The real problem with education

[Master of Ossus]

Good Christ. I never thought I'd be praising any of Philadelphia's policies to the skies, but so far it turns out I can be thankful for honest report cards and hiring policies that aren't completely asinine.

What sort of report cards are filled out in Philly? I seem to remember just getting basic grades (A-F), and then little standardized comments next to them like, "Excellent effort/attitude," "Needs Improvement," and my personal favorite "A pleasure to have in class," along with some other ones that teachers could attach to a grade.

[RedImperator]

Good Christ. I never thought I'd be praising any of Philadelphia's policies to the skies, but so far it turns out I can be thankful for honest report cards and hiring policies that aren't completely asinine.

What sort of report cards are filled out in Philly? I seem to remember just getting basic grades (A-F), and then little standardized comments next to them like, "Excellent effort/attitude," "Needs Improvement," and my personal favorite "A pleasure to have in class," along with some other ones that teachers could attach to a grade.

Basically the exact same thing, along with a few more technical markings if the kid has an IEP or somesuch. We also have mandatory parent-teacher conferences after at least one report card, and we're certainly allowed to say a kid is fucking up if he's fucking up.

[Uraniun235]

I personally don't think we're going to see any significant change within the next half-century unless the entire system crashes and burns, because - at least in my corner of the world - the notion that "everyone should go to college and anyone who doesn't is a failure" has been drilled into students and faculty for years now. I can't see that being reversed easily.

I'm curious to know what kind of an economic burden this "everyone should go to college" mentality actually places on the nation. Do we really need or want millions of people going and getting bullshit degrees solely on the notion that a piece of paper means a sizable number of people out there will be more willing to hire you and pay you more money over someone else who is just as qualified but didn't spend a few years in college? How many millions of dollars are being burned on people going to college for no other reason than "because my teachers said I'd be a failure if I didn't"?

[RedImperator]

I personally don't think we're going to see any significant change within the next half-century unless the entire system crashes and burns, because - at least in my corner of the world - the notion that "everyone should go to college and anyone who doesn't is a failure" has been drilled into students and faculty for years now. I can't see that being reversed easily.

I'm curious to know what kind of an economic burden this "everyone should go to college" mentality actually places on the nation. Do we really need or want millions of people going and getting bullshit degrees solely on the notion that a piece of paper means a sizable number of people out there will be more willing to hire you and pay you more money over someone else who is just as qualified but didn't spend a few years in college? How many millions of dollars are being burned on people going to college for no other reason than "because my teachers said I'd be a failure if I didn't"?

I totally agree. "Not everyone should go to college" is the worst heresy you could ever imagine in education, at least at the policymaking level. And let's not forget, there are a lot of people making a lot of money off the system as it exists--student loans are a cash cow for the banks. I think the only chance to fix the system is if some kind of economic crash makes it impossible for millions of kids to go to college and the only alternative is to fix the high schools.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Just to ask: What type of degrees are the nonsense ones? I hear people say it a lot, but I never actually know objectively what ones these are.

Yes, a lot of people are pressured into going into college. I remember when I was in highschool, we could either go into the college prep or they planned a vocational insitution for us, but they did not recomend it for most people; it did not have too much popularity.

Even in my college classes (some of the fillers they make you take) they basically say the degree material is meaningless, but the piece of paper saying you were there is what matters for employers. I don't think I have a bs degree, but I don't really know. I keep hearing the term.

Just to ask: What type of degrees are the nonsense ones? I hear people say it a lot, but I never actually know objectively what ones these are.
Is it history or something like communications and pet therapy? (We actually have a pet therapy class).

[Darth Wong]

Just to ask: What type of degrees are the nonsense ones?

Anything that's really easy to get.

Seriously, that's pretty concise but it pretty much covers it. If it was really difficult, then it's probably a "real" degree, or at least it says something about your discipline and ability that you got one. If it's so easy that you can be stoned and absent for most of your classes and still graduate, then it's a worthless bullshit degree. And yes, there are plenty of degrees which are that easy.

[Uraniun235]

Sadly, there are a lot of people which think that having any degree, even a bullshit degree, automatically makes someone more qualified than someone else. It gets even worse if you're judged in some part by how many of your employees hold college degrees.

[Master of Ossus]

Sadly, there are a lot of people which think that having any degree, even a bullshit degree, automatically makes someone more qualified than someone else. It gets even worse if you're judged in some part by how many of your employees hold college degrees.

Even at top-notch universities, where everyone there is smart, there are measurable differences in the incomes of graduates between departments. Going through Stanford's Sociology department means you will make less money getting out than someone who has a degree in chemical engineering or business or math or computer science.

[Yogi]

Just to ask: What type of degrees are the nonsense ones? I hear people say it a lot, but I never actually know objectively what ones these are.

Look at what the Foolball players take. Communications was known as the junk degree at my college.

[Archaic`]

I've got a friend on a business degree who I ghost write work for on occassion. I average around an A- to B+ without taking a single class in it or attending even one lecture when it comes to the coursework...needless to say, I'm not too impressed with it.

Certainly, it's rather easy for someone with above average intelligence to pass everything without much effort, though I highly doubt that the average person could replicate that kind of achievement while studying a business degree. Some people can understand topics simply by reading the textbook, others need it explained to them in full. I would expect most people on this forum to be in that first group. In any case, I would be surprised if those were specialized units that you were able to do that with. Generic, basic units, yes, but ones that are tied to a specific business major tend to go significantly more in depth.

Going back to Wong's original point though...I have to admit, I've been somewhat worried myself about the skills, or lack thereof, that this Business degree has left me with. With the exception of Japanese language ability from my specialization, none of them really seem applicable at entry-level at all.

[Stark]

Hey, I think my Masters course is laughable: many of the units (yeah, I thought Masters work was research too) are what I would consider technical school level (ie, this is the TCP stack) and many of the students are from China (specifically) and while they're all qualified they seem to lack a great deal of skills I'd assume they would have. It's really insane - only the nuts stuff like cryptography or security are even challenging. I spent the first semester not living the stressful student life, but living like I was before and occasionally going to a lecture or scratching my head over number theory. It's not just highschools.

[brianeyci]

I agree with Stark. Sometimes people bring prior knowledge or the class has to slow down for everyone else and it's alright to skip. Hey, I pay money and if I don't think I'm getting value for my money it's alright to miss class.

One thing that my economics and math majoring friend in first year (he used to be in Engineering but found it boring and took a year off, no he didn't flunk he got good grades but chose to switch) told me was one serious problem with easy courses. Basically that you felt like you were getting nothing out of the lecture and it was better to skip and work on essay writing, and that those types of courses should have a lot more in-class essays. But when there's no point going to lecture and you can just stay home and do the readings the only reason why you're going to class is as a safety to make sure you miss nothing (and the occasional professor that gives participation marks).

I used to think that people who didn't go to university were stupid too and then sometime in the middle of last year I took a nice hard look at myself and my own life skills and realized that I didn't have the foggiest idea how to take care of myself on my own while one of my high school friends who's been working for the past three years now has a car, an apartment, a girlfriend, is mature and established.

At least, I'm happy that I'm taking relatively "hard" subjects in math and English. And that I went to a reputable university rather than take the bribe another offered me. But I am realizing that in one or two years when I come out with a piece of paper it will mean jackshit in the way of communication skills and lifeskills. That is something else, and as long as you know how to get along with people you'll be fine regardless of whether you have a piece of paper.

Brian

[RedImperator]

I had a friend of mine with whom I was pretty close in high school. I was the "smart one" who was naturally going to college. We're the same age, went to the same high school, grew up in the same town, to parents in the same socioeconomic range. He went to vocational classes half the day (the schools in our county pool their resources into a single consolidated vocational school, so we actually had a decent vocational program, unlike a lot of schools). I spent four years in undergrad ($60,000) and now I'm on month 6 of 10 in grad school ($40,000). I'm still living with my parents because my internship is unpaid, and when I do get a paying position, I'm going to have to get some fleabag place because my student loan payment will be bigger than my rent. He, in the meantime, did six months of advanced training after high school that was paid for by the place that hired him the day after graduation. He's since switched jobs to a Navy contractor in Philadelphia, he's a supervisor making somewhere in the high five or low six digit range. He has a little apartment with which he is satisfied, but could afford a house if he wanted one. He's completely independent, and his only debt at this point is for all the shiny new computer gear he's bought recently and his new car. My job has a lot of vacation time, but it's unpaid, and it's made up by the unpaid overtime I'll be putting in staying after school to tutor kids, run detention, advise after-school activities, and the like, not to mention all the time I'll put in at home grading and writing lesson plans. He's done at five and only takes work home if it's a particularly interesting project or there's a critical deadline looming, which is rare enough for it not to be a hardship. His vacation time is, of course, fully paid. Even when I'm finished all my training and get full certification, my salary will top out after 20 years at about the level he's at right now after 5.

So who's the smart one?

[Darth Wong]

The big problem with university vs college education IMO is false advertising. There are those who would prefer to go the university route and those who would prefer to go the college route, but they're making their decisions based on completely false expectations of what it will be like, how lucrative it will be, how much it will really cost, etc. High school guidance counsellors seem almost totally useless in this regard; I've never heard of a high school kid who felt that he got a real, frank, accurate assessment of the post-secondary educational landscape from a high school guidance counsellor.

[RedImperator]

The big problem with university vs college education IMO is false advertising. There are those who would prefer to go the university route and those who would prefer to go the college route, but they're making their decisions based on completely false expectations of what it will be like, how lucrative it will be, how much it will really cost, etc. High school guidance counsellors seem almost totally useless in this regard; I've never heard of a high school kid who felt that he got a real, frank, accurate assessment of the post-secondary educational landscape from a high school guidance counsellor.

What's the difference between university and college in a Canadian context? In the States, they're used interchangably in most situations.

[Durandal]

The big problem with university vs college education IMO is false advertising. There are those who would prefer to go the university route and those who would prefer to go the college route, but they're making their decisions based on completely false expectations of what it will be like, how lucrative it will be, how much it will really cost, etc. High school guidance counsellors seem almost totally useless in this regard; I've never heard of a high school kid who felt that he got a real, frank, accurate assessment of the post-secondary educational landscape from a high school guidance counsellor.

What's the difference between university and college in a Canadian context? In the States, they're used interchangably in most situations.

I think it's just a turn of phrase. But even in the States, a college is different from a university. I think it's just that in Canada and Europe, they respect that difference in their vernacular. A college is a step below a university, so if you went to "college" in Canada, you went to maybe the equivalent of a community college in the States. Whereas "university" always refers to a fully-accredited institution.

[Darth Wong]

Got it in one. In Canada, "college" means "technical school" or "community college", whereas "university" is a higher-echelon accredited institution. You go to college to become an auto mechanic. You go to university to become an automotive engineer.

[The_Nice_Guy]

The concept of mass higher education, and the failure of electorates to understand that in every population there will be the smart and the dumb, has brought us to this. If politicians were the ones who pushed for 'everybody to tertiary education!' on the basis that every graduate will presumably gain employment, then who elected them in the first place?

Don't worry, every country suffers from the same problem. And so you, me, and Harry end up with the problem of illiterate graduates and inflating grades at every level because to do otherwise would mean that the program is not working and the higher-ups simply won't have that!

Mixed up in all this is actually teaching students, the objectives expected of every student to attain, the learning goals, teacher qualification, blah blah.

I'm a bit shocked to hear of the requirements to be a teacher stated in earlier posts. Over in Singapore, for example, you need a chemistry, applied chem, or chem engineering degree with honours to teach chemistry at the junior college(17-18 yrs old) level, and even the secondary level(13-16 yrs old) requires teachers with a basic degree in thos subjects to teach. And before degree holders become qualified, they have to go for a diploma course to get qualified to teach. Of course, we end up with a serious dearth of english language majors for language, but that's a problem with another cause for another day.

As a teacher, I have to say multiple choice questions have their value, and also their drawbacks as already noted. Their value lies in being extremely easy to mark. Students fill out an optical answer sheet, put it into a scanner, and presto! Results in a jiffy! Analysis with various tools, like FI(facility index) and DI(discrimination index), can also give a quick(but rough) diagnostic assessment for the teacher of the class regarding their familiarity in the tested subject and the usefulness of those questions, so that they may be recycled.

With that quick diagnostic in hand, the teacher can move to correct those deficiencies. Still, for purposes of teaching and making my students sweat every test, and because I've gotten to know my students fairly well in terms of who's good, who's poor, and who's lazy, I've completely abolished MCQs from my chemistry tests.

But for the poor langauge teachers, who have to trawl through essays of sometimes unintelligible and convoluted garbage, they have a much harder task. Because I taught english myself(I double majored) for my practical teaching module, I know well the agony of going through veritable shit, line by torturous line. And unlike science teachers, they don't have MCQs to bail them out. In fact, from age 12 onwards, MCQ is completely unsuitable for teaching language(except for pictographic languages like chinese to test word knowledge).

And of course, the freedom for teachers to be as blunt and honest as they can be towards parents in their assessment of the child. I suspect quite a bit of the 'no negative feelings at all' policy is spillover from the politically correct movement, as well as the sensitive leftoids.

TWG

[Edi]

Got it in one. In Canada, "college" means "technical school" or "community college", whereas "university" is a higher-echelon accredited institution. You go to college to become an auto mechanic. You go to university to become an automotive engineer.

I wish our terminology was that simple. Here engineers are trained by what you would call colleges in the Canadian sense (mechanics come from vocational schools), and technical university engineering degrees are called Diploma Engineers (direct translation, that). The difference between the two is that the basic engineering degree takes four years and a minimum of 160 credit units wotrh of study, the advanced one takes six years and 220 credit units worth and has tougher requirements.

There's been a huge brouhaha here about what the role of these engineering colleges and other institutes of education at the same level should be called. The university establishment here absolutely refuses to cooperate with any of them as far as degrees go, won't accept studies completed at e.g. a computer engineering program to count toward a university degree in computer science and other such and are basically outright demanding that half of these other institutes be shut down because they are a "threat" to the level of academic education. The only real threat is that the massively bloated arts and humanities departments of universities will be shown for being as useless as they in fact are. They want to maintain the old segregation to universities and vocational schools without having any kind of intermediate layer in between that would allow any portion of studies to be credited. It's also largely about money, but the attitudes are so fucked up it's hard to believe.

These institutes (such as my previous school where I failed computer engineering, the Espoo-Vantaa Institute of Technology) would be called a university everywhere else, but no, it's not good enough for the Finnish university establishment. Bunch of fossilized ivory tower fuckwits...

Edi

[wolveraptor]

In fact, from age 12 onwards, MCQ is completely unsuitable for teaching language(except for pictographic languages like chinese to test word knowledge).

Well, about every final exam in English must be "scantron" multiple-choice questions here in the 'States.

[wolveraptor]

Ghetto Edit: Final exams occur in highschool, whose students are clearly above the age of 12. In otherwords, the people who thought up this final exam stuff are assholes.

[Vaporous]

Last year a directive came down from the New York BoE stating that teachers were no longer allowed to mark work with red ink (as it would injure the students self-esteem) and were to refer to all tests as "assessments" for the same reason.

Thankfully, this has been disregarded by the teachers must like the "all students must push their desks together for 20 minutes of group work every period so they learn group skills" doctrine, excepting the occasions when the superintendent pops in.

[The_Nice_Guy]

Well, about every final exam in English must be "scantron" multiple-choice questions here in the 'States.

Ghetto Edit: Final exams occur in highschool, whose students are clearly above the age of 12. In otherwords, the people who thought up this final exam stuff are assholes.

That is seriously messed up. With the hordes of arts graduates in the states, they shouldn't have problem flooding the system with teachers with less students so that they can devote more time(marking time) to each student!

Over here, we have too many engineers and not enough language folks... which is why I'm keeping the secret of my english major from my principal(amazingly, the ministry didn't send her my CV!)!

TWG

[wolveraptor]

...why should arts graduates become teachers. Did I misunderstand?

[The_Nice_Guy]

I meant the arts and humanities graduates, which includes the languages, literature, history, geography etc. In an ideal world, every teacher would be qualified to teach both the humanities and the sciences, but that's impossible. I'm a chemistry teacher, I know just how qualified the other science teachers are to teach language, which is to say, not at all. I'm in a position to judge because I'm one of the aforementioned rarities.

So while math and science graduates are critical in becoming teachers of those subjects, students still have to learn to read to make any sense of those topics. I've heard horror stories of students not able to do mathematics because they could not understand the question.

That's where the arts and humanities graduates come in. And since long essays and their heavy marking loads are primarily the domain of subjects like economics, history, geography, and english, finding qualified teachers for these subjects shouldn't be that difficult, given the frequent comments I've read here and elsewhere about the prevalence of arts/humanities graduates in the states.

TWG