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Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

latimes.com

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Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#811

Post by PeterStuer »

try-working wrote: post #787
ziofill wrote: post #708

I can’t help comparing this to the system I grew up in (Italy), which is vastly different and it seemingly produces very good graduates. University was free and there was no test for enrolling in STEM degrees, and you could retry exams every semester as much as you wanted to. But goddamit exams were HARD and if you weren’t prepared enough you would keep failing until you gave up. We weren’t entitled because we weren’…

I studied engineering in Sweden. One of our courses had an 80% failure rate. A world of difference from Harvard where the average grade is A.

First math exam at uni just 6 out of 129 students passed.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#812

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

try-working wrote: post #787
ziofill wrote: post #708

I can’t help comparing this to the system I grew up in (Italy), which is vastly different and it seemingly produces very good graduates. University was free and there was no test for enrolling in STEM degrees, and you could retry exams every semester as much as you wanted to. But goddamit exams were HARD and if you weren’t prepared enough you would keep failing until you gave up. We weren’t entitled because we weren’…

I studied engineering in Sweden. One of our courses had an 80% failure rate. A world of difference from Harvard where the average grade is A.

I study CS at Helsinki. In most courses maybe 40% who enrolled pass. You can re-do the exam twice, but they are genuinely hard. Pretty much all courses have now moved to paper and pen -exams. I absolutely love it.

We do not have beer and wine at the canteen though :cry: But maybe that’s good because we would just drink ourselves to death.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#813

Post by vasco »

thot_experiment wrote: post #776
WalterBright wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

lmao, you're completely out to lunch, my friend is a teacher in one of the most well funded districts in the entire country and it's a decent job but it's an incredible amount of work and he's not making an amazing wage considering how much he needs to work outside of school hours i can only imagine the horrors faced by teachers even on the other side of the bay, much less in a red state that isn't the fourth largest…

You can say all you want but the fact is there's no lack of people wanting to be teachers.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#814

Post by isityettime »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #790
isityettime wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Politicians in California want the ethnic mix of students at public universities to reflect the ethnic mix of the state population. They cannot achieve this goal if colleges use academic preparedness as the main factor in admissions That's a satisfiable goal, but it means they have to accept that they need extremely broad and deep remedial courses, and they need to treat admissions more or less like a community col…

The politicians don't accept that students need remedial courses. They passed AB705 and AB1705 to prevent a community college from putting someone in a remedial classes unless it had very strong evidence they wouldn't be able to pass a regular (transfer-level) class. So if you go to a community college and intend to study for a STEM degree, you'll be placed in a calculus class.

> They passed AB705 and AB1705 to prevent a community college from putting someone in a remedial classes unless it had very strong evidence they wouldn't be able to pass a regular (transfer-level) class.

Why? Did someone make students graduating from high schools who go on to need remedial courses into some kind of metric for the high schools, and the politicians are trying to "solve" the schools' low scores on this metric by cheating?

I'm sorry, I was not prepared for how insane this is. It's super late, so I'm going to need to do it later, but I guess I should go look up those bills.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#815

Post by whateverboat »

ziofill wrote: post #708

I can’t help comparing this to the system I grew up in (Italy), which is vastly different and it seemingly produces very good graduates. University was free and there was no test for enrolling in STEM degrees, and you could retry exams every semester as much as you wanted to. But goddamit exams were HARD and if you weren’t prepared enough you would keep failing until you gave up. We weren’t entitled because we weren’…

I think the problems are deeper. The problems are at school level. The variance in the level of schooling in US is huge compared to Italy in my experience. This factor means that school exams are not a good indicator of competitiveness.

Furthermore, the social systems in Italy mean that the failure is not that problematic especially for kids from poor backgrounds. And therefore, risk of depression etc was much lower.

In short what I want to say is that the university exam system is not as important as the social security/welfare state for better student outcomes.

This also ties into Harvard's grade inflation. If you think about it, if only the countries best mathematicians are joining Harvard, it doesn't make sense for any of them to receive a D on a mathematics course just because they are not that good compared to the rest of the class but are still in top 2% country wise.

The real problem here again is that US has a few good universities and a lot of bad ones. But this again, can just also be due to the size of US, but also is affected by social welfare state and equality.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#816

Post by zfnmxt »

try-working wrote: post #787
ziofill wrote: post #708

I can’t help comparing this to the system I grew up in (Italy), which is vastly different and it seemingly produces very good graduates. University was free and there was no test for enrolling in STEM degrees, and you could retry exams every semester as much as you wanted to. But goddamit exams were HARD and if you weren’t prepared enough you would keep failing until you gave up. We weren’t entitled because we weren’…

I studied engineering in Sweden. One of our courses had an 80% failure rate. A world of difference from Harvard where the average grade is A.

This is not a good comparison.

All the students at Harvard are all selected from the tail end of the distribution and are very capable.

The students at Scandinavian universities are selected to a degree, but represent a far broader range of the distribution and correspondingly there's a broader range of exam results.

Of course, other things are at play here (there is grade inflation at Harvard, the schools obviously operate differently, student disposition is (very) different (e.g., Scandinavian students are far less likely to care a lot about their grades), etc) but students from Harvard would do well at your university in Sweden. Also, the level of the material at Harvard is likely higher.

This is my experience from attending an Ivy undergrad and then doing graduate school in Scandinavia. I actually left my MSc program in Scandinavia because I thought the level of the courses was too low. (I ultimately returned for the PhD---I found the profs and researchers in Scandinavia to be first class/excellent. Much better than I ever will be.)

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#817

Post by ajkjk »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #751
genxy wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has to suck at math. Any human can learn the majority of skills.

No one has to suck at any one thing, but one person can't possibly be good at everything . Time is finite -- everything you choose to do is a choice to not do some other thing.

nevertheless most people can be a lot better at most things than they are, in the same amount of time, if the education and culture around education is of higher quality.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#818

Post by prerok »

maxbond wrote: post #793
bawolff wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find these types of explanations doubtful, because you can always dismiss someone of subpar ability as not trying hard enough or you could define trying hard enough in a way that is not defacto practical.

My experience teaching is limited (but I have taught some, to be clear) but I have found learned helplessness to be the biggest barrier. People have varying aptitudes for different tasks, and varying aptitude and a finite lifespan does imply some people have a lower ceiling than others in a given subject, but humans are powerful general learners. They don't generally reach their ceiling in most subjects. The limit fo…

Could not agree more. I also taught for some time and generally had good results, almost everybody "got it".

There was one person, though, that I just could not get anywhere with. Even after several private lessons. Turned out that somehow she convinced herself that she will never get it and never be able to progress. Even if she did get it right one week, the next week was as if that never happened. I found no way across that barrier :(

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#819

Post by fastasucan »

zfnmxt wrote: post #816
try-working wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied engineering in Sweden. One of our courses had an 80% failure rate. A world of difference from Harvard where the average grade is A.

This is not a good comparison. All the students at Harvard are all selected from the tail end of the distribution and are very capable. The students at Scandinavian universities are selected to a degree, but represent a far broader range of the distribution and correspondingly there's a broader range of exam results. Of course, other things are at play here (there is grade inflation at Harvard, the schools obviously…

>The students at Scandinavian universities are selected to a degree, but represent a far broader range of the distribution and correspondingly there's a broader range of exam results.

I disagree with that, it is common knowledge that these students will get A's if they do a semester in the US.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#820

Post by fastasucan »

bawolff wrote: post #769
jimbokun wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the demands on the time of professors from students who repeatedly try and fail the exams? Seems like that could get expensive for taxpayers. Maybe it doesn’t happen much in practice?

I can't imagine marking the exams was a significant part of the professors time. Especially because its probably the sort of thing they could get an assistant to do.

No, professors mark their own exams.
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