6 ms·

A lot of students are there to get a degree, not to learn something. Employers don't know or care how much freshman chemistry you remember (unless you're a chem

by evanpw 12y ago

A lot of students are there to get a degree, not to learn something. Employers don't know or care how much freshman chemistry you remember (unless you're a chemist), but they do care if you didn't finish your degree because you couldn't pass some requirement. I wonder if the the same relationship is true in fields where there is a licensing exam at the end of your degree (like engineering). Or maybe something like a high-school AP class, where the final exam isn't written by the person teaching. In that case, the teacher would be more obviously on "the same side" as the student.

ohfunkyeah 12y ago
I'd argue that most employers don't really care. They want to use degree, university, and sometimes grades as a first-round filter for screening applicants. Do they actually care if you took the challenging Philosophy course from the good professor, or the easy-A from the Roman History professor? Hell no. So if the primary thing you want is a job, why would you ever take the challenging class? If a professor is significantly and knowingly more challenging than their peers and they don't adequately convey that up front why shouldn't they deserve a bad review. Part of the job is conveying expectations, and in my experience it seems like plenty of professors who will challenge and push know they are like this beforehand but really don't do anything they convey this until after a student is committed.
- nostrebored 12y ago
  I think that you're right that employers don't care about the specific courses that you took. I think you're wrong to assume that that doesn't mean that those who do take the more challenging courses do get ahead. The best networking I've done was in my challenging courses, where I met smart people who were also interested in learning and bettering themselves. My admittedly skewed and anecdotal evidence is that those people I knew who challenged themselves are now working at better jobs or going to better grad schools than those who decided to coast by. I did not have a single situation where I did not know the difficulty of a course going in. While professors may not adequately let you know, any one of your friends or a number of websites make this information easy to obtain. I feel like I might be alone in this, but I feel like if anything, a professor should warn you if they know that they do not challenge and push. You're in a university course -- it should be challenging. Courses should not be designed for an average student to excel.
noobermin 12y ago
Tell me about it. I TA for a physics class for premeds, and while they may find some passing interest in the course, they certainly don't care to learn it...and actually, I agree. May be a general knowledge of physics for someone going into medicine might be somewhat beneficial, but do I really expect my doctor to care about calculating the net force on a spaceship between the earth and the moon? Really? I'm still at a loss for understanding why physics is required for the MCAT.
- amateurpolymath 12y ago
  Ability in physics could be considered a proxy measure of student ability to understand abstract mathematical models. Or perhaps it's just another "are you smart?" filter.
  - noobermin 12y ago
    Why not teach abstract mathematical models instead, or a may be something around quantitative models in biology? I'm all for my students learning abstraction and math but I think applications in biology would be more interesting and ultimately more useful for them than a mass on an inclined plane with friction.
- semi-extrinsic 12y ago
  "calculating the net force on a spaceship between the earth and the moon" Well, that's your problem. There's a ton of physics that premeds should learn, but gravity is not one of them. Calculating electric potentials, forces etc. as applied to biological membranes would be infinitely better. Teach them the doppler effect, so they'll understand that ultrasound flow meter from the get go. Don't even get me started on NMR, PET, proton radiation therapy, ...
  - vacri 12y ago
    Well said. Biology, like chemistry, is actually a very complicated branch of physics. There's plenty of utility in understanding basic physics in biology. The doppler effect is a great example. Similarly radiation for imaging studies. Tension and compression. Optics. Fluid dynamics. Partial pressures. Electricity. Wave motion. So on and so forth. There is so much physics involved in medicine, that it's bizarre to hear that premeds are taught about spaceships. Perhaps it's due to this strange perception some people have that physics is only about subatomics and astronomy.
joe_the_user 12y ago
Yes, It seems illogical to expect students to make an acts focused on selfless learning right at the point that you are making the teacher's position tenuous and thus forcing said teacher to be thinking about immediate self-interest.

by evanpw 12y ago

ohfunkyeah 12y ago

I'd argue that most employers don't really care. They want to use degree, university, and sometimes grades as a first-round filter for screening applicants. Do they actually care if you took the challenging Philosophy course from the good professor, or the easy-A from the Roman History professor? Hell no. So if the primary thing you want is a job, why would you ever take the challenging class? If a professor is significantly and knowingly more challenging than their peers and they don't adequately convey that up front why shouldn't they deserve a bad review. Part of the job is conveying expectations, and in my experience it seems like plenty of professors who will challenge and push know they are like this beforehand but really don't do anything they convey this until after a student is committed.

nostrebored 12y ago
I think that you're right that employers don't care about the specific courses that you took. I think you're wrong to assume that that doesn't mean that those who do take the more challenging courses do get ahead. The best networking I've done was in my challenging courses, where I met smart people who were also interested in learning and bettering themselves. My admittedly skewed and anecdotal evidence is that those people I knew who challenged themselves are now working at better jobs or going to better grad schools than those who decided to coast by. I did not have a single situation where I did not know the difficulty of a course going in. While professors may not adequately let you know, any one of your friends or a number of websites make this information easy to obtain. I feel like I might be alone in this, but I feel like if anything, a professor should warn you if they know that they do not challenge and push. You're in a university course -- it should be challenging. Courses should not be designed for an average student to excel.

noobermin 12y ago

Tell me about it. I TA for a physics class for premeds, and while they may find some passing interest in the course, they certainly don't care to learn it...and actually, I agree. May be a general knowledge of physics for someone going into medicine might be somewhat beneficial, but do I really expect my doctor to care about calculating the net force on a spaceship between the earth and the moon? Really? I'm still at a loss for understanding why physics is required for the MCAT.

amateurpolymath 12y ago
Ability in physics could be considered a proxy measure of student ability to understand abstract mathematical models. Or perhaps it's just another "are you smart?" filter.
- noobermin 12y ago
  Why not teach abstract mathematical models instead, or a may be something around quantitative models in biology? I'm all for my students learning abstraction and math but I think applications in biology would be more interesting and ultimately more useful for them than a mass on an inclined plane with friction.
semi-extrinsic 12y ago
"calculating the net force on a spaceship between the earth and the moon" Well, that's your problem. There's a ton of physics that premeds should learn, but gravity is not one of them. Calculating electric potentials, forces etc. as applied to biological membranes would be infinitely better. Teach them the doppler effect, so they'll understand that ultrasound flow meter from the get go. Don't even get me started on NMR, PET, proton radiation therapy, ...
- vacri 12y ago
  Well said. Biology, like chemistry, is actually a very complicated branch of physics. There's plenty of utility in understanding basic physics in biology. The doppler effect is a great example. Similarly radiation for imaging studies. Tension and compression. Optics. Fluid dynamics. Partial pressures. Electricity. Wave motion. So on and so forth. There is so much physics involved in medicine, that it's bizarre to hear that premeds are taught about spaceships. Perhaps it's due to this strange perception some people have that physics is only about subatomics and astronomy.

joe_the_user 12y ago

Yes, It seems illogical to expect students to make an acts focused on selfless learning right at the point that you are making the teacher's position tenuous and thus forcing said teacher to be thinking about immediate self-interest.