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

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

#821

Post by tomhow »

undeveloper wrote: post #515
throwawaypath wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Enough of this dreck, please. You've posted this multiple times lately. Any low-substance, repetitive commenting is unwelcome on HN, but that's particularly the case for personal slurs, no matter what they are. If others are posting offensive comments, flag them or report them (hn@ycombinator.com). The guidelines are clear about what constitutes good conduct on HN. Please read them and make an effort to observe them if you want to keep participating here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#822

Post by zfnmxt »

fastasucan wrote: post #819
zfnmxt wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From my experience in both systems, I think some of the students of course would (the best students in Scandinavia are just as good as the best students anywhere else), but certainly not all of them. And the degree of grade inflation as well as the level of courses and course difficulty is not only highly variable by school but also by individual instances of courses, so it's pretty hard to make broad claims regardless.

I should also note I've taken courses in Europe where the failure rate was like 60%, but I've also taken courses where just about every student got (the equivalent of) an A. Easy grading occurs in Euroland as well. Or other phenomenona, like niche courses that tend to only attract talented, interested students.

P.S. The "common" in "common knowledge" is not some claim of accuracy/correctness and does not lend credence to your point---a lot of things that are common knowledge are false! (I bet most things that fall under that description are false to a degree, or at least in terms of each individuals' average understanding.)

P.P.S. Failure in the US system and the European systems are very different things. In most US schools, failing is permanently recorded on your transcript and cannot be erased. You also cannot retake an exam you've failed. You just get the one shot. So the cost of failure in the US is much higher than in Europe, where it's absolutely routine. The US system also samples students more often, with course grades consisting of many homeworks, multiple exams, etc---this gives an early signal to students doing poorly they need to get their shit together and also prevents students from falling behind. In Europe it's often just a single final exam, which may be a whole of 10-15 minutes if it's an oral exam, and you may be permitted to take the exam even if you haven't really been doing the work (often you need some perfunctory thing like 50% of the points from the homework to qualify). All these factors are also responsible for high European failure rates---it's definitely not just the Americans going easy.

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

#823

Post by prerok »

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.

Indeed, evaluating an exam does not take that much time that it would be considered expensive.

That said, in my country (in EU), it's not indefinite tries. The fourth and later attempts (up to 8, I think) have oral exams in front of a panel of professors so that they can evaluate if there is actual lack of knowledge or if there is some sort of problem between the student and the professor. The student must by then pay for the attempt to pass the exam. It's not expensive, though, it's just another incentive to make the student really be sure to be prepared.

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

#824

Post by prerok »

fastasucan wrote: post #820
bawolff wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've known this to differ between professors as well as exams. Lower levels and higher volume ones were almost always marked by assistants. The oral exam was always done by professors, though.

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

#825

Post by prerok »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #785
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’…

> "(Italy) seemingly produces very good graduates" Last I looked, China and the US account for 18/20 major contributions to chemistry annually in the last 8+ years and the US was leading for a decade before 2018. IUPAC works to keep exams international so you can't just say Americans are dumb. They are taking the same exams and the failing is permanent, not forgiven. So it's even harder to succeed in the US compared…

I believe they meant on average.

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

#826

Post by Kaijo »

vasco wrote: post #810
genxy wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And motivation was often impeded by either trauma or not finding a way to make it relevant to the student. Those are prereqs for learning anything. The common denominator for people that are good at something is that they liked it, so they did it more.

I know plenty of people that went through an engineering degree with me that do not like math, but they are competent at all the way up to what an electrical engineer needs to know, which is not research level math, but what most people would call advanced. I would never say I "like" math for example but I've always thought about it as something important to learn and get decent at to succeed in life. I have way more…

I’m similar to you, except to upgrade my practical math skills at college I did cultivate a “liking” for math comparable to other technical areas I pursue. Namely, I started reading popular math books and articles, watching math youtubers, solving recreational puzzles from math periodicals… It was like, half actual interest and half contrived interest, seeing if I could develop in that direction. One summer when I had a lot of free time, with the help of a mathematician friend, I worked through a few advanced textbooks and video lecture series beyond anything I strictly needed. Progress was real but agonizing, and then I promptly forgot everything. It turns out that just maintaining a mid-to-late-undergraduate-level understanding of applied math is all I can be responsible for. It’s a responsibility I attend to, but my brain is only so mathy. At some point it becomes a question of both motivation and ability.

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

#827

Post by MrDresden »

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’…

> "We weren’t entitled because we weren’t paying customers."

Having insight into the Dutch university education system I've noticed that the students here are incredibly entitled, and even cite "being paying customers" when they disagree with the difficulty of course work or the scoring they get and diagree with.

My experience of my Nordic university time, some 20 years ago mirrors yours. Not unlimited retakes, but very hard exams and no one had this "customer" attitude. Just nose to the grindstone, very long days in the library, every single day of the week.

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

#828

Post by kazen44 »

consp wrote: post #791
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.

I'm glad one of my old profs in the Netherlands refused to bend and was fine with arguing his 40 percent first pass numbers (the target was 60 for some reason, hint: money). If everyone is exceptional, nobody is.

also, in my experience high grades are rare in the netherlands at all education levels. I did both mbo and hbo levels, and on both levels getting a "A" (10/10 or 9/10) was a very uncommon thing.

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

#829

Post by trallnag »

throw2nwnwnnw wrote: post #761
lanfeust6 wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

progressive with a throwaway account: "We can't expect BIPOC people to pass SATs, because of reasons". The reason is racism. The evidence shows the opposite, SAT testing allows hardworking/gifted minorities to get ahead.

[flagged]

Is this also a valid question towards Indians?

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

#830

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

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

It seems like there is a pretty good way to handle this. Make the only letter grades A and F, i.e. it's pass/fail, but then additionally provide class rank percentile.

Even if everyone gets an A, in a class of 1000 students, someone is going to be at the 90th percentile and someone is going to be at the 10th and you can't inflate your way out of that.

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