51–60 of 305 posts
"The university is looking to hire several tenure-track faculty members in computing this year, he said, but competition for top candidates is fierce. I know of major departments that interviewed 40 candidates, and I don’t think they hired anybody." That doesn't sound like fierce competition if they were able to interview 40 candidates... Did they give them all high-paying offers and they all rejected?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think in CS that isn't such a concern. I mean they will want good grades in maths (and decision maths covers some parts of the CS curriculum) but little else, perhaps Physics - but other than that just good grades. The thing is that the Computing A Level wasn't widely available and the quality differed between qualifications and exam boards as well - whereas Maths is pretty consistent and is run at every school. I…
I sadly concur, as someone who did fine at Computing A-Level with no work, found Further Maths difficult and was lucky to get a B with extra tuition and some juggling of module results to maximise my two final grades, and dropped out of a CS degree. I liked coding for fun but really had almost no idea what CS was when I applied. So maybe the US system would have been better for me in that I could have dipped into a b…
I chose Physics though in the end - I think the subject that really gets let down is Engineering, I had no idea what that meant.
The UK (and the rest of the world) really needs much better access to education - there is no reason it should cost 30k when huge parts can be delivered MOOC-style and the remaining exams and labs done in person.
Even the Open University costs a fortune these days! I hope Corbyn's National Education Service idea might fix it - if he gets elected and Brexit doesn't wreck everything...
If CS is so popular right now, how can it possibly command high pay by the time these people hit the job market? Do they all expect to compete against each other for high paying positions? How is that a good bet? Do they expect that there will be a ton of jobs that will all pay well?
"The university is looking to hire several tenure-track faculty members in computing this year, he said, but competition for top candidates is fierce. I know of major departments that interviewed 40 candidates, and I don’t think they hired anybody." That doesn't sound like fierce competition if they were able to interview 40 candidates... Did they give them all high-paying offers and they all rejected?
Usually (from what I have seen) candidates on the academic job market don't end up in industry (at least not immediately) - they are in the job market because they are passionate about academia.
"The university is looking to hire several tenure-track faculty members in computing this year, he said, but competition for top candidates is fierce. I know of major departments that interviewed 40 candidates, and I don’t think they hired anybody." That doesn't sound like fierce competition if they were able to interview 40 candidates... Did they give them all high-paying offers and they all rejected?
Why 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 US university system is quite unusual (I believe Canada also has a similar system): at the undergraduate level you typically don't apply to a specific program; all students are expected to take a variety of classes (confusingly called "courses"), only some of which apply to a specific course of study. Domain-specialized classes become an increasing proportion of your overall classes after the first or second year…
Another idea to retain or hire faculty: let them have dual enrollment at tech companies and universities. Not sure if this is a good idea, or if it works. But I'd certainly be interested in studying the outcomes of it. Potentially could cause a conflict of interest in motivation of academic research vs industry driven research to profit the company, or even be used as a way to fast-track students to said company. Not…