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Post by neilgdickson on Apr 24, 2011 4:45:29 GMT -5
I don't know how many of you are at or graduated from universities. I graduated from Carleton University as a Bachelor of Computer Science, and found that although it gained me many opportunities for learning outside of the university (i.e. on internships), I learned almost nothing from the university itself. I currently do scientific research on practical quantum computers, and have several scientific papers, so I've considered doing graduate studies. This past week, Nature, considered the pinnacle of academic journals, devoted an issue to the many catastrophic failures of the current PhD system. What are your thoughts on either or both the undergraduate and graduate university education systems?
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Post by Chelsea on Apr 24, 2011 8:41:51 GMT -5
I'm a first-year university student now. I knew the university system was a mess (though it seems, in a different way than what you're saying) before I went, but I went anyway. I love learning, and if I could spend the rest of my life just going to school, I totally would.
Personally, I feel like I've learned a lot in my first year of university. I can't guarantee that I'll remember everything I've learned this year in 4 years, but I'm pretty sure that at least the things that I care about and relate to my future career will more or less stick (which is almost everything, except for those pesky science requirements D: )
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Post by neilgdickson on Apr 24, 2011 14:18:51 GMT -5
relate to my future career If you don't mind me asking, what are you planning to have as a future career, and what stuff are you learning that relates to it?
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Post by Chelsea on Apr 24, 2011 17:08:31 GMT -5
High School English teacher, so like 2/3 of my classes are in one of those areas. I'm learning how to write, understand literature, deal with kids.. shtuff like that...
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Cortney
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Post by Cortney on Apr 24, 2011 19:49:57 GMT -5
I'm a Computer Science major and an honors student and I feel like I'm learning a lot. I've loved college thus far and feel like I've grown a lot. I don't really understand your complaint.
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Post by neilgdickson on Apr 24, 2011 23:34:00 GMT -5
High School English teacher, so like 2/3 of my classes are in one of those areas. I'm learning how to write, understand literature, deal with kids.. shtuff like that... Cool. Teaching high school can be brutally tough, so hang in there and keep your wits about ya! Well, as I said, I learned a lot, but mostly not from courses. I learned the most from internships, and most other stuff I learned from the internet or friends, independently of the courses. It's no fault of most of the profs I had, 'cause I was quite fortunate to have several profs who could actually teach. Perhaps the biggest issue was the pressure the department put on profs to dumb everything down so that no students would ever complain that things were too difficult. They wanted tenure, grants, etc, so they'd always acquiesce. Talking to some students at a few other universities, it's not just an issue at Carleton. A small example is the parallel computing course. Parallel computing gets sold as this insanely complicated monster that you need a PhD to understand well, so it's tossed into 4th year as an "advanced" class. However, it's incredibly simple, and could easily be taught in 2nd year; they just don't want students to realize that it's trivial stuff. I had a great prof for the course, don't get me wrong, but the university would lose money if people knew they could pick it up in a day online. The issues at the graduate level are a different can of worms, but related, and much more systemic and problematic.
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Post by qooqǝɯɐƃ on Apr 25, 2011 16:14:41 GMT -5
I think Rob has some opinions on this. I'm only a first year college student, so I shouldn't be talking. But I can talk for public high schools. I found I wasted a lot of time in high school. I wish I could have skipped grade 12 and gone straight to college, or better yet, that public high school education was actually engaging and I had kept up my grades and made it to university. Fucking shitty system =[
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Cortney
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Post by Cortney on Apr 25, 2011 20:27:54 GMT -5
It probably varies from university to university. Mine is a science-oriented school, so all of my math and science courses are excellent. Plus with the honors program I'm learning skills that are useful in any area of life (such as critical thinking, writing, interpreting information, etc). Maybe you just went to a shitty school. =P
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Post by qooqǝɯɐƃ on Apr 25, 2011 20:35:48 GMT -5
I'm a Computer Science major and an honors student and I feel like I'm learning a lot. I've loved college thus far and feel like I've grown a lot. I don't really understand your complaint. I'm not fit to comment really, but these are quotes from one of the articles from Nature that Neil posted: "One reason that many doctoral programmes do not adequately serve students is that they are overly specialized, with curricula fragmented and increasingly irrelevant to the world beyond academia. " "To facilitate change, universities should move away from excessive competition fuelled by pernicious rating systems, and develop structures and procedures that foster cooperation." I found this comment under another article: "My PhD program is more like academic hazing than academic training." I personally felt the same through high school. I hope my college education at the undergrad level doesn't turn out like this... The article PhD Factory says it all really. Too many countries have tried to churn out graduates without concerning themselves too greatly with the quality of their training. Not in every country but it seems to be a problem in the major countries listed. Of course, some may feel these problems are overblown or something... The good thing is there are PhD programs that have been developed in light of this, so improvement is happening.
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Post by neilgdickson on Apr 25, 2011 21:21:03 GMT -5
I'm only a first year college student, so I shouldn't be talking. Don't worry; you're certainly welcome to voice your opinions. I'm with ya. I HATED high school. Okay, elementary school wasn't much better, but at least it inspired some creativity. High school was all about busy work for the sake of busy work. If I understand something, I shouldn't be forced to do meaningless work to try to memorize it instead of understanding it. It just makes students hate the material, even if they had been interested before. The best thing for me about university courses vs. high school courses was that they cut out the busy work, so at least that was a plus. Similar to in undergrad, I was very lucky to have some really good teachers (and a few teachers who are indescribably horrible), but also similar to undergrad, the system itself is just garbage. It's leaving the best and brightest behind and catering to the bottom end who don't want to be there in the first place. With respect to graduate studies, I feel like I may have dodged a bullet getting rejected by MIT, 'cause I'm doing significant scientific research where I am now. Not everyone gets to run experiments on multi-million-dollar machines that control quantum physics on computer chips 150x colder than intergalactic space.
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Post by elanetto on Apr 26, 2011 12:03:02 GMT -5
I studied in two different schools to get my bachelor degree. They worked really differently. I remember complaining a lot about the first school I went to. But then I went abroad to take my last year there, and the quality was much worse.
I learned a lot. But I feel that I learned most of it by my own will and lust to learn. Not the system the teachers made for us. I bought books on different topics and learned by myself, when I felt that what I needed to learn, wasn't given to me by the school.
It's honestly almost like if I want to take on a challenge of being a teacher and making a system that works better than the system I graduated under.
But else than that, I loved uni. Mainly because of how social it was. Best time of my life so far! hehe
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Post by newschooled on Apr 26, 2011 17:20:12 GMT -5
I have a degree in visual communication design.
My schooling was entirely worth while, I learned a lot and landed the exact kind of job I've always wanted.
</opinion>
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Post by neilgdickson on Apr 26, 2011 23:47:23 GMT -5
But else than that, I loved uni. Mainly because of how social it was. Best time of my life so far! hehe Same. It was good to be among fellow computer nerds. I know the feelin'. If only there was a good way forward. Awesome. I was really fortunate to land my current job too, thanks to a co-op workterm here in 2006; I probably learned more in those 8 months than the rest of my degree.
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Post by qooqǝɯɐƃ on Apr 28, 2011 17:57:42 GMT -5
@neil Are you studying at a university in Vancouver?
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Post by neilgdickson on Apr 29, 2011 1:03:15 GMT -5
@neil Are you studying at a university in Vancouver? Nope. I'm researching at a company called D-Wave in a suburb of Vancouver. I did my undergrad in Computer Science at Carleton University in Ottawa.
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