College is a waste of time. The majority of my experience thus far has been an abject farce. In a capitalist society, these atavistic juggernauts would have died long ago, but the mixed economy has a special talent for preserving the worthless at the expense of the innovative.
My two freshman semesters were spent in a monstrosity euphemistically named "First Year Engineering." We learned nothing. Project Lead the Way taught the design process much more accurately to students four years younger in an hour. We waddled our way through the usual "diversity" bullshit and all the non-technical garbage of that nature.
First Year Engineering did teach us one thing: MATLAB, the primary calculating tool used here. But I think it's safe to say that only a blubbering moron could have done a worse job. Six weeks of variations on descriptive statistics--really? Then slamming us with graphic user interfaces--which naturally have so much to do with anything we'll be doing.
But what makes me write tonight is the science departments, though FYE fits into the broader theme. The individual engineering departments I've taken course in (to date, Aerospace and Mechanical) have generally been pretty well managed, though of course they had considerable room for improvement. But the pre-requisite classes in the mathematics and sciences divisions are absolutely disastrous. Why is that?
I think it's because students have no where else to go. Engineering students such as myself have to choose what flavor they want to take, and (especially in the first semesters) students will change if they decide that it isn't their cup of tea. The departments are in competition for students, even if they have a large base that will struggle through so long as the money hold out (myself with aerospace, for example).
But the basic math and science courses don't have that problem, do they? Once a course is added to an Engineering Department Plan of Study, they have a steady supply of students. It's very rare for a course to be struck from a P.O.S.
And we see the natural failure of a bureaucracy not subject to competition. Without the need to attract students, the professors have no strong motivation to correct mistakes in their content, improve their teaching methods, and so on. Only when too large a percentage of students start failing--and suddenly their tenure becomes suspect--does anything change.
First Year Engineering fits this mold, interestingly enough. They have a steady supply of students, most of whom will stick it out till they can move on to the greener if more arid pastures of their majors. They have absolutely no incentive to improve, and the bureaucracy there is worst than anywhere else. (From what I've heard described, I couldn't design a less-efficient system if I tried.)
How do we fix this problem? Here are a few suggestions:
- Just abolish set plans of study. Let students pick and choose what courses they want to take.
- Abolish tenure. Professors that can't teach, should either be taken away from teaching or forced onto the labor market.
- Increase the test-out options for students. If you can demonstrate you know the material, you shouldn't have to sit through useless introductory classes, forgetting more than you learn.
What I can say is this: if the problem isn't fixed by the time my children are ready to attend college, I'm not going to send them. Period. If they want to get ripped off, they can do it on their own dime.
In fact, I'd advise everyone to opt-out of college to the maximum extent possible. Our educational system is broken, and no amount of tinkering is going to fix it. We need to throw it out and start over, but that will never happen until we're willing to stop feeding the beast.
