> I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week class.
Yeah, no. This is the problem with so many of these anti-college diatribes: legitimate criticisms such as increasingly abysmal professor-to-administrative ratios are drowned out in complete hyperbole.
Or, taken another way: treat this article as an anecdote rather than a prescription.
> I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week class.
That was true for me in high school, but not in college.
At Caltech, it took me about an average of 3 hours to learn the material covered in an hour of lecture. A joke at the time was "one week into the semester, and I'm already 3 weeks behind!"
A friend down the hall could learn a Caltech course in a few hours by flipping through the textbook. I was nowhere near as smart as him.
> A friend down the hall could learn a Caltech course in a few hours by flipping through the textbook. I was nowhere near as smart as him.
I very much doubt this, and I'm curious about the truth. I suspect that if you replaced 'smart' with 'well trained' it would be true. No one is born knowing support vector machines, but if you'd previously learned perceptrons and quadratic minimization you could understand them in an afternoon. My guess is that your friend was very very precocious - and well trained.
Same experience. In fact, I think most of my college friends have the same experiences. It is hard to find someone who is always on top of his/her work.
I kind of get the author's idea. I can probably skim through the course materials more quickly on my own.. But I wouldn't be able to understand and remember the materials to the same extent if I have not done the homework and the exams.
An excellent question. For the first couple years at Caltech, I struggled a lot. The second two were easier, though I was learning more material faster.
I think what happened was I "learned how to learn". Part of that indeed was getting better at picking out what to focus on. I don't believe I got any smarter.
It was still a full time job to keep up, though. 33 years after I graduated, I still have "examination dreams" where I attend a class and have no idea what the prof is talking about. Fortunately, these dreams have become less and less frequent over the decades :-) But it was worth it. I'm glad I've never been in combat, I shudder to think about the nightmares vets must suffer.
I wouldn't say this is complete hyperbole, but it might need the additional clarification of "I could teach myself more useful stuff in one afternoon..."
Surely you've had an experience where something you picked up on a single afternoon had more long term value than an entire course?
I'm finishing up my final semester -- double major in Marketing and CS -- and the one class that I can say was worth less than a free afternoon was Computer Skills for Business. A one-credit seminar that taught the virtues of Excel macros and what not.
The distinction in my mind is the definition of useful. Are we talking useful in careers or useful in life? I took six credits worth of British literature that probably won't be making my code any better, but the influence it had on the way I view the world and make decisions can't be replicated by an afternoon of hacking and Googling.
I actually tend to agree with that statement to some extent. Not because I can take in an entire class worth of material in an afternoon, but because experience with school showed my learning style did not lend itself to the classroom, so I would end up not learning much in those ten weeks. I'd have to put in those afternoons (and evenings) applying my own techniques in order to stay up with everyone else who learned naturally in-class.
I feel people who have graduated from college, and have obviously excelled in that environment, fail to realize what it is actually like for other people. Sadly, promoting college as the prescription is even more common than this side of the coin.
The history of this is controversial. Student Government was charged with polling the student body and making an official recommendation to President Destler on that basis. The students voted to keep 10-week quarters, but SG recommended against the popular vote. It wasn’t just their fault, of course, but this kind of thing is part of the reason I left RIT. Nothing seemed to get done, at least not right.
From my understanding (which is indeed limited), yes, give or take two-three weeks -- with the exception of summer or winter classes, which meet more frequently but for a lesser overall time period.
Still, the intensity of that course can vary, depending on the number of 'credit hours' it is worth: for example, a one credit class might meet for once a week, whereas a three credit class will meet thrice.
The Scottish University I attended in the 1980s had years made up of 3 terms of roughly 10 weeks - 9 of teaching and one of exams. A class would typically run for the whole year - so for our first year maths course there were about 6 lectures and 2 tutorials and one exam for that class at the end of the year - the class exams during the year not actually counting for anything. We probably had about ~30 hours of timetabled lectures and tutorials a week - which actually got less as you went through the 4 year course but the overall workload incread a lot - although you were always left to decide how much you wanted to work (in my final year I did a lot of 14 hour days).
Overall I thought it was great, I learned a huge amount, pushed myself really hard (mentally and physically) and had a hoot of a time socially. I don't regret it for a moment - and not just because it didn't cost me or my parents a penny!
[NB My tax payments have more than repaid the investment made in me.]
Some US universities operate on a quarter calendar (4 terms per year), while others use a semester calendar. Semester terms are roughly 5 months long. I am not familiar with any other calendar terms used in the US.
Semesters by definition are about 15 weeks long. Some schools (like RIT) operate on shorter quarter schedules of ~9 weeks, but this is definitely not the norm.
Yeah, no. This is the problem with so many of these anti-college diatribes: legitimate criticisms such as increasingly abysmal professor-to-administrative ratios are drowned out in complete hyperbole.
Or, taken another way: treat this article as an anecdote rather than a prescription.