I agree. Worth noting that a poorly taught engineering course is just as useless as a poorly taught liberal arts course. At least that's been my experience. I've learned as a student that it's ultimately my responsibility to try and maximize the knowledge I gain in a course, it isn't just going to be handed to be on a silver platter.
I agree. Worth noting that a poorly taught engineering course is just as useless as a poorly taught liberal arts course. At least that's been my experience. I've learned as a student that it's ultimately my responsibility to try and maximize the knowledge I gain in a course, it isn't just going to be handed to be on a silver platter.
nonlnear
Platinum Member
- Jan 31, 2008
- 2,497
- 0
- 76
I quite enjoyed the bullshit courses, but then I got my education because it was just so much fun. I sometimes dropped in for lectures in other "bullshit" classes that I wasn't enrolled in just to broaden my world. Good times. One of the perks I chalk up to jobs in cities with prominent universities is the opportunity to pop in on distinguished lecturers. Why stop just because I've graduated? Then again I'm a bit of an anomaly...
That doesn't change the fact that shoehorning a majority of students into an education that doesn't fit their goals and overcharging them for it is generally bad policy.
That doesn't change the fact that shoehorning a majority of students into an education that doesn't fit their goals and overcharging them for it is generally bad policy.
This of course implies students don't have a choice. No one forces a person to go to college (even those mean nasty parents who some students blame).
I know this part comes down to personal opinion, but I think the engineers tend to have better social skills than the people in social sciences, and I'll explain why. Often when I'm dealing with artsy people, they have a really hard time understanding what I'm saying. They honestly cannot tell when I'm joking and when I'm serious. They get offended for no reason at all. They do not pick up on body language or slight changes in my voice that give some hint that I'm making a sarcastic statement.
As a more specific example of this, one of my friends who reads this forum does not like Nick1985. She thinks he's a hardcore asshole. She's an artsy person, and like many other artsy people, she can't take a joke or even tell that a person is joking. I think Nick is funny as hell. Even thought I disagree with him on almost everything, I enjoy reading his posts. He makes me laugh, and I think he effectively puts across his opinions by posting slightly offensive things and making hilarious strawman arguments that have some truth to them.
Another dynamic that works really well is engineers with other engineers. I had an interview at one engineering firm where I asked the department manager how long the average retention time was for new employees. His exact response was "they work here until they die." Such a short statement, but it answers my question. I know a lot of artsy people who would get offended by that because they don't understand what it means.
The combination that seems to work the worst is trying to get artsy people to work with other artsy people. There's always so much pointless drama caused by nothing. They'll stop talking to each other just because one person has nicer shoes. It's impossible to get any work done because there's so much bullshit going on. Did you ever see that season of Survivor where it was men vs women? Did you notice how the men could effectively work together while the women were always fighting with each other? Most engineers are men and most social scientists are women, so interpret that any way you'd like.
My opinion is biased because I'm an engineer who gets along really well with other engineers, and I tend to like artsy people as well, but artsy people are constantly offended by everything I say.
When did I say we had a hard time getting jobs? I was hired as a drug analyst about 1 month after graduating from chemistry. Lots of people had jobs before they graduated.
It does happen in high school. High school is very broad and it covers a lot of topics. The topics that are covered are also looked at from different perspectives. High school was great.
I took a really broad range of courses in high school. We had an entire class dedicated to psychology. We studied parts of sociology and history in Social Studies class. In English class we would read books written last century in plain English, crap books written by Shakespeare in funky English, and we would write short reports about how events in the books are similar to other things we've seen in real life or in other books or TV shows. We would debate modern political problems in Social Studies class. I remember one debate was about whether or not world war 2 was a good thing. I picked the side saying WW2 was good because that side didn't have as many people. I also remember writing a report in grade 11 Social Studies about how the treaty of versailles was wrong because it was the allies who initially started world war 1 through an act of terrorism. Because I attended a Catholic school, the physics teacher explained to us how everything was once explained as "it moves that way because God wants it to move that way" (gravitation, EM force, etc); I thought that was an interesting way of seeing physics. My grade 11 chemistry class had field trips to a local university and a local community college where we synthesized acetylsalicylic acid, nylon, and a type of rigid plastic that I can't remember the name of. In grade 12 our chemistry class had a field trip to the tar sands in northern Alberta. We got to tour the Syncrude plant, walk through the chem lab, take pictures of sulfur mountain, get a closer look at the extraction equipment, etc. My grade 12 physics class had a field trip to the local university where we did spectroscopy analysis of hydrogen to show that it did indeed absorb light at very specific wavelengths that corresponded to the electron jumps between orbitals.
If your perspective isn't already broad by the time you finish high school, then your school just sucked.
I've done this before. My best friend is 2 years older than me, and he was in second year chemistry when I was in grade 12. There were a few days when I had no school for some reason, but my friend did. I would go to university with him and sit in his chemistry lectures. There are so many people in the room that nobody realizes you don't belong there
Last edited:
Social sciences isn't art In fact I think you'd find a lot of parallels in communication styles between people in the art fields and engineers/science types.
I think I may have unfairly painted engineers with a large brush. My own experience dictated that engineering students aren't really good interacting with others. As an intern, I say many engineers who just couldn't work together effectively. Certainly there is going to be a range.
I'm not going to use survivor to try and determine anything broad about how men and women interact. My experience has been that women communicate better than men in general, again, there are individual differences.
You said that you didn't obtain networks out of college that helped you find jobs, aside from a jobs board. You then gave examples of many people who struggled to start in their career (or utilized resources that they had before), which is what I was addressing.
In fact I think you'd find a lot of parallels in communication styles between people in the art fields and engineers/science types. I think I may have unfairly painted engineers with a large brush. My own experience dictated that engineering students aren't really good interacting with others. As an intern, I say many engineers who just couldn't work together effectively. Certainly there is going to be a range.
I'm not going to use survivor to try and determine anything broad about how men and women interact. My experience has been that women communicate better than men in general, again, there are individual differences.
You said that you didn't obtain networks out of college that helped you find jobs, aside from a jobs board. You then gave examples of many people who struggled to start in their career (or utilized resources that they had before), which is what I was addressing.
Last edited:
nonlnear
Platinum Member
- Jan 31, 2008
- 2,497
- 0
- 76
Where did I say anything of the sort? My only contention is that the incentives are skewed so far from sanity that a lot of people and up making terrible decisions as a (partly direct and partly indirect) result of federal education policy.
You'll get no argument from me on that.
Students aren't shoehorned into classes. Obviously there are vast differences in universities, but at the three I've been at every student is basically given a loose outline for what types of courses they need to take that they get to pick and choose.
Engineers especially are typically given a break, required to take less of these courses and having more options in general. Hell, Syracuse University allows engineering students to pick each one of their 18 credit hours that are in "liberal arts" outside of any set university policy. They simply have to present the plan to the Dean and get approval for it.
So saying they are shoehorned into a class is implying they have no choice over what classes to take.
nonlnear
Platinum Member
- Jan 31, 2008
- 2,497
- 0
- 76
Sigh. I never said anything about the minutia of course scheduling. This is getting tiresome. I am talking about federal education policy designed to steer many more students into longer educational programs than should be in them.
I think you need to go in depth about what you are talking about regarding federal education policy then. There are no national universities, and private universities are free to create curriculum as they see fit.
Are you talking about federal policy driving students to attend college in the first place? I agree that vocational schools and community colleges need to be given more attention.
nonlnear
Platinum Member
- Jan 31, 2008
- 2,497
- 0
- 76
It's actually much larger than federal policy, but federal policy is a good place to start looking. However federal policy is actually only a response to a massive lobbying effort to transform the culture of higher education. (The most recent notable piece of literature to search for on that score is the Kellogg Commission.) One aim of this silent lobbying effort is to bring higher education under tightly orchestrated federal control by implementing widespread benchmarks and accountability measures. (After all, if there's anything we can learn from federal K-12 policy, nothing guarantees success like centrally planned benchmarks, right?) You are right, there will still be freedom to tweak curricula and play with content in some ways, but I am speaking of the general shape of the institutions.
Massively oversold student loans are part of the carrot used to push students into colleges. Many of these students simply don't belong there. They would do much better to save a few years, save themselves the price of a modest house, and become an electrician or a millwright, making twice what they would make with their diluted degree. (There are some valuable degrees left, namely the ones that weaker students are afraid to attempt.) The universities themselves are being transformed in the process by this glut of meat as well - and intentionally so. They are forced by ridiculous measures of graduation rates (as if a high graduation rate for a state school that's not allowed to effectively restrict enrollment based on inflated high school grades is a good thing) to pass these kids along, destroying the faculty in the process. Most of the good professors retreat to grad courses so they don't have to deal with the riffraff, which unfortunately dims their ire at the erosion of student quality. If the senior faculty don't have to look at the classes full of failing students they won't scream their lungs off int he faculty senate that the sky is falling. What graduate student is going to walk into the dean's office to tell them that the university is going to hell in a handbasket?
The short version is that there is a concerted effort to make university more like high school. By that I mean it is intended to be considered a part of the default course of education which (at least most) students take. Faculty are gradually losing the ability to treat students like adults (by such innocuous sounding initiatives as mandatory engagement in student life outside the classroom, among other things showing up in more and more faculty postings), and a greater and greater proportion of students are getting passed along without really learning much or anything at all. It's all part of a plan to make the universities more responsive to the needs of the political machine - and more passively so.
There is still plenty of room in the system for strong researchers, but their voices are being marginalized when it comes to contributing input to education policy. More and more a research position requires a portfolio of grants that would make a venture capitalist blush. The choice for prominent faculty is becoming clearer and clearer: you can either build a research institute by sacrificing time in the classroom, or you can buy into the monoculture of education bureaucrats and have a say in the shape of the classroom of the future - but you can't have both unless you sleep 2 hours a night or less, or have a billionaire donors on speed dial.
Would you believe it if I told you that I really REALLY enjoyed my time in academia? Because I did. However I can't help but think that the joy it gave me will only make me mourn the direction that higher education is going all that much more...
Last edited:
Honestly, I can only speak as a student. I don't really think the doom and gloom scenario you are discussing (and what seems to be the basis of this OP) are near happening, or that we are even on that path. I agree that there are things about higher education that need to be improved.
As a person who has one of these "weaker" degrees (Psychology) my views on this are mixed. I didn't go for a Psychology degree assuming it would be the end all of my education, it was deliberately chosen in order to open doors for me to graduate education. As I discussed earlier, it worked out well, but I know people who it hasn't.
I did engineering for a long time as well, but it just wasn't a good fit. I won't make a ton of money in my chosen field, but I do enjoy it a great deal. I get to help others, and I get to learn a lot about myself...that's enough for me.
I do think we need to do more to make high school students aware of the pros and cons of college education. I've got plenty of friends and relatives who I desperately wished had gone to college like I did, simply because of how much I learned outside the classroom. I think vocational programs and community colleges have a valuable role to play.
Given my current job (which I've only been in a few weeks) in the college of engineering I can see that we are facing more and more problems with new students. My job is basically to identify any potential non-academic factors that impede a students success and help them to work through it.
Many of them simply aren't prepared for the rigors of an engineering program. Some are forced into engineering by parents, others choose it because engineers make "big bucks." Many haven't ever had to self-advocate, or do not know about the plethora of support options available. It leads to a lot of problems, and unfortunately graduation rates are one of the criteria for which colleges are judged.
As far as student loans are concerned, I firmly believe that anyone who wants to go to college and has worked hard to earn good grades should be able to. I place little to no value in standardized tests like SATs. I would honestly prefer that more scholarships and grants were available, as student loans are a major burden. I'm about 70k in debt myself, but there are options for those who graduate in fields like mine to get them waved after periods of public service. I wish programs such as those available to individuals in my profession were more common.
As a person who has one of these "weaker" degrees (Psychology) my views on this are mixed. I didn't go for a Psychology degree assuming it would be the end all of my education, it was deliberately chosen in order to open doors for me to graduate education. As I discussed earlier, it worked out well, but I know people who it hasn't.
I did engineering for a long time as well, but it just wasn't a good fit. I won't make a ton of money in my chosen field, but I do enjoy it a great deal. I get to help others, and I get to learn a lot about myself...that's enough for me.
I do think we need to do more to make high school students aware of the pros and cons of college education. I've got plenty of friends and relatives who I desperately wished had gone to college like I did, simply because of how much I learned outside the classroom. I think vocational programs and community colleges have a valuable role to play.
Given my current job (which I've only been in a few weeks) in the college of engineering I can see that we are facing more and more problems with new students. My job is basically to identify any potential non-academic factors that impede a students success and help them to work through it.
Many of them simply aren't prepared for the rigors of an engineering program. Some are forced into engineering by parents, others choose it because engineers make "big bucks." Many haven't ever had to self-advocate, or do not know about the plethora of support options available. It leads to a lot of problems, and unfortunately graduation rates are one of the criteria for which colleges are judged.
As far as student loans are concerned, I firmly believe that anyone who wants to go to college and has worked hard to earn good grades should be able to. I place little to no value in standardized tests like SATs. I would honestly prefer that more scholarships and grants were available, as student loans are a major burden. I'm about 70k in debt myself, but there are options for those who graduate in fields like mine to get them waved after periods of public service. I wish programs such as those available to individuals in my profession were more common.
I group social science as art because it's under the faculty of art where I live. People who take sociology graduate with a BA rather than a BSc.Social sciences isn't art
I don't remember giving any examples of people not finding a job. Most of the chemists and engineers found jobs, but it was through conventional means. A job is posted, we apply, and we eventually get one. I didn't mean to give the impression that we spend months looking for our first jobs. Overall, the biggest connection was the university itself because the employers posting jobs on the university's website are looking for new grads.
This is actually a good thing. Having federal standards means that an education from Alaska is just as good as an education from Florida if both have the same stamp of approval. Right now, it's hard to compare them if they only have regional standards. One meets Alaska's standard the other meets Florida's standard, but which one is better? Are they the same? Who knows.
We've already seen how successful this is when it comes to weeding out bullshit regional programs. If you go to a real university like Washington State University, you get a degree that is recognized by some regional group. If you go to a fake university like Devry, you don't get that regional accreditation because the program is total garbage. Having accreditation vs not having accreditation is a quick and dirty way for employers to tell if your education is valid or not. Without a body reviewing these things, how would anyone know that University of Phoenix is a piece of shit? If you're not familiar with that university, you would have no way of knowing. When standards are in place, employers can simply check if University of Phoenix has accreditation. Standardizing the education system makes things much easier.
It always strikes me as odd how much Americans value university (notice how I didn't say education). The US has lots of private universities that cost $20,000-$30,000 per year, but such schools do not exist in Canada. Even with a student loan program in place, there is almost no demand for private universities in Canada. While I see a lot of advertisements for Apollo College or ITT Tech on American TV from Washington, I never see that on Canadian TV because those places are not here. There's a Devry in Calgary, but that's like the 1 fake university in the entire province. Why does the US have so many bullshit fake schools? Why do people willingly pay $20,000 to attend Devry? How the hell does Apollo College stay in business? It's not like it's hard to get into an accredited community college. As long as you are not a retard, you can get into community college, and you'll have a real certificate at the end of it.
nonlnear
Platinum Member
- Jan 31, 2008
- 2,497
- 0
- 76
I think it's probably a good sign that you don't blindly agree to doom and gloom opinions if you haven't been on the inside. That would be silly. (Also I don't expect everybody on the inside to share my opinions either. After all, in the post I just wrote I was conflating my view of the way things are with some things I see as coming in the near future. I wasn't drafting a whitepaper on the state of education, but just writing about my impressions off the top of my head.)
Even though I'm not a huge fan of psych in general, and I would say it is a degree that is popular among many weaker students, I don't think less of an individual for taking it. There are plenty of excellent students in psych as well. If I had slightly different interests I might have gone that path instead...
And federal standards about institutional practices (note it's not really about educational quality, as nobody really knows how to measure it in a way that will make politicians and bureaucrats happy) benefits students how?ShawnD1 said:
This baffles me too. (I got my undergrad and master's in Canada too before coming down here.) I don't really get it, but somehow the public schools are chasing the pricetag of the bottomfeeders. Why? Because they can. I can't explain the insanity, I just observe it. *shrug*ShawnD1 said:
Last edited:
Nemesis 1
Lifer
- Dec 30, 2006
- 11,366
- 2
- 0
You forgot to tighten the graphics on level 3!
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1755441
Also, here's an interesting article from America's most trusted news source, Cracked.com
http://www.cracked.com/article_18660_why-you-should-beware-schools-from-late-night-tv-ads.html
Chaotic42
Lifer
- Jun 15, 2001
- 35,185
- 2,332
- 126
I wouldn't be able to get my job if I applied for it today. My company is apparently now fanatical about diplomas, much to the detrement of our productivity and profitability.
I think I benefited from having a faculty that really encouraged students to seek opportunities in college to maximize the value of the psych degree. My program also highly emphasized research methods and statistics, as well as learning how to critically analyze psychological research. I think a lot of programs don't have as strong an emphasis on the more "science" side of psychology, and instead devote a majority of their time to theory.
As far as nationalized standards go, I think we do a pretty good job handling that with the various accreditation bodies we have. Each profession has their own, and I hold students responsible for investigating a program and making sure it has merit before spending their money on it. I think perhaps this is an area where School Counselors need to work harder to help students understand the types of colleges that exist. I'll bring it up in one of my classes
All Colleges in the U.S. should be shut down.
Education is much cheaper overseas like everything else.
Nooooooooo then the cost of community college would go way up because people would no longer be able to give $120,000 to Westwood College to learn how to tighten the graphics on level 3!
I always love looking up how cheap community college is. It's like shoe shopping except I don't need to wear pants.
Borough of New York Community College - $1575 per semester (link). Even white trash and
New York has an excellent public education system. SUNY schools offer (imo) some of the best bang for the buck in the entire nation. Tuition is around $6000 a year. It actually works out really well for students because private universities need to compete with the SUNY system for students.
Hacp
Lifer
- Jun 8, 2005
- 13,923
- 2
- 81
Its Borough of Manhattan Community College. And its the worst possible place you could attend. I used to walk by it on the way to school every day and all the students mocked it.
Your first paragraph is completely backwards. It's the things that don't require much intelligence that we are automating (or have already done so), or are offshoring. Of course, the things that do require intelligence are being offshored just as rapidly.
The Federal Government was already on the hook for student loans, you've always been paying for the scenario you mentioned.
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 25K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes + WCL Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 23K
-
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread- Started by TheF34RChannel
- Replies: 23K
-
-
Facebook
Twitter