Georgia Tech's online Masters in CS appealed to me for this very reason. Classes generally seat 300-700 and limited by the number of TAs they can hire. There's a fair chance of getting into popular classes since their not limited by the dimensions of a physical room.
Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
81–90 of 305 posts
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I think this is a problem across the board in UK univeristies these days. When I did my CS degree (1993), I was one of two people in the year who got 1st class, now I think it's something like 25% awarded 1sts and the rest get 2:1s
I'm not convinced people aren't just legitimately working a lot harder.
When I went to university graduating in 2007, so just before the crash but not really very long ago, everyone was pretty chilled out about their courses. Nobody did internships. As long as people weren't failing they were relaxed and enjoyed themselves. Getting a 2:2 was a bit of banter rather than a serious threat to your ability to ever get a good job.
Now when I see students they are laser focused on absolutely doing the best they can in order to survive in a much more competitive world. I'd be working harder now as well.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#83If 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?
Spolier alert: it won't, and that's exactly the point of pushing so many people into CS.
It will also reduce the average skill and competency, dragging the expectations and capabilities of the profession down.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#84Why 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…
>Of course the reality isn't quite as utopian. It also means professions like law and medicine require whole additional degrees.
I kind of like the fact that in the US, doctors usually have some exposure to science outside of memorizing facts for their next test at med school. It makes them more likely to be able to understand studies, for one thing.
I might hazard to guess that if you study philosophy before going to law school (a very common path) you will be a better lawyer, but I can't attest to that with any first-hand knowledge.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#85Why 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…
I'm not sure how universal this is; I suspect that's the case at more liberal arts schools, but not the case at engineering schools. My undergrad was at Virginia Tech, and I applied to the CS program as part of my university application. I was in the CS program from day one. But I did part of my graduate school at William and Mary, and they are as you described.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#86If 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?
Entry level/junior positions already have a plethora of candidates. Where companies are sorely lacking are in senior level talent. It's going to be a gut check when all of these CS grads come out and they are competing with everyone else plus all the boot-camp coders.
There's not a ton of overlap with boot camp grads. At least here, only the bottom barrel of CS grads even apply to positions that are good fits for boot camp grads.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#87Why 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
My undergrad did that... there were 80 of us on day 1 of term 1 with people sitting on the steps and standing at the back during lectures.
On day 1 of term 2 there were 40 and we fit comfortably.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#88If 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?
Yes. My school (UC Berkeley) was the same (felt like everyone wants to study CS so they made the GPA cap 3.3 so if you have <3.3 no CS for you, and classes were STILL overcrowded clusterfucks) but my graduating class had $105k avg salary.
I assume cognitive science is the major students change towards if they didn't make the computer science GPA cut-off, right?
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
this is one of the pathologies in academic institutions: they need teachers, but they evaluate researchers. the people who make the cut for researcher also have a lot of other options, and the institution ends up with an undersupply of teachers.
Tenure track implies research.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
this is one of the pathologies in academic institutions: they need teachers, but they evaluate researchers. the people who make the cut for researcher also have a lot of other options, and the institution ends up with an undersupply of teachers.
Some universities hire non-tenure track instructors, with no research requirements, sometimes called "Lecturers".
Of course, they are compensated horribly, so nobody wants to do that unless they have no other choice, and once you do that, good luck ever getting a tenure-track position.
The whole academic job market is pretty dysfunctional. It's more interesting to look at the flawed ways universities have of measuring research contributions, but sometimes it just comes down to money. Universities are trying to save money by paying as many people as possible peanuts, while paying "stars" hugely.