<p>How about you contact me via email.</p>
<p>I definitely agree with Sakky that there is a problem with the current system. Even in the community college I went to, up to 70% of students would fail or drop an introductory mechanics class. Often I recalled the professor say that he himself failed mechanics and retook it for a C. Then he calls physics "hard" and explicitly makes jokes about how a huge chunk of the class would fail. Sad thing is he was right. But he made it hard by giving exams that were significantly harder than the homework and book just because he's good a making up problems. And a lot of those students switched to other majors but still found a hard time transferring due a lower gpa. So its understandable that a clear solution is presenting itself- wipe out those grades. But there are problems that would hinder this. First we can't make it exclusive to engineering because that would seem unfair. Of course we can try to quantify engineering difficulty, but often this would lead to accusations of elitism, being pesdoscientific(as often happened to intelligence testing). So we'll have to reform the whole system. But therein lies the problem. Most other fields have no need to reform and to do so just because engineering has expulsion problems would not only be inconvenient, engineering departments would be perceived as being arrogant. Another problem is that people rely on grades to make future predictions. And hence, they feel like they have the right to request access to all grades received, which puts pressure on universities. Just like how all employers have the right to access criminal records. The thing with top schools getting away with this( i.e MIT and Caltech for the first few terms) is that they have far more credibility as top schools. The only way out of this quagmire is for professors to be less harsh in their grading and have the weeding done by assesment exams(like a hard placement test) Making courses optional isn't the solution(really how many students would take a class that isn't required out of pure interest?) And professors have too much pride in gutting the courses. After all, by getting a Phd, they were learning for learnings sake and are really interested in theory. So its natural that they would want their students to learn theory. And they have a lot of power. So changing the grading scheme is the seemingly the only palatable solution. Professors may grade harshly because they were graded harshly, but giving that up sounds much better than giving up teaching what they like.</p>
<p>The engineering school I attend has a huge dropout rate but most people fail their classes related to their major. The only other classes I recall complaints about are for Chemistry above the 100 class.</p>
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Another problem is that people rely on grades to make future predictions. And hence, they feel like they have the right to request access to all grades received, which puts pressure on universities. Just like how all employers have the right to access criminal records. The thing with top schools getting away with this( i.e MIT and Caltech for the first few terms) is that they have far more credibility as top schools.
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<p>I'm actually more optimistic about this possibility. </p>
<p>It is true that employers can request one's criminal records. But consider the fact that many courts will seal your records, especially if you're a juvenile or if you've committed a minor offense, and by definition, any sealed criminal records will not be released to any employers without a court order (which they would not know to request unless they already knew you were a criminal anyway). </p>
<p>Or consider this analogy. Even a personal bankruptcy is wiped out, by law, from your credit record after a certain amount of time (I think 7 years). Similarly, problems in your driving record are wiped out after a certain period of time as a matter of law. So if that can happen, I don't see why schools can't wipe out a failing grade for a major that you're not pursuing anyway. I mean, seriously, what's worse: failing an engineering class or declaring personal bankruptcy? Yet the difference is that your failed engineering class stays on your record forever, but a bankruptcy won't? Why? </p>
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Making courses optional isn't the solution(really how many students would take a class that isn't required out of pure interest?)
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<p>I would imagine a situation where you have a choice of picking, say, 10 engineering courses out of 50 available. Those who really want to know what the M.R.'s are can take that class. But the rest of the people who don't care can do something they are more interested in.</p>
<p>Now, obviously, I am not saying that there should be no requirements. Obviously there are some topics that all engineers do indeed need to know. But they should be very carefully selected such that the engineers really do need to know them, and not just be artificial and arbitrary barriers that do not actually help people understand real-world engineering. Again, like forcing all of the ChemE's to know the M.R.'s when even the ChemE's who have been working in industry for years don't really understand what the M.R.'s mean and certainly never use. </p>
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So we'll have to reform the whole system. But therein lies the problem. Most other fields have no need to reform and to do so just because engineering has expulsion problems would not only be inconvenient, engineering departments would be perceived as being arrogant
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<p>I am more optimistic about this as well. I agree that most other fields don't require reform. Hence, that opens the door: allow all students to drop their failed grades if they aren't going to major in that subject anyway, but because those other fields hardly ever fail anybody anyway, their students would never use that option (because they would never need to use it). Hence, the solution is still ostensibly "fair" in the sense that everybody has access to this reform, but obviously serves to benefit the engineering students the most.</p>
<p>Okay sakky, check your email inbox. The topic is "advice"</p>