everything, all the misspellings and improper punctuation, capitalization, use of quotes, missing words, misused words, obvious hyperbole and other factual errors.
"My teachers always told me I was a good writer." I hear that a lot. Politeness forbids me from replying: "They lied."
I'm supposed to teach advanced interviewing, research and advanced non-fiction writing. If I stopped to focus on subject-verb agreement, indefinite pronouns, and the difference between it's and its, I would fail to deliver on my course's promises.
You know what helps keep me going? (Besides the cash.) The two or three students every semester that really get it, and blossom over the course of the semester. Sometimes they're the ones who started out with the most editing marks.
One time one of them actually said: "I never had a teacher care enough to point out everything I did wrong."
That made me ponder a bit.
posted by sacre_bleu at 9:14 PM on April 25, 2005
wow... we have some angry TAs here at MeFi.
Speaking as a philosophy TA. I've tried to get students engaged. I've tried being super strict. I've tried being laid back. I've tried floating in the middle. The results are pretty much always the same. Four or five out of twenty students are into it, 10 or so come to class and coast, the rest more or less fail.
You know what? I'm going back to being strict. It makes my life a heck of a lot easier (students get the hint that you won't cut them any slack and stop pestering you for exemptions and breaks).
The students who enjoy the class and get a lot out of it are *always* the ones who come in to the class ready, willing and able to participate. The apathetic kids don't respond to anything, and the get nothing in return.
On preview:
Sacre_bleu, you are so right! I spend so much time just teaching kids how to write that I sometimes forget I'm supposed to be teaching metaphysics.
posted by oddman at 9:22 PM on April 25, 2005
Speaking as a philosophy TA. I've tried to get students engaged. I've tried being super strict. I've tried being laid back. I've tried floating in the middle. The results are pretty much always the same. Four or five out of twenty students are into it, 10 or so come to class and coast, the rest more or less fail.
You know what? I'm going back to being strict. It makes my life a heck of a lot easier (students get the hint that you won't cut them any slack and stop pestering you for exemptions and breaks).
The students who enjoy the class and get a lot out of it are *always* the ones who come in to the class ready, willing and able to participate. The apathetic kids don't respond to anything, and the get nothing in return.
On preview:
Sacre_bleu, you are so right! I spend so much time just teaching kids how to write that I sometimes forget I'm supposed to be teaching metaphysics.
posted by oddman at 9:22 PM on April 25, 2005
koeselitz : "Lecture courses do not work with undergraduates."
I have to agree with bugbread: In my experience, that couldn't be further from the truth. I've had a lot of big lectures -- and a lot of small classes as well -- as an undergrad at my big university, and I have to say, some of the best classes that I've taken have been the big lectures. Demonizing large classes -- and not just on this thread or in the nyt, but in so much of the current talk surrounding colleges and universities -- is unproductive and silly. As my advisor always says, professors aren't here to socialize and befriend students -- they are here to teach them.
I also agree with what a lot of other people have pointed out: college is not highschool. College requires some responsibility, responsibility that those who drink too much or skip too many classes shouldn't be able to get out of by whining about being "anonymous."
posted by katherine at 9:28 PM on April 25, 2005
I have to agree with bugbread: In my experience, that couldn't be further from the truth. I've had a lot of big lectures -- and a lot of small classes as well -- as an undergrad at my big university, and I have to say, some of the best classes that I've taken have been the big lectures. Demonizing large classes -- and not just on this thread or in the nyt, but in so much of the current talk surrounding colleges and universities -- is unproductive and silly. As my advisor always says, professors aren't here to socialize and befriend students -- they are here to teach them.
I also agree with what a lot of other people have pointed out: college is not highschool. College requires some responsibility, responsibility that those who drink too much or skip too many classes shouldn't be able to get out of by whining about being "anonymous."
posted by katherine at 9:28 PM on April 25, 2005
There was that one guy who was in three of the labs that I taught. He always knew what he was doing, always was prepared and his experiments worked pretty much all the time. He is now teaching the beginning bio lab, same one he was in 2 years ago. He also works in a lab. I guess he's a junior by now. What makes me feel bad is that I never really talked to him, because he never had any problems and I was busy trying to keep other students from turning their pipettes upside down and spilling the shit on the floor (I was not very successful). I think if anyone gets screwed, it's people like him.
posted by c13 at 9:32 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by c13 at 9:32 PM on April 25, 2005
Here's the thing. If so-called 'teachers' are really teachers, isn't it their job to show students how to get by at college?
No. I teach political science, not study skills. I'd be extraordinarily bad at teaching study skills because they're one of those things that come naturally to me. Whaddaya mean, I have to teach people how to read a book?
All of the schools I've been involved with one way or another have had programs to teach study skills. Students should go there, since those people ostensibly at least have extensive training in study skills, how to learn study habits, test-taking strategies, essay writing, and all that. I spent time learning political science instead of that stuff -- not in a snotty I'm-so-cool way, just in a that's-not-my-specialty way.
At some point you have to trust or assume that (most of) the students have reasonable study skills, or you'll never get any actual teaching of your own subject done.
If undergraduates are new, shouldn't teachers be showing them the ropes, and helping them along?
Where they can, maybe. They ought to be available to answer questions about how you pick [foo] as a major and what that entails, and so on.
But, again, not for teaching study skills.
And if the students don't come to office hours on their own, shouldn't professors be doing something else to make this work?
You can require them to show up. I've seen people that do... mostly you tend to get very awkward conversations with people who don't want to be there, and resent being forced to be there.
"Lecture courses do not work with undergraduates."
I learned lots more in lecture than I did from discussion as an undergrad. I'd much rather hear the relatively nuanced, thought-out-ahead considerations of an expert than the random ramblings of yet another 19-year-old from northern Virginia suburbs. So long as they're willing to stop for questions, I'm golden.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:39 PM on April 25, 2005
No. I teach political science, not study skills. I'd be extraordinarily bad at teaching study skills because they're one of those things that come naturally to me. Whaddaya mean, I have to teach people how to read a book?
All of the schools I've been involved with one way or another have had programs to teach study skills. Students should go there, since those people ostensibly at least have extensive training in study skills, how to learn study habits, test-taking strategies, essay writing, and all that. I spent time learning political science instead of that stuff -- not in a snotty I'm-so-cool way, just in a that's-not-my-specialty way.
At some point you have to trust or assume that (most of) the students have reasonable study skills, or you'll never get any actual teaching of your own subject done.
If undergraduates are new, shouldn't teachers be showing them the ropes, and helping them along?
Where they can, maybe. They ought to be available to answer questions about how you pick [foo] as a major and what that entails, and so on.
But, again, not for teaching study skills.
And if the students don't come to office hours on their own, shouldn't professors be doing something else to make this work?
You can require them to show up. I've seen people that do... mostly you tend to get very awkward conversations with people who don't want to be there, and resent being forced to be there.
"Lecture courses do not work with undergraduates."
I learned lots more in lecture than I did from discussion as an undergrad. I'd much rather hear the relatively nuanced, thought-out-ahead considerations of an expert than the random ramblings of yet another 19-year-old from northern Virginia suburbs. So long as they're willing to stop for questions, I'm golden.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:39 PM on April 25, 2005
Besides, in order to discuss something, one first has to learn about it.
posted by c13 at 10:00 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by c13 at 10:00 PM on April 25, 2005
It would help immensely if everyone would just admit that they aren't the damned sharpest tool in the shed, and consider technical school, or a job. Professors are expected to teach masses of comfortably lazy undergrads living off of their parents income who do not see why they should have to work hard to succeed, the idea is that hey, I'm already a part of this culture of success, I'm in college, I deserve a job. What is missing is a genuine interest in knowledge, and the understanding of what it takes to get it. No one can 'give' it to you, it is earned, and not by getting a grade, it takes nights at a desk working on a thermodynamics problem until 3:30 AM, when it clicks, and you realize... I just learned something, and I'll never forget it. I'm a third year biochemistry/biophysics major at a large university (19,000), and agree with some of what has been said here, but most of it is so wrong that it's almost offensive. Large universities are basically large government funded laborotories where the researchers are given more freedom than they would in an out and out gov't research facility, the point being that no one is forcing the academic to research a laser that can melt bin laden's brains from orbit.. but they could go after it if they wanted to...so 3.2.3, you couldn't be more wrong. No professor of science has a job at a large state university without a government NIH or NSF grant supporting their work.
State universities should be thought of as a place where you can go to become a researcher - this is really what professors know, and can teach you. I realized this during my sophomore year, and after only a year of helping out around a molecular biology lab my name will be going on a paper as third author.
Well... I could write a book about this... but i think the most important point i can make is that people are going to college for the wrong reasons, and should consider why they need a college degree in a non-research oriented field like english, what that is going to do for them exactly? It is, after all, the common desire for a degree that has lowered standards and forced the change towards the consumerism of education.
I am wondering though, who does this mass delusion of what college is for serve? The administrators? The football team? The guy who wants to go to school just to get away from his parents?
posted by StrangerInAStrainedLand at 10:27 PM on April 25, 2005
State universities should be thought of as a place where you can go to become a researcher - this is really what professors know, and can teach you. I realized this during my sophomore year, and after only a year of helping out around a molecular biology lab my name will be going on a paper as third author.
Well... I could write a book about this... but i think the most important point i can make is that people are going to college for the wrong reasons, and should consider why they need a college degree in a non-research oriented field like english, what that is going to do for them exactly? It is, after all, the common desire for a degree that has lowered standards and forced the change towards the consumerism of education.
I am wondering though, who does this mass delusion of what college is for serve? The administrators? The football team? The guy who wants to go to school just to get away from his parents?
posted by StrangerInAStrainedLand at 10:27 PM on April 25, 2005
I go to the University of Georgia. We have around 40,000 students. I've had 2 lecture classes of over 150 students in my time here. Most of my classes were around 15-20 students. I can't walk a block without running into three or four people I know. I've never felt anonymous here.
Depends on your major. I, too, go to UGA and as a senior biochemistry major, I haven't had a single upper-level science class with the small 15-20 people environment. Hell, last time I had class that small was my sophomore year in English class and I felt totally anonymous my first two years here. However, I guess science majors also have the opportunity to get to know professors via lab experience which is where all of my recs come from while also getting to know the lab personal very well. Experiences can vastly vary from major to major so your mileage my vary.
posted by jmd82 at 10:54 PM on April 25, 2005
Depends on your major. I, too, go to UGA and as a senior biochemistry major, I haven't had a single upper-level science class with the small 15-20 people environment. Hell, last time I had class that small was my sophomore year in English class and I felt totally anonymous my first two years here. However, I guess science majors also have the opportunity to get to know professors via lab experience which is where all of my recs come from while also getting to know the lab personal very well. Experiences can vastly vary from major to major so your mileage my vary.
posted by jmd82 at 10:54 PM on April 25, 2005
It would help immensely if everyone would just admit that they aren't the damned sharpest tool in the shed, and consider technical school, or a job.
The problem with that is that working on a high school diploma is basically begging to have your job outsourced or to be replaced by an illegal immigrant. Tech school is better, but people still have to be reasonably intelligent and put effort into it to succeed there. Plus, you aren't likely to get a career that is as well-paying, respected, or compelling as you are at a university.
Short of being extremely talented or serendipitous, university education is still the only reliable pathway to success.
It is true that you have to have a genuine interest in education to succeed in college, which is the problem. Most people just don't care about learning, especially in their off-subjects. The problem is primarily in our culture; intellectualism and learning isn't highly valued, so most people view it as a means, not an end. I can't imagine how unpleasant college would be under such a worldview; I know how much I hated the few classes I personally didn't care about, and while I never failed any, I didn't really learn much.
It is likely to be more and more of a problem in the future, as college is going to become progressively more and more necessary to have any kind of worthwhile lifestyle. Eventually, everything that can be outsourced will be, and everything an immigrant can do will be done by one, so the only thing to do is keep ahead in science and technology.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:09 PM on April 25, 2005
The problem with that is that working on a high school diploma is basically begging to have your job outsourced or to be replaced by an illegal immigrant. Tech school is better, but people still have to be reasonably intelligent and put effort into it to succeed there. Plus, you aren't likely to get a career that is as well-paying, respected, or compelling as you are at a university.
Short of being extremely talented or serendipitous, university education is still the only reliable pathway to success.
It is true that you have to have a genuine interest in education to succeed in college, which is the problem. Most people just don't care about learning, especially in their off-subjects. The problem is primarily in our culture; intellectualism and learning isn't highly valued, so most people view it as a means, not an end. I can't imagine how unpleasant college would be under such a worldview; I know how much I hated the few classes I personally didn't care about, and while I never failed any, I didn't really learn much.
It is likely to be more and more of a problem in the future, as college is going to become progressively more and more necessary to have any kind of worthwhile lifestyle. Eventually, everything that can be outsourced will be, and everything an immigrant can do will be done by one, so the only thing to do is keep ahead in science and technology.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:09 PM on April 25, 2005
It would help immensely if everyone would just admit that they aren't the damned sharpest tool in the shed, and consider technical school, or a job.
Except that it's not the sharpest knives who do best in college, it's people with the sort of skills and temperment that suits it. Not the same thing. People who go to technical school or get jobs or go into the service have many sharp knives among them, if not in the same manner, necessarily, that college demands.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:39 PM on April 25, 2005
Except that it's not the sharpest knives who do best in college, it's people with the sort of skills and temperment that suits it. Not the same thing. People who go to technical school or get jobs or go into the service have many sharp knives among them, if not in the same manner, necessarily, that college demands.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:39 PM on April 25, 2005
as a mega U attendee, a couple points:
college/ university is necessary or (popularly viewed as necessary), and business school is today's vocational school...
The difference (stark difference) between a university and a private college has to be stressed to people, the differences have to be made clear. Of course some kids want to go to party u...
a big percentage of kids have absolutely no sense of responsibility today, and for those older ones who think that students should be able to make mature decisions (their major for one), why they've grown up never having to make mature decisions. It's the over-protective parent shield being raised and kids having absolutely no idea how to act... and they just go crazy... (myself included it took me 5 years, but I'm graduating with way too many credits, two majors, and finally direction)
The only solution that i see for this institution wide failure, is mandatory years off for students...
It works really well in the UK, kids work, go traveling, get mature, get the drinking out of their system, and come back and have an idea of what the hell they want to do...
I really feel universities need to push huge numbers of kids to do this.
posted by stratastar at 11:55 PM on April 25, 2005
college/ university is necessary or (popularly viewed as necessary), and business school is today's vocational school...
The difference (stark difference) between a university and a private college has to be stressed to people, the differences have to be made clear. Of course some kids want to go to party u...
a big percentage of kids have absolutely no sense of responsibility today, and for those older ones who think that students should be able to make mature decisions (their major for one), why they've grown up never having to make mature decisions. It's the over-protective parent shield being raised and kids having absolutely no idea how to act... and they just go crazy... (myself included it took me 5 years, but I'm graduating with way too many credits, two majors, and finally direction)
The only solution that i see for this institution wide failure, is mandatory years off for students...
It works really well in the UK, kids work, go traveling, get mature, get the drinking out of their system, and come back and have an idea of what the hell they want to do...
I really feel universities need to push huge numbers of kids to do this.
posted by stratastar at 11:55 PM on April 25, 2005
sorry for the readability, its late and my brain apparently can't make the switch between correcting english and mathematics smoothly
posted by stratastar at 11:57 PM on April 25, 2005
posted by stratastar at 11:57 PM on April 25, 2005
At My School we don't have grades. No majors either.
Written evaluations all the way, a final transcript the size of Huey Newton's FBI file. 180 Credits in anything offered gets you a B.A.
and it's a public school. Cheap & Small too. Wonderful, insightful proffessors.
The Evergreen State College, i'm lovin' it®
ILTFP! Fuck you, MIT
posted by blasdelf at 12:09 AM on April 26, 2005
Written evaluations all the way, a final transcript the size of Huey Newton's FBI file. 180 Credits in anything offered gets you a B.A.
and it's a public school. Cheap & Small too. Wonderful, insightful proffessors.
The Evergreen State College, i'm lovin' it®
ILTFP! Fuck you, MIT
posted by blasdelf at 12:09 AM on April 26, 2005
Also, any class larger than 25 students is required to be taught by taught by more than one proffessor. Nearly all full time students take a single interdisciplinary course at a time for about 16 credits, with independent research, seminar, and lecture components. If there are TAs in a class, they are there only to make photocopies and grade papers. They are also usually your fellow students in the class.
God, I'm glad I'm not at any of your silly mega-universities.
posted by blasdelf at 12:18 AM on April 26, 2005
God, I'm glad I'm not at any of your silly mega-universities.
posted by blasdelf at 12:18 AM on April 26, 2005
like many aspects of life, when it comes to a university education you get out of it what you put into it.
i'm sure if i sat here for a while longer i could come up with a more eloquent phrasing but i've got to go read some neitzsche for class, or something...
posted by joedan at 1:49 AM on April 26, 2005
i'm sure if i sat here for a while longer i could come up with a more eloquent phrasing but i've got to go read some neitzsche for class, or something...
posted by joedan at 1:49 AM on April 26, 2005
The biggest thing I learned in college: how to learn enough about a random subject to pass a fairly difficult test on it, in a constrained amount of time.
I'm pretty sure my business would be bankrupt if I hadn't learned how to do this effectively. The actual classes I took on the other hand... they were mostly just a bunch of crap.
posted by mosch at 1:54 AM on April 26, 2005
I'm pretty sure my business would be bankrupt if I hadn't learned how to do this effectively. The actual classes I took on the other hand... they were mostly just a bunch of crap.
posted by mosch at 1:54 AM on April 26, 2005
StrangerInAStrainedLand: I am wondering though, who does this mass delusion of what college is for serve?
I'm not sure I agree with your assessment entirely, but the answer is, The University/College.
From the administration's point of view, it's a business. The head of the ship is so very often a CEO type, not an educator. And this invariably creates an attitude that works its way down the chain.
The problem is, this isn't always avoidable. I teach at a large State U. in North Carolina. The University was told by the state a year or two ago that we would be getting less money. We were also given a mandate to increase enrollment progressively each year for the next five years.
So, admissions has opened its doors even wider, and Student Retention is often the subject of faculty meetings. Retention's another way of saying Customer Satisfaction. Which isn't, in and of itself, bad, unless the teaching/learning suffers. It does.
The Bottom Line forces schools to operate like big businesses. The problem is, the product isn't studnts with a rich education. It's students who had a pleasant time.
I work my butt off to make sure my classes are interesting. I want my students to want to come to class and to want to learn, and many do. (I teach 5 sections/semester, and keeping the energy up is a trick....but that's a gripe for another time.) However, I push them hard, and when it comes time for evaluations, I worry about the complaints. Because unhappy students can hurt the bottom line. My job security is all about the bottom line/customer satisfaction.
I feel pressure from the Chair who feels pressure from the Dean who feels pressure from the Chancellor.
Keep 'em happy--keep 'em pacified.
posted by kortez at 3:19 AM on April 26, 2005
I'm not sure I agree with your assessment entirely, but the answer is, The University/College.
From the administration's point of view, it's a business. The head of the ship is so very often a CEO type, not an educator. And this invariably creates an attitude that works its way down the chain.
The problem is, this isn't always avoidable. I teach at a large State U. in North Carolina. The University was told by the state a year or two ago that we would be getting less money. We were also given a mandate to increase enrollment progressively each year for the next five years.
So, admissions has opened its doors even wider, and Student Retention is often the subject of faculty meetings. Retention's another way of saying Customer Satisfaction. Which isn't, in and of itself, bad, unless the teaching/learning suffers. It does.
The Bottom Line forces schools to operate like big businesses. The problem is, the product isn't studnts with a rich education. It's students who had a pleasant time.
I work my butt off to make sure my classes are interesting. I want my students to want to come to class and to want to learn, and many do. (I teach 5 sections/semester, and keeping the energy up is a trick....but that's a gripe for another time.) However, I push them hard, and when it comes time for evaluations, I worry about the complaints. Because unhappy students can hurt the bottom line. My job security is all about the bottom line/customer satisfaction.
I feel pressure from the Chair who feels pressure from the Dean who feels pressure from the Chancellor.
Keep 'em happy--keep 'em pacified.
posted by kortez at 3:19 AM on April 26, 2005
There are few graduates in the UK who go on to work in the area they studied specifically at university.
'over two-thirds (68.5%) of vacancies advertised in the year up to the end of July 2004 in Prospects Today, the national graduate vacancy bulletin, ask for graduates from any degree subject, which means that you will have lots of career options whatever you decide to study.'
Oxbridge degrees more so.
posted by asok at 4:36 AM on April 26, 2005
'over two-thirds (68.5%) of vacancies advertised in the year up to the end of July 2004 in Prospects Today, the national graduate vacancy bulletin, ask for graduates from any degree subject, which means that you will have lots of career options whatever you decide to study.'
Oxbridge degrees more so.
posted by asok at 4:36 AM on April 26, 2005
I TA'd a MegaUniversity course with the unfortunately inaccurate name "Contemporary Moral Issues" for three semesters and I got quite a few papers that looked a lot like this. The experience really made me think that the university is not for everyone. How should those who really don't belong there be discouraged from going? And how should those who truly belong be encouraged to go/stay? Perhaps part of the answer is that those who are interested in educating themselves will be motivated enough to negotiate whatever institutions they find themselves in... To defend the MegaUniversity from another point of view, I'd like to trot out that hackneyed old chestnut: one can learn something no matter which college or university one attends. At any one institution there's likely more than anyone could absorb (for any particular discipline) over the course of five years.
posted by Wash Jones at 8:47 AM on April 26, 2005
posted by Wash Jones at 8:47 AM on April 26, 2005
To my many detractors -
Grades are not, and never have been, objective. They are arbitrary and unrelated to any objective standard, and this goes for any teacher. Every student is different and has different learning styles, a different education history, and different background - they require different teaching methods.
Grades are a scam and communicate the wrong things about learning and education. If you're in school to earn a GPA, you're in school for the wrong reason. If you're in my class to earn a grade, you're in my class for the wrong reason.
My job is not to please students or parents, but to make sure students learn and are better readers and writers than they were when the course began.
I explain how I grade in my courses at the beginning of the course, and most of my students seem to find it fair. That's because, believe it or not, a lot of students, especially the smart ones, want to learn, and unlike you, they seem to be able to grasp that my method is more objective than the ones many of you prefer.
It is more objective because the goal in any class is to become better at a given thing (reading and writing). If I have a student who coasts on her smarts and learns nothing, s/he will likely get a B, because s/he did not improve as a writer. (S/he should get an F, because s/he learned nothing.) If I have a student who comes in writing awful papers and can't complete a sentence, and ends up writing good papers and can construct a sentence, s/he will also likely get a B.
With the methods some of you seem to prefer, students can make no effort and "earn" an A. You want grades to reward the talented and the fortunate. How is that objective?
Secondly, I think I may not have explained myself fully when I wrote this passage:
Different students relate to grades differently - smart students expect A's, and so I often withhold them until the student has demonstrated s/he is going to work extra hard and not coast on his/her smarts and agility at navigating the educations system.
Other students, especially bright students who are not good at manipulating the educations system, are better motivated by being given grades based on what I expect from them (i.e., with these students, if I give them a B in faith, they will often be inspired that I believe in them and work for the B.)
Below is a more full explanation:
As a writing teacher, I get multiple papers, and return multiple grades, and the grades for papers are weighted more heavily at the end of the course than at the beginning, so that improvement is rewarded and slacking off is discouraged. I tend to grade smart students hardest at the beginning of the course and then ease up on them once they realize they have to work harder to get the A they want. Virtually no one gets an A on the first paper, but most of the kids with aptitude for writing get A's on the last paper. At the same time, I tend to grade students with potential easier to start with and get harder on them as the course progresses, so most of these start out with B's and some will drift down to a C or a D, but others (the ones who are working hard and learning) will give the extra effort and retain the B.
The point of all that is that the part of my grading method that seems to have upset the meritocrats in the thread must be placed in the context of the course - most smart students end up getting high grades, and higher grades than most of the less advanced students, who often do end up getting higher grades than they might in another class, but they've worked for them and have learned, so they deserve them.
Further, even though I am not paid well, and not paid to do anything more than show up, lecture and grade papers, I spend a good deal of my free time giving students one-on-one attention, answering questions, offering advice, and generally doing the individualized teaching that's so lacking in our system.
At the end of my courses, students line up to tell me some variant of "this was the hardest English class I've taken but I've learned so much. Thank you."
I will continue to give that more wieght than the bitching and moaing of MeFi meritiocrats.
posted by eustacescrubb at 8:49 AM on April 26, 2005
Grades are not, and never have been, objective. They are arbitrary and unrelated to any objective standard, and this goes for any teacher. Every student is different and has different learning styles, a different education history, and different background - they require different teaching methods.
Grades are a scam and communicate the wrong things about learning and education. If you're in school to earn a GPA, you're in school for the wrong reason. If you're in my class to earn a grade, you're in my class for the wrong reason.
My job is not to please students or parents, but to make sure students learn and are better readers and writers than they were when the course began.
I explain how I grade in my courses at the beginning of the course, and most of my students seem to find it fair. That's because, believe it or not, a lot of students, especially the smart ones, want to learn, and unlike you, they seem to be able to grasp that my method is more objective than the ones many of you prefer.
It is more objective because the goal in any class is to become better at a given thing (reading and writing). If I have a student who coasts on her smarts and learns nothing, s/he will likely get a B, because s/he did not improve as a writer. (S/he should get an F, because s/he learned nothing.) If I have a student who comes in writing awful papers and can't complete a sentence, and ends up writing good papers and can construct a sentence, s/he will also likely get a B.
With the methods some of you seem to prefer, students can make no effort and "earn" an A. You want grades to reward the talented and the fortunate. How is that objective?
Secondly, I think I may not have explained myself fully when I wrote this passage:
Different students relate to grades differently - smart students expect A's, and so I often withhold them until the student has demonstrated s/he is going to work extra hard and not coast on his/her smarts and agility at navigating the educations system.
Other students, especially bright students who are not good at manipulating the educations system, are better motivated by being given grades based on what I expect from them (i.e., with these students, if I give them a B in faith, they will often be inspired that I believe in them and work for the B.)
Below is a more full explanation:
As a writing teacher, I get multiple papers, and return multiple grades, and the grades for papers are weighted more heavily at the end of the course than at the beginning, so that improvement is rewarded and slacking off is discouraged. I tend to grade smart students hardest at the beginning of the course and then ease up on them once they realize they have to work harder to get the A they want. Virtually no one gets an A on the first paper, but most of the kids with aptitude for writing get A's on the last paper. At the same time, I tend to grade students with potential easier to start with and get harder on them as the course progresses, so most of these start out with B's and some will drift down to a C or a D, but others (the ones who are working hard and learning) will give the extra effort and retain the B.
The point of all that is that the part of my grading method that seems to have upset the meritocrats in the thread must be placed in the context of the course - most smart students end up getting high grades, and higher grades than most of the less advanced students, who often do end up getting higher grades than they might in another class, but they've worked for them and have learned, so they deserve them.
Further, even though I am not paid well, and not paid to do anything more than show up, lecture and grade papers, I spend a good deal of my free time giving students one-on-one attention, answering questions, offering advice, and generally doing the individualized teaching that's so lacking in our system.
At the end of my courses, students line up to tell me some variant of "this was the hardest English class I've taken but I've learned so much. Thank you."
I will continue to give that more wieght than the bitching and moaing of MeFi meritiocrats.
posted by eustacescrubb at 8:49 AM on April 26, 2005
The real problem is that, for no very good reason, you need a college degree to get a white-collar job. Accounting, business, communications, etc, could all be covered by technical/trade schools (though that would lower their middle-class cred). That's what I took to be the point of the upthread comment about most people at colleges, whether large and public or small and private (or small & public or large & private) not actually needing to be there.
posted by kenko at 8:51 AM on April 26, 2005
posted by kenko at 8:51 AM on April 26, 2005
If you are using them as anything else you are cheating the student. Professors who grade significantly more harshly or easily than is expected are bad enough (because it means grades are not standard throughout a department), but if you grade two different students by two different standards, in my opinion, you should be fired.
Yeah, sure: about 90% of my students write better papers and are better readers when they finish my courses, and they often thank me for pushing them harder than they're used to being pushed. I've totally cheated them.
And honestly, if you want to talk about "education" as something having a real/lasting effect is to make it interesting and/or useful. If it's not that, none of your little schemes will mean a single goddamn thing.
Who says I don't? It's rather unfair for you to decide based on a short description of how I grade papers that my class isn't interesting.
Also, a lot of what sacre_bleu wrote is true for me as well.
posted by eustacescrubb at 9:15 AM on April 26, 2005
Yeah, sure: about 90% of my students write better papers and are better readers when they finish my courses, and they often thank me for pushing them harder than they're used to being pushed. I've totally cheated them.
And honestly, if you want to talk about "education" as something having a real/lasting effect is to make it interesting and/or useful. If it's not that, none of your little schemes will mean a single goddamn thing.
Who says I don't? It's rather unfair for you to decide based on a short description of how I grade papers that my class isn't interesting.
Also, a lot of what sacre_bleu wrote is true for me as well.
posted by eustacescrubb at 9:15 AM on April 26, 2005
No. I teach political science, not study skills. I'd be extraordinarily bad at teaching study skills because they're one of those things that come naturally to me. Whaddaya mean, I have to teach people how to read a book?
And that's why I long to develop a class that teaches introductory information skills. As a librarian at the largest undergrad university in Tennessee, I have dealt with a ton of students who have no idea how to do research, evaluate information, or even format a citation correctly. Should they have learned these basic skills in high school? Yes, but they didn't.
Our professors work very hard at providing students with the tools they need to do well, but many times the students don't care. We started a research coach program in the library two years ago, designed to help students with their research. Typically, during mid-terms we only have 5-10 students who sign up for research coach over a two week period. Now with a student body of 24,000+, that's a miniscule amount of students who are even interested in receiving help.
I've tried to explain to students that do approach the reference desk how to search more effectively, what databases to use and so forth, but the majority want to just use Google. Not that I think Google is evil, but the students are paying good money for access to scholarly databases and seem to not want to use them.
The biggest problem with universities (large and small) is that there will always be a student that is there because they have to be and there will always be a professor who shows up to work because he has to pay his bills. These are just facets of human nature, and there's very little you can do about it.
The point is that if you choose to go to college, do your best, make a connection with your professors and if some are stand-offish and unfriendly, remember that these are just people. Professors have crappy lives too, they have junk meeting they have to attend, they have students who don't give damn about the class, they have shit going on, and many days they are just as over it as you are.
And if you choose to be a professor, remember that your students are people as well. With all the same problems that you have, and cut them a little slack. Open your door, be in your office, talk to them.
Oh, and both of you (professors and students alike), get your asses to the library! If it's not meeting your needs, tell us. Let us know what we can do better. If we're doing well, tell us that too.
posted by teleri025 at 11:40 AM on April 26, 2005
And that's why I long to develop a class that teaches introductory information skills. As a librarian at the largest undergrad university in Tennessee, I have dealt with a ton of students who have no idea how to do research, evaluate information, or even format a citation correctly. Should they have learned these basic skills in high school? Yes, but they didn't.
Our professors work very hard at providing students with the tools they need to do well, but many times the students don't care. We started a research coach program in the library two years ago, designed to help students with their research. Typically, during mid-terms we only have 5-10 students who sign up for research coach over a two week period. Now with a student body of 24,000+, that's a miniscule amount of students who are even interested in receiving help.
I've tried to explain to students that do approach the reference desk how to search more effectively, what databases to use and so forth, but the majority want to just use Google. Not that I think Google is evil, but the students are paying good money for access to scholarly databases and seem to not want to use them.
The biggest problem with universities (large and small) is that there will always be a student that is there because they have to be and there will always be a professor who shows up to work because he has to pay his bills. These are just facets of human nature, and there's very little you can do about it.
The point is that if you choose to go to college, do your best, make a connection with your professors and if some are stand-offish and unfriendly, remember that these are just people. Professors have crappy lives too, they have junk meeting they have to attend, they have students who don't give damn about the class, they have shit going on, and many days they are just as over it as you are.
And if you choose to be a professor, remember that your students are people as well. With all the same problems that you have, and cut them a little slack. Open your door, be in your office, talk to them.
Oh, and both of you (professors and students alike), get your asses to the library! If it's not meeting your needs, tell us. Let us know what we can do better. If we're doing well, tell us that too.
posted by teleri025 at 11:40 AM on April 26, 2005
eustacescrubb : " Grades are not, and never have been, objective."
Evidence?
Think back to elementary school. Learning your multiplication tables. You get a test that says:
1 x 2 = ?
2 x 7 = ?
7 x 6 = ?
How can that not be objective?
eustacescrubb : " Grades are a scam and communicate the wrong things about learning and education."
Grades indicate how much you learned in a class. How is that "the wrong thing about learning"?
eustacescrubb : " It is more objective because the goal in any class is to become better at a given thing (reading and writing)."
For reading and writing, this may be true. However, for most classes, the objective is to master the material being taught. If I were to go back to elementary school and take a multiplication table test, I better get an A no matter how much I fucking sleep in class, because the objective of the class is to teach me my multiplication tables (specifically, multiplying single digit integers by single digit integers). The grade isn't about "how much you learned in class", it's about "how much you know at the end". If you knew the material from the start, and coasted, you should get the same grade as someone who didn't know the material, but worked hard and earned it.
eustacescrubb : "You want grades to reward the talented and the fortunate. How is that objective?"
No, we want grades to reward those who know the material. Some may know it because of hard work. Some may know it through talent. The very fact that those factors don't affect the final grade are what make it objective.
The goal of university is learning. That is true. The goal of individual classes, however, is not "learning", it's "mastery of contents". Students shoud pick classes where they have not mastered the materials already, so that the class will offer them something to learn. The two then work together. If someone already knows the contents, they shouldn't be in that class in the first place!! That's why in high school native Spanish speakers were not allowed to take Spanish I. It's the reason that multiplication tables aren't taught at the university level.
Howeeeeeeever,
There are important differences between subjects, and I am well aware of that. The situations for teaching writing and for teaching science are different. Your description of how you grade a writing class does not seem terribly off-base. I had a writing teacher much like you in Uni. I personally didn't like him much, but I saw how much he helped other students out, and I definitely saw his worth. What you're saying is not terribly off-base for a subject (writing) which is in itself pretty subjective. My beef only comes with the implication that what you say about grades is true for all subjects. If a mathematics, computer science, or science teacher (among others) used your grading criterion, I would find it an enormous disservice to the students, and I would hope the teacher came under review by the university, if not suspension. In a subject where there is only one (or a very limited set) of correct answers, using a subjective grading system for objective results is reprehensible. For a subject that is in itself subjective, using a subjective grading system isn't necessarily bad.
posted by Bugbread at 8:45 PM on April 26, 2005
Evidence?
Think back to elementary school. Learning your multiplication tables. You get a test that says:
1 x 2 = ?
2 x 7 = ?
7 x 6 = ?
How can that not be objective?
eustacescrubb : " Grades are a scam and communicate the wrong things about learning and education."
Grades indicate how much you learned in a class. How is that "the wrong thing about learning"?
eustacescrubb : " It is more objective because the goal in any class is to become better at a given thing (reading and writing)."
For reading and writing, this may be true. However, for most classes, the objective is to master the material being taught. If I were to go back to elementary school and take a multiplication table test, I better get an A no matter how much I fucking sleep in class, because the objective of the class is to teach me my multiplication tables (specifically, multiplying single digit integers by single digit integers). The grade isn't about "how much you learned in class", it's about "how much you know at the end". If you knew the material from the start, and coasted, you should get the same grade as someone who didn't know the material, but worked hard and earned it.
eustacescrubb : "You want grades to reward the talented and the fortunate. How is that objective?"
No, we want grades to reward those who know the material. Some may know it because of hard work. Some may know it through talent. The very fact that those factors don't affect the final grade are what make it objective.
The goal of university is learning. That is true. The goal of individual classes, however, is not "learning", it's "mastery of contents". Students shoud pick classes where they have not mastered the materials already, so that the class will offer them something to learn. The two then work together. If someone already knows the contents, they shouldn't be in that class in the first place!! That's why in high school native Spanish speakers were not allowed to take Spanish I. It's the reason that multiplication tables aren't taught at the university level.
Howeeeeeeever,
There are important differences between subjects, and I am well aware of that. The situations for teaching writing and for teaching science are different. Your description of how you grade a writing class does not seem terribly off-base. I had a writing teacher much like you in Uni. I personally didn't like him much, but I saw how much he helped other students out, and I definitely saw his worth. What you're saying is not terribly off-base for a subject (writing) which is in itself pretty subjective. My beef only comes with the implication that what you say about grades is true for all subjects. If a mathematics, computer science, or science teacher (among others) used your grading criterion, I would find it an enormous disservice to the students, and I would hope the teacher came under review by the university, if not suspension. In a subject where there is only one (or a very limited set) of correct answers, using a subjective grading system for objective results is reprehensible. For a subject that is in itself subjective, using a subjective grading system isn't necessarily bad.
posted by Bugbread at 8:45 PM on April 26, 2005
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But then the college racket needs to be exposed.
posted by Postroad at 1:26 PM on April 25, 2005