61–70 of 109 posts
Engineering and science faculties, in general, want to produce stars and have little interest in helping students along that find the material interesting but challenging.
Because it's far easier for a smart person to get a business degree that pays just as well, if not better? Because a degree in engineering is a fast-track to career marginalization by the frat-boy MBAs who see technical workers as interchangeable cogs? Because engineering virtually guarantees you a minimum of social interaction in college, when your peers are actually enjoying their lives? Because you'll run smack in…
Maybe the engineers you describe tend to roll with the kicks and take pretty much anything that's given to them as long as they're more or less left alone to work on something interesting, while the frat-boy MBAs are more the type to drift through life on other people's backs and make enough noise to get what they want? Maybe there are engineers who had a blast in college (I know I did), and there are business types who spend all their time studying?
It's easy to just blame it on the degree, but it's never ACTUALLY that simple, is it?
"At the recent Web 2.0 conference John suggested that the US should staple a Green Card to every foreign student's engineering diploma and encourage them to stay in the USA." I really agree this. It's hard for a foreigner to work here.
Because it's far easier for a smart person to get a business degree that pays just as well, if not better? Because a degree in engineering is a fast-track to career marginalization by the frat-boy MBAs who see technical workers as interchangeable cogs? Because engineering virtually guarantees you a minimum of social interaction in college, when your peers are actually enjoying their lives? Because you'll run smack in…
Because it's far easier for a smart person to get a business degree that pays just as well, if not better? Because a degree in engineering is a fast-track to career marginalization by the frat-boy MBAs who see technical workers as interchangeable cogs? Because engineering virtually guarantees you a minimum of social interaction in college, when your peers are actually enjoying their lives? Because you'll run smack in…
Yep. http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/ There's always hope that the complete collapse of the Wall Street institutions build by those "frat-boy MBAs" will change things. Probably not though. They'll get bailed out by that other frat-boy MBA institution, the government. Of course the fact that Philip Greenspun walked away from Ars Digita with ~ $8 million proves there are some opportunities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you provide some links? I googled a bit for some information, and didn't find much, and I'd like to read about this in more detail. It seems odd that either organization would be anti-AP, and Obama's proposed policies would provide more benefits to mathematicians and scientists who decided to teach in high schools...
I'll look it up in a couple hours when I go to the library. Basically my claim comes from Alfie Kohn's book The Schools Our Children Deserve, but I'll try to find the footnote with the primary source document.
The report was issued by the NRC, not the NSF, but the NSF apparently agrees because they paying for an overhaul of the AP curriculum based on the report.
Also, if you do a Google search for:
NSF criticism of AP curriculum
You see an overview of this as the second result. Also, I couldn't find this in that Alfie Kohn book, so I must have stumbled upon it in something I read around the same time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
this also means that if you're going into it, you have to really like it (in addition to being relatively intelligent), which is why the article talks about the "surprising" statistic that mit et al have very high retention rates (though I think caltech is a counterexample)
There are many aspects to consider in the differences in drop-out rates. One is that not all engineering programs are the same. MIT's education is very different than RPI's or Georgia Tech's (I'm went to GT). The RPI or GT style is more like 5 years of boot camp (yes, its really a 5 years program, another problem to consider when comparing against a management degree). Its a non-stop grind of 6 classes at a time with…
Because it's far easier for a smart person to get a business degree that pays just as well, if not better? Because a degree in engineering is a fast-track to career marginalization by the frat-boy MBAs who see technical workers as interchangeable cogs? Because engineering virtually guarantees you a minimum of social interaction in college, when your peers are actually enjoying their lives? Because you'll run smack in…
That's the hard truth folks, don't get into engineering if you don't love it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's funny, it's a routine complaint at Stanford that all the campus job fairs are filled with companies recruiting engineers and nobody else. :p Our system also rewards engineers way more than teachers, graduates who go into public service, and-- at graduation time, at least-- anyone with a humanities degree. I'd worry about fixing compensation for teachers before rewarding engineers... Google is an engineering fi…
Compensation for teachers is fantastic, as long as you compare it properly to compensation for other workers. To begin with, multiply by (12 months worked by others)/(9 months worked by teachers). Then add in the value of the state health plan, usually fantastic. Then add in the real value of a defined benefit pension plan (chances are you only get a defined contribution plan) available in most states. Then add in th…
I'd give a multiple of 1.2.
Because it's far easier for a smart person to get a business degree that pays just as well, if not better? Because a degree in engineering is a fast-track to career marginalization by the frat-boy MBAs who see technical workers as interchangeable cogs? Because engineering virtually guarantees you a minimum of social interaction in college, when your peers are actually enjoying their lives? Because you'll run smack in…
Because there are better opportunities on Wall Str... oh wait. Your second point is key. Corporate society is structured so terribly that the big-box companies pretty much can't get top talent (and fire what little they can get for various forms of "insubordination"). No one with any talent is going to answer to a frat boy. There are two somewhat parallel (but unequally situated) trees within the modern workplace, th…