Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[ciao_yall]

Although I wouldn't be opposed to flagging any programs, including STEM, where a high percentage transfer out. Recruiting and/or admissions aren't doing a good job if students don't have a good idea of whether a particular program is a good fit for them. Filling seats with warm bodies isn't responsible behaviour.

Why flag the program then?

Lot's of people wash out of "pre-med" majors b/c they can't handle it.  I don't see that as a failure of the program.  That's not a bug, that's a feature.

And most of those "pre-meds" used their prereqs in biology and chemistry to knock out their general eds.

Again, someone sounding good but not knowing what the &^@% they are talking about. You'd think someone who had access to higher education would understand how it works.

[Wahoo Redux]

Although I wouldn't be opposed to flagging any programs, including STEM, where a high percentage transfer out. Recruiting and/or admissions aren't doing a good job if students don't have a good idea of whether a particular program is a good fit for them. Filling seats with warm bodies isn't responsible behaviour.

Why flag the program then?

Lot's of people wash out of "pre-med" majors b/c they can't handle it.  I don't see that as a failure of the program.  That's not a bug, that's a feature.

And most of those "pre-meds" used their prereqs in biology and chemistry to knock out their general eds.

Again, someone sounding good but not knowing what the &^@% they are talking about. You'd think someone who had access to higher education would understand how it works.

People are allowed to make choices, Marshy, even bad ones.  A number of majors have gatekeeper gen ed classes and GPAs, anyway.  But at the undergrad level any student should be allowed to try any major they can get into.  It is not up to you or me to run their lives. 

[marshwiggle]

Although I wouldn't be opposed to flagging any programs, including STEM, where a high percentage transfer out. Recruiting and/or admissions aren't doing a good job if students don't have a good idea of whether a particular program is a good fit for them. Filling seats with warm bodies isn't responsible behaviour.

Why flag the program then?

Lot's of people wash out of "pre-med" majors b/c they can't handle it.  I don't see that as a failure of the program.  That's not a bug, that's a feature.

And most of those "pre-meds" used their prereqs in biology and chemistry to knock out their general eds.

Again, someone sounding good but not knowing what the &^@% they are talking about. You'd think someone who had access to higher education would understand how it works.

People are allowed to make choices, Marshy, even bad ones.  A number of majors have gatekeeper gen ed classes and GPAs, anyway.  But at the undergrad level any student should be allowed to try any major they can get into.  It is not up to you or me to run their lives. 

Sure, but we owe them some honesty about their chances when they're offered admission. If, based on incoming grades, etc. we can predict a given student has a less than 50% chance of completing, they should know that when it's still easy to choose something else where their chance of success would be greater.
 

[FishProf]

Sure, but we owe them some honesty about their chances when they're offered admission. If, based on incoming grades, etc. we can predict a given student has a less than 50% chance of completing, they should know that when it's still easy to choose something else where their chance of success would be greater.

Do you work somewhere where you don't tell students that?

Where I work, we do tell them.  Most don't listen.  Then what?

[ciao_yall]

Although I wouldn't be opposed to flagging any programs, including STEM, where a high percentage transfer out. Recruiting and/or admissions aren't doing a good job if students don't have a good idea of whether a particular program is a good fit for them. Filling seats with warm bodies isn't responsible behaviour.

Why flag the program then?

Lot's of people wash out of "pre-med" majors b/c they can't handle it.  I don't see that as a failure of the program.  That's not a bug, that's a feature.

And most of those "pre-meds" used their prereqs in biology and chemistry to knock out their general eds.

Again, someone sounding good but not knowing what the &^@% they are talking about. You'd think someone who had access to higher education would understand how it works.

People are allowed to make choices, Marshy, even bad ones.  A number of majors have gatekeeper gen ed classes and GPAs, anyway.  But at the undergrad level any student should be allowed to try any major they can get into.  It is not up to you or me to run their lives. 

Sure, but we owe them some honesty about their chances when they're offered admission. If, based on incoming grades, etc. we can predict a given student has a less than 50% chance of completing, they should know that when it's still easy to choose something else where their chance of success would be greater.

Define success. In this case, it might not be "completing A." It might be "changing majors, applying their freshpeep prereqs to gen ed electives, and successfully graduating with a degree in B."

It's not up to us to tell them what they can and cannot do. We tell them what it takes to succeed, and let them know that if they struggle, there are lots of very good Plan B's out there because they aren't the only ones who have done it.

[onthefringe]

Although I wouldn't be opposed to flagging any programs, including STEM, where a high percentage transfer out. Recruiting and/or admissions aren't doing a good job if students don't have a good idea of whether a particular program is a good fit for them. Filling seats with warm bodies isn't responsible behaviour.

Why flag the program then?

Lot's of people wash out of "pre-med" majors b/c they can't handle it.  I don't see that as a failure of the program.  That's not a bug, that's a feature.

And most of those "pre-meds" used their prereqs in biology and chemistry to knock out their general eds.

Again, someone sounding good but not knowing what the &^@% they are talking about. You'd think someone who had access to higher education would understand how it works.

People are allowed to make choices, Marshy, even bad ones.  A number of majors have gatekeeper gen ed classes and GPAs, anyway.  But at the undergrad level any student should be allowed to try any major they can get into.  It is not up to you or me to run their lives. 

Sure, but we owe them some honesty about their chances when they're offered admission. If, based on incoming grades, etc. we can predict a given student has a less than 50% chance of completing, they should know that when it's still easy to choose something else where their chance of success would be greater.
 

But we can't predict with anything like that level of accuracy. And as pointed out above, we need to let people have opportunities even if that means they sometimes make mistakes. And if you tie whether people get accepted to college to the major they claim they want, they just start lying about the major they want and then switch (or try to) when they arrive.

[marshwiggle]

Sure, but we owe them some honesty about their chances when they're offered admission. If, based on incoming grades, etc. we can predict a given student has a less than 50% chance of completing, they should know that when it's still easy to choose something else where their chance of success would be greater.
 

But we can't predict with anything like that level of accuracy. And as pointed out above, we need to let people have opportunities even if that means they sometimes make mistakes. And if you tie whether people get accepted to college to the major they claim they want, they just start lying about the major they want and then switch (or try to) when they arrive.

That's not the way it works in Canada. Students get accepted to a program; whether they can switch depends on whether they can meet whatever the requirements are of the program they want to transfer into. And some programs basically don't accept any transfers in.

[Wahoo Redux]

Sure, but we owe them some honesty about their chances when they're offered admission. If, based on incoming grades, etc. we can predict a given student has a less than 50% chance of completing, they should know that when it's still easy to choose something else where their chance of success would be greater.
 

But we can't predict with anything like that level of accuracy. And as pointed out above, we need to let people have opportunities even if that means they sometimes make mistakes. And if you tie whether people get accepted to college to the major they claim they want, they just start lying about the major they want and then switch (or try to) when they arrive.

That's not the way it works in Canada. Students get accepted to a program; whether they can switch depends on whether they can meet whatever the requirements are of the program they want to transfer into. And some programs basically don't accept any transfers in.

Well buddy, it is different here and I think it is a basically good system despite its many faults.

[quasihumanist]

Sure, but we owe them some honesty about their chances when they're offered admission. If, based on incoming grades, etc. we can predict a given student has a less than 50% chance of completing, they should know that when it's still easy to choose something else where their chance of success would be greater.

Do you work somewhere where you don't tell students that?

Where I work, we do tell them.  Most don't listen.  Then what?

It's worse than that.  We lie to students and tell them they are succeeding when they actually aren't.  A significant fraction of our CS graduates cannot write code on their own.  (They find and copy vaguely relevant code off the Internet and make basically random changes until it passes the tests.)  By the time they get a job and get fired after a few months because they can't do it, we've collected the tuition and (more importantly) counted another successful student in the statistics we report to the public.  Most of the time, the student doesn't even blame us; they blame the employer firing them for having unfair expectations.

[lightning]

Sure, but we owe them some honesty about their chances when they're offered admission. If, based on incoming grades, etc. we can predict a given student has a less than 50% chance of completing, they should know that when it's still easy to choose something else where their chance of success would be greater.

Do you work somewhere where you don't tell students that?

Where I work, we do tell them.  Most don't listen.  Then what?

It's worse than that.  We lie to students and tell them they are succeeding when they actually aren't.  A significant fraction of our CS graduates cannot write code on their own.  (They find and copy vaguely relevant code off the Internet and make basically random changes until it passes the tests.)  By the time they get a job and get fired after a few months because they can't do it, we've collected the tuition and (more importantly) counted another successful student in the statistics we report to the public.  Most of the time, the student doesn't even blame us; they blame the employer firing them for having unfair expectations.

But, doesn't your university's CS degree get de-valued in the eyes of the employer, so then that employer avoids hiring your future graduates, which de-values your university's CS degree even further?

[marshwiggle]

Sure, but we owe them some honesty about their chances when they're offered admission. If, based on incoming grades, etc. we can predict a given student has a less than 50% chance of completing, they should know that when it's still easy to choose something else where their chance of success would be greater.

Do you work somewhere where you don't tell students that?

Where I work, we do tell them.  Most don't listen.  Then what?

It's worse than that.  We lie to students and tell them they are succeeding when they actually aren't.  A significant fraction of our CS graduates cannot write code on their own.  (They find and copy vaguely relevant code off the Internet and make basically random changes until it passes the tests.)  By the time they get a job and get fired after a few months because they can't do it, we've collected the tuition and (more importantly) counted another successful student in the statistics we report to the public.  Most of the time, the student doesn't even blame us; they blame the employer firing them for having unfair expectations.

But, doesn't your university's CS degree get de-valued in the eyes of the employer, so then that employer avoids hiring your future graduates, which de-values your university's CS degree even further?

The university administration's short-term concern is for attrition and graduation rate; the department's long-term interest is preserving their reputation. These two will be in conflict in many institutions.

[marshwiggle]

Sure, but we owe them some honesty about their chances when they're offered admission. If, based on incoming grades, etc. we can predict a given student has a less than 50% chance of completing, they should know that when it's still easy to choose something else where their chance of success would be greater.
 

But we can't predict with anything like that level of accuracy. And as pointed out above, we need to let people have opportunities even if that means they sometimes make mistakes. And if you tie whether people get accepted to college to the major they claim they want, they just start lying about the major they want and then switch (or try to) when they arrive.

That's not the way it works in Canada. Students get accepted to a program; whether they can switch depends on whether they can meet whatever the requirements are of the program they want to transfer into. And some programs basically don't accept any transfers in.

Well buddy, it is different here and I think it is a basically good system despite its many faults.

I assume even in the U.S. that individual programs can have requirements that people have to meet to "declare" them. (Like STEM programs having specific math requirements.)Is that not the case?
If it is, then it still means that the programs with the lowest bar for entry will tend to collect all of the people who didn't make the cut for anything else, which will automatically select for student who are likely to perform more poorly than average.

[lightning]

Sure, but we owe them some honesty about their chances when they're offered admission. If, based on incoming grades, etc. we can predict a given student has a less than 50% chance of completing, they should know that when it's still easy to choose something else where their chance of success would be greater.

Do you work somewhere where you don't tell students that?

Where I work, we do tell them.  Most don't listen.  Then what?

It's worse than that.  We lie to students and tell them they are succeeding when they actually aren't.  A significant fraction of our CS graduates cannot write code on their own.  (They find and copy vaguely relevant code off the Internet and make basically random changes until it passes the tests.)  By the time they get a job and get fired after a few months because they can't do it, we've collected the tuition and (more importantly) counted another successful student in the statistics we report to the public.  Most of the time, the student doesn't even blame us; they blame the employer firing them for having unfair expectations.

But, doesn't your university's CS degree get de-valued in the eyes of the employer, so then that employer avoids hiring your future graduates, which de-values your university's CS degree even further?

The university administration's short-term concern is for attrition and graduation rate; the department's long-term interest is preserving their reputation. These two will be in conflict in many institutions.

very true
The short-term concern for administrators is really on the tactical (or even transactional short-term), regardless of what they may say is their strategic long-term outlook for the institution. I don't know who said it in the fora, but the quote (paraphrased) is brilliant: "Administrators rent and are in it for the short-term before they move somewhere else to rent, whereas faculty own and are in it for the long-term."

[flying_tree]

test

[quasihumanist]

Sure, but we owe them some honesty about their chances when they're offered admission. If, based on incoming grades, etc. we can predict a given student has a less than 50% chance of completing, they should know that when it's still easy to choose something else where their chance of success would be greater.

Do you work somewhere where you don't tell students that?

Where I work, we do tell them.  Most don't listen.  Then what?

It's worse than that.  We lie to students and tell them they are succeeding when they actually aren't.  A significant fraction of our CS graduates cannot write code on their own.  (They find and copy vaguely relevant code off the Internet and make basically random changes until it passes the tests.)  By the time they get a job and get fired after a few months because they can't do it, we've collected the tuition and (more importantly) counted another successful student in the statistics we report to the public.  Most of the time, the student doesn't even blame us; they blame the employer firing them for having unfair expectations.

But, doesn't your university's CS degree get de-valued in the eyes of the employer, so then that employer avoids hiring your future graduates, which de-values your university's CS degree even further?

There are a few reasons why this isn't a problem:

First - it's not a problem for the students who graduate with a decent GPA.  Employers who care can easily find that number.

Second - the employers who are hiring our graduates with 2.5 GPAs are not big companies with data about how employees with various backgrounds end up performing.  They are smaller outfits desperate to get any warm body who might be able to code.  There are so many of these outfits, and so many universities, that there is not much reputation effects in this marketplace.

Third - many of the folks who graduate with poor grades are capable slackers.  They get in a situation where their performance actually matters and shape up.  So some smaller outfits will have good impressions of our graduates, and anyone looking for a job just needs one.