3 ms·

Speaking as a professor: the filter is really helpful. Having students struggle for two years in a program they're going to fail out of is terrible. I've seen i

by dgacmu 4mo ago

Speaking as a professor: the filter is really helpful. Having students struggle for two years in a program they're going to fail out of is terrible. I've seen it happen - and I saw more of it happen for the years CMU also stopped requiring the SAT. The SAT is a very imperfect measure but it turns out a lot of the others are even worse.

falcor84 4mo ago
Honest question: why is it terrible? I would assume that if someone is capable enough to struggle for 2 years, they stand a real chance to struggle for 4 years and graduate. And seeing how the job market rewards a mediocre diploma from a good college significantly more than a good diploma from a mediocre college, it seems like a very rational decision from the student's side. And if they do fail out, they should still be able to enroll in another program, and presumably get a decent grade there, no?
cucumber3732842 4mo ago
>Having students struggle for two years in a program they're going to fail out of is terrible. Putting a body every a seat for those profitable 500-person lectures taught by an adjunct and graded by TAs who are all paid peanuts and then having them wash out before those expensive 50-person high level classes and esoteric electives taught by tenured profs and accompanied by lots of expensive lab time is great for the university's bottom line though.
- falcor84 4mo ago
  Good point, and that was for me the promise of the original MOOCs 15 years ago - for students to be able to take on these MIT/Stanford courses, with the exact same workload and see if they could handle them, without any additional cost to the school and without the student having to upend their life yet. And if they proved to themselves that they could and are willing to, then enroll, and use that as proof. There are still some online courses that try to do this sort of thing, with a particular example being the University of Helsinky's Full Stack Open [0] which offers post-hoc university credits for those who complete the course, but it seems that the dream didn't quite materialize. [0] https://fullstackopen.com/en/about https://fullstackopen.com/en/about

by dgacmu 4mo ago

falcor84 4mo ago

Honest question: why is it terrible? I would assume that if someone is capable enough to struggle for 2 years, they stand a real chance to struggle for 4 years and graduate. And seeing how the job market rewards a mediocre diploma from a good college significantly more than a good diploma from a mediocre college, it seems like a very rational decision from the student's side. And if they do fail out, they should still be able to enroll in another program, and presumably get a decent grade there, no?

cucumber3732842 4mo ago

>Having students struggle for two years in a program they're going to fail out of is terrible. Putting a body every a seat for those profitable 500-person lectures taught by an adjunct and graded by TAs who are all paid peanuts and then having them wash out before those expensive 50-person high level classes and esoteric electives taught by tenured profs and accompanied by lots of expensive lab time is great for the university's bottom line though.

falcor84 4mo ago
Good point, and that was for me the promise of the original MOOCs 15 years ago - for students to be able to take on these MIT/Stanford courses, with the exact same workload and see if they could handle them, without any additional cost to the school and without the student having to upend their life yet. And if they proved to themselves that they could and are willing to, then enroll, and use that as proof. There are still some online courses that try to do this sort of thing, with a particular example being the University of Helsinky's Full Stack Open [0] which offers post-hoc university credits for those who complete the course, but it seems that the dream didn't quite materialize. [0] https://fullstackopen.com/en/about https://fullstackopen.com/en/about