University has turned into kindergarten

It explains nothing.

We are now talking about the general trend that the level of university education is being dumbed down. Stating that only Florida is the problem is a not an answer.

For instance, why did they hire me?

I heard there were many american candidates from all over the country for the position I am currently in. They preferred me. Is it because of my charming personality? I doubt it. And I am not that good either. Is the rest worse? That could be an answer. Or they are different.

I always wondered why you hardly ever see american scientists in Europe. I never met one for instance. You can of course say that the best research is done in the US, but nobody is that shallow to believe that. Excellent research is extremely dependent on the conditions. One of the more important factor is people. Excellent researchers are all spread out over the world and not restricted to the US. Some of the best researchers in their field are sitting in European labs. No Americans there though. Why? Too much trouble? We go to the US and Japan. Don't americans see it as a valid option? Is it more easy to stay in the US?
As you can see lots of questions and no answers.

Let's reflect back to the situation in florida. I'm sure that there is lots of mediocre research here, but the place is big enough to also have very excellent researchers present. They often also teach. Still this does not seem to motivate students either. To get up to date lectures on the latest research that goes beyond the textbook. I can remember those lectures when I was a student. I gobbled them up and then went to the library to look up the original articles and read them. I hear people complaining that there just isn't that much interest. (a generalization will follow) What students are interested in is getting good grades for the sake of good grades. Because they can't have their precious career without a perfect record or extra merit. Students work in labs because of the extra merit but often do not really care about the work.
I Europe the situation is slightly different because good grades are unimportant for a career. I often pitty americans for this. I often tell them to go to Europe. Nobody cares about your grades. They care more about your motivation and skill (in research). But as we have seen earlier no American seems to see this as a valid option for whatever reason. They usually give you a blank stare that seems to say; what do you mean go to Europe? In Europe the problems lie in a different area wit student. Lack of interest. Went to university because I didn't really know what to do else. That kind of stuff. And if you have a lot of these kind of unmotivated people you lose the acadamic edge. University turns into a school.

end rant.

 

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Didn't we beat you?

I go to the University of Alabama (insert joke here) and I have noticed all of the non-college material that does go here. A friend of mine is in astronomy and she said one of the girls in their got confused when they were talking about the earth being round or flat... she asked which one was right. She needs to leave and leave now.

 

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University in america....
... an oxymoron?

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Huuummmmm....
*ponders*

 

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It was like this during Einsteins time in Europe (maybe even more). I think they even called him a 'stupid dog' for having a B average.

The strength of university is that you get out what you put in. I know many guys who are here solely for the pursuit of science. Good grades being a nice side effect.

 

Yep. But those are rare. Specially nowdays, where the opposite is encouraged....

 

Well ... So? How many "students" get in a good university because of good reference or "who" they are and/or who they know. In kindergarden, as in university, as in a job, as in life, it's not as much WHAT you know rather than WHO you know. In general, what I've observed so far in my life, is that more often than not, it's not the most qualified nor the most deserving that get's the job, the class, etc. If that student uses his mother to "get in" and it works, then good for him. To get ahead, use all or any resource you have.

on the other hand,
If there was a good chance that a phone call from my mother to my boss would get me a promotion, would I tell my mom to call? Me.. probably not. Too much pride. Some of us have too much integrity to become rich and "successful". George W. Bush, on the other hand ...

 

For some mothers it really is.

 

Dsdsds,

in this case the phone call from the mother didn't improve the quality of his or her network at all. It lowered the esteem of the student in the eyes of the staff. University staff do not want to be treated as a school teacher. Because mostly they are not. They do research, and they teach young people to become independent researchers. A phone call from someone's mother isn't an approporiate action. What could have helped maybe if the student had the guru in that particular scientific field call the local university staff. That might have worked. Not someone's mummy.

But I understand fully the principle you are describing in your post. You are 100% right about that. That is indeed the way to go forward. It's merely unfortunate that a wrong approach was chosen in this case. If we speculate a bit on the why the mother called, I think it wasn't because they made the conscious decision to do some effective networking. I personally think the mother was still in her 'mother mode' of looking out for her children's affairs, not realizing that the university is not supposed to be a school. It is supposed to be an academic institution with rather different values than ordinary educational training institutes.

But nowadays the line has blurred between education and acadamic education. Maybe we cannot blame the mother for not seeing the difference anymore. Unfortunately the university staff still like to present themselves as academic.

 

I can't speak for how they've changed, as I've been a student only two years, but university to me seems like a complete and total joke. Arts, at least. Sciences and Engineering and Math seem to still have their shit together and be fairly hard at most places. But every single Arts class without exception that I've attended has been so brain-dead easy that a retarded four year old with alzheimer's could get an A without trying. And this has only served to make me more obnoxious to the people around me. Most of my friends are in Arts and they work at least 3 hours a day and get maybe B's. In every Arts class I've taken (every single one) without exception I've not attended class, studied for one-two days before the final, and aced or gotten a high B, and I've always gotten above class average. The supposedly hardest class in first-years Arts - deductive logic - I got 100% on without studying for one minute for the exam or attending class once.

Frankly, I think my peers are brain-dead monkeys. I've found no other explanation for this behavior. I think the high-school public system has simply taught all of us how to be supremely retarted, and it's only my lack of attendence in high school which must have saved me. High school taught everyone how to regurgitate bullshit and think that you're doing something hard. They made us write essays and told us we had to work hard to do well to scare us. Really, all along, all they wanted was an extremely followed formula - and if you did it; instant 90% or more! It's like they say "this is hard" so everyone believes them that it's hard. Meanwhile it's easier than touching my finger to my nose.

I supposedly go to the best university in Canada for Arts (McGill - also the highest admission average), yet for my fourth year class I wrote my 15 page final paper in a day and got an A. Somehow all the fourth and fifth year students wrote for weeks and the class average was a B-. What the fucking hell are these people smoking? I swear they must be smoking crack during the day every day.

Which also brings up the shit they talk about lifestyle affecting things. I smoke pot every night, drop acid fairly regularly and refuse to do any work past 8 o'clock in the evening. Yet, I'm dandy.

These people. I can't for the life of me imagine what they're doing.

 

You may wish to consider the possibility Tyler, that you are naturally gifted.

 

Yeah I'm a bit smarter than most my age. But that doesn't account for nearly the deviations I'm talking about.

 

Tyler's absolutely right. My school ranks as something like the 15th in the nation for undergraduate studies (in some programs) and the work in anything liberal arts is a joke. I've written English papers for finals over the course of a day, coming down off of e and not even sure I was hitting the right keys. I get a's, mostly.

Before I decided to get out of here I took one philosophy class. Nobody besides myself had any interest in the subject and complained vociferously whenever the teacher tried asking students to evaluate an argument or a movement.

Why? Well none of the answers for the things he was asking were in the assigned readings!

I have to say I've grown up in a university town, so I knew firsthand that students were dumb and (most) teacher's self-involved fools, but wow.

You know what has been challenging for me? Studying mechanics at a community college.

 

Universities only measure how fast and precisely you can absorb and process information. That is not an accurate measure of someone's intelligence. There are many kinds of intelligence. The two highest and most important kinds of intelligence are not measured at university (actually, arts classes might attempt to measure, but this is only a guess- I personally avoid those classes). Those two are creative and adaptative intelligence. The latter consists of the ability to change smoothly according to circumstances. The former is the ability to combine completely different concepts into something new, logical and useful. Those are two very useful kinds of intelligence which are always ignored at university.

Hence why Einstein could only be an average B student.....

Yaba Daba! :m:

 

Actually.. I'm not sure he was a B student. He recieved that comment for a grade of 85% (which I think is a B+ or A-)

Einstein was doing high level math at a young age and would certainly be an 'A' student nowadays.

 

High level math used to be common at a young age. Nowdays, we study way too many subjects at once to be able to have the time to study math in depth.

 

Nonsense. They never taught high level stuff in grade 6.

 

Of course not. How many subjects did you study in grade 6?

 

Einstein was doing extremely advanced math at an extremely young age. It was everything else he got low marks in.

But that seems to go along with genius. Most of the mathematicians I've studied did extremely poorly in grade schools and even many of them at university except in one or two classes. They all excelled in the very specific areas they were fascinated with, and didn't do an ounce of work in any other area. Most of my math profs hate giving marks. Their attitude is that school is for you to learn, not to get graded.

I complained a lot about school, but like Xev I do have some challenge. The advanced maths classes I take are difficult and the class averages are barely passes. It's just that arts classes are complete shite.

Now, this is not to say all of you (and me) who are doing poorly in stupid classes and well in a few are geniuses!!

 

Why not?

 

Because we're not all geniuses.
It's going to take an awful lot of proof before I'd ever recognize myself as any sort of notable intelligence.