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Another interesting factor just occurred to me, that supports what you've said here - at UCSD, by the time you'd done your two year undergraduate survey and yea

by geebee 10y ago

Another interesting factor just occurred to me, that supports what you've said here - at UCSD, by the time you'd done your two year undergraduate survey and year of upper division regional focus through the history department, you were only six courses away from a history major. So yeah, if you were limited to four years, the system definitely pushed you away from science or math or engineering. It's not just the rigor, it's that you can apply general ed requirements to a major - and if those requirements are much more substantial in the humanities, then absolutely, that would deter people from majoring in the sciences. If undergrad general requirements included two years of science track calculus, a year of upper division science or engineering, and so forth, then it would be the humanities majors who would have to find some way to cram in all that extra coursework instead. The reason this drives me batty is that my elected officials (and silicon valley execs) constantly talk about a terrible "shortage" of STEM students, but our universities really do an amazing job driving people away from these fields, and it's not just the rigor of these topics, it's structural. I hadn't thought of it this way before, but yeah, our undergraduate general ed requirements, while worthy in terms of getting a well-rounded education, probably do increase the attrition rates from science programs (and, because they reduce the amount of undergraduate specialization in math and science, may also increase the attrition rates from graduate STEM programs). Damn. Quite an accomplishment for universities in a nation that constantly frets about a "shortage" of students going into STEM.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
Well, I just went back to UMass Amherst's honors-college's website, they made it better at some point, and then made it worse again. Where they once consolidated the honors course (a special stamp a course has to receive from the Honors College itself, not just any old upper-division course) requirements into Honors English Writing, a 3+1 credit sequence of Honors Seminars, two honors courses of any kind, and two in-major honors courses of any kind, they've now taken the "of any kind" and turned them into Honors Gen-Eds. This means a scholarship student has to find two courses which were stamped by the university bureaucracy with two special shiny stamps: a Gen-Ed stamp and the Honors stamp. And if you skip Honors English Writing by having a high score on the SAT Writing Section, that adds on another Honors Gen-Ed you have to take. In my day, you only had to take one Honors Gen-Ed, a high SAT Writing score exempted me from the Honors English requirement, and you could fill those horrid Any Honors Course requirements by just getting a certain number of professors from in-major courses, or an undergrad research supervisor (only once in your career, though) to write you a letter declaring that you were taking an Honors Colloquium. (Mind, the idea of writing classes for everyone isn't actually that bad. UMass has a Junior-Year Writing requirement that every department has to fill with a course customized to their degree material. We Comp Sci kids had a writing course that taught us how to compose things like tech-marketing presentations, technical research papers, start-up pitches, and game designs. It was a great idea at core to give us a communications course specialized to our prospective line of work, even if they didn't teach LaTeX or anything that in-depth. The objectionable thing is to have two writing courses, one of which is explicitly a gen-ed, and which actively penalizes students who try to eat into their coursework requirements with exam scores.) Dear Lord, it's like they actually dislike the idea of depth. The very least they could do is ditch the stupid Gen-Ed stamp and just require a number of courses outside your own department or college. That would at least let Comp Sci students fill requirements in with physics or intro to analytic philosophy or something. Or they could encourage breadth-with-depth by declaring that any student who double-majors can receive honors and scholarships without all the stupid stamps. Oh, and now they charge a fee to be in the honors college, which is of course how you qualify for merit scholarships. That's it, I'm writing them a letter. I hated this stuff when I was an undergrad, and it turns out that was entirely justified. Five years later, time to tell them. >I hadn't thought of it this way before, but yeah, our undergraduate general ed requirements, while worthy in terms of getting a well-rounded education, probably do increase the attrition rates from science programs (and, because they reduce the amount of undergraduate specialization in math and science, may also increase the attrition rates from graduate STEM programs). Damn. Quite an accomplishment for universities in a nation that constantly frets about a "shortage" of students going into STEM. Yeah. Damn.

by geebee 10y ago

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

Well, I just went back to UMass Amherst's honors-college's website, they made it better at some point, and then made it worse again. Where they once consolidated the honors course (a special stamp a course has to receive from the Honors College itself, not just any old upper-division course) requirements into Honors English Writing, a 3+1 credit sequence of Honors Seminars, two honors courses of any kind, and two in-major honors courses of any kind, they've now taken the "of any kind" and turned them into Honors Gen-Eds. This means a scholarship student has to find two courses which were stamped by the university bureaucracy with two special shiny stamps: a Gen-Ed stamp and the Honors stamp. And if you skip Honors English Writing by having a high score on the SAT Writing Section, that adds on another Honors Gen-Ed you have to take. In my day, you only had to take one Honors Gen-Ed, a high SAT Writing score exempted me from the Honors English requirement, and you could fill those horrid Any Honors Course requirements by just getting a certain number of professors from in-major courses, or an undergrad research supervisor (only once in your career, though) to write you a letter declaring that you were taking an Honors Colloquium. (Mind, the idea of writing classes for everyone isn't actually that bad. UMass has a Junior-Year Writing requirement that every department has to fill with a course customized to their degree material. We Comp Sci kids had a writing course that taught us how to compose things like tech-marketing presentations, technical research papers, start-up pitches, and game designs. It was a great idea at core to give us a communications course specialized to our prospective line of work, even if they didn't teach LaTeX or anything that in-depth. The objectionable thing is to have two writing courses, one of which is explicitly a gen-ed, and which actively penalizes students who try to eat into their coursework requirements with exam scores.) Dear Lord, it's like they actually dislike the idea of depth. The very least they could do is ditch the stupid Gen-Ed stamp and just require a number of courses outside your own department or college. That would at least let Comp Sci students fill requirements in with physics or intro to analytic philosophy or something. Or they could encourage breadth-with-depth by declaring that any student who double-majors can receive honors and scholarships without all the stupid stamps. Oh, and now they charge a fee to be in the honors college, which is of course how you qualify for merit scholarships. That's it, I'm writing them a letter. I hated this stuff when I was an undergrad, and it turns out that was entirely justified. Five years later, time to tell them. >I hadn't thought of it this way before, but yeah, our undergraduate general ed requirements, while worthy in terms of getting a well-rounded education, probably do increase the attrition rates from science programs (and, because they reduce the amount of undergraduate specialization in math and science, may also increase the attrition rates from graduate STEM programs). Damn. Quite an accomplishment for universities in a nation that constantly frets about a "shortage" of students going into STEM. Yeah. Damn.