Higher education in decline

[Ishmael]

Euler's constant?

I'm still running '98 which means I have the calculator with the KNOWN published flaws!

Work with enough floating point and the errors creep in. If those errors were random in the direction in which they assert themselves you could expect some cancelation. Unfortunately, they seem to trend uni-directionally.

Ishmael

 

[*******]

That reads like the answers to one of the questions on a Calc III test!



Did I ever tell you about the test where I got ALL the right answers but failed to get there the proper way?

It doesn't take a genious to know when a limit is going to go screaming off into infinity. It's not like it's the Mandlebrot set or anything...

Now THAT was a conservative professor reguardless of who he voted for.

 

[Hamletmaschine]

For the third time you've called Dr. Williams and for the third time I've read the article and now I guess I need YOU to point out where the fuck all the name-calling is...

The only Dr. Williams I've ever called was an eye doctor.

If you don't see it, maybe I should give you his number.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Over the years I've seen more than a few people get themselves in trouble with the machines. Especially in the early years. I watched as one mechanical type pissed away close to $100K and a couple of man months of labor due to a calculator error. He showed over and over how his calculator came up with the precise numbers. I just smiled, took his calculator, raised 2 to the 3rd power, then took the cube root of that number, then subtracted 2 from the result (2) and ended up with a remainder. I handed the calculator back to him and he sat there slack jawed for damn near 30 minutes staring at that calculator.

I tried this with my Casio fx-115d, vintage 1992, and it came up with the answer zero.

What did I win?

 

[Hamletmaschine]

Business people have to teach themselves about the world otherwise, they won't suceed. It's not the school's job to get the up to speed on how to work around the latest French strike, but rather how NOT to emulate the government and keep books like Enron did. College is not a finishing school anymore. It evolved...

If you're going to be consistent, then you should probably have chosen the term "devolved." Which is what I said. Which means you agree with me. See? That wasn't hard now, was it?

 

[Guest]

Wtf? Seriously, what the fuck??? Of course why should any university of college be an insitute of learning and teach you something more than how to hook up an IV? By all means let's just churn out human beings for 9-5 jobs. What good is music to anyone anyway?

I'm afraid to read past the first page of this thread.

Edit: Okay, I just did. Are music classes a required course in American universities?

At Northern Michigan University, yes. Music in Society is one of the required liberal studies courses. Along with about two dozen other useless or near useless classes. You're right, when I leave college with a degree, I should be able to do more than hook up an IV. I should also be able to read the IV bag and tell you what's in it (I DARE you to ask your nurse that question), design a legitimate laboratory experiment, write an effective research paper, think critically, and learn to communicate with my patients. Medical ethics, sign language, public speaking, interpersonal communications, effective stress management...these are all acceptable and applicable electives that could serve me well as a nursing student. And if I can't gain any of the above skills by attending those courses, then those courses are lacking, not the scope of my education. As I said before, it's time to make the curriculum qualitative and effective and quit with the quantitative and expensive shit.

 

[Ishmael]

I tried this with my Casio fx-115d, vintage 1992, and it came up with the answer zero.

What did I win?

Look at your calculator and what do you see?

Ishmael

 

[Guest]

With that attitude you may become a functional nurse, but you won't become a well-rounded anything. And please explain to me how a course teaching the history of music in society creates more capital for a school. How many federal research grants do you suppose those professors bring in? How many millions in corporate funding go to the College of Liberal Arts? Come on. Get real. Look at the most run-down buildings on just about any campus. Who do you suppose has offices in there?

The Liberal Arts have been taught in Universities for centuries, from the days when the practice of nursing was little more than a death watch. To cast them aside as bullshit betrays an astonishing ignorance of what they're all about.

And no, before you ask, I was not a Liberal Arts major. My studies were as scientific, practical, and specialized as yours, but I wasn't haughty enough to think I was superior just because of that.

I'm looking around my campus, and I don't see one run-down building in sight. In fact, I see buildings being renovated and redesigned, skywalks built where they're not truly needed, and offices moved, all for the sake of "rejuvinating" the campus. Let me tell you, it's not my tuition that's footing the bill. Federal grants are not going to help the liberal arts department-- they're going to help the development fund. I used to be a music major-- I would know how NOT underfunded the department is. Don't you dare twist my words and call me haughty. I'm not just a nursing student. I'm also a first obligato soprano.

The truth is, the major expense of providing education today has nothing to do with the cost of the education itself. Many of my profs have not recieved a raise since 1981.

Administrative costs, however, have increased by an average of 200% nationwide. Room and board costs have gotten to the rate of obscene. For ex., at my university, all students under the age of 21 are required to live on campus. All on-campus students are required to have a meal plan, and all freshmen students are required to have the "constant meal pass," a meal plan of over $3,000.00. $3,000.00 for 32 weeks worth of food? We're not talking steak, here, we're talking college kid fare. The cost per meal works out to $6.75 per meal (lunch/dinner). And that is, of course, assuming that the student eats every meal in the caf every day of the week all semester long. Most freshman students are fortunate to use 2/3 of the meals they pay for. Now that I'm 21, I've sat down and done the math, and I'm off campus because of it. I can live for a full year on what it would cost me to live on campus for 32 weeks.

The board of trustees at this school has had five raises in seven years. There have been three major construction projects in the last two years and unnecessary relocations of entire departments, leaving entire buildings of the campus, buildings that were previously not only serviceable, but quite nice, empty and wasted. Administrative costs have skyrocketed, particularly due to the new laptop program and a complete changeover to online notification of EVERYTHING (am I the only one who finds it scary that my finaid can be cancelled without even calling or mailing me?). THIS stuff is why tuition keeps rising, why students are required to live in an environment that is prone to partying and not conducive to studying, and why students are required to take courses that they don't want or need and have no pertinence to their fields of study.

If I am to become a well-rounded nurse and well-rounded person, I can and will decide for myself what courses will best do that.

P.S. none of the courses I mentioned previously such as medical ethics, interpersonal communications, etc. are required courses for my major. Nor are they on the list of liberal studies courses required to graduate.

 

[Ljbonobo]

Sample BSN curriculum (degree requirements)

English - basic english course
Second writing course (can be of any subject matter, just needs to be on where the writing process is taught)
Math Class - some sort of calculus is enough, no need to go to Calc 2 or 3
Data Analysis Course aka Stats - lots of choices from a math one, to a psych one, to one offered by the agricultural department
Basic Biology Course (intro)
Basic Chemistry course (intro with lab)
Microbiology
Intro to Psychology
Intro to Sociology
Something from Human, Natural and Economic resourses (basically an econ, geography, or something similar)
2 course history sequence (can choose from ancient, world, american, latin american and just about any sequence the university offers)
A literature course (anyone you choose to take, dependent on your interests)
Visual or performing arts course (this can be either Music, music appreciation, actual drawing, painting photography, ceramics, or appreciation of)
Ethics course (can be any type of ethics offered from religious, to scientific, to whatever)
Anatomy
Human Nutrition
All the Nursing core courses
and then you have to find about 10 extra hours (~2 or so classes) of extra hours to fit in.

that is the bare minimum required to graduate with a BSN from my university.


Now, ourladyofthehighways, if your college doesn't offer what it is you feel you need its up to you as an individual to either a) take the classes you feel you need or b) go somewhere that does make you take those classes. You have choices, there are not just one or two universities that offer a nursing degree. If you don't like the way your major is offered go somewhere else.

Now for educational funding. Yes the costs of living on campus are insane. However, a lot of times it is the university that is doing the screwing of the students for $. Once again you don't like it, go somewhere else. You are obviously an intelligent person, so make the informed choice.

Ishmael,
I did the same test on my TI-85. I came up with 0. What am I supposed to see on my calculator?

 

[Guest]

<snip>

Now, ourladyofthehighways, if your college doesn't offer what it is you feel you need its up to you as an individual to either a) take the classes you feel you need or b) go somewhere that does make you take those classes. You have choices, there are not just one or two universities that offer a nursing degree. If you don't like the way your major is offered go somewhere else.

Now for educational funding. Yes the costs of living on campus are insane. However, a lot of times it is the university that is doing the screwing of the students for $. Once again you don't like it, go somewhere else. You are obviously an intelligent person, so make the informed choice.

Ishmael,
I did the same test on my TI-85. I came up with 0. What am I supposed to see on my calculator?

I have and do take the classes I need, whether or not they are required. I'm proud to say I've become quite fluent in sign language, as well.

As far as just going elsewhere, that's easier said than done. College tuition trends are they way they are for much the same reason wages for unskilled laborers are. The people who have to live by them are not necessarily free agents in a democratic capitalist society. They cannot simply just "go elsewhere," for a lot of reasons. I am going elsewhere in the most effective way available to me-- I am off-campus.

I am now at the school in my area that is reasonably close to home and that is screwing its students the least. But just because it's better than the other guy doesn't mean it's the perfect school. I'm bitching, and I'll keep fighting with the right people until it gets changed.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

Having a diverse background, i have to disagree. The general education & "fluff" courses do provide things to the students. If nothing else, it helps train them how to think and gives them a chance to learn how to think outside of the limited parameters they will be taught in their major courses.

Considering learning actual thinking is not even a side note in K-12, it has to be taught somewhere. Without it, if the major course work ever become obsolete or outsourced, the person will have to start back at square one to learn something new.

Interesting. Just last week I had a meeting with one of my "head up the ass administrators" who outlined to us K-12 teachers how the FCAT tests thinking, and that we should provide similar type questions during our lessons. If you like I would be glad to provide you with her telephone # via pm and you can call her and I'm sure she'd be glad to explain it to you.

 

[linuxgeek]

Interesting. Just last week I had a meeting with one of my "head up the ass administrators" who outlined to us K-12 teachers how the FCAT tests thinking, and that we should provide similar type questions during our lessons. If you like I would be glad to provide you with her telephone # via pm and you can call her and I'm sure she'd be glad to explain it to you.

I do not see how teaching to pass standardized testing promotes anything but memorization. Anyone can memorize if they hear and/or see the same thing over and over again. It takes thinking to do something with the data memorized other than just regurgitating it back out or recognizing it from a lineup of 4 to 6 choices.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

I do not see how teaching to pass standardized testing promotes anything but memorization. Anyone can memorize if they hear and/or see the same thing over and over again. It takes thinking to do something with the data memorized other than just regurgitating it back out or recognizing it from a lineup of 4 to 6 choices.

No. On parts of the FCAT you will lose points for injecting previous knowledge. On some portions of the reading tests students will be asked to compare 2 different passages. These passages will most likely not be alike, but the content may be similar.

For example students may read a newspaper article about clouds, then a poem about clouds. The students will be asked to compare the forms and not the content. So how will memorization help?

 

[Adrenaline]

I'm looking around my campus, and I don't see one run-down building in sight. In fact, I see buildings being renovated and redesigned, skywalks built where they're not truly needed, and offices moved, all for the sake of "rejuvinating" the campus. Let me tell you, it's not my tuition that's footing the bill. Federal grants are not going to help the liberal arts department-- they're going to help the development fund. I used to be a music major-- I would know how NOT underfunded the department is. Don't you dare twist my words and call me haughty. I'm not just a nursing student. I'm also a first obligato soprano.

The truth is, the major expense of providing education today has nothing to do with the cost of the education itself. Many of my profs have not recieved a raise since 1981.

Administrative costs, however, have increased by an average of 200% nationwide. Room and board costs have gotten to the rate of obscene. For ex., at my university, all students under the age of 21 are required to live on campus. All on-campus students are required to have a meal plan, and all freshmen students are required to have the "constant meal pass," a meal plan of over $3,000.00. $3,000.00 for 32 weeks worth of food? We're not talking steak, here, we're talking college kid fare. The cost per meal works out to $6.75 per meal (lunch/dinner). And that is, of course, assuming that the student eats every meal in the caf every day of the week all semester long. Most freshman students are fortunate to use 2/3 of the meals they pay for. Now that I'm 21, I've sat down and done the math, and I'm off campus because of it. I can live for a full year on what it would cost me to live on campus for 32 weeks.

The board of trustees at this school has had five raises in seven years. There have been three major construction projects in the last two years and unnecessary relocations of entire departments, leaving entire buildings of the campus, buildings that were previously not only serviceable, but quite nice, empty and wasted. Administrative costs have skyrocketed, particularly due to the new laptop program and a complete changeover to online notification of EVERYTHING (am I the only one who finds it scary that my finaid can be cancelled without even calling or mailing me?). THIS stuff is why tuition keeps rising, why students are required to live in an environment that is prone to partying and not conducive to studying, and why students are required to take courses that they don't want or need and have no pertinence to their fields of study.

If I am to become a well-rounded nurse and well-rounded person, I can and will decide for myself what courses will best do that.

P.S. none of the courses I mentioned previously such as medical ethics, interpersonal communications, etc. are required courses for my major. Nor are they on the list of liberal studies courses required to graduate.

So exactly how is narrowing the curriculum so that you only learn things relevant to your job (as you see it) going to solve this problem of administrative salary hikes and other things you feel are a waste of funds?

I have a completely different take on education: schools for years have been ensuring that students do not ONLY learn what is relevant to their chosen career in order to provide (what I think) is a more valuable education. I do not see educational institutions solely as job factories. Perhaps things are too restrictive at your univeristy; at mine while you are required to take courses not directly linked to your major they do not pinpoint specific courses. The different subject areas are split into A & B categories with the student required to pick two from each. A couple of courses in two languages are also required.

Edit: It seems to me as if you are taking your annoyance at dealing with subjects you don't enjoy or have an interest in and using it as the scapegoat to explain a larger problem in many universities. The problem with scapegoats is that there are never the source of the problem. If the curriculum is narrowed, they may simply raise the price of other things (for eg. the classes you need) and the hikes continue and the new buildings are built. And so it continues.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

Did you get your tenses mixed up there?

I agree about the "feel good" bull shit courses. However those kids coming out of the one room schools knew more about the world around them, and their language/math basics than todays high school grads.

Ishmael

Sorry Ish but you're dead wrong on this one. SAT math tests reached a 36 year high & verbal a 16 year high in 2003. I believe this is the 2nd time I've posted this.

• The College Board

(AP) -- The nation's high school class of 2003 achieved the best score on the math section of the SAT exam in at least 36 years, while students' verbal scores hit a 16-year high.

The College Board, which owns the nation's most popular college entrance exam, said Tuesday that this year's high school graduates had an average cumulative score of 1,026 points on the SAT, up six points from 2002. Both the average math (519) and verbal (507) scores were up three points from last year.

The math and verbal sections of the SAT are each graded on 200-800 point scale. A total of 897 students in the United States had a perfect cumulative score of 1,600 this year.

Overall, some 1.4 million students in the class of 2003 took the SAT during their high school career. The nonprofit College Board said 36 percent of those taking the test were minority students, up 6 percent from a decade ago.

"Higher SAT scores, a record number of test-takers, and more diversity add up to a brighter picture for higher education," College Board President Gaston Caperton said in a prepared statement.

"While we certainly need to make more progress, the fact remains that we are clearly headed in the right direction."

This year's average math scores are the highest the College Board could document under the current scoring system. The earliest figures date from 1967. The SAT was first given in 1926.

Advanced courses
The College Board said the higher scores were due to increased enrollment in advanced math and science courses such as physics, precalculus, calculus and chemistry.

The president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics credited teaching methods that make math meaningful.

"(Students are) looking at problems that don't just involve pure calculation and computation-type of mathematics," said Johnny Lott. "They're looking at real-world problem solving."

Female test-takers also have improved notably in math over the last decade, with their average scores increasing 19 points to 503. Male math scores have gone up 13 points over the same period of time to 537.

Higher SAT scores, a record number of test-takers, and more diversity add up to a brighter picture for higher education.
-- College Board President Gaston Caperton


Females also averaged 503 on the 2003 verbal exam (up a point from last year), while males averaged 512 -- a jump of 5 points from 2002.

The board said 54 percent of the test-takers were female and 46 percent were male.

SAT scores play a role in the admissions process at 80 percent of the nation's colleges and universities.

Along with the ACT, the country's second-largest test-maker, the SAT has come under fire from critics who maintain high schools and colleges place too much emphasis on standardized entrance exams. Others contend the tests are unfair to students coming from poorer school districts.

Results from both tests this year showed the gap between the scores of white students and non-Asian minorities continues to persist.

To stress the importance of language skills -- verbal scores have improved by seven points compared to a 16-point jump in math proficiency over the last decade -- a mandatory essay will be introduced as part of the SAT exam in 2005.

While high school students have participated in more college preparatory math and science classes since 1993, the board found that enrollment in English composition courses dropped from 79 percent to 66 percent.

"Rigorous preparation in this area is crucial for students' success in college and beyond," Caperton said.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

[Avery_Chisholm]

 

[sigh]

They've gotten better over the years, but I still demand to see the numbers rolled out by hand.

Hey, hon, I use a calculator a dozen (usually more) times a day, and not to make money. I use it to save lives. Ishmael, I don't have time to roll it out by hand. When we're in the crunch, seconds count, and if I make a math error, or take too much time to figure out an elimination constant, people die; it's that simple.

Yes, I'm capable of doing the numbers by hand, but because I can estimate an answer before I start, I can recognize at a glance if the answer that comes out of my calculator is reasonable or not. And I always punch the numbers through twice because it's easy to make a mistake when you're hurrying. Luckily, doing it twice (or even five times) with a calculator is still far quicker than doing it once by hand, so that's a luxury I can afford. If my two tries don't match, I do it again until I can duplicate the results.

And you know, every time there's been a mistake, it's been my mistake, from simply tapping in a number wrong (which is why I always do it twice). Otherwise, my calculator has been flawless through hundreds, probably thousands of calculations, and it's a small TI scientific job that works off room light and costs about 20 bucks in any store. I trust it implicitly. It's in the pocket of my lab coat always.

It takes me ten seconds to tap out a drip rate for a CCU nurse. It would take me ten minutes to do that by hand. That, quite literally, is the time I save, and that's for simple algebra, like ratios and concentrations and such. If you want me to calculate an aminoglycoside dose based on estimated clearance, half life, volume of distribution, rate constants and so forth, it'd take me half a day for every dose using just a pencil and paper (hell, I'm not even sure I could raise a number by the inverse of the product of a constant times natural log by hand; if I ever get a couple of days to work on it, I'll let you know). Give me a calculator and I'll get back to you in ten minutes. Or give me a software program for calculating doses and you can just wait a minute and I'll print it out for you, and give you three different dosing options, with estimated peaks and troughs for each to boot.

Now which option do you suppose the doctor, who's just asked me the question, would prefer I choose?

Calculators are a tool, just like sliderules were a tool, just like long division is a tool, and learning how to carry the number is a tool when adding figures in a column. Every one of those tools was developed so that we could manage numbers greater than the number of fingers on both hands. No tool is necessarily better or worse than another, but some are a hell of a lot faster, and in my line of work, I don't have the luxury of time that apparently you have in yours.

If there's a problem, it's most often not with the tool. It's with how the tool is applied. You don't drive a screw with a hammer, and you don't force teachers to have kids do kindergarten lessons on a computer when they're reading at a first grade level.

I'm an absolute proponent of using calculators and computers in schools. To me, not teaching kids how to use them is the same as not teaching kids long division, or not teaching them how to write. I do understand that there's only so much time in a school day, but how can we choose to not teach something that virtually every workplace in the country will soon require as basic knowledge?

 

[linuxgeek]

No. On parts of the FCAT you will lose points for injecting previous knowledge. On some portions of the reading tests students will be asked to compare 2 different passages. These passages will most likely not be alike, but the content may be similar.

For example students may read a newspaper article about clouds, then a poem about clouds. The students will be asked to compare the forms and not the content. So how will memorization help?

On which grade level(s) version of the FCAT?

If the FCAT is such a spectacular measuring tool, why do so many teachers continue to take issue with it? They get paid basically the same reguardless of what content they are teaching. I would suspect generating a teaching schedule for each week to submit would be much easier when your content is dictated.

If all a student is expected to do is recognize and give a comparison of two forms, the subject can be anything. As long as the compared pieces follow the standard form memoried from class, the student can use a comparision given to him/her while training for the test. no?

 

[sigh]

Don't you dare twist my words and call me haughty.

I apologize for the haughty comment. It was uncalled for and rude. My folks taught me better than that.

I am sorry.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

If all a student is expected to do is recognize and give a comparison of two forms, the subject can be anything. As long as the compared pieces follow the standard form memoried from class, the student can use a comparision given to him/her while training for the test. no?

Sure we could. If we knew what the students were going to be asked to compare, and how those 2 pieces would present the information....... but we don't.

 

[landslider]

The advice I got, and heeded, was to apply to the best college and advanced schools on the theory that fancy pieces of paper impress strangers.

Besides, for a broader education, people can always read something like Jones and Wilson, An Incomplete Education.

 

[sigh]

Did I ever tell you about the test where I got ALL the right answers but failed to get there the proper way?

Maybe you're autistic?

Not to suggest you are, but I heard an adult autistic speak once and he said that back in his college days at the University of Michigan, he used to fail math tests because he just wrote down the answer to each question and handed in the tests after ten minutes or so. When the prof told him he had to show his work, he asked, "What work?".

The human brain is fascinating, isn't it?

 

[sigh]

Work with enough floating point and the errors creep in. If those errors were random in the direction in which they assert themselves you could expect some cancelation. Unfortunately, they seem to trend uni-directionally.

Ishmael

So buy a high end calculator and set it to work in ten decimal points, then round off at the very end. Who cares if it drifts unilaterally a few hundred billionths at a time when the final answer is rounded off to the hundredths?

Unless you routinely work in fractions approximating hundred billionths, of course. Then you're screwed.

 

[Le Jacquelope]

Unless you routinely work in fractions approximating hundred billionths, of course. Then you're screwed.

He does. He recently tried to calculate his IQ.

 

[cryptictravler]

Honestly comparing scores vs. 50 years ago is damn useless. First of all you have huge expansion of who is in college and secondary school. Self selection has serrious data effects. Second of all, you aren't really studying learning or bias by asking about things like the bus or counting change (the bus schedule example is especially stupid. First off when a city is smaller and the bus route is smaller it is way easier findind where one is going. The NY and Boston transit system (while not solely busses) are pretty simple and getting places is pretty easy (systems in place pre 1950). Finding out how to take the bus in LA or San Diego is ridiculous- you have over 100 mini maps and they are seriously not user friendly. Not being able to use them isn't a testament to lack of knowledge but the fact that anyone who really want to find out how the hell to get from point A to point B can just call.

The real issue at hand is the overspecialization pressures from business. Turns out becoming a tool is really easy when you only know how to do one thing. It is pretty sad how much actual learning gets left behind when people overspecialize in one field. The university system is not really meant for that, honestly if one wants to learn a specific task going to classes to get information about that task is a pretty shitty method. The point of universioties should be to educate people. It is too bad that it has become a competency screen instead of a place where serious students go to learn. All of that said, the university system is still decent at doing its job of educating those who want to be educated.