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Free Tuition for Math, Science, and Engineering?
Gibbs-Duhem writes "Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus wants free college tuition for US math, science, and engineering majors conditional upon working or teaching in the field for at least four years. From the article: 'The goal, he said in an interview last week, is to better prepare children for school and get more of them into college to make the United States more globally competitive, particularly with countries like China and India. "I think the challenge is fierce, and I think we have a real obligation to go the extra mile and redo things a bit differently, so we leave this place in better shape than we found it," Baucus said.' Do you think this would help with the US's lackluster performance in these fields?"
Cutting tuition will always improve the talent pool, because it removes an arbitrary obstacle. That's why the University of Georgia System has improved so dramatically in the last 10 years. The HOPE Scholarship made college so cheap that anybody can go, so the schools can all be a lot more selective.
You aren't required to teach. You can teach or work in the field, for a minimum of 4 years.
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It didn't say mandatory teaching. It said 4 years of mandatory teaching or working in the field.
Well, we've (ab)used parts of it, anyway. I think that "using" the rest more would sort of limit the charm, unfortunately.
-b.
10%? Where are you getting your numbers? According to the department of education, the graduation rate for 4-year institutions is about 56%.
link see page 3.
Since I like helping bigots, here's my link for you: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,276508,00.htm
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Problems over here in Europe are similar.
But, instead of another "let's give certain groups something special" program, how about raising the general level of education in such fields as math?
Many scams and doubtful business methods (including, btw. many insurances) only work because the general public is frighteningly uneducated in math, for example, and can't do even simple statistics.
One of the reasons this is so is that there is no education science of mathematics. There are special branches of education science for almost every other field, be it art, languages or health. But no one seems to care about how to teach math. So it's taught by people who know general pedagogics and try to apply that to math as best as they can - but we all know that math skills and people skills do not very often go together, so you are really lucky if your math teacher is good at both math and teaching.
And that's not his fault, but a failure of the system, which instead of thinking about why so many people fail in math in school, and improve the teaching techniques, dumbs down the curriculum or makes math optional instead of mandatory.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Actually the reason is a lot simpler and probably scarier - while the majority of Congress (and Americans) favor ending the embargo, Cuban immigrants do not. They hate Castro and want to make sure that the US puts pressure on him to the bitter end. And while Cuban Americans are a small population nationwide, they are a large percentage in Florida, which is important state in Presidential elections with the Cuban population a swing vote. So no one running for President will ever consider allowing the embargo to end for political reasons (it would be political suicide as you would lose Florida and probably the election), even though the rest of that nation knows what the policy should be.
I had 3 teachers in high school with PhDs, and one with an honorary one. They taught AP US History, AP English 4, AP Calculus and AP Chemistry, along with a few sections of the regular versions of those classes. They were by far the most knowledgeable teachers I've ever had, and were able to teach well. It seems to me that a PhD teaching high-school voluntarily means they're probably in it because they love to teach - good at it - and would prefer to teach high schoolers, because they're far enough in their career they could be anywhere they wanted. As a result of being both a good teacher and knowledgable, plus having students willing to learn and apply themselves to college level material, they were able to prepare us very well for the AP tests without the whole year being focused on it. Those classes were some of the most fun I had in high school, and prepared me the best for the AP tests. I ended up tih 2 5's and 2 4's on the AP tests for their classes, which was quite typical. Our district had some of the highest numbers of both students taking AP tests and also of the highest % passing AP tests. Every single student in my AP chem class passed the AP, with over half getting a 5 (out of 5) on it. Our district had as a consequence 9 students who were national AP scholars in a graduating class of 311. This means that 9 students got 8 grades of 4 or better on AP tests, meaning that if they went to a school that accepted 4's (most do) for college credit, they likely would be starting with 30-40 hours of credit done already.
So yes, PhDs teaching advanced high school students is a good idea, but only if they want to be there (not many of them)