Getting a weird sense of deja vu... colleges were oversubscribed for CS just before the dotcom bubble burst too.
Yeah I remember Universities desperate to attract people to CS in 2003-6
Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
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Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#12Why do US colleges over-admit like this? In the UK you apply to do a computer science course, and they have 50 places or whatever for that course, and so they admit 50 people. You can't get into the college and then be told that actually it's full. If they do accidentally over-admit it's their problem to solve, not yours.
the other alternative is to let in 300 and weed them out in first quarter with extra hard coursework and tests
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Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#13Why do US colleges over-admit like this? In the UK you apply to do a computer science course, and they have 50 places or whatever for that course, and so they admit 50 people. You can't get into the college and then be told that actually it's full. If they do accidentally over-admit it's their problem to solve, not yours.
Why do US airlines overbook flights? Is it the same sort of thinking?
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#14Why do US colleges over-admit like this? In the UK you apply to do a computer science course, and they have 50 places or whatever for that course, and so they admit 50 people. You can't get into the college and then be told that actually it's full. If they do accidentally over-admit it's their problem to solve, not yours.
My (UK) uni admits about 350 people to the Bachelors programme (I think about 250 survive the first two years) and about 100 more into the Masters programme. This year we had over 300 people take the AI module and it has absolutely resulted in a decrease of teaching quality, and I'm not sure if some of the students are
qualified to be there (namely, Chinese students who can't even read the coursework specification correctly).
International students are moneymakers (they got £75k off me) so I'm pretty sure they also over-admit.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#15So now there are three hard problems in computer science.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#16I was interviewed for five mins on the phone back in 1990. They asked if you programmed your own computer at home. Not sure what they would say if you said "No."
This wasn't particularly true by 1990 but early in computing history, most engineers didn't have any computer in their house; being expensive and all. Maybe they thought of it from that angle. There'd still be a lot of older engineers who may not have gotten on board the PC revolution that began in the late seventies.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#17Why do US colleges over-admit like this? In the UK you apply to do a computer science course, and they have 50 places or whatever for that course, and so they admit 50 people. You can't get into the college and then be told that actually it's full. If they do accidentally over-admit it's their problem to solve, not yours.
Why do US airlines overbook flights? Is it the same sort of thinking?
No that metaphor doesn't work.
US colleges' approach to admissions is more like selling aeroplane tickets but not asking people where they want to go, then be surprised when they all get to the airport and try to cram on the one plane going to the same place.
In other places you buy a ticket for a destination. Yeah some flights might be a bit overcrowded in some cases, but it's not as bad as not knowing how many people want to go to each destination at all.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#18Why do US colleges over-admit like this? In the UK you apply to do a computer science course, and they have 50 places or whatever for that course, and so they admit 50 people. You can't get into the college and then be told that actually it's full. If they do accidentally over-admit it's their problem to solve, not yours.
My (UK) uni admits about 350 people to the Bachelors programme (I think about 250 survive the first two years) and about 100 more into the Masters programme. This year we had over 300 people take the AI module and it has absolutely resulted in a decrease of teaching quality, and I'm not sure if some of the students are qualified to be there (namely, Chinese students who can't even read the coursework specification co…
But everyone who was admitted can take the class, right? This article is talking about people being admitted, but then not being able to take the class at all.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#19So now there are three hard problems in computer science.
Getting into class, naming things, cache invalidation, and off-by-one errors?
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#20Why do US colleges over-admit like this? In the UK you apply to do a computer science course, and they have 50 places or whatever for that course, and so they admit 50 people. You can't get into the college and then be told that actually it's full. If they do accidentally over-admit it's their problem to solve, not yours.
Why do US airlines overbook flights? Is it the same sort of thinking?
Overbooking increases the likelihood of full flights which increases the efficiency of the system and reduces costs. It's hard to see a problem with that.