Slashdot Mirror
New 'Academic Redshirt' For Engineering Undergrads at UW
vinces99 writes "Redshirting isn't just for athletes anymore. The University of Washington and Washington State University are collaborating on an 'academic redshirt' program that will bring dozens of low-income Washington state high school graduates to the two universities to study engineering in a five-year bachelor's program. The first year will help those incoming freshmen acclimate to university-level courses and workload and prepare to major in an engineering discipline."
I just picture some low income student showing up in a red shirt to a room full of grinning SOBs in yellow and blue.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
lol
College administrator #1: How can we get 5 years of tuition payments from students in exchange for a 4 year degree?
College administrator #2: How about making them stay longer? We can call it 'academic redshirt.' By likening it to something we do for athletes, it'll make it much more saleable!
College administrator #1: Fucking brilliant! Here, have a raise! You've earned it!
Fodder for the away team?
Weren't Red Shirts the Enterprise crew members that were always killed within 60 seconds of their appearance?
An athletic "redshirt" means you get to practice with the team but you're not allowed to compete, and it doesn't count as a year of eligibility.
Are they saying that you get to audit all of your classes as a freshman and then take them for real the next year? If not, then they're probably misusing the term redshirt. If so, then it's "welcome to whose degree is it anyway? the major where everything is made up and the grades don't matter"
Did the PR flack check who reads SlashDot before they posted something about "red shirts?" I'll bet we have more people who care about the Bajorans than the Trojans here...
Just a word of advice to these engineering redshirts; stay well away from the laser lab...and the biology lab, for that matter.
Really, just don't go there. In fact, try to stay out of those buildings altogether...and make sure everyone knows your last name. :p
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Sure, if there is one thing that we need at WSU it is more quota admission CS majors who can't code when they reach the upper class ranks.
Typical WSU -- not the least bit suspicious that UW thinks that this is a good idea.
Thanks for the explanation; many of us here only know the Star Trek definition of red shirt :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm a bit confused. So apparently these low income students can't handle real college, so they need a practice year, then skip competitive department admissions? CSE at UW has pretty competitive admissions, and is usually entered on the second year, which is what this program does, but then gives then 4 years in the department instead of 3.
Perhaps this is a system to help people who can't finish their degree in 4 years, and also can't afford 5 years of classes? I can't find financial detail in the article.
Anyway, giving long term planning to red shirts just seems like a bad idea. We all know what happens to them.
A lot of graduating high school students are completely unprepared for college. Programs like these should fill the gap and keep engineering freshmen from failing the "make or break" first year courses. In my university for example, the freshman Engineering Calculus 1 course had an absurdly high failure rate because it was a lecture-based course, completely different from how high school classes are taught. With a teaching grant, one of the professors taught an experimental Engineering Calculus 1 course which was much more similar in format to a traditional high school class setting--and as a result the failure rate dropped dramatically. I hope to see more advances in this area in the future.
Sounds like a good idea to me. I work at a large flagship state school, and we see a number of underprepared students admitted. The problem is not so much that we can't teach them what they need to catch up, it's that they are given unrealistic expectations. The College of Arts and Sciences is making a big push to have everyone finish in 4 years, but this is very unrealistic for these underprepared students. A program where everyone expects them to take an extra year would reset the expectations to a realistic level and, in my opinion, probably improve performance.
By the way, "underprepared" often includes students who have, for example, passed pre-calculus, but did not learn the material and thus struggle when I see them in calculus. It's well established that the best predictor of success in calculus is algebra/pre-calculus skills, so giving them a chance to sharpen these skills with less time pressure would be beneficial to the student.
Well, considering the pass rate through Freshman Calc in the Engineering/Science track was only ~60% when **I** was an undergrad in the early 1980s. . .
Academic or not, they're Redshirts EITHER way. . . .
You know, I wonder about that. You see it was the same when I was in college (not engineering) and it was because the department chair was busting balls - it wasn't about learning or teaching - it was busting balls for the sake of busting balls.
The math department was run by this ass who for one, broke the calculus track into four classes instead of your usual 3: Differential, integral and then multivariate.
I actually did better at calculus at a local engineering school! The math dept chair at my school wanted "his" students to be all ready for graduate programs in math. Yes, lots of proofs and learning the esoteric shit that only a math grad student would need.
And then there's the chemistry 101 class - "look to your right and look to your left - those people aren't going to be here by finals." Chemistry, especially Organic, has become the weed out class for pre-med & pre-vet.t
WTF?!?! Are we here to get an education or be weeded out?
Weeded out.
College is about thinning the ranks for the upper socio-economic levels - for the middle class.
pfffttt..... Starfleet Academy has been doing this since forever.
One of the things this might do is increase the completion rate of the engineering courses without having to dumb down instruction.
Back when I was in college (measured in geological time units,) I started off in chemical engineering due to a fascination with engineering and a good prep in chemistry. What I didn't have was (and still is) a good math background. I know people who "get" math learn it differently from the rote memorization method taught in most schools, and this makes it make more sense. I was a memorizer -- I'd love to know the secret to actually understanding math. Anyway, it became clear to me after a year and a half that I was never going to be able to keep up with the coursework because of my lousy math background and full time employment. Most people I knew who washed out of engineering switched to business - I tried that for a semester, found it incredibly easy and boring, and switched to chemistry. So you could say I succeeded, in that I got a degree in something marketable, but I still lacked the tools to pursue what I was interested in.
It's awful that universities have to do a "remedial year" to fix shortcomings in K-12, and I wasn't even a low income student who went to a crappy school. But looking at it from the perspective of someone who may have benefited from something like this, it makes a little sense. I think that if I hadn't had to learn calculus at the same time I was doing physics and other intro engineering courses, I may have had a better chance of actually understanding what was going on. Once you go beyond the basics and start dealing with thermodynamics, dynamics, etc., not having that foundation kills your ability to fully master the material. The problem with a program like this is that they have to find people who have skills deficiencies AND are willing to put in the hard work to correct them quickly.
A Slashdot article with the term "redshirt" in the title, and absolutely no references to Star Trek?
Man, maybe the pessimists are right, perhaps /. really is on the decline...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The away team will consist of myself, Commander Spock, Doctor McCoy, and Ensign Ricky.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I love how that they insinuate that only students from low income families come unprepared for engineering studies. Yes I realize that the odds are true that it is the case but just because you go to a well funded school doesn't mean that you have good teachers or that the student is mature enough to do well in the university setting.
Aren't the red shirts the ones who always die first?
why would anyone want to be a redshirt they are always the first one to die on any away mission, and cant shoot a phaser worth crap. I'd much rather be a yellow or blue.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
do to over full classes, the way some classes in to the year, and the high number of filler and fluff classes.
This sounds more like a cash grab to me. Nobody makes it through UW or WSU engineering programs in only 4 years, even under normal conditions.
"Awful" is a strong word. In the past these students would have become blue-collar workers and never learned the material at all. Now that path is largely gone, so we're trying to help more people reach higher. (This is not just a glass-half-empty philosophical distinction; the percentage of students who enter college has gone way up in the last century including the last 20 years.)
Thank you for your cooperation.
Honestly, I don't see any need for athletics in college.
If they want to have sports levels above high-school, then they can pay the athletes and go from there.
The current system leaves students unable to hold down any kind of job, get permanently injured so they lose their their scholarships, all while the colleges rake in funds hand over fist using their names, likenesses and abilities.
Talk about slavery - and no, the education they are getting isn't worth the money they are losing out on by not being paid.
Every single college athlete would shrug and say so what about losing their amateur eligibility for the Olympics if given the opportunity.
The people that go on to the Olympics are the ones who do the work on their own, on the side, outside of school.
College sports does nothing but ruin peoples lives, wastes time that could be used to study and learn to become a benefit to society, all while being used by the college to gain more money, that isn't used to improve education, only used to line the pockets of a few greedy bastards.
You understand arithmetic?
Math builds, identify the earliest math course you didn't understand. Study that. If you don't understand the basics all you can do is attempt to pass by memorize and regurgitate. The one you want is likely a year before the one where you started to feel like all you could do was memorize.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So they turned a 4-year program into a 5-year program, with all 5 years at full price, I presume. If you need a year to acclimate freshmen, you either aren't doing it right, or you have the wrong students. Are the low-income target students dumber than high-income students? God help the low-income students when they leave school not only with bigger loans than their classmates, but now also an extra year's worth of debt.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Sorry, my mod points expired yesterday, otherwise I would have used one for this AC
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
is just blatantly saying that the poor are expendable now?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtDqsmbyo1M
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
You agree then, college is for weeded out people and not for education.
That's all you had to say.
The problem, as **I** see it, is the societal urge to send everyone to college. That, at least in my opinion, is a mistake. We have a serious lack of people in the skilled trades and technician roles, and this need will grow as more mundane manufacturing and even office tasks are automated out of existence.
Thank you. Iike to see folks who agree that college is about weeded out people and not about education.
And kudos to your English Professors, BTW. Nice ... post!
They're talking about added funding from outside the UW and WSU for additional positions.
Which, to be frank, we've heard lots of promises about added faculty and added undergrad positions, but this is the first real addition I've seen that wasn't just a promise but was funded.
Glad they're doing it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That is to be charged an insanely high annual rate to be weeded out, leaving many with a mountain of debt and no way to pay.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Lots of high school students are absolutely unprepared for the rigors of college study (I was one myself) coupled with a level of independence that tests the responsibility of young people. High school is simply so dumbed down college academics can be a large jump regardless of how well you did before. I see that other posters look at it as a money grab, but so long as it doesn't become financially exploitative this will produce positive results for students from *all* spheres.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
When I was at UW in the early seventies they had the same sort of "5 year bachelor's" for "disadvantaged" students who got a free ride. I'm sure some of them made out okay, but they had a reputation for smoking dope in class. You can lead a horse to water, but....
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
This is awesome. I went to the UW and I came from a very poor, under-taught school out in the sticks and from a family well below the poverty line. My intention was to be a computer science major, but I wasn't even fully prepared for pre-calc. As a result, I took a huge hit on math early on and it kind of sank my dreams. Luckily, I was able to get into another great major (Informatics) which wasn't quite as math heavy and still ended up in the profession I wanted doing quite well.
If I had this program available to me, I would have only graduated 1 quarter later than I did and I, likely, would have gotten into the major I wanted. I ended up taking the pre-calc course over again during my 2nd year and then doing very well (4.0, 3.8) in the following two calculus classes, but only after I had acclimated to the learning environment and because there wasn't any stress on me to do well in the calculus courses. So, I had it in me, I just wasn't prepared coming in. I'll say it again, this is a great idea.
Anyone doubting this tactic, I encourage you to realize that not all Universities are the same and the UW is a very difficult university to do well in. It's unlikely I would have had such a hard time at other less difficult schools (Washington State University, for example) where some of my friends went for a while to pad their grades to get into their major of choice at the UW.
Do you mean "college is about weeding out people?" Or are you talking about stoners? ...either way, you're probably right.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
(Sarcasm on) a university would have to give a shit about their undergrads? Why they might put you away for crazy talk like that. (Sarcasm off) Sorry I'm pretty jaded from my university which made it plainly obvious they were a research institute first and foremost.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
but we need more trades / tech school like trading the old college system moves to slow and is to long of a time to keep up with the fast moving tech field and people also need more hands on classes as well.
we also need more trades / tech schools not all people do good in a university setting and more some stuff 4+ years pure class room is to much.
but we need more trades / tech school like trading the old college system moves to slow and is to long of a time to keep up with the fast moving tech field and people also need more hands on classes as well.
Trade schools are fine and all, however, engineers should also have years of practical experience before getting their degrees, just like medical doctors. Book learning is just that, learning from books. Being a field engineer means being in the field where there are differences between what the book shows you and what the data from the field shows you. Just because you are working with a 4 to 20 milliamp feedback circuit doesn't mean you can achieve 4 to 20 milliamps ( this is an ideal) my experience has shown me it's more like 7 to 18.5 milliamps. Your values may vary according to circuit workmanship, humidity, environment, whether the people around you give a shit or not.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Did anyone else think of Star Trek's Red Shirts -- and how they were used to provide body count? Maybe the research universities needs so many warm bodies to get in for less than altruistic reasons??