This is an ongoing discussion in the parents’ FB group at my son’s school and thought it would be interesting to see the opinions of a wider audience.
Like many, this large university has several classes that students (and parents) describe as weed out classes. The point that is repeatedly made is the classes have been made much more difficult than they need to be. Students come out demoralized at best even if they make it through with a decent grade, and at worst are forced to change majors.
Have to admit that when I first saw this discussion, my thought was that this s probably the first time the student has faced a low grade in a class or their first experience failing a test so cue the"whining". But there’s a solid group of parents who work in the fields in question (usually business or engineering) and feel there’s no good reason from a “real world” perspective for these classes to be so difficult. What purpose does it serve for the U to effectively turn them into an obstacle for student to be successful in getting a degree and joining the working world.
Are there "weeders’ at your student’s school? Thoughts?
If a university allows a free choice of major upon entry, weed out classes are not only necessary, but a kindness to the affected students. Letting students know early that they are unsuited for a field gives them time to find another field they are better suited for, possibly without even delaying graduation.
At my state flagship university about 30 years ago, the engineering weed out rate was well above 50%. Given the talent of some that still graduated, I think they may still have set the bar a bit too low.
I actually don’t believe that any university or department deliberately creates “weed out” classes. I base this on my experiences as a professor. I’ve never been in department meetings where a weed out strategy is discussed. On the UC campus where I worked, not infrequently, the experienced professors known to be good at explaining stuff were assigned to teach courses like intro chem.
Going from high school to college and getting used to having to take more personal responsibility, having to do more studying vs time spent in class, having fewer exams and other evaluation metrics, being in much bigger class sizes, can be an adjustment for students. I honestly don’t think weed out formulas really exist. Course enrollment sizes and resource allocations (professors, classrooms) usually follow historical data.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that the teachers in engineering / CS or pre-med classes were actively trying to fail a large percentage of the students. Rather, it reflects that these topics are difficult and that the standard for proficiency is high.
And rightly so. You want a high level of competence for future doctors, or bridge designers, or software engineers writing the control systems for a nuclear power plant.
No, I know you weren’t trying to suggest that. I can give a little more insight into those large courses, though. When a chemistry department offers intro chem that students from many other majors take, or a math department offers calculus, etc. those can be refered to as “service courses” in that they are a service to the other departments and university, not directly benfiting the students in the major. There can be some interdepartmental resentments when some departments feel they do more than their share of service courses. Some faculty hate teaching them, but others love it. Even those who like it need a change once in a while. Doing the same course for 5 years straight gets boring and that can translate to decreased effectiveness as an instructor. So faculty generally do like to mix it up a bit. So it can happen that to give a faculty member who likes teaching a big intro class, but is burned out, a break, a professor who does not like it so much will have to step up to the plate. So, it can happen that a professor who doesn’t much like teaching a huge intro course, and is used to teaching smaller classes to more advanced students, gets out of touch with what the new students know and don’t know, and perhaps will go over their heads.
At a more selective college, the students were A students in high school. But some will be B or C students in college.
Is this about the courses (which may seem difficult to students making the adjustment to college, or because the courses have to cover material rigorously enough because they are important prerequisites to later courses), or does this college have more demand for majors like business and engineering than it has space for, so it imposes a high GPA requirement or competitive admission to get into those majors? Some colleges which have oversubscribed majors do not admit directly to the major, but have entering students compete by college GPA (and sometimes additional criteria) to get into the major. This can create a “weed out” environment, regardless of the difficulty of the courses.
The university where I work puts a heck of a lot more effort into graduating the students we accept than trying to weed people out. I can’t speak for each department or professor (and I think @LBowie is spot on), but overall, that’s the case.
@ucbalumnus engineering is a capped major at this school. You are direct admitted into CoE freshman year then apply to specific engineering major for sophomore year. It’s competitive to get into the various E majors, you need specific grades/classes to be considered at end of frosh year. You are guaranteed admission to AN engineering major if you hit their minimums, some majors are more selective than others. “Weed out” classes are freshman and soph year. GPA to admission to E school from HS is 4.0+. Several of the specific engineering majors are top 10 ranked.
Business not quite as selective, but similar path - direct admit to B school as frosh and pick your major end of freshman year. “Weed out” classes are soph year - and there are a lot fewer of them than for engineering. Typical B school GPA from HS is closer to 3.8, maybe as low as 3.6 in some cases. Heavily recruited B school, kids get jobs from most of those majors.
It is easy to see why this can be a “weed out” environment, even if the courses are no more difficult than they need to be for prerequisite purposes. Some students may not be interested in the less selective engineering majors (which is likely why those majors are less selective), so not meeting the GPA threshold for their preferred majors results in being “weeded out”.
I’m not sure working in the fields in question qualifies them to determine the level of academic rigor required from a pedagogical standpoint. And really, do we want dumbed down engineers?
@sylvan8798 yeah I’m not sure a working accountant is the best arbiter of how difficult the supposed accounting weed out class should be. Especially when his response was “it’s not fair” lol. But the number of parents chiming in to agree really surprised me. And that made me wonder if I’m too blasé about the concept of weed out classes.
@ucbalumnus not meeting the grade threshold of a particular weed out class means you don’t even get to apply for your particular major - you’re out of the program. Most of the classes involved require a C or C- in the class for it to count towards the major. Obviously retaking to get a C or C- is an option but that hurts you in GPA requirements (you can’t replace a grade, they are averaged).
The GPA requirement to get into the top majors is more a case of you’ve got a 3.5 in your required classes rather than the minimum 3.2 needed for admittance to AN engineering major. Like Aerospace avg GPA starting soph year is around 3.8, Materials E more like 3.2… that kind of thing.
I took physics 2 with a young professor in his first few years of teaching. He was, I thought, enthusiastic about the subject and not bad at conveying the information. The people who sat behind me in class made fun of him for being nerdy.
The exams for that class were difficult – and, in one case, I thought actually unfair – but I don’t think our professor was the one who made them. Furthermore, the department curved grades, and after the first or second test the professor started having review sessions that really helped for the exams. I emerged with an A.
When I went to give him a positive rating on Rate My Professor, I was startled to see he had one of the lowest ratings I’d ever seen. Because he was new, and the same people who would complain about the class being a “weed-out” converged en masse to rail about what a horrible professor he was, and how hard he made the tests.
Again, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t even him making the tests.
Point is, disgruntled students will complain about literally anything. I prefer the definition of weed-out as a class that has the potential to make students drop out of the program. That way anything can be a weed-out depending on your personality and ability – calc 1 for some, physics 2 for others. I don’t know if I believe that they go away as you progress through the program, either. A friend of mine dropped out near the end of the fall of junior year.
NOT to make this all about my son’s school but many many classes have common finals - multiple profs/sections all take same final. Students know to inquire which prof is writing the final and that gives them a guide of what’s going to be on it and how difficult it will be.
The school itself also publishes grade distributions for each class/professor/section. Data on last fall’s classes should be out this week. That’s got really interesting info and does usually show variances between grades earned under different profs for the same class.
In Accounting, Intermediate is usually considered to be the weed-out. I thought the class I took was really easy, both in terms of overall grade (everyone in the class could have gotten an A, rather than a curve limiting it) and depth of understanding required (test questions identical to homework except for dollar amounts). I was surprised a couple years later to come across reviews saying how hard that specific course and professor were, and a published grade distribution showing that a large percentage of my classmates failed.
A grade threshold of C or C- is not that high. Indeed, someone who falls below that is like to risk academic dismissal from the school.
Regarding the 3.5 GPA for some majors, yes, this is a “weed out” process chosen by the school to handle oversubscribed majors (rather than direct admission to majors at the frosh level). But that is a subtle distinction from a “weed out” course.
I think weed out classes in of themselves are not evil. However, some of the rhetoric that some instructors/profs use in these classes is certainly irresponsible and inconsiderate to say the least. I had friends tell me that their Orgo professor had everyone in the class stand up, and then get everyone but a few people to sit down, and then told the class that is how many would actually make it to Med School. Pre-med students have enough pressure and heat - and their advisors surely have already told them of the low acceptance rates. Such exercises have no benefit except to break morale and/or get students to become cutthroat - that is just wrong IMO. It just the prof/instructors stroking their own ego.
I’ve never done those exercises where we point out the percentage of students who are going to survive engineering or get into med school, but I think those who do are simply trying to stress that this is not going to be a cakewalk and you will have to go the distance in order to be one of those survivors. Why not tell students on the first day? Maybe there are some students who take this as a message to buckle down and who then survive when they might not have otherwise?
My son’s school definitely has weeder classes in the Literature/Sciences school, specifically in Organic Chemistry and Economics, but even that is modified. Student’s grades are determined by the average grade of their instructor , so they are not penalized for having a bad teacher or rewarded for a good one. The exams are the common for every instructor.
There are no weed-out classes in the engineering school. The engineering school already did its weed-out during admissions. How much more weeding can you do with a 3.9+ UW HS GPA and 33-34 ACT? The engineering school is completely oriented to help students collaborate and succeed.