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Comment by spicymaki | Hacker News Reader

Here is my take:

This class seems to be a filter class. A class designed to sift out students that would not cut it in a engineering/science curriculum. They are not designed for students to learn, they are designed as a barrier. That in itself is fine if it happens early enough so students can regroup and reevaluate what to do next with their lives. What I don't like about this is that there is a mismatch between what colleges are saying they want to do and what they are actually doing. They should actually state that in the name and description of the course. I wish schools would be transparent so they don't waste the money and time of the students. This won't happen of course, we will just continue the kabuki dance.

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That is often given as an excuse for this common experience, but it is not really intended. Top schools are assessed on their graduation rates. It is part of the rankings they are obsessed with. It serves no one--students or schools--for students to be weeded out in these intro courses.

The truth is just that even top schools in the US (and I suspect, ESPECIALLY top schools, more so than middle-tier schools) are really, really bad at teaching STEM, even to students very interested in learning. I still have clear memories 20 years later of my awful Calc 3 (multivariate) class. In one lecture, the prof spent the entire time on one problem on the chalkboard. He never looked at his notes. At the very end, he looked at his notes and then at the solution on the board and then back at his notes...and stuttered that the solution on the board was incorrect. Somewhere along the way he made a mistake. "But you get the idea," he said. No, we didn't. Just awful. We were completely on our own. All this guy cared about was his research. We were a distraction to him.

> That is often given as an excuse for this common experience, but it is not really intended. Top schools are assessed on their graduation rates. It is part of the rankings they are obsessed with. It serves no one--students or schools--for students to be weeded out in these intro courses.

Unless I misunderstand what you're saying here, it really is intended. "Top schools are assessed on their graduation rates" so if they don't admit students that will not graduate from the major into the major in the first place, they improve their graduation rates. Therefore, it does serve the school. And it probably serves the student too, since they only spend a quarter or two getting weeded out, rather than a few years and then hit a dead end.

Yes exactly. I didn't go to an Ivy League, but it was still pretty good.

The 100 level big classes were waaaaay harder than classes for the actual major. Lots of dumb problem sets that were huge just to be huge. Lots of time writing lab reports with error calculations etc.

The one hack I figured out was that if you didn't include an error calculation in your lab report, they only took off 1 point. Given it took 20+ minutes to write it up in the format they wanted using the Word equation editor (this was before I knew Latex), the -1 was absolutely worth it.

I never, ever, had to spend 60-70 hours a week outside of class doing work though. That's insane.

> This class seems to be a filter class.

"Linear Algebra for Engineers" is a bit late for an early filter class (Generally Calculus 102 or Physics 101/Chemistry 101 are those filter classes) and too early for a field filter class (ie. Thermodynamics, Electrodynamics, Organic Chemistry). Normally, linear algebra is a class in second term sophomore year (The sequence is generally->Calc 101->Calc 102->Intro to Vector Calc->Linear Algebra).

There are a couple of issues:

1) Never take the engineering version of math, physics, etc. if you want to learn. Engineering version of classes tend to emphasize "plug and chug" more than underlying understanding. The "math" version of linear algebra would presumably be pointing toward vector and complex analysis rather than PDEs and numerical analysis.

2) Linear algebra takes an AMAZING teacher to make relevant and interesting. Applying linear algebra is kind of like pointers to pointers in C--there is an extra layer of abstraction. Linear algebra is applied to something that is then applied to the application domain. Linear algebra is rarely the solution, itself.

3) Linear algebra really isn't a class to take without knowing why you are taking it. Motivation is significantly better if you've got something concrete you can apply it to.

OK - but the idea of a "filter class" is simply that the material itself is somewhat challenging, and the class syllabus is fairly fast-paced.

Not that you put banana peels in front of the students (like problem sets with no exercises). As it to discourage them for the sake of discouraging them.

That's how you would design a filter class, if you were trying to actually treat students fairly. The point is that de-facto "filter" or "weeder" classes can arise wholly organically (as in, 100% organic banana peels!) as the hopefully-unintended consequence of abysmal-quality teaching. And OP seems to be talking about something very much like the latter, not the former.

Yeah, I guess I'm kind of nostalgic for the days when being a college instructor was still considered a viable profession in itself.

"As if to"

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