5 ms·

I don't know if I'd say "service to the students", and I definitely have a few things to say about the artificial caps placed on med students and use of absolut

by timr 4y ago

I don't know if I'd say "service to the students", and I definitely have a few things to say about the artificial caps placed on med students and use of absolutely irrelevant courses (like biochemistry lab and anything beyond basic organic chemistry) but sure, I suppose some some filtering mechanism is of value. > But what cynical advantage does the school gain from weeding out premeds? Besides tough love for the students who won't cut the mustard, what is their motivation for weeding out premeds? Teaching these pre-med courses is expensive and hard. They're huge, require armies of TAs, and the educational experience blows (that's a scientific term) for both professor and student. Aside from the raw economic incentives (professors in this area tend to bring in far more money from research than teaching even the largest classes), believe it or not, a lot of professors actually want to teach their subject well. They love it. They do not love giving Biochem 101 lectures to a an audience of 100-1000 uninterested, uninspired undergrads who are only there because the AMA is making them jump through a hoop. Just to be clear, though: I don't think I'm suggesting anywhere that this is "cynical" behavior. Everyone is acting rationally given the rules of the game. Even the O-chem professor from my own life was acting in an extreme form of rationality -- I assume he didn't make the course hard out of some cynical motivation, but because he had a huge class and he wanted to provide a useful measurement of talent. One way to do that is to make it really, really hard and spread out the curve. (But he might also have been forcing the pre-meds into a different section by reputation.)

MichaelCollins 4y ago
> They do not love giving Biochem 101 lectures to a an audience of 100-1000 uninterested, uninspired undergrads. And if Biochem 101 doesn't weed them out, those 100-1000 uninterested uninspired undergrads will be dumped on the next premed course after biochem, moving the problem further along the process and subjecting even more premed instructors to the glut of subpar students. Better to get those students retracked into a more appropriate major sooner than later. > Teaching these pre-med courses is expensive and hard. Well they get paid for it, don't they? Either from the government or student loans, most schools aren't doing it for free. From a cynical money perspective, the short term incentives of a school is to never flunk any student who can pay for more classes. But that's not what's going on.
- timr 4y ago
  I agree with your first point. I'm not sure if that qualifies as "cynical", but it's definitely true. It's critical to winnow down these huge classes before upper-level coursework begins. > Well they get paid for it, don't they? Either from the government or student loans, most schools aren't doing it for free. No, they don't get paid nearly enough to justify the time of the people involved. With weird, rare exceptions, anyone teaching one of these lecture courses at a major research school (i.e. any public school) makes most of their salary -- and earns far more money for the school -- by doing research. Maybe it all pencils out in aggregate (e.g. the teaching staff is a loss, but at N=250 students you break even, or whatever), but I suspect that isn't true in general. Teaching these courses takes up so much time that you barely get anything else done for a whole quarter/semester. That's hard when you have a lab of people to manage and an active research program. Schools usually manage it by indenture, coercion, voluntary mutual sacrifice, or all of the above. There are different reasons for investing in it despite this fact, but the big one is the unwritten rule that "this is a University, and this is what we do". Sometimes you take a loss to support the wider team. In this case, it's pretty bad marketing to have a university without a pre-med pathway, just like it's bad marketing to have a gym without a climbing wall (or whatever the fad is these days).
zozbot234 4y ago
> Teaching these pre-med courses is expensive and hard. They're huge, require armies of TAs, and the educational experience blows (that's a scientific term) for both professor and student. Sure, but what we would expect due to this is pre-med courses that are all of roughly equal difficulty (perhaps with slightly harder classes earlier in the degree), but with none of them being exceedingly difficult, or being perceived as a singular "weed-out" class. A "weed-out" class is one that's badly taught, even by comparison with other classes in the same program. If better-quality teaching is not feasible, it probably needs to be split into two modules - O-Chem I and O-Chem II, taken separately, with other material being slightly reduced/compressed to compensate.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > A "weed-out" class is one that's badly taught I disagree, a weed-out course can be well taught and still weed out most students who take it. If a course requires a level of dedication and memorization ability that most students don't possess, then it will weed out lazy, disinterested and unintelligent students no matter how good the instructors are. You might claim that a lazy and disinterested student is still the fault of the professor, but it's not the professor's job to babysit a 19 year old and make him to spend Friday night studying instead of getting drunk in a frat party.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    All college courses require dedication and memorization, so "lazy, disinterested and unintelligent" students will always be hit by gradual attrition - or, more likely, they will gradually realize that their college program is a lot harder than they might have expected, and do their best to shape up rather than switch to something else. "Weed-out" classes, as a rule, are perceived as highly peculiar in a way that doesn't simply boil down to tougher standards.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      Not all courses are made equal, some college courses intrinsically require more dedication and memorization than others. These courses will naturally come to be called weed-out courses.

by timr 4y ago

MichaelCollins 4y ago

> They do not love giving Biochem 101 lectures to a an audience of 100-1000 uninterested, uninspired undergrads. And if Biochem 101 doesn't weed them out, those 100-1000 uninterested uninspired undergrads will be dumped on the next premed course after biochem, moving the problem further along the process and subjecting even more premed instructors to the glut of subpar students. Better to get those students retracked into a more appropriate major sooner than later. > Teaching these pre-med courses is expensive and hard. Well they get paid for it, don't they? Either from the government or student loans, most schools aren't doing it for free. From a cynical money perspective, the short term incentives of a school is to never flunk any student who can pay for more classes. But that's not what's going on.

timr 4y ago
I agree with your first point. I'm not sure if that qualifies as "cynical", but it's definitely true. It's critical to winnow down these huge classes before upper-level coursework begins. > Well they get paid for it, don't they? Either from the government or student loans, most schools aren't doing it for free. No, they don't get paid nearly enough to justify the time of the people involved. With weird, rare exceptions, anyone teaching one of these lecture courses at a major research school (i.e. any public school) makes most of their salary -- and earns far more money for the school -- by doing research. Maybe it all pencils out in aggregate (e.g. the teaching staff is a loss, but at N=250 students you break even, or whatever), but I suspect that isn't true in general. Teaching these courses takes up so much time that you barely get anything else done for a whole quarter/semester. That's hard when you have a lab of people to manage and an active research program. Schools usually manage it by indenture, coercion, voluntary mutual sacrifice, or all of the above. There are different reasons for investing in it despite this fact, but the big one is the unwritten rule that "this is a University, and this is what we do". Sometimes you take a loss to support the wider team. In this case, it's pretty bad marketing to have a university without a pre-med pathway, just like it's bad marketing to have a gym without a climbing wall (or whatever the fad is these days).

zozbot234 4y ago

> Teaching these pre-med courses is expensive and hard. They're huge, require armies of TAs, and the educational experience blows (that's a scientific term) for both professor and student. Sure, but what we would expect due to this is pre-med courses that are all of roughly equal difficulty (perhaps with slightly harder classes earlier in the degree), but with none of them being exceedingly difficult, or being perceived as a singular "weed-out" class. A "weed-out" class is one that's badly taught, even by comparison with other classes in the same program. If better-quality teaching is not feasible, it probably needs to be split into two modules - O-Chem I and O-Chem II, taken separately, with other material being slightly reduced/compressed to compensate.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
> A "weed-out" class is one that's badly taught I disagree, a weed-out course can be well taught and still weed out most students who take it. If a course requires a level of dedication and memorization ability that most students don't possess, then it will weed out lazy, disinterested and unintelligent students no matter how good the instructors are. You might claim that a lazy and disinterested student is still the fault of the professor, but it's not the professor's job to babysit a 19 year old and make him to spend Friday night studying instead of getting drunk in a frat party.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  All college courses require dedication and memorization, so "lazy, disinterested and unintelligent" students will always be hit by gradual attrition - or, more likely, they will gradually realize that their college program is a lot harder than they might have expected, and do their best to shape up rather than switch to something else. "Weed-out" classes, as a rule, are perceived as highly peculiar in a way that doesn't simply boil down to tougher standards.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Not all courses are made equal, some college courses intrinsically require more dedication and memorization than others. These courses will naturally come to be called weed-out courses.