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Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

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Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

#41

Post by 0wned »

Locke1689 wrote: post #35
imack wrote: post #5

To be fair to the time, in 1999, there was the dot-com bubble going on and a lot of students were going into CS for the wrong reasons so there could have been more at play than government objectives. I suspect there were a lot of CS students who did not enjoy programming in such programs, thus accounting for seniors who couldn't do projects. I know CS and programming are not the same, but I liken it to studying Shake…

I am an American, so forgive me, but I was under the impression that UWaterloo was also regarded as one of, if not the best, CS schools in Canada. I would argue that many of the more elite universities have managed to beat back this trend for the most part, as I do not believe that Stanford or MIT are graduating substandard computer science students.

I agree with this statement. Other schools (perhaps not as highly regarded as the ones you mentioned) such as Texas A&M do hardcore, low-level C++ courses, compiler stuff, etc. for both CS and CE students as core requirements. They lightened the requirements several years back to compete with other schools, but changed back to them when they realized how soft their students had become. Of course, Bjarne Stroustrup is the chair of the CoE CS program at TAMU... so that may have a lot to do with it.

Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

#42

Post by brent »

amichail wrote: post #17
brent wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that is an entirely accurate characterization. I don't know anyone in my department doing research that doesn't interest them. Students generally love the research they are doing and are probably a bit more autonomous than your comment seems to imply. I've taken both directions (industry then academia) and in industry I was a code-churning-out slave working on something that barely interested me. Now I…

Wouldn't you say that pursuing a startup is better than both industry and academia?

I am certainly not ruling out a startup at some point. I was an early yc interviewee (and rejectee :-)) and afterwards just figured I'd enjoy my work for a while instead of worrying about the dollars and other minutiae. In reality, I'm just waiting for the right opportunity. "Life'a a marathon, not a sprint." An extremely successful local entrepreneur once told me that and it has stuck with me since.

Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

#43

Post by gaius »

Locke1689 wrote: post #40
ivanyv wrote: post #3

That was very interesting. I live in what you'd call a 3d world country (Mexico), and this stuff makes me think about why empires fall and others rise... The rising stars get to watch how an empire falls ;-) One of my dreams is to open a school that's much better than most of the schools in Mexico, using the good and bad examples of schools in countries like the US and the UK. My 2 cents to leave to the world.

In that case, you should look more closely to elite schools in the US (I have no idea how Cambridge and Oxford changed in the UK). Most of the top 15-20 schools in the United States have succeeded in continuing to graduate competent students.

All of the elite universities in the UK are under sustained attack by the government in the name of "equality". Oxford and Cambridge in particular are under intense pressure to take substandard students from failing State comprehensive schools.

The Russell Group should take the plunge and break away from government control altogether.

Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

#45

Post by cpuddle »

Locke1689 wrote: post #30
amichail wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java is an improvement though, especially under Eclipse. Even better would be using Python followed by Scala. Perhaps the issue is that too much class time is spent teaching details of a language and its libraries.

No. Java and Python and Scala are not improvements. Why? They're too easy. Pointers are hard (relatively). Compiler design is hard. Complexity theory is hard. A loss in any one of these sections is a loss to the degree as a whole. The ACM ICPC helps a little in promoting intelligent problem solving (every CS student should be able to write a program to use Dijkstra's algorithm in under 20 minutes from memory ), but i…

About pointers being difficult...I don't think that pointers are difficult to understand. To me it was more the syntax C uses that got in the way.

Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

#46

Post by quantumhobbit »

ivanyv wrote: post #3

That was very interesting. I live in what you'd call a 3d world country (Mexico), and this stuff makes me think about why empires fall and others rise... The rising stars get to watch how an empire falls ;-) One of my dreams is to open a school that's much better than most of the schools in Mexico, using the good and bad examples of schools in countries like the US and the UK. My 2 cents to leave to the world.

That is a dream I share, as a disillusioned graduate student in the US. I'm sure a lot of people, students and junior faculty especially, have the same dream.

Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

#47

Post by tybris »

> By pre-1990 standards about 20% of the students should have been failed.

Interesting, I find that number quite low.

The failure rates for most CS courses at my BSc/MSc university (VU Amsterdam) usually hovered around 50% in the post-00s era, especially for the hard-line courses such as computer networks, finite fields and data structures. We were allowed to do an unlimited number of retrials (6 months in between), but still over a third of the students would drop out before completing their BSc.

When I started my PhD at a British university I was obliged to do some MSc courses. Basically every course started with: No one will fail this course. At first that seemed like a comfortable idea since I didn't want to be distracted from my research. Soon I learned that actually means the course is going to be boring as hell.

I don't believe the Dutch system works better than the British one. We've had our share of choice fanatics. Despite Andy Tanenbaum raking in millions, my current department is also a whole lot better funded than the VU.

I think it has more to do with attitude than politics. Tanenbaum basically created the department with his bare hands, writing Minix and his well-known books in the process. He's no longer actively involved in teaching, but he created a culture of outstanding education. There's still an enormous amount of attention on making courses more interesting, challenging and up-to-date. It's easy to get lazy and lower your standards, but not impossible to say no and become a better university.

Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

#48

Post by BrentRitterbeck »

tybris wrote: post #47

> By pre-1990 standards about 20% of the students should have been failed. Interesting, I find that number quite low. The failure rates for most CS courses at my BSc/MSc university (VU Amsterdam) usually hovered around 50% in the post-00s era, especially for the hard-line courses such as computer networks, finite fields and data structures. We were allowed to do an unlimited number of retrials (6 months in between),…

This is the result of the university becoming more of a business than anything else. If you start flunking people out, you lose revenue.

Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

#49

Post by DanielBMarkham »

BrentRitterbeck wrote: post #48
tybris wrote: post #47

> By pre-1990 standards about 20% of the students should have been failed. Interesting, I find that number quite low. The failure rates for most CS courses at my BSc/MSc university (VU Amsterdam) usually hovered around 50% in the post-00s era, especially for the hard-line courses such as computer networks, finite fields and data structures. We were allowed to do an unlimited number of retrials (6 months in between),…

This is the result of the university becoming more of a business than anything else. If you start flunking people out, you lose revenue.

This would be true if the business were selling degrees.

If the business were selling an education, then it would actually result in increased revenue, since students would have to stay around longer to learn required materials.

Lots of business sell education instead of certifications. The problem here is the government stepping in and mucking around with standards, creating financial incentives that looked good in theory but don't work in the real world.

This happens a lot with well-meaning politicians trying to "help"

Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

#50

Post by BrentRitterbeck »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #49
BrentRitterbeck wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the result of the university becoming more of a business than anything else. If you start flunking people out, you lose revenue.

This would be true if the business were selling degrees. If the business were selling an education , then it would actually result in increased revenue, since students would have to stay around longer to learn required materials. Lots of business sell education instead of certifications. The problem here is the government stepping in and mucking around with standards, creating financial incentives that looked good in…

Flunking out means you get kicked out. You don't get to stay around longer.

With that said, it really doesn't matter to me. I think we let too many people into the university system.

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