71–80 of 305 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I remember Universities desperate to attract people to CS in 2003-6
And before that, in the late 90s, due to the millenium bug goldrush. Now it's 'AI'...
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…
So, it can work. But, you need a good supply of local professionals with the aptitude to teach. Probably not too hard for entry level courses, but 3rd or 4th year courses are likely harder to find suitable adjuncts. I'm sure I could teach CS101, but no way could I teach a senior level OS class.
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 school doesn't care if students drop out because they already got their $$. The school doesn't care if students who can't hack CS switch majors because then they take more money making 100 level classes in their new major.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you would have had to have done related courses A levels for the last two years. You cant just rock up at a university and say id like to study X with out any previous education - this is what the Raspberry Pi was made for originally.
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…
Back in the day I tried to switch from a HNC stream mech eng to a Maths Stats and Computing but it was 99% pure maths (no CS maths) and the computing element was nugatory and ancient.
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…
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, especially liberal arts colleges, is pretty wary of premature specialization. A common thing here is that you apply to a university, take classes in a range of departments, and then by the end of sophomore year (two of four) you decide on a major. I went to Swarthmore (referenced in the article) before CS enrollment surged (www.swarthmore.edu/computer-science/alumni) and there were some people in my CS classe…
While the article bemoans these programs becoming restrictive, it is ignoring a major reality. Let's take a person. This is the person that might end up getting 'weeded out' before they've even gotten their foot in the door. They probably have 0 or near 0 background in anything related to computing. They similarly likely have negligible background in anything related to science/engineering/mathematics. And keep in mi…
> The majority of people in his class will fail/drop out of the program before graduation, regardless of background. Really? That sounds like a huge failure of the system, especially since they've gone into debt for that.
The universities that maintain their standards for graduation will typically have droves of students dropping out, because there are droves of students who do not put effort into learning the material.
Isn't CS teaching the kind of thing that ought to be able to scale? There's no other subject that's as well covered on the internet; nothing in an undergraduate course isn't public knowledge. There's loads of video lectures these days. And the coursework is incredibly scalable too, in addition to being similar to what people actually use in industry. My brother did CS at an Ivy, and they were just pushing repos to a…
A bachelor's degree once meant more than passing a sufficient number of tests. Now that everyone treats it like a ticket to employment, it barely even means that.
"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?
I'm not CS faculty, but this is similar to the situation in economics. Interview 40. Of those, 20 may end up being acceptable. The eight best of those 20 get offers at better places. Four others take nonacademic jobs. You're left fighting over a pool of eight candidates with a lot more than eight other schools. It was really tough after the recession, when the Fed was hiring a ginormous number of new PhD's.