5 ms·

rather than accepting them for an entire year and then kicking 2/3rds of them out, why not don't kick them out and just teach three times as many students. feel

rather than accepting them for an entire year and then kicking 2/3rds of them out, why not don't kick them out and just teach three times as many students. feels more humane somehow

orwin 6y ago
If you're not making into year 2 (or year 3), you can repeat ad vitam aeternam.
Kalium 6y ago
Students are only occasionally actually kicked out. Much more common is that they struggle with the coursework, decide it isn't for them, and pick a different direction. How many years of time do you think it is humane to provide to a student before suggesting somehow that they might consider an alternate use of their time?
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Where I went, there was a hierarchy of lesser degrees to pick from.
barry-cotter 6y ago
That’s called lowering your standards. It punishes the third who would have made it under the old system. Better to have a test. Doesn’t waste a year of the lives of the two thirds who drop out.
- gowld 6y ago
  Me learning doesn't hurt you.
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    But lowering the standards does. And that’s the only way you’re going from a pass rate of a third to 100%. You might be able to double pass rates to two thirds by putting many more resources into teaching but that costs money or comes out of research time/teacher satisfaction. You learning does hurt the top of the class if you’re a marginal student. Students on the verge of failure take up a lot more instructional and administrative time than the top third who were going to get through anyway.
    - mnky9800n 6y ago
      What's wrong with spending more time on helping struggling students?
      - dataduck 6y ago
        That it inevitably means dropping the most challenging i.e. most valuable parts of the course? Not only are resources not infinite; if you make them accessible to worse students, that necessarily means removing the parts which are inaccessible.
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        To play devils advocate its not free and by default the cost accrues to the more successful students who may not have the financial resources to pay the additional funds and may opt not to attend despite being quite qualified. In some cases you may be trading more qualified graduates for less. For some the truth may be that their lack of success may be external issues that can't be resolved by an additional investment of staff resources or just unsuitability for the program that can't be resolved other than by picking a more suitable major. There is of course in the context of US education which wastes massive amounts of money so the actual answer is to stop wasting money on sports and invest that money in students but in all cases resources remain finite and some failure rate is inevitable.
        mnky9800n 6y ago
        In the context of the US, the lack of proper financial support coupled with the lack of a proper vocational education system means that a lot of people go to college when they will not succeed. In the case of struggling students. I think it's hard to dismiss a person because they struggle in a single course. I failed calculus 2 and now I'm about to finish a PhD doing statistics and machine learning. Should I have been "let go" so to speak upon that failure? Failures matter when they are cumulative not singular. This is why early warning systems in education fail so much. They rarely have enough information to provide a warning that is actually early.
  - HPsquared 6y ago
    The most important benefit of a university degree is the credential itself, indicating personal characteristics of the graduate. Lowering standards directly hurts the value of said credential. Learning is a side-effect of the process.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      You are correct but isn't that strange and defective?
  - BobbyJo 6y ago
    It does though. If a teacher has to teach 50 students instead of 17, that is a huge difference in the amount of attention any given student will have for help. Teachers scale better than some things, but not infinitely.
dehrmann 6y ago
Now the school has a bad reputation, and students who spent four years of time and tuition have a diploma worth nothing?

rather than accepting them for an entire year and then kicking 2/3rds of them out, why not don't kick them out and just teach three times as many students. feels more humane somehow

orwin 6y ago

If you're not making into year 2 (or year 3), you can repeat ad vitam aeternam.

Kalium 6y ago

Students are only occasionally actually kicked out. Much more common is that they struggle with the coursework, decide it isn't for them, and pick a different direction. How many years of time do you think it is humane to provide to a student before suggesting somehow that they might consider an alternate use of their time?

dehrmann 6y ago
Where I went, there was a hierarchy of lesser degrees to pick from.

barry-cotter 6y ago

That’s called lowering your standards. It punishes the third who would have made it under the old system. Better to have a test. Doesn’t waste a year of the lives of the two thirds who drop out.

gowld 6y ago
Me learning doesn't hurt you.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  But lowering the standards does. And that’s the only way you’re going from a pass rate of a third to 100%. You might be able to double pass rates to two thirds by putting many more resources into teaching but that costs money or comes out of research time/teacher satisfaction. You learning does hurt the top of the class if you’re a marginal student. Students on the verge of failure take up a lot more instructional and administrative time than the top third who were going to get through anyway.
  - mnky9800n 6y ago
    What's wrong with spending more time on helping struggling students?
    - dataduck 6y ago
      That it inevitably means dropping the most challenging i.e. most valuable parts of the course? Not only are resources not infinite; if you make them accessible to worse students, that necessarily means removing the parts which are inaccessible.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      To play devils advocate its not free and by default the cost accrues to the more successful students who may not have the financial resources to pay the additional funds and may opt not to attend despite being quite qualified. In some cases you may be trading more qualified graduates for less. For some the truth may be that their lack of success may be external issues that can't be resolved by an additional investment of staff resources or just unsuitability for the program that can't be resolved other than by picking a more suitable major. There is of course in the context of US education which wastes massive amounts of money so the actual answer is to stop wasting money on sports and invest that money in students but in all cases resources remain finite and some failure rate is inevitable.
      - mnky9800n 6y ago
        In the context of the US, the lack of proper financial support coupled with the lack of a proper vocational education system means that a lot of people go to college when they will not succeed. In the case of struggling students. I think it's hard to dismiss a person because they struggle in a single course. I failed calculus 2 and now I'm about to finish a PhD doing statistics and machine learning. Should I have been "let go" so to speak upon that failure? Failures matter when they are cumulative not singular. This is why early warning systems in education fail so much. They rarely have enough information to provide a warning that is actually early.
- HPsquared 6y ago
  The most important benefit of a university degree is the credential itself, indicating personal characteristics of the graduate. Lowering standards directly hurts the value of said credential. Learning is a side-effect of the process.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    You are correct but isn't that strange and defective?
- BobbyJo 6y ago
  It does though. If a teacher has to teach 50 students instead of 17, that is a huge difference in the amount of attention any given student will have for help. Teachers scale better than some things, but not infinitely.

dehrmann 6y ago

Now the school has a bad reputation, and students who spent four years of time and tuition have a diploma worth nothing?