4 ms·

It's a concerning trend. Lot's of people go into the fields looking for high salaries and job opportunities, and then have no interest and thus talent in the fi

It's a concerning trend. Lot's of people go into the fields looking for high salaries and job opportunities, and then have no interest and thus talent in the field. There's so many totally inept people with even graduate degrees in computer science. At the same time, look into some of the top University's CS exams and they're writing code on paper. They're not training effective and talented programmers, they're training effective exam writers.

dnautics 13y ago
This problem exists in the "hard sciences" too. There happens to be an intern in our lab, who is very motivated to do science, and actually fairly competent, but there are just some really critical things that are missing she just can't do basic mental arithmetic - it takes her minutes to figure out what volume to add to do a 1:20 dilution. Then she writes it down so that she doesn't have to do that calculation again in the future. She's always asking to make sure her procedure is correct, and has never creatively come up with an experiment on her own. This is compounded by self-doubt, there are procedures that need to be done extremely quickly, because there's an air-sensitive compound, and I've told her she needs to be snappy, and if she needs to, practice it 20 or 50 or 100 times to get the whole thing done under a minute or two, still no, and I think it's affecting the results, which of course, increases her self-doubt, so she tries to be more careful, which makes things slower, etc etc (she's not my intern so I can't be too aggressive in giving her criticism). This student has a master's degree and was applying to PhD programs at Harvard. I think Harvard rejected her, and the best grad school she got into had "people worse than her" (which I don't doubt, like I said, she's competent overall), so she's applying again this fall. I can't take her aside and tell her, "you are not PhD material". I leave it to the reader to figure out why. She would be fine in industry as a lab tech. I presume something similar happens at a lower level where people who are techs, shouldn't even be at that level. Contrast this with a high school intern in the other lab, who successfully built a giant 6 meter bioreactor that is actually being used to process waste at an industrial facility, and totally took down a professor that asked a dumb question during her "presentation on what she did".... I am terrified that she will leave STEM - she didn't get into as good a college as she should have.
- trekky1700 13y ago
  Wow, I didn't realize it was quite so bad everywhere. This really shows how desperately reform in the education sector is needed. Especially the last part, a student brimming with talent turned away and potentially changing fields because of it. That's scary.
  - dnautics 13y ago
    maybe I'm being pessimistic, she got into an good school that I respect, she just - deserves more. EDIT: I guess I could be more specific. In the state of california, there is the Cal State system and the UC system, the UC system is considered to be the "top tier" system, and the CS system is widely considered to be "slightly less than". She got into a CS engineering program, that I happen to think creates a substantial number of engineers that are superior to some of the UCs, but that may or may not be the appraisal of people who hire her down the line, especially as we move towards a more credentialed system, or if the system gets flooded with less competent engineers and candidate selection trends toward the superficial.
    - dschuler 13y ago
      I went to a Cal State for undergrad, and had a great experience. None of my engineering or math classes were 'seminar-style', I always had access to my professors, who generally knew me by name. Most of the students come out being able to put something together on their own. I ended up going to to a private school for my master's, and was surprised to see so many people who wouldn't know which end to hold on a soldering iron. BUT - the student body was generally much more engaged and interesting, and I ended up having a much better time there. I just wasn't blown away by their academic superiority :)
      - dnautics 13y ago
        without naming names, there are DEFINITELY programs/whole schools in the UCs that are worse than many Cal States, in my opinion. Nonetheless, my opinion in this world doesn't count for very much.
vonmoltke 13y ago
Well, they are in alignment with the industry then, where the big players seem intent on hiring effective exam writers based on their technical screening process. How do you pass your undergrad courses? Memorize data structures, algorithms, and definitions, and write code on paper. How do you pass a Google interview? Memorize data structures, algorithms, and definitions, and write code on a whiteboard. I cringe every time someone asks a question about interviews on /r/cscareerquestions and the inevitable reference to Cracking the Code Interview or something similar comes up. I cannot fathom that you can, and should be expected to, study or cram for an interview. It makes the interview the equivalent of an undergrad test, with the same value as a signalling device. I'm not sure which feeds which, and I'm sure there is two-way feedback in this system, but I don't think fixing undergrad education alone will fix the core of the problem, nor will encouraging more students to pursue engineering degrees as programs like MathMovesU attempt to do.

dnautics 13y ago

This problem exists in the "hard sciences" too. There happens to be an intern in our lab, who is very motivated to do science, and actually fairly competent, but there are just some really critical things that are missing she just can't do basic mental arithmetic - it takes her minutes to figure out what volume to add to do a 1:20 dilution. Then she writes it down so that she doesn't have to do that calculation again in the future. She's always asking to make sure her procedure is correct, and has never creatively come up with an experiment on her own. This is compounded by self-doubt, there are procedures that need to be done extremely quickly, because there's an air-sensitive compound, and I've told her she needs to be snappy, and if she needs to, practice it 20 or 50 or 100 times to get the whole thing done under a minute or two, still no, and I think it's affecting the results, which of course, increases her self-doubt, so she tries to be more careful, which makes things slower, etc etc (she's not my intern so I can't be too aggressive in giving her criticism). This student has a master's degree and was applying to PhD programs at Harvard. I think Harvard rejected her, and the best grad school she got into had "people worse than her" (which I don't doubt, like I said, she's competent overall), so she's applying again this fall. I can't take her aside and tell her, "you are not PhD material". I leave it to the reader to figure out why. She would be fine in industry as a lab tech. I presume something similar happens at a lower level where people who are techs, shouldn't even be at that level. Contrast this with a high school intern in the other lab, who successfully built a giant 6 meter bioreactor that is actually being used to process waste at an industrial facility, and totally took down a professor that asked a dumb question during her "presentation on what she did".... I am terrified that she will leave STEM - she didn't get into as good a college as she should have.

trekky1700 13y ago
Wow, I didn't realize it was quite so bad everywhere. This really shows how desperately reform in the education sector is needed. Especially the last part, a student brimming with talent turned away and potentially changing fields because of it. That's scary.
- dnautics 13y ago
  maybe I'm being pessimistic, she got into an good school that I respect, she just - deserves more. EDIT: I guess I could be more specific. In the state of california, there is the Cal State system and the UC system, the UC system is considered to be the "top tier" system, and the CS system is widely considered to be "slightly less than". She got into a CS engineering program, that I happen to think creates a substantial number of engineers that are superior to some of the UCs, but that may or may not be the appraisal of people who hire her down the line, especially as we move towards a more credentialed system, or if the system gets flooded with less competent engineers and candidate selection trends toward the superficial.
  - dschuler 13y ago
    I went to a Cal State for undergrad, and had a great experience. None of my engineering or math classes were 'seminar-style', I always had access to my professors, who generally knew me by name. Most of the students come out being able to put something together on their own. I ended up going to to a private school for my master's, and was surprised to see so many people who wouldn't know which end to hold on a soldering iron. BUT - the student body was generally much more engaged and interesting, and I ended up having a much better time there. I just wasn't blown away by their academic superiority :)
    - dnautics 13y ago
      without naming names, there are DEFINITELY programs/whole schools in the UCs that are worse than many Cal States, in my opinion. Nonetheless, my opinion in this world doesn't count for very much.

vonmoltke 13y ago

Well, they are in alignment with the industry then, where the big players seem intent on hiring effective exam writers based on their technical screening process. How do you pass your undergrad courses? Memorize data structures, algorithms, and definitions, and write code on paper. How do you pass a Google interview? Memorize data structures, algorithms, and definitions, and write code on a whiteboard. I cringe every time someone asks a question about interviews on /r/cscareerquestions and the inevitable reference to Cracking the Code Interview or something similar comes up. I cannot fathom that you can, and should be expected to, study or cram for an interview. It makes the interview the equivalent of an undergrad test, with the same value as a signalling device. I'm not sure which feeds which, and I'm sure there is two-way feedback in this system, but I don't think fixing undergrad education alone will fix the core of the problem, nor will encouraging more students to pursue engineering degrees as programs like MathMovesU attempt to do.