College sure isn't what I remember

[Aloha_Shooter]

When I went to college, dorms were ... dorms, not hotel rooms. If you wanted to exercise, you could go to the gym for free weights or run on the street ala "Rocky" (which had its own inspiration given this was Philadelphia in the mid-80s) instead of climbing walls and spas.

To help kids handle the pressure of exams, they had "Primal Scream Night" a couple days before the first exams where kids had a half hour to let loose with their frustrations. Apparently today's kids need a whole lot more: http://heatst.com/culture-wars/minia...l-exam-stress/

I hope to God taxpayer grants and funds aren't being used for this crap. Therapy dogs? Therapy horses? Coloring books and play dough? Seriously? Don't even get me started on the scratch-and-sniff bookmarks, zen gardens, or stuffed animals. WTF? Have we become an entire nation of pajama boys? Wait, don't answer that, Obama won re-election in 2012, of course we have.

I just got back from a vacation in New Zealand. College kids there in 2011 got to go help dig out Christchurch. I mean, really dig out -- even today the center of the city looks like a mixture of a war zone and modern city with whole blocks razed to the ground and new structures in various stages of rebuilding. They had a mini-army raised from college and high school students who just went to work at recovering from REAL stress. This year, they're going to get to go help dig out Kaikoura while American college kids make pretzel wands and build Hogwarts from Legos.

[Irving]

Is therre anything that is not different today than it was in our youth?

[Great-Kazoo]

Is therre anything that is not different today than it was in our youth?

Spelling ?

[Irving]

Spelling ?

Werd!

[MrPrena]

No offense, but students thesedays are living an easy academic life.

They rely more on matcad, and pc more than before. Prerequisite for majors are much weaker than when I was a student in under and grad courses.

Only thing I feel real bad is the tuition.

[MarkCO]

The current administration is working to figure out how to forgive 108B in student loans to dump on us, the taxpayers, so yes, there is a chance you are paying for all that tomfluffery.

[Rumline]

Re: relying on PCs and Mathcad, if I'm paying [not cheap amounts of money] for a college degree, I would expect to learn higher-level thought processes than how to manually calculate something a computer can do in 0.1 seconds. In the real world, nobody gives a **** if you can manually compute a Fourier transform.

[Aloha_Shooter]

Re: relying on PCs and Mathcad, if I'm paying [not cheap amounts of money] for a college degree, I would expect to learn higher-level thought processes than how to manually calculate something a computer can do in 0.1 seconds. In the real world, nobody gives a **** if you can manually compute a Fourier transform.

Yes and no. I don't expect someone to calculate a Fourier transform manually but I want the to know the material well enough to recognize when the numbers coming out of the programs don't make sense. I see too many junior engineers these days that just trust outputs directly because it came from the computer. The process of actually doing the work yourself conveys learning and helps you understand when to trust your tools and understand their limitations.

[Fmedges]

Yes and no. I don't expect someone to calculate a Fourier transform manually but I want the to know the material well enough to recognize when the numbers coming out of the programs don't make sense. I see too many junior engineers these days that just trust outputs directly because it came from the computer. The process of actually doing the work yourself conveys learning and helps you understand when to trust your tools and understand their limitations.

The problem that I had in the engineering program hat I used to attend was that it was so disconnected from industry. Learning hand calculations are good to a point, but we never learned how to do it any other way. It's hard to teach to people going into industry when most professors are career students. I have other college gripes but that's a big one to me.

[hollohas]

The problem that I had in the engineering program hat I used to attend was that it was so disconnected from industry. Learning hand calculations are good to a point, but we never learned how to do it any other way. It's hard to teach to people going into industry when most professors are career students. I have other college gripes but that's a big one to me.

My wife got an architectural degree. In 4 years, they never used CAD. It was not a required elective. Even at the time I thought that was insane. I was extremely proficient in CAD out of highschool yet college architectural students weren't required to learn it. They spent more time building paper models and making furniture out of recycled trash than learning to design buildings. It was so desiconnected from the real world, one that requires 7 or 8 VERY extensive tests after years and years of on the job to get a license.