I swear my first circuits professor in college must have been a contemporary of Edison. But basically I was told later in my college career from corporate representatives from Babcock & Wilcox that an OK from him as his graduate student almost guaranteed you a job with them. He would not hesitate to fail the class. His attitude was if you can’t hack his Electrical Power Engineering curriculum you have no business victimizing the public with your incompetence. Fortunately I was in the Computer Engineering curriculum as a EE undergraduate.
It’s not my fault you went to a school not on a time standard.
Hmm. Not exactly CV reference material I presume?
The way the time standard operates at many institutions of higher learning is that classes taught three times each week have 50-minute class periods, which are one Carnegie Hour long (Andrew Carnegie, not Dale Carnegie. He was a rich dude who starting in the 19th century gave much of his money in support of education).
We give students 15 minutes between those class periods because our campus is spread out, so classes start at 7:45, 8:50, 9:55, 11 AM, 12:05 PM and then a 25 minute break before the 1:20 PM class and so on.
Donna Shalala of Clinton HHS fame was Chancelor here at the U and then took a similar role at University of Miami, Coral Gables Florida. At Miami she announced to a group of Department Chairpersons, “We have no money for more classroom space. We will have to start earlier, why at Wisconsin we started at 7:30 AM (that may be the Tuesday-Thursday 75-minute grid, never taught one that early)” to which without missing a beat, one of them quipped, “Yes, but that makes it 8:30 AM, Florida time.
I disagree with the defeatism in the article. Students that don’t understand the material should be failed officially as they have already failed themselves. That would just make it official. I understand his point that the university would suffer and possibly go bankrupt if honest grading were to be enforced. How is that worse than taking 3-4 years out of the students’ life for little result? Perhaps it’s time for an entrepreneur to start a new college with no grade inflation as part of the sales pitch. Graduates would be almost certain to get excellent jobs as soon as the business world realized what they would be getting.
I also blame K-12 as the students have been conditioned to expect passing grades even when not doing their work. It’s been 50 years since I went back to night school (sixth grade dropout) but passed a GED before finishing the semester. This is not a new problem.
The screens yes, the general problem no. If lack of learning results in a failed grade, and cheating results in expulsion, then the problem resolves itself.
“I’m not saying our students just prefer genre books or graphic novels or whatever. No, our average graduate literally could not read a serious adult novel cover-to-cover and understand what they read.”
The author talks about societal causes. A lot of people wont have the life experiences to have a good understanding of a lot of books. Also, a lot of books that literary people are into are trash. It is the dichotomy of being able to read unpleasant things and authors being able to write engaging material.
I don’t know why he wouldn’t blame k-12 teachers. It is their job to teach and I wouldn’t let college professors off the hook either. Many are intelligent and knowledgeable but horrible teachers.
He doesn’t put his slides on blackboard or whatever they use these days? Do you want the students scrambling to get the beats of your disjointed lecture in their notes or do you want them to get the everything the beats represent?
School should be hard, that means a student is pushing themselves, but it shouldn’t be hard because of the failings of their teachers. A teacher shouldn’t be proud they structured a class to make it artificially harder. The content should be difficult not dealing with the teacher.
We do have a societal problem and in part it is students but also teachers, professors, and administrators. I don’t get why people love to rag on the students but then give adults with agency, responsibility, and a paycheck a pass.
It is like a lawncare company complaining the grass grows. No shit buddy, its your job to cut the grass.
I’m sure he uses his slides in class, my take was that the students were requesting a copy of the deck because they failed (or couldn’t be arsed) to take any notes.
I spent some time at my alma mater, Purdue University, a couple of years ago. The engineering students are better than they were when I was there (1977-1980), way smarter IMHO. Of course, I was being shown the best and brightest, which was not my cohort (with some exceptions). Scientific and technological advances make it difficult to compare, of course, and kids today have to have a background education consisting of knowledge that didn’t even exist when I was in school, just to learn all of the stuff that is current and state of the art.
I think “the screens” are on balance a good thing. One of my iPhone apps is Maple Calculator, which I can use to photograph any mathematics problem that can be solved either in closed form or numerically, and have it solved in nothing flat. It shows its work upon request, so I learn how its done along the way. There’s nothing wrong with that, as far as I’m concerned.
I am on the ECE long-term curriculum revision committee, and we are clunking along without any good ideas.
I am familiar with Maple, but thanks for telling me there is a version of Maple for the iPhone that can recognize hand-written math and then solve it.
I had suggested that we need to incorporate tech like that into our Engineering courses but this hasn’t had much of an impression on the committee members.
Communication skills in Electrical Engineering:
“Electrical fire, bad!”
I swear my first circuits professor in college must have been a contemporary of Edison. But basically I was told later in my college career from corporate representatives from Babcock & Wilcox that an OK from him as his graduate student almost guaranteed you a job with them. He would not hesitate to fail the class. His attitude was if you can’t hack his Electrical Power Engineering curriculum you have no business victimizing the public with your incompetence. Fortunately I was in the Computer Engineering curriculum as a EE undergraduate.
Oh did I fail to mention his lectures started at 8am? Sharp! Entry into class at 8:01 earned a comment. At 8:15 he’d ask why are you bothering?
Oh yeah? My Circuits class started at 7:45 AM.
And the professor was Arthur Butz, who later achieved notoriety as author of a book on Holocaust denial.
It’s not my fault you went to a school not on a time standard.
Hmm. Not exactly CV reference material I presume?
The way the time standard operates at many institutions of higher learning is that classes taught three times each week have 50-minute class periods, which are one Carnegie Hour long (Andrew Carnegie, not Dale Carnegie. He was a rich dude who starting in the 19th century gave much of his money in support of education).
We give students 15 minutes between those class periods because our campus is spread out, so classes start at 7:45, 8:50, 9:55, 11 AM, 12:05 PM and then a 25 minute break before the 1:20 PM class and so on.
Donna Shalala of Clinton HHS fame was Chancelor here at the U and then took a similar role at University of Miami, Coral Gables Florida. At Miami she announced to a group of Department Chairpersons, “We have no money for more classroom space. We will have to start earlier, why at Wisconsin we started at 7:30 AM (that may be the Tuesday-Thursday 75-minute grid, never taught one that early)” to which without missing a beat, one of them quipped, “Yes, but that makes it 8:30 AM, Florida time.
I disagree with the defeatism in the article. Students that don’t understand the material should be failed officially as they have already failed themselves. That would just make it official. I understand his point that the university would suffer and possibly go bankrupt if honest grading were to be enforced. How is that worse than taking 3-4 years out of the students’ life for little result? Perhaps it’s time for an entrepreneur to start a new college with no grade inflation as part of the sales pitch. Graduates would be almost certain to get excellent jobs as soon as the business world realized what they would be getting.
I also blame K-12 as the students have been conditioned to expect passing grades even when not doing their work. It’s been 50 years since I went back to night school (sixth grade dropout) but passed a GED before finishing the semester. This is not a new problem.
I think the screens are a new problem.
The screens yes, the general problem no. If lack of learning results in a failed grade, and cheating results in expulsion, then the problem resolves itself.
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.
-Glenn Seaborg
“I’m not saying our students just prefer genre books or graphic novels or whatever. No, our average graduate literally could not read a serious adult novel cover-to-cover and understand what they read.”
The author talks about societal causes. A lot of people wont have the life experiences to have a good understanding of a lot of books. Also, a lot of books that literary people are into are trash. It is the dichotomy of being able to read unpleasant things and authors being able to write engaging material.
I don’t know why he wouldn’t blame k-12 teachers. It is their job to teach and I wouldn’t let college professors off the hook either. Many are intelligent and knowledgeable but horrible teachers.
He doesn’t put his slides on blackboard or whatever they use these days? Do you want the students scrambling to get the beats of your disjointed lecture in their notes or do you want them to get the everything the beats represent?
School should be hard, that means a student is pushing themselves, but it shouldn’t be hard because of the failings of their teachers. A teacher shouldn’t be proud they structured a class to make it artificially harder. The content should be difficult not dealing with the teacher.
We do have a societal problem and in part it is students but also teachers, professors, and administrators. I don’t get why people love to rag on the students but then give adults with agency, responsibility, and a paycheck a pass.
It is like a lawncare company complaining the grass grows. No shit buddy, its your job to cut the grass.
I’m sure he uses his slides in class, my take was that the students were requesting a copy of the deck because they failed (or couldn’t be arsed) to take any notes.
I spent some time at my alma mater, Purdue University, a couple of years ago. The engineering students are better than they were when I was there (1977-1980), way smarter IMHO. Of course, I was being shown the best and brightest, which was not my cohort (with some exceptions). Scientific and technological advances make it difficult to compare, of course, and kids today have to have a background education consisting of knowledge that didn’t even exist when I was in school, just to learn all of the stuff that is current and state of the art.
I think “the screens” are on balance a good thing. One of my iPhone apps is Maple Calculator, which I can use to photograph any mathematics problem that can be solved either in closed form or numerically, and have it solved in nothing flat. It shows its work upon request, so I learn how its done along the way. There’s nothing wrong with that, as far as I’m concerned.
I am on the ECE long-term curriculum revision committee, and we are clunking along without any good ideas.
I am familiar with Maple, but thanks for telling me there is a version of Maple for the iPhone that can recognize hand-written math and then solve it.
I had suggested that we need to incorporate tech like that into our Engineering courses but this hasn’t had much of an impression on the committee members.