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Math and Science Popular With Students Until They Realize They're Hard
First time accepted submitter HonorPoncaCityDotCom writes "Khadeeja Safdar reports in the WSJ that researchers who surveyed 655 incoming college students found that while math and science majors drew the most interest initially, not many students finished with degrees in those subjects. Students who dropped out didn't do so because they discovered an unexpected amount of the work and because they were dissatisfied with their grades. "Students knew science was hard to begin with, but for a lot of them it turned out to be much worse than what they expected," says Todd R. Stinebrickner, one of the paper's authors. "What they didn't expect is that even if they work hard, they still won't do well." The authors add that the substantial overoptimism about completing a degree in science can be attributed largely to students beginning school with misperceptions about their ability to perform well academically in science. ""If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared (PDF) to study science.""
hard is merely the fact that often, the theories and equations taught are quite abstract. It is very important to have a solid grasp of concepts, but in the end, the material could be improved with visual and/or tangible results which have some values and/or association to the abstract concepts.
It really breaks your concentration when you realize you are hard. :(
A lot of it has to do with "Engineers make good money" or "My dad's an engineer, I'm smarter than him". I remember seeing it all the time back in college.
Then they realise it's hard and transfer to a different major.
Solution: make the classes easier!
You're welcome,
My alma mater used to have saying that summed this up quite nicely for the freshman physics weed-out classes:
"E-mag, Re-mag, Three-mag, Management."
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Set your school eduction so low that anyone can pass will give a lot of students the misconception that they are better than they really are.
All of these garbage political/social projects to supposedly increase American kids' achievement in science are just that: feel good garbage. Lowering standards only goes so far until real work and real achievement are required.
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The Onion has reported on this ground breaking finding exhaustively.
Students who dropped out didn't do so because they discovered an unexpected amount of the work and because they were dissatisfied with their grades.
This implies that the students did not drop out because the courses were hard, but for some other reason. But title says otherwise. So... why did they drop out?
As usual they fail to take into account that college sucks at instruction. They're shifting the blame downwards rather than wondering "oh wow so we give these kids textbooks and read directly from slides to rooms full of hundreds of students and then wonder why they don't intuitively grasp the concepts right away!"
"If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared (PDF) to study science."
In other words, this is the price everyone is now paying for public schools sucking so much ass: A generation full of kids who will end up working at McDonalds or something equally meaningless, because they weren't given a decent foundation in grade school and high school.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Math and Science are NOT hard. What they are is fucking tedious. Its a problem of patience, not intelligence. Compounding the problem is rambling autist professors who can barely speak fluent English. We'd have a lot more interest in Science in Math if they were based only on real-world problems, with plenty of visual aids and applications to assist in their learning.
What the average math class amounts to is mind-numbing tedium, doing "jack-off math" for math's own sake. Which is exactly the solution of the problem - offer an upper division catch-up class called "Jack-off Math for Math's own sake" about solving all of those needless endless nested-derivative problems to prepare them for "Pure Math" or whatever it is the autists are studying nowadays.
-- Ethanol-fueled
Arithmetic is hard. A good teacher is worth their weight in gold. I consider myself extremely fortunate that I had a few in my career. Sadly, I don't know how we can change the system to get many more. If I could, Nobel Prize baby!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
how about... just accepting that the country's bringing up kids who are dumb, and being happy with that? by contrast: in japan, kids are taught to be able to do mental arithmetic at lightning speed. tests involve flashing up 6-digit sums for 1/3 of a second every couple of seconds.
"If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared."
Conclusion: We should improve education.
Whee! And they spent how long and how much money coming to this conclusion?
This is a completely ignorant comment.
There has always been a question of where money and resources should be dedicated if we want to increase the number of STEM college graduates. To many people, it would seem obvious that if we want more college graduates in subjects, we should just support those subjects more at the college level. After all, these students get good grades in high school, but they struggle when they take that college physics class.
Although this might seem obvious, this study indicates that it is probably completely wrong. Increasing funding at the college level is unlikely to have much of an impact - the money would be better spent by improving teaching at lower levels. The high grades in high school just indicate that standards have gone to crap, not that students are prepared.
Now, this does match up with what pretty much any college (natural) science educator would tell you. Everybody with any experience in science education at the university level can tell you that students come in WOEFULLY unprepared for college level (natural) science. The students simply aren't good enough, and instead of lowering standards excessively, many of the sciences simply force prospective majors to work much, much harder than other majors.
But, it is always important to have studies backing up anecdotal evidence before you start spending millions to billions of dollars.
How about teaching children grades don't matter as much as they are meant to believe. Science undergrad with sub-par (2.7) GPA, still made it into graduate school and currently make six figures (with my degree's). Clearly remember, straight A students crying over B's and other straight A students switching to easier majors to maintain unrealistic GPAs. No one gives a shit about your 4.0 five years after the fact. Actually, no one gives a shit now. Too many believe they're learning the material in the book, they're actually learning *how to learn*
that rewarding mediocre talent and allowing pseudo science in classrooms is resulting in students being unprepared to study science in college? Gasp!!
Its the last 20 years of coddling and telling kids thay can do anything, handing out prizes to everyone, and boring the crap out of anyone with an extra IQ point above average that makes the mentality that well, of course you can dear, all you have to do is work hard and you can do anything.
Then you get a classroom full of people who expect a prize every time they do anything.
/ old grump rant..
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until they discover girls.
That's always been an issue, but starting with the Nintendo 64 Generation (late '80s) and WWW Generation (mid '90s) the acceleration of prepacked information-rich distractions has grown exponentially. If kids find they're not an expert in something within a week, they can throw it aside and get 3-4 new hobbies right away, each complete with a worldwide social circle. The same phenomenom is also causing problems for traditional school athletics and acoustical musical instruments.
Why does the WSJ hate American students? Technically I shouldn't jump to that conclusion, since it is phrased conditionally. FTA:
“If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared to study science,” the researchers write in the paper.
Why would we want more STEM graduates? There is no objective evidence that there is a shortage of them, and quite a few indications that, at least in some fields, we have a surplus. Moreover US policy is, and for many years has been, to import STEM students or graduates rather than get Americans interested in these fields. We know this policy is essential because Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and other very wealthy STEM dropouts tell us it is.
Of course it couldn't possibly be that classrooms are frequently designed for the efficiency of the institution over the educational needs of students. Lecture-based education, unaccommodating clasroom policies, instruction and assistance provided by persons with almost no professional education training, uninformative grading systems, a culture of shape-up or ship-out, none of these could possibly be changed without compromising the integrity of the program. The industrial organization of education can efficiently educate students well only by reducing the diversity of student learning requirements and that is most easily accomplished by rejecting input units which fail to meet specification. Don't you dare criticize this structure as to do so would only be dumbing things down and that is unacceptable.
The main problem is that large parts of science and math are skills. But, they are taught as other subjects with a lecture and homework. You wouldn't learn swimming by listening to someone talk about it for an hour or learn to play the guitar by looking at someone playing it for an hour.
Seriously, there is even a saying among people that the best way to learn something is to teach it. Sitting in class and listening to lectures is the wrong way to learn something.
In almost any skill that has to be learned, there's often a fairly rapid and abrupt transition from "I can't do that" to "I CAN do that and since I now know how to it's actually easy".
I think a lot of people get discouraged when they're unable to get through that transition on their own the first time they try it, and "I can't do that right" can be appear to be an impossible mountain to climb, even if you're not far from the top.
I think we need to be challenging kids from an early age to learn things that are "hard" so that they become intimately familiar with this progression from impossible to trivial. Too often I see kids these days try something that looks interesting to them a couple times and then decide "nah, that's too hard" and quit.
It's not specifically teaching perseverance, but more about learning to recognize that progress is almost never linear toward a goal and many times you won't recognize you've reached your goal until you're actually there.
Additionally, we ought to be able to get better at helping people fight through these places they get stuck, rather than just leaving them with a failing grade in a math class and a feeling that that they're not up to the task. Early recognition of students who are having difficulty and focused tutoring and other help getting through the hard parts to the point that they achieve their needed breakthrough.
I don't think any undergraduate subject should be so inherently difficult that anyone who can get into the university in the first place shouldn't be able to do well in it.
G.
Here's a really crazy thought. A thought based on something that really pissed me off all through my schooling. At the end of the day, kids (which may or may not themselves be stupid) that took stupid, easy courses would earn better grades than those that busted their butt taking challenging courses. An "A" grade in physical education, or introductory algebra should most certainly NOT mean the same thing as an "A" in biology, or Calculus. It's unfair, and discouraging to those students that are truly accomplishing something. Why try so hard when you're surrounded by dumba**es taking slacker classes and pulling off better grades than you.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
""If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared (PDF) to study science.""
Secondary and college students are subjected to only the most minimal of discouragement compared with what they will experience in the real world of academic and industrial science. Research progress is based on multiple failures, punctuated by brief, intense flashes of insight. There is a lot of chance involved, because there is a great deal of educated guesswork leading to theories and experiments.
High school, and college barely begin to prepare you for grad school and life in the real world.
...Between what the research proves and the conclusions drawn from the research. I missed it the first time in the summary, and think this deserves highlighting:
The research concludes: "While math and science majors drew the most interest initially, not many students finished with degrees in those subjects...The students switched out [of math and science majors] because they were dissatisfied with their grades."
The author concludes from the research: "“If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared to study science."
That's quite the spin. If I could be so bold as to suggest a different conclusion...
Kids these days don't understand the meaning of the word fortitude.
So, these scientists did studies on science and found one simple thing: "math is hard". Congrats.
And the "solution" is to train six year olds harder. Again, well done.
Perhaps, just maybe, there might be a better solution.
How does this differ from the past? The article doesn't address that at all. In the past, did a smaller percentage of STEM students dropout or switch to non-STEM majors? In the past were STEM graduates a larger or a smaller percentage of college graduates, and were they a larger or smaller percentage of people of a given age? Is there any objective evidence that there is a shortage of STEM graduates?
Without that information, this article is the usual "OMG, crisis! American education sucks!" hysteria that we've been hearing for decades. Not that that jibes with American prowess in science and technology, but lets not worry about a little things like that. A variant of this garbage is that everyone should study STEM (ignoring demand). Look, the USSR launched a satellite before us! We're gonna loose the Cold War! That was the "crisis" in 1957, and the nonsense hasn't abated since.
Make sure you include the requisite grain of salt. The blog is based on a study from over a decade ago - performed at a liberal arts college. Quickly perusing the school's website, I do not see a strong emphasis on STEM programs (I don't even see a B.S. offered, even the CS degree is a B.A.).
Not that I entirely disagree with the premise, but I think a study at a school with a broader academic base would provide more worthwhile results.
+1 Disagree
I was a Math major back in the day (though I regret not doing Physics or EE instead). The biggest things that I wish I were told were these: 1) You don't STUDY math and physics. You PRACTICE math and physics. 2) Don't worry about not knowing something. The next chapter is nothing if not examples of this chapter (this is especially true for Physics; this is also a better way of saying-- this chapter is a prerequisite for the next). Sadly, weekly tests DESTROY the ability for people to learn correctly in this model. 3) Your math teacher isn't rain man, s/he just did the work ahead of time. Most of the time you don't hope for an insight, but just recall a similar problem. Thus, again, you PRACTICE math... get the ninja skills going. 4) Reach the pareto point (80/20) as fast as possible, then hammer on that last bit as hard as you can. The next 5% is what's separating you from your peers. Of course, another 5% you are in the masters program. The next 5%, doctoral. The last 3% is post doc. The last 2% will be for a future generations.
Unlike majoring in English, where anything goes, apparently
I wonder how many people watch science shows like Through the Wormhole, NOVA Science NOW et al. (which I regularly watch myself) and don't realize how much of the intricate background math is deliberately not shown/discussed to make the subject matter more engaging to the average viewer.
There has always been a question of where money and resources should be dedicated if we the number of STEM college graduates.
There's no point in even asking that question until it's been decided whether "we" want to increase the number of STEM graduates, and if so, why "we" want to. If that question was analyzed a tenth as scientifically as the question of where to allocate resources if "we" want to increase the number of STEM graduates, it would be a miracle. The assumption that "we" should want to is endlessly asserted and little questioned. Whose agenda does that promote?
Waw, you have to be really intelligent to really understand math and science!
And you needed a study to get this?
Math and Science Popular Until Students Realize They Are Taught In The Most Boring And Ass-Backwards Way Possible
While my intuition tells me that high school grads are, on the whole, not as well prepared as they should be, there is certainly some improvement that could be done at the college level.
One problem I faced on the path to my EE degree was that in mathematics classes and some engineering classes (particularly electromagnetic fields, communication systems theory, and stochastic signal analysis -- which of course are some of the most math/calculus heavy of the EE curriculum), was that I lacked an intellectual model of what the mathematics was accomplishing. While concepts like derivatives and integrals made a degree of sense because they could be related to velocity, acceleration, position, area, and volume, when I got to the point I was dealing with eigen-this and eigen-that and hermetian-something-or-others I had lost any real-world connection, and my understanding suffered as a result.
The most frustrating and poignant instance of this was the first day of my linear algebra class, which I was taking only as a pre-req for CS class on GUIs, which only needed it to the extent that rotation, translation, and scaling using matrices was involved, and I already knew that much. Anyway, the mathematics professor walks in and announces "I do not care, even one little bit, what this material is used for in the real world. I am here to instruct you in mathematics alone." I looked around the room. In a class of about 25, I believe there were 20 science/engineering students, 4 math students, and one photography major (she was one of those brilliant types who took upper level classes in sciences, math, philosophy, or anything else just for fun). I was somewhat incredulous at the professor's utter disregard for his students' background, abilities, and interests. And just as I expected the course was utterly miserable and tedious, and then there were the bad days.
I contrast that with the math classes I took for Calculus II-IV, and Numerical Systems Analysis. The professors (thank heavens I avoided graduate students) who taught those classes were totally on top of the situation, and made it very clear what we were trying to accomplish with real world examples, or at least didn't veer too incredibly far from intuitive models. I think it helped that in Calc II-IV I had the same professor all through, and he was teaching a pilot course that integrated calculators into the material, so there was a lot of approachable material throughout. This was a stark contrast from the previously mentioned Linear Algebra as well as the Differential Equations I courses.
To this day I hate Linear Algebra and Differential Equations, and I'm 100% convinced it's due to the terrible instructors I dealt with. Which is a shame, because I loved mathematics in high school, and would go beyond my coursework to explore what I could on my own without much additional help from my (incredible) high school teacher, and I had a blast doing it. If I hadn't developed a strong interest in aeronautics and computers I most likely would have pursued a math degree.
The biggest problem I faced throughout my mathematics education, as well as many engineering classes, is that as the course would progress it was building taller and taller upon a shaky foundation. While my arithmetic was bedrock, my algebra was concrete, and my trigonometry was 2x4 construction, the rest was a lot less solid. Calculus felt a lot like building with Tinker-toys, and by the time I got to anything past that it was toothpicks stuck together with Sticky-Tack. As more and more material was piled on top, a lot of it kept slipping off because the stuff underneath it was crumbling. I would have benefited greatly from either better construction (i.e. better instruction), or a lot more hands-on experience with those shaky bits such that they were strongly reinforced.
Cyrano de Maniac
It's not so much that it's hard, but that it takes longer to complete a science degree. Figuratively speaking, 1 credit hour in libral arts is like 0.1 hours in STEM courses. I think a lot of people come to realize that a degree is just a key for opening doors, and opt for the easiest degree that will accomplish their goals.
I started in college as a comp sci major. I already knew how to program in BASIC, C, and C++ with reasonable proficiency and was excited about the major. However, I had a string of lousy math teachers until high school and struggled with algebra. Oddly, I was always fine with trigonometry and statistics, and I never had issues with the logic part of programming (I'm an attorney now). I was drastically unprepared for college mathematics. Because comp sci majors weren't even allowed to take major-required coursework until they had various math prerequisites, I started behind. After I nearly failed a mid-term in math class I barely understood with a TA I literally could not comprehend, I dropped the class and the major. I retreated to my safe zone in history and eventually ended up in law school.
While I'm not disappointed with the way things worked out, since my hands give me trouble just with the typing I do for my job now, I do wonder how different my life could have been if one of my math teachers caught on that I was struggling before my senior year of high school. I finally had a good teacher that last year, and she pulled my aside after class and turned a D to an A, but it was too late by then. I just lacked the skills.
From my perspective, the biggest issue in math education, and really education in general, is grading with no follow up. If a student isn't getting it, failing them doesn't make them get it, and passing them with pity is even worse. This flaw in a lot of education was really hammered home to me in law school when a professor got frustrated her ENTIRE class failed an exam. If the whole class fails, it isn't the students...
Ironically, I always had amazing science teachers. They were always engaged and excited. I usually got good grades. But, one science teacher was the only teacher I ever had who picked up on the fact that I was being teased and then tried to do something about it. And, my aunt is a science teacher, so I may be biased.
My rambling point...they need to be catching the kids who are struggling in second to fifth grade. My math issues started with multiplication in elementary school. I was behind, and no one ever caught it because in our school system you could basically still pass if you didn't understand, provided you just got enough questions right and showed effort...and passing was all that mattered.
There's no point in even asking that question until it's been decided whether "we" want to increase the number of STEM graduates, and if so, why "we" want to. If that question was analyzed a tenth as scientifically as the question of where to allocate resources if "we" want to increase the number of STEM graduates, it would be a miracle. The assumption that "we" should want to is endlessly asserted and little questioned. Whose agenda does that promote?
The question of what "we" want is not a scientific question. It is a political and social question. Since it is not a scientific question, it shouldn't necessarily be analyzed scientifically. Science is a wonderful tool, but not everything is a scientific question.
Now, you could make an economical argument about whether or not increasing the number of STEM graduates is useful to our economy. But I don't think that anybody trusts economical models at that level. Is everybody REALLY going to trust some economical model that predicts the state of our economy as a function of STEM graduates?
So, we fall back on less rigorous arguments. But I think that most people would find it believable that training people to address challenging problems quantitatively (which is really what all the STEM fields have in common) is going to be a good thing, and certainly isn't going to hurt.
This has been known for a long time.n The respected personage, Barbie, has declared that "Math class is tough!". Who are we to second guess such an important figure?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Schools these days don't allow the top students to be challenged by treating them like they're special. The good students are mixed in with the others who are just putting in their time; robbing both good students and good teachers of the opportunity to prepare for college classes.
This is a great money making opportunity for a savvy university. Offer a 2-year Pre-Science curriculum to prepare them for the following 4-year Bachelor of Science. Wouldn't be much different than Pre-Nursing, Pre-Med, Pre-Law, etc. If you happened to come from an awesome school system, then you will have no problem testing out of Pre-Science and go directly to your standard 4-year program.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Math is hard only when the teacher is bad. Known now and since the Greeks. Even the most difficult math can be understood to some good degree by almost any average inteligent person if explained adequately. Even Quantum Mechanics. That is not the problem.
One problem theaching science is that while math is the language of science, in many places, physics, thermodynamics, elasticity or other science courses are teached more like math courses with science applications than focusing to teach the actual science concepts and solving actual problems.
Entangling the studends in an algebra, calculus or differential equations mess make lots of people lose the perspective and the simplicity of most science concepts. Sure they need to know all these math things, but more important is to understand the science concepts and know how to solve these science problems with modern tools which mostly take away the prone-to-error math tedious and leaves all the science concepts intact.
Then if you want to be sure they still know how to solve evil multivariate differential equations or simplify page full algebraic expressions and such, do a math exam but don't make things that are easy hard with no benefit... at all.
As a retired chemistry professor I find that undergraduates are incredibly unprepared for college level science courses both in math and basic science. I have many example stories that I could recite. Here's one: handing back the 1st exam in General Chemistry, one student came in late after the graded exams were returned and picked up his at the end of class. His score was 16 out of 100 and asked what kind of grade that would be. I told him it was an F and he needed some help if he wanted to pass the course. He told me that he got A's in all his science and math in HS and expected the same in college. I never saw the student again. Another: the average grades for all chem courses at our school was something like 2.4 out of 4. The average grade in the communication department was 3.95. Hmmm.... It's clear some departments have absolutely no standards or their courses are so easy the subject matter is obvious and requires no work. Another: one of my colleagues went to a 5th grade parent-teacher conference and asked the teacher when fractions would be studied. The teacher said that they were no longer taught because no one ever used them any more. I think of that response every time I use a ruler or tape measure with English units, divided in 16ths of an inch. If this is an example of how elementary teachers think, no wonder why students aren't prepared for college, much less a technical vocational school. And: how about a HS algebra teacher who told me that freshman algebra was taught at the 5th grade math level. Enough said.
I ducked out of a STEM degree myself exactly because it was too much work and because science classes turned out to be a huge drag on my grades. However, this wasn't because the content itself was "hard," it was because at the university level all the math and science classes I took were graded competitively on a curve, and this system gave a tremendous advantage to all the students from Korea and China who were brought up spending every waking hour in study.
Ultimately, I changed to a liberal arts degree. This wasn't the only reason I switched away from STEM, but it certainly made my decision easier.
Wimps.
Coming from a different system, I appreciate the fact of not having the choice in the class "I took" AT ALL. I had to learn the same thing as all my other classmates (3 sections of 45 persons each). I think that it helped me because I couldn't feel alone in the storm that way...
Also it was intensive work at this time (12hrs of Maths class/week, about 20Hrs of work by my-self, 1Hr oral examination with one professor per week, 4Hr closed-book-no-calculators-you-have-only-your-brain-and-your-hands exam every two weeks). Then add almost the same in Physics and a little bit of Philosophy, English and Espagnol, and voila!
If that's the key to success why am I still broke? I've been playing video games all day for years!
Now French, there was a course that was basically impossible.(Especially French 4 in college with those made up tenses.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
So liberal arts degree == can work hard while science degree == smart and can work hard?
I guess college degrees tell you something after all.
Funny, marriage is like that, too.
You are welcome on my lawn.
http://xkcd.com/435/
Up through Engineering math isn't that bad, as long as you don't fall behind the rest of the class.
Good math classes are self-paced (more so than most other subjects, since there are so many dependencies), so everyone can rise to their level of ability.
The question of what "we" want is not a scientific question.
Strictly speaking you're right, but what I was referring to is whether there is objective evidence that we have a "shortage" of STEM graduates. Normally it's just assumed, or the evidence is the assertions of some very wealthy STEM dropouts with a vested interest. That's not a good enough starting point for a debate.
Now, you could make an economical argument about whether or not increasing the number of STEM graduates is useful to our economy. But I don't think that anybody trusts economical models at that level.
Forget the fancy models. Start with basic question of whether there is a "shortage" in the sense of rising prices. There isn't.
But I think that most people would find it believable that training people to address challenging problems quantitatively (which is really what all the STEM fields have in common) is going to be a good thing, and certainly isn't going to hurt.
Believable isn't the same thing as true, and "isn't going to hurt" is not a good enough argument for possibly spending a lot of money, and almost certainly expending a lot of effort. It wouldn't hurt if everybody learned the Klingon language either, but that's not much of an argument for encouraging it.
If I may borrow a quote from Representative Paul Broun on the House committee for Science Space and Technology, this so-called study is obviously just another Lie Straight From The Pit Of Hell. As he says, the Bible is "the manufacturer's handbook". Obviously science would be a lot easier if students spent a lot more time in Bible class and spent a lot less time in science class.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Rather than be pissed-off, you should see school for what it really is, not a competition between students, but an opportunity to get educated.
If you look back at it, it's rather bizzare to think of education as a contest. So if you happened to be so smart that you didn't have to study and you still got better grades than everyone else, would that matter a bit to your preparation for a future college course (or life). Or in contrast, finding the best opportunities to put in your best effort regardless of the competition, you will perhaps learn better your own strengths and weaknesses as preparation for the future.
Life is really what you make of it. It generally is not what everyone else is doing (or as some might suggest, a race to die with the most ribbons and toys, or that success requires others to fail). The truth is that eventually, nobody really truly cares what you did or even what you are doing, so who are you trying to impress? The answer is generally yourself, so you might as well try as hard as will make you happy or you will live to regret it (a fact that many looking back who do not try as hard as they could will often attest to).
Obligatory demotivational poster: http://www.despair.com/potential.html
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I don't know what the study suggests, but it sure seams like these students are entering college without the skills they need and good work habits. Being a programmer and having friends with STEM degrees, I don't know that engineers/scientists are smarter than non STEM people. I know plenty of smart people with liberal arts degrees. If America doesn't fix this culture issue, how the heck are we going to compete with people in other countries that prepare their kids with the necessary skills and instill in them a strong work ethic? Sure looks like this "reality tv fame for acting stupid" culture is getting us what we deserve.
"Math[s] and Science Popular With Students Until THEY Realize THEY're Hard"
So students like Maths and Science until they get horny?
I would agree with this.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Let's see... watching a rocket take off or seeing a Ferrari and thinking "I want to build one when I grow up!" is very different than acquiring the skills and aptitude to actually work on a team to build one.
I didn't know you were on /. dad.
Seriously, you sound just like him. Do you brag about how many 'idiot, good memorizer, non-doctors' you are responsible for? (pre-meds NEED an A in general chem)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What's needed are less helicopter parents and less public and high school teachers who are more concerned with not hurting students self esteem, than about about teaching core fundamentals and ensuring that kids are graded so that they can know when that isn't happening. Then students will be better prepared for college. Yes good teachers are essential. But on the whole, the current batch seem to be less than stellar. Or on the other hand, teachers can continue to focus on students' self esteem so they feel better at work selling french fries.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
The question of what "we" want is not a scientific question.
Strictly speaking you're right, but what I was referring to is whether there is objective evidence that we have a "shortage" of STEM graduates. Normally it's just assumed, or the evidence is the assertions of some very wealthy STEM dropouts with a vested interest. That's not a good enough starting point for a debate.
Now, you could make an economical argument about whether or not increasing the number of STEM graduates is useful to our economy. But I don't think that anybody trusts economical models at that level.
Forget the fancy models. Start with basic question of whether there is a "shortage" in the sense of rising prices. There isn't.
But I think that most people would find it believable that training people to address challenging problems quantitatively (which is really what all the STEM fields have in common) is going to be a good thing, and certainly isn't going to hurt.
Believable isn't the same thing as true, and "isn't going to hurt" is not a good enough argument for possibly spending a lot of money, and almost certainly expending a lot of effort. It wouldn't hurt if everybody learned the Klingon language either, but that's not much of an argument for encouraging it.
No, I would say there is plenty of evidence to suggest a shortage of STEM graduates. Looking at things from the stated economic perspective, there is a massive demand for engineers in a variety of fields that is simply not being met. That, by definition, is a shortage. In this instance, I don't think I even need to start linking the proof because EVERYONE, especially on slashdot should be aware of this, and it is also not limited to the United States, it is worldwide. You are kind of looking at things from the 'it isn't broke, don't need to fix it' perspective, but you can't do that when you are trying to grow the economy.
Yes, I agree with many people there is no end all be all correct answer to where we should spend money/effort/virgin blood/(insert economic stimulus aid here), but there definitely is a quantatitive statistical base for putting that money into stimulation for math and science education.
Part of it is that science, at a post-secondary level, is not taught from the beginning, but something like sociology or accounting is.
You're expected to have had an intuitive understanding of some of it for your whole life, and to have taken it formally in high school. Therefore the material in, say, second year, actually is far more advanced than the second year level of some other disciplines. Something like economics starts with unlearning the pop culture understanding of the subject (which is usually ideology and not economics in any kind of scientific sense).
I majored in computer science and minored in math. I loved both subjects. They were--and are--easy to me, and fun!
But I stink at art. I can't draw or paint or sculpt or play an instrument well, even after 10 years of trying. ART IS HARD...for me!
It's not so much that science and math are "hard," it's more that people are wired certain ways, and if you try to go outside what you are good at, it's going to be hard!
Math and science are currently popular because they lead to well-compensated professions, so lots of people try to major in math and science, who have no aptitude for either. So it seems hard to lots of people!
Yeah, it always bugged the [expletive deleted] out of me that the fields and waves courses were a total joke to the vast majority of my fellow EE students because back before the days of the "Personal Computer", there were no "real world solutions" to ANYTHING in those courses. Just an overbearing arrogant professor who never worked outside academia and made most of us sick to think that we had to take six hours of useless theoretical stuff that could not be experimentally verified outside of "gummint labs" used only for designing weapons systems. I learned more about how fields and waves really worked from building antennas from the ARRL handbook, and rewinding bicycle generators than I did from those two courses.
Assuming were talking about America here, this is a no-brainer conclusion any GED-holding fool can come to.
America loves to hate education.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
-kgj
I think this is basically an effect of differential grade inflation between math/science courses and humanities social sciences. As a result many students are getting a defective signal as to their comparative advantage. Actually, if students understood the job market, they would realize that they might have much more interesting career prospects coming out of B and B- grades in applied math and social sciences than with A and A- courses in humanities and social science subjects.
The teaching of math, in my opinion, is less effective than it could be because math departments do not spend enough time on applied math subjects, and tend to be looking for the very few students who are likely to be able to pursue math PhDs. There is a huge opportunity for able applied mathematicians in research in academia and industry.
Feynman had a wonderful statement in his precursor lectures that I found inspiring. I don't have it on hand but I think it should be taught to all incoming university students. So here it is paraphrased:
Upshot: it's worth the struggle. Stick it out.
Also, from the books Feynman was disappointed in the quality of the solutions to the physics exercises that his lecture series students could perform (understatement). So let's not just assume he was the world's greatest educator :)
While this would result in graduates who really knew their stuff, I'm afraid the pressure is in the opposite direction. Administrators lean on faculty to increase the institution's "4-year graduation rate". Because legislators lean on them, because the public leans on the legislators. John Q. Public wants what he's paying for, a four year degree in four years, dammit! (despite the fact that an Engineering curriculum really is five years worth of stuff: it used to be here, and still is in much of the world). Given the current huge tuition rates, certainly that's understandable though: if penny wise and pound foolish.
Some people can learn what they need in less time than others. Some subjects are harder than others. But, everyone and every subject unfortunately has to be mashed into the same timeframe.
Of course, why it's ok for the "professional" careers (as if Engineer or Scientist isn't) you mention to require more schooling is a baffling exception. Good for those fields: they get the time to teach stuff thoroughly!
I learned more about how fields and waves really worked from building antennas from the ARRL handbook, and rewinding bicycle generators than I did from those two courses.
Same here, effectively. However it was some IEEE journal, I believe, that finally helped me make sense of what antennas are really doing and the principles behind designing them to radiate effectively. I saved that journal, though it's stuffed away in a box somewhere, because I thought it is exactly the sort of thing which should be in an ARRL publication somewhere.
Just today, some 15 years after I finished my masters in EE, a coworker filled me in on the basics of how vacuum tubes work. It was almost intuitive once he described their structure, and suddenly the terms "collector" and "emitter" as applied to transistors make much more sense and are much easier to remember. Now granted, there's a widespread demand for engineers who are familiar with designing vacuum tube circuits these days so I can understand why the technology isn't taught, but I think a basic understanding of how they work would go a long way toward helping students understand the operation of transistors.
Cyrano de Maniac
I'm reading a lot of comments on here about how teaching needs to be better, or new teaching methods need to be introduced. That's all well and good, but it makes learning STEM subjects fragile: it depends on having the right people. We need amazing, gifted teachers, and otherwise we're lost.
I don't buy that.
I think most people simply don't know how to read a STEM book. Or if they do, they're just too lazy to do it right. The thing about books is that there a lot of good ones out there, so reading math is a robust way to learn it.
Let me outline the process of reading math for those who don't know and who have the willpower and desire to do it right.
Read the material five times. The first time, don't worry about understanding the details. The idea is to get the big picture: how the section is laid out, how one idea leads to another, how the major result of the section depends on the minor results. Read all the figures closely, even if you don't understand them. The pictures help to frame the material. The second time through is to acquire detailed knowledge. This read-through takes the longest. Try to understand all the details. You're just basically packing your brain with complicated stuff. Have pencil and paper out to work out all intermediate steps and examples. At the end of the second reading, your mind will feel jumbled and exhausted. So the third reading is just like the first: it restores a sense of the big picture to your mind. Now go to sleep. The next day, do a fourth reading. This time the goal is to use the fresh start to make connections and consolidate the material. This reading should be jumpy: you skim over the stuff you really understand and linger on the hairy stuff. Now go to class prepared either to laugh quietly at how bad the teacher is, or to ask knowledgeable questions to improve your understanding further. The final reading comes much later, before the exam. Now you're reviewing material you're confident of, consolidating the information into something that you can keep with you; some people say you're "owning" the material or "making it your own". It doesn't take long if readings two and four were successful.
And that's how you read math. The good thing about math books is that they have far fewer pages than in other subjects, so reading each page five times is not actually that much worse than reading history books just once.
My pre-calculus course at a major research university had nearly 500 students. Lab/section consisted of an underpaid graduate student with poor English. I'm all for the US attracting top minds from other countries and we should fund it, but not with undergraduate tuition. That class brought in over a $1 million for that department. At 500-$1,000/credit, you can afford private one-on-one tutoring sessions at $40-$50 every day for the entire quarter. The only difference is that "student aid" (aka taxes in the form of debt) won't pay for a tutoring! On top of that, the professor also told us to expect devoting 50-100% more time than the normal credit/hour ratio.
I dropped the class and took it (in two quarters instead of one) at the local community college, where I had a class of 25. If you were lucky enough to be an honors student in HS (yes, lucky enough to have a normal childhood and good teachers) and you get on the honors track in college, you will be rewarded with small class sizes, a smaller selection of higher quality professors, scholarships, and projects instead of rote memorization.
So yes, if you give us poor grades on top of a shitload of homework and a terrible education we will be very unhappy.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
there is a massive demand for engineers in a variety of fields that is simply not being met. That, by definition, is a shortage
The prices aren't going up, which is the objective sign of a shortage. Anybody can say they have a "massive demand", but if it's not backed by money, it's nonsense.
In this instance, I don't think I even need to start linking the proof because EVERYONE, especially on slashdot should be aware of this
The "everybody just knows it" argument. Sorry, but that's pure hand waving. Please cite some evidence.
Ironically you're say there is a shortage of STEM, where the first rule is to make measurements and use objective data, yet you resort to "everybody knows" to argue that there's a shortage!
you can't do that when you are trying to grow the economy
I'll believe that the supposed shortage of STEM people is hindering the economy when supply exceeds demand. That in turn would be indicated by a long term trend of increasing prices. It ain't there. Money talks, and it ain't saying a word.
there definitely is a quantatitive statistical base for putting that money into stimulation for math and science education
Is there? Then please cite it.
Sounds not a good idea in practice. After those pre-nursing, pre-med, pre-law, you get into med school, law school, and earn a professional doctorate. Following the pre-science track, you then get a bachelor of science that gets paid 1/3 of those professional doctorate...
Pre-meds NEED an A in general chemistry for a reason. They will be responsible for lives of human beings. I wouldn't want someone who got 16/100 in general chemistry to be my doctor...
I have ranted endlessly, like a rabid dog, that we need to raise the bar for every high school student by a huge increment. The days of lite mathematics or dumbed down courses in any subject need to be dealt a death blow. If we want skilled people we must have great expectations and demands upon the youngsters. Any young person allowed to graduate from high school should easily make it at the better colleges.
Those children who are not able to have a full academic experience should be sorted out and taught trades after the sixth grade ends.
I had a relative, by marriage, who took a high school class in physiology. After a full six weeks he was under the illusion that he was in a psychology class. How can a junior in high school be that far gone?
David Wong called this effort shock. Basically, most (U.S.) kids today vastly underestimate how much effort it takes to accomplish anything worthwhile.
I worked really hard and still had to retake two math classes to get through my CS degree. I wasn't going to quit over it though and I'm happy I didn't.
for some people work = hard.
You have to work in STEM degrees, while in others you can breeze from 1-4 years and beyond on skills you don't need to practice at.
One of the major issues is who is teaching STEM subjects at high school. PE teachers, librarians and biologists (which I feel is wrong for a bio teacher to teach maths unless they did a lot of math units). Even if they are a STEM graduate, do they have the qualities for HS teaching? Personality, motivation, discipline/classroom management, inspiration as well as the knowledge to go it, and the support structure to do it.
Personally I think advanced Maths (calc and beyond) and Physics teachers need to be paid more. Because there is a shortage of them, most students aren't even offered real maths or real physics but watered down stuff to be taught by no specialist teachers.
Everyone uses math in one way or another.
What most people consider "hard math", is the math you get in engineering etc. But what most people don't really give a second thought, is that we ALL use some kind of simple AND quite advanced math in real life, everyday situations too.
Some artists use highly advanced math to create the most amazing artwork, without even knowing or suspecting it's math. And we all visualize mathematics differently. Sure, book-math as we know it, is the sure way to explain things mathematically, you know - numbers and formula, but what about the guy that visualize solutions to complex formulas and problems in fields and mountains? That's just ONE example on how some genius uses math, but not as WE know it, still math though!
A world renown cook, that wins prize after prize - has INCREDIBLE skills in math, maybe not on paper, but I'm pretty sure he/she would be an award winning scientist in chemistry, cooking IS chemistry.
We need to look at math the natural way. Everything is math, and math is everything.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
we need more apprenticeship / trades schools and less college.
We are sending to many people to college and some of them are not college material and they should be in an apprenticeship or an trades school.
http://www.theledger.com/article/20130329/EDIT02/130329193
What I understand is that to get into Med School, students need to do well in a number of subjects, particularly Organic Chem and General Physics. Some of the knowledge in these studies may be important for medicine, but more importantly good grades in these subjects may suggest that students have the problem solving skills required to do well in Med school and the profession. Applying a vast amount of information to solve a complex problems in a short time is a required skill to learn what is needed to become an MD and to practice medicine. It also may indicate the student is willing to put in the great deal of time necessary to learn these hard subjects well enough to be near the top of their class.
Maybe it's the fantastic job opportunities where they can wash beakers in a lab for $14/hour if they get a masters degree? There's not a lot out there for a BS in chemistry or physics.
Leaving my bad smell out of this, the teachers are given a role and that's to teach their students properly. It doesn't help to just tell them to memorize formulas or a grande list of facts about atoms to remember. Is there a reason why we, as high-school students had to learn individual atom weight and such? No. You don't even learn that in college when you're in that very field. What students should learn is the fundamentals and the REASON why things are. The little details are something that the students can learn on their own or through the given problem sets that they were given. In math for example, you shouldn't be memorizing formulas, you should learn why algebra is the way it is, why arithmetic is the way it is and heck, with a strong enough foundation, you could out of logic not need to learn calculus and re-invent the wheel in a few years. That's how fast it was originally created... But, one fundamental problem with learning fundamentals is that it just takes ONE teacher to screw it up for the teachers in the higher grade.
When there is a need / curiosity, there won't be problem in learning. But for kids, gamification is good approach to teach the maths. For kids, it should be more meaningful while teaching the abstract concepts like numbers and operation on them. One way is to convert this abstract concept into a conceivable objects like stones. Instead of using symbols, it would be great if small pebbles are used to do addition / multiplications.
I studied some time (15y) ago (and stayed in academical research for a while) and i find the findings more than just plausible, even if if affects only a certain fractions of the students.
In principle it is very reasonable to readjust your plans after assessing the difficulty of the path you want to follow. Have seen too many who did not leave but got unhappy, frustrated (even with the degree they wanted), or ending up with a failed life (10y+ trying to get a degree which they did not get in the end). It is very reasonable to stop studying physics if you fail at math.
What is special for science is that there is no way around seeing your limitations. You solve the equation or you dont. Your are able to measure something or you are not. You are able to understand a certain theory or not. Sometimes you may take 1week to understand a few pages of a book, which you should understand faster to finish it in time.
IMHO the problem is not that the subject is difficult (which aplies for many subjects if you do them right), but the problem is that there is no way around the difficulty.
Go outside on a sunny day.
Look up at that big, spherical, yellow apparatus. (But don't look at it too long!)
Problem solved.
... not only because it got quite hard unexpectedly, but also because I found that the course was not what I was actually looking for (was a simulation course and I tended more towards the programming side while the course pushed for the hard math side without giving much incentive)
where you must not be disadvantaged when refusing any deductive work on the basis "God made it so"? That's as stupid and lazy as refusing to read any book because it is just some distribution of ink on paper, anyway.
Or rejecting any history book since it tells about a time before the authors' birth.
If a perfect storywriter writes an immaculate story reaching back billions of years, refusing to listen to that story on the basis that one assumes it has been written down just a few thousand years ago is stupid. And lazy. And blasphemous: "oh, I don't want to read your story, I'm sure you are the best so I'll just let some people who read some secondary papers about hearsay tell me their take on it and fantasize what it must be about".
This is quite misleading, the effect is that students aren't graduating from the science because they think the material is hard. This is jumping to conclusions. I can think of many different causes for this effect.
I would pose that many students leave the sciences because of our teaching structure. Tenure rewards complacency in teaching, and as teachers get older and the student body remains the same age, the gap between how teachers think and teach, and how students think and learn, is widening.
Science is hard. But so is learning a language, so is learning the coordination to walk. So is learning how to beat level X on Candy Crush. So is producing a decent YouTube video in collaboration with your friends. Life.... is hard and most people manage.
I don't think the difficulty of science is the only thing driving students away from getting their degree in it. I even suspect its not the primary causal factor.
In the liberal subjects there is an "All have done well and all shall have prizes" attitude. You write say a history essay and it might not be very good but it's unlikely to be wrong...so the miracle of confirmation bias allows you to convince yourself you're good at history. You try your hand at some maths and there's no beating about the bush, you got the whole thing wrong. In maths you can get 100% and you can get 0% and you can't really argue about it- it's black and white. This is not good for self-esteem.
If you're bad or at best average at everything it's going to be really obvious you're bad at maths and less obvious that you're bad a the other stuff so you can convince yourself that you're good at it.
Maths is also very unnatural, requiring thinking of a thought we never evolved to do and is therefore not "fun" like figuring out social situations.
No ammount of teaching or "math is great" propagander will change this fact.
Better tuition would help......but maths aficianodos...not the best with people.
The reason kids drop out of art school, or art programs, is not because its "bullshit" as they always say, but because its a lot of work.
Try doing 3 paintings a week as well as drawings, pottery, etc. Oddly enough they work more than science majors. I had a good science education in college but I wasn't writing more than 4 or 5 papers a semester. Art majors are producing 3 or 4 things a week.
So, did math discover computers yet? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_symbols Maybe we don't need to shorten every variable to 1 character just so you can write it fast by hand anymore? Maybe math can start using, let me think, this new invention called "Words with meaning" instead? Nah of course not then more people would understand it and that would be really bad wouldn't it?
It's all memorization of facts. Half truths about the nature of things. That with each year your understand has to change for the next test because everything they had taught you up to that point, was not quite true. There is next to no lessons on the process of science or what peer review is, and how scientists are trying to prove each other wrong etc.
Science education up until college is a joke.
Math classes (as in real math, maybe not math for engineers) are used to filter out an "elite", not to teach people skills. The workload is very high, it all goes too fast, and you're so busy doing homework that you don't have any time left to actually learn, let alone think deeper and explore. The only way to slow down a bit is to fail a class repeatedly, which is extremely frustrating because you're forced to start from zero again. This system is designed to produce lots of dropouts who could actually have become reasonably skilled if only they'd had a chance to study at their own pace. The way universities are designed, the goal isn't to spread knowledge: they want a small "elite" of minions and the rest of us is fucked. It's a desired effect.
Math and science build up. You need arithmatic and algebra and trig and some geometry for calculus , the is now way to cram for an exam if you for got your trig for your calculus test. Just does not work that way. Only three ways to remember shit over the long term, 1 enjoy the material, 2 review a lot/often or 3 just be lucky enough to be born with a good memory.
"What they didn't expect is that even if they work hard, they still won't do well."
Purely anecdotal, and I won't mention names other than my own. Many professors are good and go above and beyond what is required of them to get the subject matter through their students' skulls. For example, my Logic for CS professor on his own dime and time chose to meet the entire class for an additional lecture every single Saturday to go over lectures and homeworks and additional exercises. Suffice to say that, collectively our grades and learning skyrocketted. We were fortunately that our CS department didn't care much about grade quotas.
Sadly, not all departments and not all universities are like that. For instance, my Physics II professor was admonished by the Physics department because too many people were getting good greats. IMO, he was the best professor I've ever met, and he made it possible, via his teaching, to get the bulk of the class to have a satisfactory rate of learning. But 3/4 up the semester he was forced to start "curving" and quoting who got A's, who got B's, etc. This was independent of how well he did.
An acquaintance of mine is a full-time Math professor at a local community college who was also teaching part-time at another local 4-year school. It was the same story. Good professor and lots of people getting good grades. Sadly he was constantly harassed about being "tough", that he was "giving away" too many good grades (those grades weren't given away, they were earned. I know the guy, and I know he won't give a grade to someone not deserving it.) Lo and behold he was pretty much forced out of (and made to walk away from) this specific teaching position.
A sad day for the pedagogical sciences and many from-now-on unfortunate students. Being "tough"? Being "tough"? How about being effective for a change. Regardless of the hardness of a topic, if you cannot get the bulk of your students to get good grades, you pretty much suck at teaching. Period.
A lot of students are unfortunately poorly trained in middle and high school to tackle science courses. But that is just a fraction of the problem. There are extremely few topics that are truly that hard. The bulk of freshman, sophomore and even junior science courses are not in that category. A lot of professors simply suck. And I'm not just talking about sucking at teaching, but sucking at being human.
To be deliberately "tough" as opposed to striving in efficiency, that's the hallmark of being an asshole to cover for other, deeper levels of flaws. It is the ultimately form of incompetence IMO.
The authors add that the substantial overoptimism about completing a degree in science can be attributed largely to students beginning school with misperceptions about their ability to perform well academically in science.
That hasn't been my experience. I have two sons who were taking engineering at the same university where I received my degree, but dropped out last year. I was tutoring them, and my evaluation is that they were learning the material. In fact, they understood some of the material better than I did at the same point in my academic career. My judgement is that the university has changed.
There is no longer a human grading homework. They have reduced costs by having a computer do that work. The problem that causes is that these computers only know one correct answer. The instructor accommodates the computer by having the significant digits be required in every problem. Thus, if the answer is 2.2, then 2.21 is marked wrong. In fact, 2.20 is marked wrong as well. No partial credit is awarded. Now, I could understand if that were being done on a section regarding significant digits, but it's done everywhere. That's absurd. In the real world you have to accept nearest best. Suppose the ideal size for a drain hole is calculated to be 0.160 inches diameter. Well, it turns out that there are no 0.160 drills. You have to accept either a #20 drill or a #19 drill. And even then you must live with the hole + or - 0.003. Or suppose in electrical engineering that you calculate the ideal size of a resistor to be 43.5K ohms. There are no 43.5K ohm resistors. Well, there aren't at any kind of price that I'm willing to pay.
Furthermore, their physics instructor had no text book. That's outrageous. Who teaches physics without a text?
If indeed there was any overoptimism it wasn't because of any misperceptions about their ability to perform well academically in science.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
At one point in time, I was attending a school which had a policy of students working at their grade level, up to 4 levels ahead, save for those courses which were set aside as ``socialization'' (if memory serves, those were homeroom, recess, Phys Ed, and social studies), so I was in 4th grade and taking 8th grade English, math and science (and reading at a 12th grade level) --- the school was also accredited as a community college (all of the teachers had at least Master's degrees), and if one was 4 grades ahead at 9th grade, one began doing college coursework, for credit --- at 10th grade they removed the socialization limit and one could graduate w/ a BA or BFA or BSA.
I've never forgiven my father for moving away from that school system.
Is this a surprise? America is crap for science core skills like critical thinking. A good part of our population is not even sure that "science is real" and "is just as fallible as any belief".
Analysis and logical thought are more than sidelined by media and society; they're actively discouraged. "News" organizations that push innuendo and fabrications as fact, advertising that teaches flash and dazzle trump substance, constant distraction touted as a desirable lifestyle, all lead to minds challenged by any concrete logic. It takes a village to create a scientist.
True story. On my first day on the job as a new engineering professor, my faculty mentor advised me to be a bad teacher. He let me know tenure is only on your grantsmanship, teaching is a hobby. If you are getting great reviews, then you are putting too much into it.
I understood what he said. I understood what he said was true. But, I could never shake the feeling of dishonor of facing a class and giving a half assed lecture. So, I tried, hard. I developed new material. I made hands on activities. I took time to mentor any undergraduate who needed it. I won two teaching awards, and had the highest evaluations in the history of the department.
Long story short, I am now unemployed and gun to head depressed. For every accademic job I apply, my former chair gives a resounding negative review. (my mention was right, my grant success rate was lower than department average and hurt our money raising statistic-a cardinal sin.) for tech jobs, the US congress has said we need to import scientists instead of implying our own. In effect, all my training is now wasted.
Moral if the story? Until the system is change to reward teaching, we get what we have. Being a martyr is just stupid.
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people realize that studying intense material, plus paying college bills, plus cost of living, is very unrealistic so they say F this, I'm doing liberal arts.
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That was what hit me when I took my first AP classes in high school. AP Chemistry, AP Physics, and AP Calculus - for the first time in 12 years of education, I found myself unable to do my homework on the bus before school or during lunch because the concepts were difficult to grasp immediately. I didn't have the necessary study skills for the subjects because I'd never needed them before. My parents were flummoxed too, because I'd coasted along on the straight A gravy train for so long that to suddenly face a D in AP calculus was a big blow to my personal pride and their expectations of me.
I think I would have done better with an accelerated math program that challenged me much earlier and forced me to sit and work through problems for an hour at night, instead of breezing through them in fifteen minutes during homeroom for so long.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
What I feel most commenters are ignoring is the fact that we all learn at different rates and hit different choke points. The math and science programs are particularly prone to this. All it takes is a major enough stumbling block and a student will be thrown off course for an entire year or their entire lives. We need better mechanisms to tailor math and science courses to the individual students. I think this is really the only way to make sure that students achieve the most that they can.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
Smart US students would have to be stupid to plan on a STEM career in today's environment.
If you want student to study STEM, provide stable employment for them.
All those mid-uni transfers to English had to suffer through English 3000, which was a 300+ lecture with ten smaller breakout session classes led by TAs. You needed a C or higher in the class to declare your major as English. That was easier said than done, since they wanted an essay a week and the proper levels of kissing up to the TAs. I got into many frustrated arguments with my TA, who was a bigger ass than anyone I'd dealt with in the physics department, and barely scraped through with my C. A good third of the class got a D or F and either had to take it again or find another major.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Looking back, every science teacher I had in both middle school and high school was fantastic. They loved their subject material, they loved teaching. They put together fun and interesting labs (my high school anatomy teacher, Mrs. Pousman, was famous for using different food and candies to illustrate difference cells - Necco wafers became skin cells, marshmallows became fat cells, Twizzlers became striated muscle cells... hey look Mrs. Pousman, I remembered that term!)
The math teachers just didn't have the same enthusiasm or tools. A high school calculus teacher tried - we got Hershey Kisses during the lesson on parabola osculations - but lab time in math classes was not often enough.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I consider the teachers' methods a direct result of helicopter parenting. Thirty years ago, when a kid got a bad grade, the parent would take it up with the kid to do better. Flash forward to now, and as often as not, the parent takes it up with the teacher - "why aren't you giving my kid a better grade?" Teachers have lost the support of the parents, who've switched sides to their little self-esteem monsters.
If you can figure it out yourself, go for the math and science education. If you can't, don't even try.
Your professors are generally not teachers--they're publishers of academic articles. Your teaching assistants are inexperienced grad students who are paid shit.
For this your student loans have doubled interest rates and your student loan debt is nondischargeable in bankruptcy.
This is the Republican "free market." Enjoy it.
Science is all fun and games until someone gets hurt. But how could science ever hurt anyone? It's all just facts.
My philosophy students often approach the subject as being a class in Opinion. As in "that's just my..."
About Feinman, star professors come along every once in awhile. But we have to be able to teach science using adjuncts who can't speak English properly. At least, that's the law of large numbers (in enrollment).
Maybe if we spent more time trying to TEACH people STEM subjects instead of trying to weed them out, we would not have this problem. STEM has a shortage because of elitism. And now, we are paying for it.
I really am that old. ;-) The last time I was in a classroom was 30 years ago. It may take a while to get a new degree, but I'm going for it!
When I went to law school decades later, it was deja vu all over again. If you've got an aptitude for legal reasoning, almost any law school can give you a deep understanding how legal systems work. But if you're at the other end of the spectrum, then no matter how much you work, no matter how much you spend on study aids, the best you can ever hope for is a sad existence posting snarky, unintentionally funny, comments about patent law on Slashdot.
(Sorry, couldn't resist!)
Fundamental problem is the quality of unionized High School teachers, and the lack of teaching skills for undergrad college Profs. Forget 'intelligence', Nobel Prizes, research money raised, how good at teaching are they? I managed to get through Engineering at a top ranked public university....even with a mediocre primary education. I worked full time and went to a junior college (community college) for 3 years to save money for university. I think this is the best solution for many wanting a science or engineering education. Why? Because JC profs only teach. No pecking order in tenure tracks, no research grant competition, minimal ego battles with administration. My Calc teacher in JC was a registered Professional Engineer, nearing retirement with an aerospace company. Taught half day, worked in industry half day. Focused on teaching, kept very long office hours. Sometimes, that meant dinner at a fast food place with us slow students. When I finally went to a university, I had a very good grasp of math, despite my 'not being good' at it. Similar situation with English. Prof was editor for newspaper, and would not tolerate sloppy writing. Paid dividends when I went to work. Electronics? x-Navy instructor. Drilled basic circuit analysis into us. We ALL could solder and were wizards with a 'scope. I was amazed at university that most Seniors couldn't solder well, if at all. East Coasters and rich Libs look down their noses at JCs. But, neither of my kids had Profs at their 'name' schools who taught as well, or cared as much about students as in my JC. The higher ed system in the US is turning into another form of American Idol. Somewhere along the way, Student Union buildings, research grants, and USA Today rankings replaced quality teaching. Fix that, and the other problems fade away.
OK, I started out as a Physics/ Astronomy major, and even got through three semesters of intro (all the way to elementary QM) and three semesters of math (thru diffy Q) as an undergrad. My problem, and why I became an English major: I was in the 3rd semester phys class and the math breaks out, and I am fine until they started using bra-ket notation. (If you don't know what I mean it's stuff like and used a lot in QM) I had no idea what it was. I hadn't seen it in a math class yet. the math and physics departments evidently never spoke to one another so there wasn't ay "matching" of the curricula, so if you got to the right notation in math you were ok but god help you if it was unfamiliar. I was too embarrassed to ask about it, probably. I didn't give up a sci major for *just* that reason. Originally I wanted to do both a liberal arts and a science degree. Yeah, I bit off more than I could chew. And I got interested in a lot of other things, like language learning (which I was more naturally talented at no question). But I did feel that I was falling behind in physics and was getting a bit frustrated I think. Even with pretty OK grades. But all that said, math builds up from one step to the other. I think it's like bicycle riding -- a lot of things stay once burned in. Anyhow, I did OK in my physics classes, and even the math. I was a B student and probably could have stuck it out. Interestingly, 20 years down the line I am back in math again. And I did Vector Calc and loved the class. My prof gave a take-home exam and I loved the fact that me and other students could argue over solutions. In one interesting instance I had the answer to a problem and I had to convince 2 other people I was right. I really learned that one! I think, even though I got a B-, (I glitched on the final, blanking on L'Hopital's rule for more than one variable, for christ's sake, I was so anxious) but my teacher was so good I felt like I learned a lot. And I still remembered, with a little prodding, the calc I took 20 years ago. Funny how it stays with you. Then this summer I was in Linear Algebra. And it was the most frustrating math class ever, for me. Lots of memorization of proofs. Abstractions way more than Vector Calc. I found it VERY hard. Much more so than vector calc even. A totally different skill set. I find that kind of abstract math more challenging for some reason. (Though I finally learned what the hell bra-ket notation meant. If someone had told me that in 1989... ) I think it's a combination of difficulty, preparedness, and the hit-or-miss setup of curricula at various colleges. And you have to have - as others here have said -- instructors who can help students with the things they struggle with. That's an art and there are no hard and fast answers or easy methods. I'll be taking partial diffs at some point soon I think. Will have to break out my old calc book and study ahead tho. (Finishing that physics BA. I really kind of dug intermediate E&M this time around).
but lots of practice, an open mind, and a healthy life style has allowed me to reach the journeyman level
No, what's needed is fewer incompetent teachers. Teachers that will teach the difference between less and fewer, for example.
I would have to see the data, however:
1) 655 is a small statistical sample for the claims they are making. Perhaps they should have taken some statistics prior to their Journalism degree.
2) See #1
3) Prerequisites. I can go take a 300 level English literature course if I like. I cannot take an advanced mathematics course without the foundation.
4) Many Universities require a broad spectrum of 1st year courses to be taken, including math and science as sometimes mandatory.
5) Many non-math or non-science degrees may have math or science requirements that need (or wish) to be taken (2).
6) Many students may have noticed that other degrees might have better job prospects. I know many hard science grads not employed in their field of study for one reason or another.
7) Teachers. Required to take so many teachable credits, however actual degree in field may not be required to graduate.
I could probably go on. Suffice it to say that much depends on the data, how it was collected, how they defined "Math" and "Science" etc...
Anyway explaining away everything as simple "MATH HARD, SCIENCE HURT HEAD. HERP DERP!" is seemingly about as intelligent as that sounds.
High school is taught to the lowest common denominator.
College is aimed at top 10%.
You do the the math. It should not be a surprise.
The fundamental "problem" with STEM fields is that they build on the information and understanding of previous years. If you have a hard time with algebra, you are boned when it comes to trig or calc.
All it takes is one bad year. Maybe it was a teacher that couldn't connect with you, or maybe a bad breakup got you distracted and mopey for a semester, maybe too much partying cut into study time ... whatever the reason, if you screw up a single link in the chain, everything after it will suffer and become exponentially harder.
Compare to history, economics, arts and crafts, interpretive dance, or whatever other non-STEM fields people major in. There may be some carry over from one year to the next, but if you forget Hannibal's motivation for trudging over mountains on elephants, it's not really going to impact your understanding of what caused the Great Depression.
This signature is false.
If you think math is easy then you clearly don't know enough math.
Math is nothing compared to Taxes. Taxes are math with no basis in reality - like the Matrix. It's like trying to imagine numbers while being hit over the head with a log. Integrate politicians in their creation, and taxes become a sin.
If you understood the subtext, you are ready for Calc 1.
From: http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.html
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Way back in the mid-eighties a first grader gave me a nugget of language that helps. The Gardner Academy (an elementary school in an under-privileged neighborhood of San Jose, California) was one of the first schools to own enough computers for students to spend significant time with them every day. Their introduction, for all grades, was learning to program, in the computer language Logo, at an appropriate level. A teacher heard one child using these words to describe the computer work: "It's fun. It's hard. It's Logo." I have no doubt that this kid called the work fun because it was hard rather than in spite of being hard.
Once I was alerted to the concept of "hard fun" I began listening for it and heard it over and over. It is expressed in many different ways, all of which all boil down to the conclusion that everyone likes hard challenging things to do. But they have to be the right things matched to the individual and to the culture of the times. These rapidly changing times challenge educators to find areas of work that are hard in the right way: they must connect with the kids and also with the areas of knowledge, skills and (don't let us forget) ethic adults will need for the future world.
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Also, a focus on early abstract academics (ABCs and gold stars) has deprived young children of time spent in nature and playing with sand, water, rocks, leaves, sticks, sunlight, and such. This means they have little physical appreciation for what abstractions like quantity, mass, heat flow, energy, and so on relate to, so kids have less physical intuition to bring to math and science. See John Holt and John Taylor Gatto for alternatives.
I think it may be more that kids realize that people who study STEM tend to get shafted economically relative to the degree of work. Example:
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
"Why does anyone think science is a good job?
The average trajectory for a successful scientist is the following:
age 18-22: paying high tuition fees at an undergraduate college
age 22-30: graduate school, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend of $1800 per month
age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year
age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year
age 44: with (if lucky) young children at home, fired by the university ("denied tenure" is the more polite term for the folks that universities discard), begins searching for a job in a market where employers primarily wish to hire folks in their early 30s
This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead.
Why then, does anyone think that science is a sufficiently good career that people should debate who is privileged enough to work at it? Sample bias."
There was another article on how there are less Electrical Engineers. I read the EE Times forums and many EEs say they tell their kids not to go into the field based on career prospects and working conditions.
Also on the failure of the US academic system for STEM:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"I would like to propose a different and more illuminating metaphor for American science education. It is more like a mining and sorting operation, designed to cast aside most of the mass of common human
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Damn, you all are starting to sound like dad.
He had a regular stream of pre-meds and later 6 year med students that NEEDED an A. They had all already gotten an A in high school chemistry.
10% couldn't balance a redox equation to save their lives. 4.0 students in high school. Sometimes it got ugly, begging was involved.
Some couldn't plug numbers into formulas. He always wondered how they got their, especially the 6 year med school students. Can you really memorize yourself a 4.0 in high school?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The sciences are difficult for the unprepared. Kids raise in a learning environment will do well. Science is hard because the kid never liked school, was never encouraged at home, figured 3 square, a steady job a beer, and time to watch the game. School was taught as one size fits all, or to the lowest denominator, don't let some advance or you'll hurt the feelings of the less capable. Home environment, schools, unions, peer pressure, see school as something to be endured and escaped as soon as possible, ridicule those who do better than you. If you put a kid into a learning environment early on, there are few limits to what most kids could do. Me? I never had to study, made top grades, and the first thing college taught me was I was SOL because I didn't know how to study. So..I got a good tech job, kept going to college part time with a couple classes per year. Finally learned how to study effectively, picked up the basics, quit work, went to college, earned a bachelors of science degree and was picked up on a graduate assistant-ship for my Masters. It was the long way around, but I did it and if I can do it, most any kid that wants to and is willing to work can too. The ones who just go into debt to get a useless degree are also SOL, but due to lack of ambition and expecting the government to do it for them will likely never become much of anything worthwhile.
I cannot speak for my own degree as I study film. However, I have friends studying mathematics, physics, computer science etc. in Oxbridge, Exeter and the like. Indeed, my sister studied linguistics in Exeter and is going to Oxford for an MA. Now, the point I'm making is that all of these subjects are hard at this level (welcome to university, folks.) What is lacking, a lot of the time, is the drive and passion for the subject. Maths and sciences are, more often than the arts, taken as a means to a career. This means that people are doing them as a necessity, not as a subject of passion. Therefore, the subject feels more relentless and unbending. Of course, this doesn't apply to all students of these subjects (my aforementioned friends who study mathematics and sciences etc. are hugely enthusiastic and enamoured with the subjects) but I think it is certainly more true than, say, a person studying film as a gateway to a career.
Every major field that's taught in university has vastly more information than can be taught to students. The STEM fields are hardly unique that way.
What's odd is that the science and technology majors make an effort to push students as hard as possible, and the other majors choose not to. Look back on the standards at schools 100 years ago and you'll often see that the liberal arts curium seems way more difficult and thorough than it is today.
There is a slight bias in the fact that it is a liberal arts college. They're attracting students who on the most part would have little or no aptitude for maths and science to begin with and then making them do some as part of their liberal arts degree. I found my art degrees (yes, plural - Fine Art, Visual Culture, Literature) more difficult that the BSc. (Physics), B.Sc. (Geology) and B. Comp.Sc (Maths major). Mainly as there is a LOT more research to do.
In most maths / science subjects you can get away with reading one good textbook to explain a concept (sometimes two textbooks are needed for some subjects, like one of my physics subjects was 50% Atomic Physics with one text book, and 50% Thermodynamics with another textbook - they later split it into two different subjects like a normal university would do it). In art you need to read about 20+ books per essay (and you need to write three or four essays or more per subject), and rather than the book explaining a concept to you, you have to write a compelling argument around a concept and support it with quotes from aforementioned books (some of which are not written directly concerning the concept, but support or oppose it none the less).
Science/Maths is also easier in the fact that when you get an answer you can be pretty sure you know when you got it correct or not, were as in art your argument can be based on shaky ground and not be very compelling. (To get around that problem I usually write more than one essay per assignment and do a for essay and an against essay, and try to look for the problems on both sides of the argument). It's an awful lot more work than the science degrees, and I think it was more intellectually stimulating in the long run.
Article:
students who dropped out didn't do so because they discovered an unsuspected amount of the [sic] work [... but] because they were dissatisfied with their grades.
Summary:
Students who dropped out didn't do so because they discovered an unexpected amount of the work and because they were dissatisfied with their grades.
So the article isn't a scientific paper, it's written in accessible language without any nerdspeak or math, and the submitter still gets the central thesis wrong because they're unable to parse negation. Maybe Slashdot should have an admission test in basic reading comprehension?
Word. The New Age movement focuses on self-esteem as primary, as if you can accomplish things by having good self-esteem first. Personally, I think self-esteem and confidence come from accomplishment, not the other way around. Once you have actually done a task successfully, you will feel good about yourself. We shouldn't be telling kids "you can do it!" but instead lead them to take on new ideas and skills - and follow through - by sheer determination. That's what commitment means. It builds character, really it does. :)
http://www.dol.gov/
There is all the proof you need. The prices you cite as 'not going up', the shortage of workers in these fields, the statistical analysis on a yearly basis of how an influx of STEM graduates has affected the fields in question. Hell, do a 5 second Google search and you could have 15 billion articles digest the information that is readily available to you from the department of labor.
It really isn't that hard to see, but hey if you want to be stubborn and try to back your point by saying 'hand waving' or 'show me the stats' that isn't my fault. I actually AM one of those not too far removed STEM graduates that now works as a software engineer and have seen a lot of this first hand and heard from plenty of people that have been in these fields for 10 to 15+ years (not just in software either, I work with electrical, mechanical, and even some chemical and energy engineers). You can dismiss this as 'anecdotal' if you want, but the fact remains, look at the stats and the numbers don't lie.
Good to have Hugh Pickens back, though.