AP = advanced placement. You take a harder version of a given subject, and if you pass an exam, you get credit for that course in college. It is really equivalent to an IB course or a British A-Level (or whatever they are calling them now?). However, high school teachers tend to overwork the students in these courses (which is why I think they are terrible college prep, even though you learn the material) so it is very difficult to take more than three or so per year. So students who are from a remotely decent school district will probably take a few of these, which comes out to being similar to doing IB courses and then going to university. A big problem in the states is that we do have degrees in areas that wouldn't normally require university degrees in Europe (Childhood development = preschool teachers, accountants, and so on). There would be less need for gen eds if one limited US universities to only serious academic majors. Having said this, learning philosophy from someone who has a doctorate and knows the material exceptionally well is probably a better experience than learning it from a high school teacher (whether in a US AP course or a more rigorous European high school).
Right, because all of the people who put men on the moon, are trying to fix the economy, and cure diseases, are just academics who don't get anything done.
You mean the fundamental flaw in Ph.D programs is to produce more academics, rather than focusing on getting them out in the world to get things done. Undergraduate programs (especially at the gen ed level) skim the surface. If anything, a lot of fields (especially engineering and CS) try to weed out students, not push them all towards academia.
Does a barber or a janitor understand the difference between correlation and causation? Do they understand what the word "logic" really means? Do they understand basic economics? Most of them probably don't. And I wouldn't be surprised someone who is a good programmer but lacks a well rounded education is much better than his barber or her janitor.
The problem with "just reading" is that it helps to have someone who is an expert explain things to you in more detail, or to be there to answer your questions. Writing about the stuff really makes you think about it an synthesize it more. It is sort of like the difference between reading proofs of calculus without having actually taken a derivative.
I'd like to see anyone get a job at google or some other top company who "managed to barely pass final exams using nothing more than wrote memorization skills while hung over for a period of four straight years"
College networks have a tendency to block all sorts of things. iTunes probably not (they'd rather have that than the RIAA on their doorstep) but I wouldn't be surprised if netflix is seen as a bandwidth hog.
While I agree with the funding Americans sentiment, I still think think academia and graduate schools are pretty full of white males when you take said foreigners out of the picture.
But did you learn it? In my experience, people in the "hard sciences" seem to somehow think that some topics are outside the purview of science that clearly are not. This suggests that they understand science as being about test tubes more than falsification, etc, even if they had it explained to them previously. If you think the scientific method can't be applied to human behavior, you don't get the scientific method. I guess that was more of my point, rather than to say that chem and physics majors are clueless. As a result of the scrutiny that psych gets that other fields do not, many of our majors are taught things about the philosophy and history of science that don't come up in other majors, giving those who are taught these things a better understanding than those who do not.
Ever try to argue that computer science isn't a science with CS and physics majors? Or that string theorists really aren't scientists because none of their predictions will be testable for centuries, if ever?
As for soliders: What makes you think that an officer doesn't have to use well constructed arguments to defend his actions to his superiors, or to motivate the troops under her command? Or understand the culture of a country where they are deployed? The liberal arts provide the tools needed. The US military academies are placing a lot more emphasis on them these days, and for good reason. The academies have been far too engineering focused in the past, and as a consequence the armed forces have suffered.
No. Just, no. Liberal arts degrees exist to give you skills that you can generalize to other fields. Engineering is not built that way. English majors run companies, practice law, lead troops into battle (West Point and VMI consistently do well in liberal arts rankings), the list goes on. Just because people don't "use" the degree doesn't make it useless. Psychology is one of the most popular undergrad degrees, but only a small number of the majors go on to become psychologists (whether clinicians, researchers, neuroscientists, or counselors), and yet we don't see tons of unemployed psych majors. Why? Because they have a good understanding of the scientific method (one of the only disciplines that actually spells it out to their majors...a psych major could give a better definition of science than most "hard science" majors who still think it is just about math and test tubes), statistics, and human behavior. A lot of companies are realizing that business majors know how to wear a tie and give a powerpoint, but actually have no idea how to read, write, and think critically. And what degree(s) could give them those skills, may I ask?
Liberal Arts colleges are not everywhere. Plenty of states between the coasts are limited to mostly land grant schools. So your idea wouldn't really work out in most cases.
Not to mention that *everybody* puts PDFs on their websites these days. Every time someone moans about academic pay walls, they should use google (not even friggin google scholar!) to find the webpage(s) of the author(s), and they should be able to get it. I do this all the time to avoid waiting on interlibrary loans, crappy databases etc. A caveat is that there usually must be an author still active to have a page to host it.
Also, here is another problem most non-academic/.-ers don't know about. Someone has to pay to publish it. So, if the journal is closed, subscriptions pay for it, and if the journal is open, the authors must pay! Some granting agencies really don't like paying for articles to get published when they don't have to.
I'm sure if you went to the lab she got her PhD in, you'd be just as clueless because you aren't trained to do her job, just like she isn't trained to do yours.
There are still several times more PhDs graduating each year than their are jobs. It doesn't help that virtually all departments/fields/disciplines/programs are structured to produce future professors, either. The whole thing is sort of a ponzi scheme, and as a young grad student I'm a bit scared when Nature and the Chronicle of Higher Ed suddenly start posting numerous articles calling it such, or criticizing how it works. I don't call that cynicism, but honesty.
I'm sure your friends who get drunk on Tuesday nights will have enough publications to get a decent post doc when they are done. I'm currently a grad student, and I know people like that. As much as I'd love to party with them, I don't envy them, even when I am in the lab on Tuesday nights. Your friends are also lucky to work on projects that they care about, rather than being forced to work on grant projects that they aren't that interested in, or to have faculty call them asking them why they aren't in the lab at 9 on a Saturday morning. Note that neither of these are a huge problem in my case (only one lame project compared to a few cool ones) and I don't work for a PI that demands that I work weekends (although I do anyway).
Conferences in Prague and SF? How much of that do they have to pay for out of pocket? The silly thing about academia is how the money works. I once explained to my dad (a retired air force colonel) that if the military was ran like academia, each squadron (or regiment, or ship, etc) would have to write a grant to congress to get money to fly to the war zone, write the DoD to pay for the ammo, and then write the UN for some cash for food, ask the next commander in the chain of command to pay for the flights back, etc. And then they would still have to buy their guns with their own cash. Oh, and each guy or gal going through basic would be told on day one that they'd end up a four star general or admiral one day.
I think the argument about babies is dubious, not all learning is created equal, so I agree with you there. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that if you talked to anyone in the military they could rant forever about the lack of realism in video games.
If you really think that parenting is the cause or solution to all problems dealing with children and adolescents, you are quite naive. Responsible parents raise bad kids, bad parents raise good kids (sometimes even a few of each!). Kids disobey their parents. Parents have to strike a balance between trusting their kids and being invasive. For example, you can argue "why did that kid have a gun to shoot up the school, where were his parents?!" - when that kid was well behaved and the parents had no reason to search his room for anything. It is sort of like saying "why did that guy have an arsenal of weapons in his garage, where was the ATF?!" when they never had any reason to investigate the guy or get a warrant. Although I don't have kids yet, I'm sure that most people with kids will probably empathize more with the argument that a bit of help from outside institutions makes their job easier, and their relationship with their kids a bit easier too.
Interesting article, thanks for posting. Definitely one of the better ones out there. I'm glad to see that they put more thought into this than other studies (ie ruling out past experiments that had crap controls, boring games, etc). But a big problem is that the tone of the article is quite sensationalist, and clearly has a solid agenda (comparing the video game industry to the tobacco industry is a bit ridiculous). It is also pretty clear that you can't turn correlational data into causal data (which they seem to think is possible with meta analysis), and that there need to be long term studies of this issue. For example, watching a movie about genocide might make one sad, but repeated viewings may not lead to depression.
Like most "brainwave" technology (ie game controllers) this is a bunch of horse shit designed by people who are clearly clueless on these matters. Electrodes are not well placed, individuals at home probably have no idea how to put it on right, the list goes on. Not to mention the lack of a system to account for eyeblinks. Head movement can screw things up, as can cell phone use. Seriously, if they took a day of psychophysiology they would know this. The fact that it was started by folks from MIT is an embarrassment to that institution.
Not really. There is a difference between solving the problems of the world (which the author claims the best and brightest should be doing) which cannot be reduced unless you think the survival of our planet or species is pointless.
Slashdot Mirror
AP = advanced placement. You take a harder version of a given subject, and if you pass an exam, you get credit for that course in college. It is really equivalent to an IB course or a British A-Level (or whatever they are calling them now?). However, high school teachers tend to overwork the students in these courses (which is why I think they are terrible college prep, even though you learn the material) so it is very difficult to take more than three or so per year. So students who are from a remotely decent school district will probably take a few of these, which comes out to being similar to doing IB courses and then going to university. A big problem in the states is that we do have degrees in areas that wouldn't normally require university degrees in Europe (Childhood development = preschool teachers, accountants, and so on). There would be less need for gen eds if one limited US universities to only serious academic majors. Having said this, learning philosophy from someone who has a doctorate and knows the material exceptionally well is probably a better experience than learning it from a high school teacher (whether in a US AP course or a more rigorous European high school).
Right, because all of the people who put men on the moon, are trying to fix the economy, and cure diseases, are just academics who don't get anything done.
You mean the fundamental flaw in Ph.D programs is to produce more academics, rather than focusing on getting them out in the world to get things done. Undergraduate programs (especially at the gen ed level) skim the surface. If anything, a lot of fields (especially engineering and CS) try to weed out students, not push them all towards academia.
Does a barber or a janitor understand the difference between correlation and causation? Do they understand what the word "logic" really means? Do they understand basic economics? Most of them probably don't. And I wouldn't be surprised someone who is a good programmer but lacks a well rounded education is much better than his barber or her janitor.
The problem with "just reading" is that it helps to have someone who is an expert explain things to you in more detail, or to be there to answer your questions. Writing about the stuff really makes you think about it an synthesize it more. It is sort of like the difference between reading proofs of calculus without having actually taken a derivative.
I'd like to see anyone get a job at google or some other top company who "managed to barely pass final exams using nothing more than wrote memorization skills while hung over for a period of four straight years"
College networks have a tendency to block all sorts of things. iTunes probably not (they'd rather have that than the RIAA on their doorstep) but I wouldn't be surprised if netflix is seen as a bandwidth hog.
It is an old Saturday Night Live reference, you uncultured swine!
While I agree with the funding Americans sentiment, I still think think academia and graduate schools are pretty full of white males when you take said foreigners out of the picture.
Something tells me that using Bose equipment is going to be taboo at caltech in the coming years.
But did you learn it? In my experience, people in the "hard sciences" seem to somehow think that some topics are outside the purview of science that clearly are not. This suggests that they understand science as being about test tubes more than falsification, etc, even if they had it explained to them previously. If you think the scientific method can't be applied to human behavior, you don't get the scientific method. I guess that was more of my point, rather than to say that chem and physics majors are clueless. As a result of the scrutiny that psych gets that other fields do not, many of our majors are taught things about the philosophy and history of science that don't come up in other majors, giving those who are taught these things a better understanding than those who do not. Ever try to argue that computer science isn't a science with CS and physics majors? Or that string theorists really aren't scientists because none of their predictions will be testable for centuries, if ever?
As for soliders: What makes you think that an officer doesn't have to use well constructed arguments to defend his actions to his superiors, or to motivate the troops under her command? Or understand the culture of a country where they are deployed? The liberal arts provide the tools needed. The US military academies are placing a lot more emphasis on them these days, and for good reason. The academies have been far too engineering focused in the past, and as a consequence the armed forces have suffered.
No. Just, no. Liberal arts degrees exist to give you skills that you can generalize to other fields. Engineering is not built that way. English majors run companies, practice law, lead troops into battle (West Point and VMI consistently do well in liberal arts rankings), the list goes on. Just because people don't "use" the degree doesn't make it useless. Psychology is one of the most popular undergrad degrees, but only a small number of the majors go on to become psychologists (whether clinicians, researchers, neuroscientists, or counselors), and yet we don't see tons of unemployed psych majors. Why? Because they have a good understanding of the scientific method (one of the only disciplines that actually spells it out to their majors...a psych major could give a better definition of science than most "hard science" majors who still think it is just about math and test tubes), statistics, and human behavior. A lot of companies are realizing that business majors know how to wear a tie and give a powerpoint, but actually have no idea how to read, write, and think critically. And what degree(s) could give them those skills, may I ask?
Liberal Arts colleges are not everywhere. Plenty of states between the coasts are limited to mostly land grant schools. So your idea wouldn't really work out in most cases.
Not to mention that *everybody* puts PDFs on their websites these days. Every time someone moans about academic pay walls, they should use google (not even friggin google scholar!) to find the webpage(s) of the author(s), and they should be able to get it. I do this all the time to avoid waiting on interlibrary loans, crappy databases etc. A caveat is that there usually must be an author still active to have a page to host it.
/.-ers don't know about. Someone has to pay to publish it. So, if the journal is closed, subscriptions pay for it, and if the journal is open, the authors must pay! Some granting agencies really don't like paying for articles to get published when they don't have to.
Also, here is another problem most non-academic
I'm sure that VCs have interest in things that won't make money for 100 years but could immensely benefit mankind. You sir, are an ignorant slut.
I'm sure if you went to the lab she got her PhD in, you'd be just as clueless because you aren't trained to do her job, just like she isn't trained to do yours.
You don't know what a postdoc is, or how the tenure track system works, do you?
There are still several times more PhDs graduating each year than their are jobs. It doesn't help that virtually all departments/fields/disciplines/programs are structured to produce future professors, either. The whole thing is sort of a ponzi scheme, and as a young grad student I'm a bit scared when Nature and the Chronicle of Higher Ed suddenly start posting numerous articles calling it such, or criticizing how it works. I don't call that cynicism, but honesty.
I'm sure your friends who get drunk on Tuesday nights will have enough publications to get a decent post doc when they are done. I'm currently a grad student, and I know people like that. As much as I'd love to party with them, I don't envy them, even when I am in the lab on Tuesday nights. Your friends are also lucky to work on projects that they care about, rather than being forced to work on grant projects that they aren't that interested in, or to have faculty call them asking them why they aren't in the lab at 9 on a Saturday morning. Note that neither of these are a huge problem in my case (only one lame project compared to a few cool ones) and I don't work for a PI that demands that I work weekends (although I do anyway).
Conferences in Prague and SF? How much of that do they have to pay for out of pocket? The silly thing about academia is how the money works. I once explained to my dad (a retired air force colonel) that if the military was ran like academia, each squadron (or regiment, or ship, etc) would have to write a grant to congress to get money to fly to the war zone, write the DoD to pay for the ammo, and then write the UN for some cash for food, ask the next commander in the chain of command to pay for the flights back, etc. And then they would still have to buy their guns with their own cash. Oh, and each guy or gal going through basic would be told on day one that they'd end up a four star general or admiral one day.
The music industry actually lacks a coherent standard. The label is given pretty much arbitrarily.
I think the argument about babies is dubious, not all learning is created equal, so I agree with you there. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that if you talked to anyone in the military they could rant forever about the lack of realism in video games.
If you really think that parenting is the cause or solution to all problems dealing with children and adolescents, you are quite naive. Responsible parents raise bad kids, bad parents raise good kids (sometimes even a few of each!). Kids disobey their parents. Parents have to strike a balance between trusting their kids and being invasive. For example, you can argue "why did that kid have a gun to shoot up the school, where were his parents?!" - when that kid was well behaved and the parents had no reason to search his room for anything. It is sort of like saying "why did that guy have an arsenal of weapons in his garage, where was the ATF?!" when they never had any reason to investigate the guy or get a warrant. Although I don't have kids yet, I'm sure that most people with kids will probably empathize more with the argument that a bit of help from outside institutions makes their job easier, and their relationship with their kids a bit easier too.
Interesting article, thanks for posting. Definitely one of the better ones out there. I'm glad to see that they put more thought into this than other studies (ie ruling out past experiments that had crap controls, boring games, etc). But a big problem is that the tone of the article is quite sensationalist, and clearly has a solid agenda (comparing the video game industry to the tobacco industry is a bit ridiculous). It is also pretty clear that you can't turn correlational data into causal data (which they seem to think is possible with meta analysis), and that there need to be long term studies of this issue. For example, watching a movie about genocide might make one sad, but repeated viewings may not lead to depression.
On another note, no one has anything to be afraid of because this technology sucks.
Like most "brainwave" technology (ie game controllers) this is a bunch of horse shit designed by people who are clearly clueless on these matters. Electrodes are not well placed, individuals at home probably have no idea how to put it on right, the list goes on. Not to mention the lack of a system to account for eyeblinks. Head movement can screw things up, as can cell phone use. Seriously, if they took a day of psychophysiology they would know this. The fact that it was started by folks from MIT is an embarrassment to that institution.
Not really. There is a difference between solving the problems of the world (which the author claims the best and brightest should be doing) which cannot be reduced unless you think the survival of our planet or species is pointless.