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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2011 17:47:06 GMT -5
And experience proves that students are dropping like flies so something is wrong. Name your poison. Is this your experience again? College enrollment and graduation numbers are higher than they have ever been.
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Post by mtntigger on May 22, 2011 17:47:54 GMT -5
And experience proves that students are dropping like flies so something is wrong. Name your poison. Yeah, it proves that U.S. students are getting lazy as they are "entitled" to good grades because that's what youth soccer, helicopter parents and the school system have taught them. And no, it's not just students, it's most of the U.S. population. We aren't working as hard as we used to.
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on May 22, 2011 17:49:32 GMT -5
And experience proves that students are dropping like flies so something is wrong. Name your poison.
Phil said it a couple pages back. Students have been spoonfed throughout 12 years of elementary/MS/HS education and it's what they expect when they reach college level. It's a blow to their esteem to fail at something and when you've got parents calling professors demanding grade changes, that's NOT the norm. Hell, I'd have been mortified if my parent called a professor trying to get them to change one of my grades.
When I was an undergrad in 1981, by my junior year roughly half my original class was gone. They simply could not hack the major and most moved over to science education, rather than strict science.
The course requirements were easier as not as much science was required. Upper division science classes that were killers were not required.
Again, we were told during one of our first lectures as freshmen that roughly 50% of the class would not make it halfway through, and the professors were correct.
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on May 22, 2011 17:51:13 GMT -5
Really? In technical subjects in the United States? I don't think so.
Yeah, in technical subjects. Why do you find this so astonishing?
Why do you find it so hard to believe that this is what those of us who are actually IN the trenches see?
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2011 17:52:24 GMT -5
Really? In technical subjects in the United States? I don't think so. Yes. Technical degrees are decreasing as a percentage of all degrees awarded, but the absolute number of technical degrees awarded each year continues to climb (if not at the same rate as other disciplines). Math is hard.
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on May 22, 2011 17:55:55 GMT -5
Parents demanding professors change grades? That's a new one on me.
Yep. My boss gets about 3 calls/semester. Fortunstely, we discuss the grades I give out and both of us come to a consensus on the work that is done - so the call only makes the parent look like an idiot, no grades are changed.
IMO, this only goes to show how out of step you are these days about college. This has been going on for about 8 years now.
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2011 17:57:20 GMT -5
Math is not that hard. If the population increases than the number of degrees will increase also. If the proportion of technical degrees granted plummets that is a problem. Presumably a larger population would demand more technical professionals to run complex systems. (a) who said plummet? You're looking at a plateau at best. and (b) why is this a problem? Why do we think the world will end if 23% of our workforce (statistic completely fabricated) should possess engineering degrees? Maybe the statistic represents the fact that we've had too many folks choose pre-law in the past few years?
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Post by mtntigger on May 22, 2011 18:05:13 GMT -5
What the heck are you saying toughtimes? It seems that you are arguing both sides. Nobody is condoning fraud.
This is why science and engineering students have hard degrees and are told that it's going to be tough, but they are also told that if they graduate, they are the best and the brightest in the world. (Yes, a number of my professors did that.) After graduation, the kids have 40+ years of work ahead of them where they need to be better, smarter, and more connected than everyone else to maintain a job. It's not an easy life and it's probably better that a lot of the students find out in their junior year than into 10 years of working and realizing that calculating the coefficients of lift and drag are not all that it's cracked up to be.
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2011 18:26:38 GMT -5
Do you imagine that expecting people to go 5 or 6 years without making a dime while expecting them to bear greater financial burdens will not encourage them to seek other majors? I doubt that premise. I knew that I was going to be an engineer - and it took 5 or 6 years. And my wife knew in Grade school that she was going to be a Nurse. That was 50 yrs ago, the K-12 system provided order, discipline, and direction, pointed out where our skills lie, and counseled us. Modern K-12 systems provide little discipline and order, permissiveness and esteem based learning is the norm. So the 18 yr olds have no boundaries, no direction, no knowledge of how to earn a living, and no help with making a life decision. Except that they are told that "college is mandatory and follow your dream". The result is BA's in Pysc, Women's Studies, yada, along with no jobs and a $75k student loan. It's not our universities that are failing - and it's not the fault of foreign students/teachers. We are doing this to ourselves before our kids get to their 18th birthdays. I'm going to stop picking on toughtimes for a minute to challenge this point. Phil, I usually agree with what you say and I think much of the blame for problems with our colleges does lie with our elementary, middle and high schools, but... I am a little younger than your wife, but the reason she always knew she wanted to be a nurse may have been related to the fact that it was one of a small handful of professions available to women. For some women and men - and this may include your wife - nursing is absolutely their true calling. But for others, I think our schools did a lousy job of preparing women for the careers that were available to them and an interest in health meant nursing and nursing alone. (I sure as heck didn't learn the word "epidemiologist" in high school) I'm also one of the women's studies majors you speak of. (I know I have mentioned my student loans on these boards before, so for the record, I accrued that debt working on my master's degree) In our department, you were advised to double major in women's studies and something else. Because I was interested in health, I chose biology. But I have to be honest, I use the critical thinking skills I learned in my women's studies program every day in my career. The biology, while it was fun, not so much.
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phil5185
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Post by phil5185 on May 22, 2011 18:54:12 GMT -5
a nurse may have been related to the fact that it was one of a small handful of professions available to women. For some women and men - and this may include your wife - nursing is absolutely their true calling. Yes, you are absolutely correct. In the 1950s there were almost no male K-12 teachers, no male nurses, no male secretaries - all women. Likewise, no female doctors, engineers, truckers, pilots (Amelia excepted), welders, mechanics. Lots of gender-specific jobs. In my engineering work, I did not see a woman engineer until into the late 1960s - and then we were amazed, how could that be? In the mid-70s our recruiters hired some female engrg grads - those of us that managed projects (responsible for a budget) were fearful. What if a woman is assigned to me on my job? $50k of budget down the drain? Well, I drew one - and I sure had to eat my words - dazzlingly bright, competent, leadership skills, practical knowledge, the whole package.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on May 22, 2011 19:19:51 GMT -5
There were probably some students who could understand foreign professors. I could not as well as some others. I'm sure some of it was due to me never having any contact with anyone that spoke with any kind of accent.
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Mad Dawg Wiccan
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Post by Mad Dawg Wiccan on May 22, 2011 19:28:16 GMT -5
I don't know why, but Korean is the most difficult accent for me to understand. I once met a Korean guy who I couldn't understand more than one word in five of English from, but we did just fine in German. For some reason the accent disappeared then.
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on May 22, 2011 19:28:58 GMT -5
I thought the stories were apocryphal, but now I don't know what to think. This doesn't square with my experiences in the late 70s. You do realize that times have changed a bit in the three and a half decades since the late 70s right? 18-22 year olds of today weren't even born until the late 80s or very early 90s.
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Post by illinicheme on May 22, 2011 20:59:55 GMT -5
There were probably some students who could understand foreign professors. I could not as well as some others. I'm sure some of it was due to me never having any contact with anyone that spoke with any kind of accent. There's certainly something to be said for exposure. There were a few TAs that I found difficult to understand in college, probably mostly because I wasn't used to it after my essentially whitewashed experience in HS. Nowadays, after 4 years of undergrad, 4.5 years of grad school, and 6.5 years in my industry, I can understand almost anyone, regardless of thickness of accent. Every once in awhile I need to say "I'm sorry, can you repeat that?" but it's not a big deal.
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Post by illinicheme on May 22, 2011 21:25:16 GMT -5
Yeah, well I grew up in Astoria, Queens, multicultural navel of the universe and I couldn't understand them. That says a lot. Well, it says that even with longer exposure, you're apparently worse at understanding thick accents than I am. I'm not sure it says anything about the general state of STEM education though.
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Post by illinicheme on May 22, 2011 21:38:07 GMT -5
My biggest problem with my STEM degree was higher level math. Math doesn't come 100% naturally to me, and once you reach a certain point, it seems that explanation goes out the window. I had difficulty because the examples in class and the book would be fairly straightforward, and then the homeworks would have complex problems that required steps for which I could not find instructions. (The phrase "intuitively obvious" needs to DIAF. I also have bad memories of a diff eq professor who actually turned around once and said "at this point we don't know what to do, so we just keep going.") I've had some great math teachers, but most have been fairly poor.
As far as the rest of my classes, it was a mix of good and less good. Overall, chemical engineering was tough but doable. There were plenty of resources to pursue help if needed. I had several amazing (legendary in at least once case) professors, many very good ones, and a handful of terrible ones. Most of my TAs were very good. Frankly, most of my classmates that washed out of chemE just weren't very bright.
I think those who have called out lazy students as the main problem have hit the nail on the head. I TAed organic chemistry lab for pre-meds once back in about 2003. What a NIGHTMARE. I also TAed an intro chemical engineering class at one of the premier universities in the country. Some of those kids were dumb as rocks. And most of them never came to office hours even though it would have helped them immensely.
(ETA: My other problem with math is that I also took a "fast-paced" class in 7th/8th grade that put me ahead of the typical curve. I took trig in sophomore year of HS, calculus I in junior year, and calc II/III in senior year at the local community college. That left me taking diff eq in freshman year of college, which was at least a year or two before I needed it in my chemical engineering classes. Bad move. I'll try to keep my experience in mind if I have kids.)
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Post by phil5185 on May 22, 2011 22:18:37 GMT -5
The phrase "intuitively obvious" needs to DIAF. "The proof is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer" and need not be covered here. LOL - and then it was in the Diff Eq mid term.
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Post by illinicheme on May 22, 2011 22:22:40 GMT -5
The phrase "intuitively obvious" needs to DIAF. "The proof is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer" and need not be covered here. LOL - and then it was in the Diff Eq mid term. I see we had similar experiences even though they were decades apart. ;D (Turns out my dad and I used the same diff eq textbook, but his was the 2nd edition and mine was the 6th or 7th!) Note to any higher level math teachers reading this thread - please show me all the steps and then I'll be able to do it myself!
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Post by Opti on May 23, 2011 3:13:33 GMT -5
The trick is getting our kids to WANT to go into technical fields. I don't see why they wouldn't; much harder path to getting your foot in the door, crappy wages, tons of competition from countries where PhD's are happy to work for less than you'd have to pay a burger jockey here, what's not to love? Everyone goes into business and finance because that's where the money is. Companies started outsourcing everything except the corporate office, and finance, so all the whiz kids went into those majors. Why work your ass off to get through school just to compete for mediocre wages with the unwashed masses of China and India? Screw that racket, get an MBA and be the guy who sends the jobs overseas and picks the winners between underpaid Americans, Chinese, and Indians. He's the one with job security, a fat paycheck, and he's more respected by society than engineers are anyway. Dark, I agree. This is why I think there usually is an overabundance of MBAs. But if you land a job and stay competitive you don't have to worry about being outsourced or your salary dropping as you get older and more experienced.
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on May 23, 2011 8:09:55 GMT -5
Currently, the standards ARE lacking and some of the things that I graduated from college with my BS knowing how to do, I have to teachI hate students, especially undergraduate students. They pop into your lab thinking research is neat, mess it all up and you're left to clean up the mess once summer ends. ![>:(](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/angry.png) I went to a private liberal arts college and it actually BENEFITED me to have a lab with every class because I had something to sell when I got out of school, I was able to talk somewhat knowledgably with interviewers about certain lab techniques I had learned. I only had 2-3 labs a week, it really wasn't that bad if you structure your course load right. The only time it sucked was my first semseter of my senior year and I had to take a couple night courses to get generals out of the way. I agree with Mich that weeding out should happen at the bottom. How are you going to survive Phyiscal Chemistry if you can't grasp Chemistry 101? How will you understand Molecular Genetics if you can't understand Biology 101? I think Susanna is right that people go into science thinking they will make big bucks without realizing how long it takes to get there. Then thanks to various television shows there is an overblown idea of what science actually IS. For example my alma mater wanted to start a Forensic Science department because they saw money in, kids were coming in wanting to be like characters on CSI and other cop shows. Which is FAR from the reality and a lot of parents were concerned about whether or not it was a functional major. So the O-Chem professor got it dovetailed into the Biochemistry major as an emphasis. Lab work is BORING to most people, there are not a lot of people willing to sit at my computer all day making minute changings to wavelenghts in order to get the desired chromatography. Course I think most jobs are boring, but science is an area where people have an overblown sense of what exactly it is we do. Then people drop out once they find out what math/science really entail. All the pre-reqs are crowded, that's just a duh. EVERYONE has to take a biology course, EVERYONE has to take a math course. Organic Chem 101 was huge because physical therapy students and sports majors also have to take O-Chem 101 as a pre-req. When you get higher, the classes usually start to get smaller and smaller as they become more major specific. There were only 20 people in my Molecular Genetics class BIO 385.
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Post by pig on May 23, 2011 8:16:23 GMT -5
My professors seemed to have the attitude of "sink or swim" and "weeding out the low performers" rather than try and help people.
Sorry but at this stage of the game you are either committed to your course of study or you don't belong there. This isn't grade school where you should be coddled. If you require extra help, seek it but don't expect a college educator to go out of their way to coddle you.
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on May 23, 2011 8:20:57 GMT -5
You will probably start to see less engineers graduating around here. The university chain I work for has decided to jack up the tution for engineering majors on the logic of "they make more money when they get out". I guess the assumption is they will take out bigger student loans to get in and FA will rationalize it to them that they will make $$$ later, so please sign the dotted line? ![???](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/huh.png)
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on May 23, 2011 8:22:16 GMT -5
If you require extra help, seek it but don't expect a college educator to go out of their way to coddle you. ![](http://us.social.s-msn.com/s/images/emoticons/thumbs_up.gif)
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Post by pig on May 23, 2011 8:22:26 GMT -5
The university chain I work for has decided to jack up the tution for engineering majors
What college is this? I've NEVER heard of a school charging more for any major.
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swamp
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Post by swamp on May 23, 2011 8:22:45 GMT -5
The university chain I work for has decided to jack up the tution for engineering majors on the logic of "they make more money when they get out". ![](http://boards.msn.com/Themes/default/emoticons/confused_smile.gif)
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swamp
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Post by swamp on May 23, 2011 8:23:41 GMT -5
If you require extra help, seek it but don't expect a college educator to go out of their way to coddle you. ![](http://us.social.s-msn.com/s/images/emoticons/thumbs_up.gif) That I agree with, but some college faculty really needs to be more accessible to the students asking for help, and not be complete condescending dickheads when asked questions.
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on May 23, 2011 8:25:50 GMT -5
What college is this? I've NEVER heard of a school charging more for any major.
I don't want to accidently out myself, so I'm going to pass.
It's something I heard about, for the school of engineering and then the school of business they are thinking of raising the rates.
Might be for professsional, not 100% sure.
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on May 23, 2011 8:28:24 GMT -5
but some college faculty really needs to be more accessible to the students asking for help, and not be complete condescending dickheads when asked questions. I agree, but unfortunately I don't think you are ever going to be able to make an entire department like that. Every department has dickheaded professors. My physics professor wasn't a dickhead, but he was one of those people that operates on a totally different plain than most people, no matter how hard I tried I just could not get it. Definetly a theoretical physicist. I just cannot grasp that stuff, it goes way over my head. ![???](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/huh.png) Second teacher was much better for me teaching wise, I did a lot better.
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Post by magichat on May 23, 2011 8:33:55 GMT -5
You will probably start to see less engineers graduating around here. The university chain I work for has decided to jack up the tution for engineering majors on the logic of "they make more money when they get out". I guess the assumption is they will take out bigger student loans to get in and FA will rationalize it to them that they will make $$$ later, so please sign the dotted line? ![???](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/huh.png) I saw the same news and was deeply saddened by it, that University is already quite expensive as it is compared to when I went to school, all of 14 years ago as a Freshman.
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Post by pig on May 23, 2011 8:37:20 GMT -5
I understand you not wanting to "out" yourself I am curious because I just can't believe any school would do this. I can understand if it's a "special" program which is what I suspect it is but not for a regular generic 4 year degree. If that's true then it will either sink that schools engineering program or it will set a very very bad precedence.
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