3 ms·

Unfortunately, Its almost a certainty that you're wrong about this. They realize #3 has subsumed both #1 and #2 with the added twist of inescapable debt slaver

by than3 4y ago

Unfortunately, Its almost a certainty that you're wrong about this. They realize #3 has subsumed both #1 and #2 with the added twist of inescapable debt slavery with no deterministic way to complete those degrees. Education is no longer an investment, its a casino with the house winning 80% of the distribution. I'm sure you've heard about weed-out classes where people fail not because of lack of knowledge, but from structure. Apprenticeships are the only alternative to Professional certifications or educational degrees as job qualifiers. The latter two options both have subsumed their original primary purpose and have exchanged those purposes for an overarching profit motive instead while stripping due process and agency. If you know the material you should be able to pass no problem which is what people pay for when they go to college, but instead they are basically bait and switched which is a form of fraud, with no legal recourse in this case. I'm sure some may argue that you can always sue, but look at ITT tech. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardconroy/2022/02/24/report-on-fraud-committed-by-itt-technical-institute-highlights-need-to-protect-student-loan-borrowers-with-stronger-regulation-of-for-profit-colleges/?sh=506448b12fff https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardconroy/2022/02/24/report-...). I know people who have repeatedly failed Mechanics (Physics), while acing multiple heavy math courses above multivariate calculus. Their biggest complaints were non-deterministic questions being asked on those tests, and structural course elements that induce causality spirals. Example of the first being material the material taught is different from what was being tested with no adequate preparation, or in the case of inference there being multiple correct answers without enough information provided to deterministically come to a single correct answer, or in the case of heuristics where you build a context (or initial set of conditions) and that context should only lead to one answer but has multiple correct answers (with some uncommunicated assumption). They were all extremely upset because the tests amount to guesses, and some have repeated the same course every semester with different professors (same structural elements) over 3-5 years, even going so far as to take the course at different district colleges (same structural issues) before dropping out entirely due to the additional financial burden with no path forward. Examples of the latter being, the answer of the second problem is dependent on the correct answer to the first, the answer of the third problem is dependent on the correct answer to the second. An arbitrarily uncommunicated rounding scheme guarantees most fail. It might seem from the way I've said this that they just gave up, but it wasn't from lack of trying. Some escalated this from the Chairperson, to the Dean, to the Board of Directors over several years. Ultimately, no corrective action was taken, and its not a new story. This is why people are generally not going to college and opting for other consistent options.

selimthegrim 4y ago
There is a calibration test in physics education called the Force Concept Inventory. Was this administered to any of these individuals?
- than3 4y ago
  I'll have to reach out and ask, my guess is no it was never administered. We had a physics support group that was trying to change these practices for a long while. I haven't heard anything recently from them so they may have disbanded but the organizer had been working on changing this for our local community colleges since 2002, and it was active in 2013. I can say as of 2014 they did not administer that, if it matches the youtube video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR3ZF7jrk8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR3ZF7jrk8o, if that were all, almost all of us would have passed. That would have been my 6th or 7th attempt at it, average pass rate for the department that year averaged 12% for the required GE transfer classes. There were hundreds who could have been engineers, who either ended up changing their majors, being academically dishonest, or realized the futility and dropped out for professional pursuits (IT) like myself. I'd run into two similar roadblocks, one in trigonometry (6 times), the other in physics. A lot of good multivariate calculus and linear algebra will do me since I gave up and went into IT when I could no longer self-fund. Its ironic that I got the top award for the department-wide egg-drop lab contest for best design (3 item egg drop surviving 4 stories), and yet could not pass the course, and maxed out my tutor center schedule, and got a private tutor. I ended up cutting my losses at something like $42k in expenses over two decades before leaving for a professional line of work. Almost everyone in the group was first time college, or self-funding for a pipe-dream. I'm not bitter but I am upset that the fraud the administrators, staff, board of directors, and professors perpetrated on their students was allowed to continue without punishment or correction. Fraud isn't a new thing in education, as the ITT tech fraud has dragged out its battle for almost two decades.

by than3 4y ago

selimthegrim 4y ago

There is a calibration test in physics education called the Force Concept Inventory. Was this administered to any of these individuals?

than3 4y ago
I'll have to reach out and ask, my guess is no it was never administered. We had a physics support group that was trying to change these practices for a long while. I haven't heard anything recently from them so they may have disbanded but the organizer had been working on changing this for our local community colleges since 2002, and it was active in 2013. I can say as of 2014 they did not administer that, if it matches the youtube video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR3ZF7jrk8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR3ZF7jrk8o, if that were all, almost all of us would have passed. That would have been my 6th or 7th attempt at it, average pass rate for the department that year averaged 12% for the required GE transfer classes. There were hundreds who could have been engineers, who either ended up changing their majors, being academically dishonest, or realized the futility and dropped out for professional pursuits (IT) like myself. I'd run into two similar roadblocks, one in trigonometry (6 times), the other in physics. A lot of good multivariate calculus and linear algebra will do me since I gave up and went into IT when I could no longer self-fund. Its ironic that I got the top award for the department-wide egg-drop lab contest for best design (3 item egg drop surviving 4 stories), and yet could not pass the course, and maxed out my tutor center schedule, and got a private tutor. I ended up cutting my losses at something like $42k in expenses over two decades before leaving for a professional line of work. Almost everyone in the group was first time college, or self-funding for a pipe-dream. I'm not bitter but I am upset that the fraud the administrators, staff, board of directors, and professors perpetrated on their students was allowed to continue without punishment or correction. Fraud isn't a new thing in education, as the ITT tech fraud has dragged out its battle for almost two decades.