Sunday, October 23. 2005Students are the only bottom line that matters
They have done away with standards, requisites, and learning objectives. All that matters is getting 4 years worth of fees out of a product. This is a sure fire way to run a department into the ground, here is why...
Universities, like any other business, have profits as their first objective. It's important you realise that when you're in college, as it'll answer a lot of questions for you. The only thing the university really cares about is getting as much cash in as possible. When you look at most markets there are generally 3 types of retailers.
If you're from America, you'll notice that one clothes store sells the same products at all three levels. Banana Republic, Old Navy, and Gap all sell the same clothes. The only thing that differentiates the products is the cost and the in store service. In Gap you get a greeter who offers you a big smile and asks how your day is going and if you need any help just ask, in Old Navy you get a basket and a grunt from an employee, I don't know what you get in Banana Republic, but it had better be special. 
So that’s simple economics, but what has that got to do with universities, or Bart’s recent post about the decline in quality of the undergraduate degree. Well, my university (more specifically my department) is currently in transition from Tescos to Aldis. The only goal of the university at the moment is to shift products. They have done away with standards, requisites, and learning objectives. All that matters is getting 4 years worth of fees out of a product. This is a sure fire way to run a department into the ground and then some. Students are the only bottom line a university should concern itself with. To be precise, the only thing that a university should care about is the quality of its graduates. Once that is in place, everything else will look after itself. 
Good Students Increase ProfitsUniversities need...
If you are graduating excellent students, they will get jobs. If they get jobs and are indeed excellent the profile of the university will increase. This will result in more students coming to your university. If businesses hire many of your students and find them to be good, they will gain an invested interest in what subjects you teach, what final year projects you offer, what research you do. This will get you funding. If you have funding, and you have excellent students, you can select the best ones for postgraduate careers. This will provide you your top quality research students. So, all of a universities needs are met simply by ensuring that final year students are good, or at the very least that your grades are reflective of student ability. More than two thirds of my year graduated with a 2.1 or higher, that is effectively saying to employers that the degree means nothing. The teaching process has failed to ensure that students have the appropriate skill sets, and has failed to distinguish between the different abilities of students. It all comes down to education, if you educate your students well, your university will succeed. Its like what Paul Graham says about restaurants
When you do research in Computer Science Education, people always have 2 questions "Is that real research?", and "Why do you bother?” Well I hope this post answers the second question somewhat. Universities are in the business of selling teaching; if their teaching isn't good they won't go far. In Set Your Priorities, Joel Spolsky wrote that to succeed a business must focus entirely on its objectives, and ignore irrelevant ancillary tasks ("Dumb Shit" is his term) Its the exact same for universities. If they aren't concerning themselves with great teaching, they're wasting their time. And that’s where Computer Science Education comes in. LinksComments
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As you know, I agree with you 100%, and I had the very same discussion with a staff member a while back.
It came down to two thing, could the uni. afford to be the loss leader for the 1st couple of years it would take the graduates from the course to make an impact in industry. The 2nd, if the uni. developes an reputation that only 20% of people in 1st yr will make it to final year, would that incurage students to goto that uni. I know of some uni. where they do this, like only the top 50% of the class will make into next year regardless of how high ever one scored. But these places have hugh student pools to they can afford to be unfair assholes. I guess the main point to take away from this would be that, I don't know where the ballance lies between retention and quality of graduates.
Yeah, those are two obstacles. But they can be avoided/alleviated.
Firstly, things like PR and marketing can both shorten the amount of time it takes for the University to get a good reputation and secondly can bring in money in the form of investments. I'm not sure if it can afford to be a loss leader for long, but its a better game plan than the current one. I don't think its a good idea to limit the number of places in second year of a course ever. You should never turn away good students, and that approach would imply that good students may get turned away. I think a better one would simply be that you must score a first class honor in programming to advance to second year. That'll ensure that you don't have weak programmers to deal with in the later years.
Nice post Des.
To some extent I see where Vish is coming from in his comment but places that put hard limmits like "only the top 50%" on their students are basially at the opposite extreme to what I see in NUIM ATM where it seems to be a case of "at least 80% must get through" (I made up that figure but it seems about right to me). In an ideal university ALL students who reach the grade and ONLY students who reach the grade should pass and that grade must not be let slip regardless of fluctuations in student ability. If the pass-rate starts falling then you need to increase the quality of your teaching or of your in-take but not drop your standards, that results in bad graduates going out into the real world and making your name muck and hence reducing your intake of students in an ever decreasing spiral. IMO a CS degree from NUIM is now not worth much ATM because of how much I have seen standards slip in my eight years in this place (see my blog entry linked to by Des). Simply put I would not employ an NUIM graduate based on their NUIM degree, I would only employ them based on their other achievements and experiences. I can only imagine how Intel feel when they hire our graduates and find that many of them are lacking in even the most basic CS skills but I doubt they go around telling everyone how great NUIM graduates are. Although I may sound very scathing of University administrators I would like to point out that a lot of the blame lies over their heads, at government level. The government judge colleges based on retention rates and the number of graduates that a university spews out in a year without paying due attention to the quality of those graduates. Hence the government funding for our universities is governed to a large extent by these incorrect metrics and it is the quality of the end product, i.e. our graduates that is suffering from this missguided approach to education. What makes this all the worse is that our famous 'celtic tiger economy' is built on a foundation of education and knowledge and our government seem to be systematically chiselling that foundation away.
Good post Des, some interesting stuff there.
I don't disagree with you, but call this a devil's advocate position or whatever; linked to what Vish said, assuming standards were raised considerably, and as a result the majority of current level students were failing out of the course, say a 75% failure rate, is that sustainable? NUIM isn't exactly a hugely popular University - CAO applications aren't bad, but there aren't very many 500+ points courses run here either, particularly not in IT. IT courses in general aren't doing too good, so dumping a large percentage of what few students you do get might not be a workable strategy. I'm only loosely familiar with the current funding situation in the place, but I do know the money isn't exactly pouring out of the woodwork. So if you're losing the majority of students you take in, would that leave the Dept in a tenable position re staffing, funding, etc? I do appreciate your point re marketing, bottom lines, etc, but at the end of the day, everything costs money, and running a university or university dept is a hugely expensive endeavour. If you're only producing a bare handful of graduates, even if they're of high quality, that might leave the Dept in a difficult position, sustainability wise. That said, as yourself and Bart point out, the current apparently declining standard in graduates might not be a very tenable position either.
Great post Des. Dave, I see what you are saying, but you need to look at the standards separately from the economics for a moment. The current setup is a big waste of money, free fee's means that anyone can try their hand at csse, and if they drop out, no big deal. Basically, raise the fees to a level that is necessary for people to be taught well. If you can't afford the fees, the government pays them. But this is means-tested, and only applies if you are really poor. Anyone else is given an option of paying, or taking out a loan.
As for standards, as Des and others have said, if the teaching and graduates improved, the quality of the student intake would rise and fail rates do not have to shoot up. All you are doing is removing the people who don't give a shit, the half lazy people will be kicked into working, and the good students will do fine anyway. This is all idealistic stuff, and will probably never happen, but it gets depressing talking about how crap the situation is the whole time, might as well spend the time thinking about solutions.
Well if the CS degree for example had a reputation as being one of the hardest degrees in the country, the smart people would flock to do it. 500+ people, and really good people want to study at the highest level in the hardest place. They are the target market.
But, I never said that we need to start failing students, I said we need to improve the standard. This doesn't mean more students have to fail, it means they need to start working harder. It also means we need to start teaching better. We need to convince the first years that they should be learning stuff, not simply skimming through powerpoint slides with a highlighter in an attempt to pass an exam. (BTW: I installed nl2br, so your paragraphs will be disjoint now)
"We need to convince the first years that they should be learning stuff, not simply skimming through powerpoint slides with a highlighter in an attempt to pass an exam"
It's true. I know people tried that for the programming exam in first year, cos they STILL hadn't a clue about it. I know some people don't have an aptitude for programming, but that sort of thing should be told to students that it doesn't work. The emphasis should be on continuous assessment for programming, with a written exam at the end. i know for maple in the maths dept, it's 40% CA and then 60% exam. Or maybe it's the other way around. They also put us into groups of three. At the moment, I'm in a group with a guy who did first year cs and codes really well, and I'm not sure what the other dude did. He may have done maple before, he may not have. However, we're encouraged to work together, and I know we do. The whole class does. It also means that if you can't get a part, the chance of someone else being able to get it is quite high. Maybe that sort of thing could be brought into the cs dept? I know we did the problem based learning in first year, but if that's not working (with regards to pass rates, and people still struggling with code), it could be the way forward. Who better to learn from, than someone your own age, and who knows what way you're thinking?
Great post Des.
Many late night conversations have been had at Casa Del ClaireKevinCianMeaigs on this topic and it was widely agreed that I was the problem. By about Christmas of first year it was quite evident to anyone who cared (Claire and that weird stalker from Monaghan) that I had no interest left in computer science longterm and that I should have hopped into theology or philosophy. Borrowing notes off your sister on Foucault should have been a clue to me. But as Phil has pointed out, the free fees system encourages really destructive behaviour from students so that it was financially prudent to stick with CSSE. I got a 2:1. I sometimes marvel that I can turn a computer on. I got by with a little (lots of) help from friends and a marking system that must have been preposterously flexible. Thankfully for the tech industry, it is unlikely I will ever apply to work as an engineer or a programmer. But this lack of suitability to the course is why I am the problem. First year should be intensive* and challenging and exciting so that by the end of it, the potentially gifted programmers have enough to really chew on without resorting to the gurus at MiNDS> to keep them going. Those that can't feel the heat should be failed and those that are suited to a really excellent course won't notice the heat since they'll be having too much fun. *by intensive, I mean programming obbsessed. While true, do listen to Zoomtard. |
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This website is the online diary of me, Des Traynor, a User Experience Researcher in Dublin, Ireland. I work with Contrast. I usually write on 5 topics: I update about 3-4 times per month. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss this good stuff. If this is your first time here, check out the archives.My official homepage provides more information about who I am, and what I research. You can contact me at destraynor [at] gmail [dot] com Quicksearch |
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From myself and Des' posts on the matter and the comments both posts have recieved, it would seem fair to say that people agree that academic standards are on a slide. I've been pondering this for a while now and I've decided to summarise my views on wh
Tracked: Nov 25, 08:16