How to beat the high cost of text books!
Lawrence V. Cipriani
a lot of money for a book that is hardly used. So I figure there
has to be a better way ...
Why not have a Cheap Textbook Foundation? It would be along the
lines of the Free Software Foundation. Through the cooperation of
many authors texts could be written on virtually any subject. To
begin start with something like Calculus or Physics, that just about
all science undergrads need. Then if that works out, go on to other
areas. The books would be written in a common typesetting language,
say LaTeX, and stored on line.
Who would write them? Who knows? The FSF has many people involved.
I would think a lot of people would be interested in writing a book
or part of one just for the fun of it. I am!
As for production, copies of the books could be down loaded, printed
on a high quality laser printer, then copied en masse, and then sold.
So the $64,000 question is ... Would this produced books less expensively
than the current system, would the books be of high quality? I don't
have any idea about the cost. The quality issue is really up to the
people that are involved, junk or masterpieces could be produced. Ideally
they would be of high enough quality that universities would adopt them
as texts.
So, what do people think? Is this a worthwhile idea? What are the
obstacles to implementing this? Do publishers have a lot of influence
on what texts are chosen?
--
Larry Cipriani, AT&T Network Systems, Columbus OH,
Path: att!cbnews!lvc Domain: l...@cbnews.ATT.COM
John Murray
> Yet another quarter passes at Ohio State University where I pay
> a lot of money for a book that is hardly used. So I figure there
> has to be a better way ...
Why not abolish the publishers' restrictions on importing textbooks into
the US? So-called "International Editions" of many common US textbooks
are produced by the same publishing corporations for sale in Europe and
elsewhere, and cost maybe one quarter the price of the US edition.
This is not related to copyright loopholes, as far as I know. Nor is it
because of any direct government subsidy of textbook publishing. It seems
to be simply a way of shafting the US student, who is accustomed to paying
inordinate amounts of money for education in general.
- John Murray (My own opinions, etc.)
Eric Green
> In article <22...@cbnews.ATT.COM>, l...@cbnews.ATT.COM (Lawrence V. Cipriani) writes:
>> Yet another quarter passes at Ohio State University where I pay
>> a lot of money for a book that is hardly used. So I figure there
>> has to be a better way ...
> Why not abolish the publishers' restrictions on importing textbooks into
> the US? So-called "International Editions" of many common US textbooks
> are produced by the same publishing corporations for sale in Europe and
> elsewhere, and cost maybe one quarter the price of the US edition.
There is, or at least was, a law regulating importation of printed
material. I don't remember any details about it, alas...
I've been thinking about a used textbook co-op for some time. What it
would be is basically a used-book classified ad paper, bypassing the
college bookstores with their 100% markup on used books. You might try
organizing something like that on your college campus. Talk to the
people at your college newspaper, your student government (if you can
get their attention -- most student governments spend all their time
organizing parties and pep rallies), your university administration,
etc., if you really are serious about something like that (on
retrospect, I don't need cheap books THAT bad...).
--
Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509
Alexander J Denner
>Why not have a Cheap Textbook Foundation? It would be along the
>lines of the Free Software Foundation. Through the cooperation of
>many authors texts could be written on virtually any subject. To
>begin start with something like Calculus or Physics, that just about
>all science undergrads need. Then if that works out, go on to other
>areas. The books would be written in a common typesetting language,
>say LaTeX, and stored on line.
>As for production, copies of the books could be down loaded, printed
>on a high quality laser printer, then copied en masse, and then sold.
Good Idea. I do not know how possible it would be to get so many
profesors to write good textbooks for free unless when they can do
the same work and get money.
At MIT, many profesors hand out (or even sell) xeroxed copies of
drafts of future textbooks to the class. The test out the book, and
get input from the students. That practice is not very well received
sometimes. My biggest problem is that one wants a text to refer to, as
a reference book. The bundle of xeroxes are often difficult to handle
and search through.
To make this successful I think that the copies should be well
organized, well bound (if looseleaf--a good binder), and some method
for high-resolution pictures should be included. Introductory textbooks
are not appealling if they do not have nice glossy pictures.
The next step would be to have published texts online. Hypermedia
or some other learning aids could be included to take advantage of the
computer.
-Alex J. Denner
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alexander J. Denner ajde...@athena.mit.edu
234 Baker House, 362 Memorial Drive mit-eddie!mit-athena!ajdenner
Cambridge, MA 02139 ajdenner%ath...@mitmva.mit.edu
Brad Templeton
laser printing, photocopying and binding in small quantities might well
approach the costs of the real books, and you would get 8.5 by 11 books
with lousy binding that don't sit on your shelf well.
You would pay a little bit less money, but you would be paying it all to
photocopying & binding firms rather than authors and publishers. Is
this what you want?
--
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
Pete Holsberg
Doesn't the OSU Bookstore buy and sell used books? You should be able
to sell them back (silly, because they will probably be useful as
references later in your career) so that another student can benefit
from the reduced price.
--
Pete Holsberg UUCP: {...!rutgers!}princeton!mccc!pjh
Mercer College CompuServe: 70240,334
1200 Old Trenton Road GEnie: PJHOLSBERG
Trenton, NJ 08690 Voice: 1-609-586-4800
Bj|rn Lisper
jo...@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (John Murray) writes:
>Why not abolish the publishers' restrictions on importing textbooks into
>the US? So-called "International Editions" of many common US textbooks
>are produced by the same publishing corporations for sale in Europe and
>elsewhere, and cost maybe one quarter the price of the US edition.
A quarter of the price...this may be true in some places, but certainly not
in others. I live in Sweden, a notorious high-cost country, and here the
price of textbooks in computer science (my principal area of interest) is
certainly not a quarter of the U.S. price. I'd rather say these books are
more expensive here than in the U.S. I guess the same holds in other areas,
like math.
And yes, I'm talking about textbooks in English. The standard ones.
Textbooks in Swedish (when available) are, by the way, hardly cheaper.
Thus, the original idea about an on-line textbook archive seems like a great
one to me. Just make sure that this archive has a mail request facility, so
that we without FTP access can benefit too....
Bjorn Lisper
Jeffrey C. Kantor
One thing bothers me about this discussion. A quality mathematics or
technically oriented textbook is not an easy thing to write. It can require
intense effort over an extended period, with classroom testing, reviews,
and the like. What's in it for the author? Well, for one thing, financial
renumeration which can be fairly reasonable for a well-received textbook.
I really wonder, if after all expending the effort required for a good
text, there are very many potential authors willing to distribute their
work for free?
--
Jeff Kantor
US Mail: Dept. of Chemical Engineering
internet: je...@ndcheg.cheg.nd.edu University of Notre Dame
uucp: iuvax!ndmath!ndcheg!jeff Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA
Jan Harrington
>
>
> Why not have a Cheap Textbook Foundation? It would be along the
> lines of the Free Software Foundation. Through the cooperation of
> many authors texts could be written on virtually any subject. To
> begin start with something like Calculus or Physics, that just about
> all science undergrads need. Then if that works out, go on to other
> areas. The books would be written in a common typesetting language,
> say LaTeX, and stored on line.
>
> Who would write them? Who knows? The FSF has many people involved.
> I would think a lot of people would be interested in writing a book
> or part of one just for the fun of it. I am!
>
As the author of several textbooks, this gives me nightmares. There is more
than you might think involved with the creation of a textbook. First of all,
textbooks are "reviewed." That means that the manuscript is sent to various
people who might use it in their courses for critiquing. The book is read
for technical accuracy as well as style, readability, etc. Part of the
cost of producing a quality text lies in paying decent honorariums to good
reviewers (the process takes a significant amount of the reviewer's time
and effort).
There are also special techniques used in textbooks. Writing review questions
and exercises is a very difficult task. Many textbooks also come with
"ancillaries" - aids for the teacher - including instructor's guides,
student data disks, transparency masters, databases of exam questions,
etc., etc. All of these take a great deal of expertise and effort to create.
The publishers have little to say with what text is adopted in a given course,
though their representatives are always trying to get books adopted. Textbooks
are expensive because a great deal of care and effort goes into their
writing and because the market for a text is relatively small. Desktop
publishing techniques have cut down on the costs somewhat, and some books
are being marketed at more reasonable prices for that reason.
You should also look carefully at your college bookstore. Many mark up
publishers' list prices significantly.
So you want to write a book for fun? OK, write a book for fun. But writing
a text is serious business. If you do it well, then you get royalties because
the book sells. However, without the quality control of the review process,
the textbook market would be flooded with even more drek than it already
is.
I sympathize with your having to pay for textbooks, but consider that a
cost of going to college. The text was hardly used? How should a text be
used? An instructor shouldn't necessarily teach directly from a text. Even
if you're not assigned specific readings, find the chapters in the text that
supplement what's going on in the classroom. In that way, you can get every
bit of value out of the text and add to what happens in lecture.
Jan Harrington, sysop
Scholastech Telecommunications
UUCP: husc6!amcad!stech!sysop or allegra!stech!sysop
BITNET: JHARRY@BENTLEY
********************************************************************************
Miscellaneous profundity:
"No matter where you go, there you are."
Buckaroo Banzai
********************************************************************************
Carl Witthoft
Yes it's true that the authors work pretty hard to produce the book.
And they oughta get paid for it.
Unfortunately, they often come out with 2nd 3rd, Nth editions to
ensure that all the poor kids can't buy a used text. (generally, at
least in math, the only thing that changes is the problem sets)
This is a major problem in the more competitive areas such as
introductory Calc, Chem, etc.
So what. A really well-written text can serve as a reference for
the user (you know, what we become after we graduate) for years to come.
--
Alix' Dad ( Carl Witthoft @ Adaptive Optics Associates)
" Axis-navigo, ergo sum."
{harvard,ima}!bbn!aoa!carl
54 CambridgePark Drive, Cambridge,MA 02140 617-864-0201
"disclaimer? I'm not a doctor, but I do have a Master's Degree in Science!"
Norman Matloff
>As the author of several textbooks, this gives me nightmares. There is more
As the recent author of a textbook, I'd like to give an alternate point
of view.
>than you might think involved with the creation of a textbook. First of all,
>textbooks are "reviewed." That means that the manuscript is sent to various
>people who might use it in their courses for critiquing. The book is read
>for technical accuracy as well as style, readability, etc. Part of the
>cost of producing a quality text lies in paying decent honorariums to good
>reviewers (the process takes a significant amount of the reviewer's time
>and effort).
I found the reviews to be not only unhelpful, but downright harmful. There
was not much consistency among them, at least in my case. Reviewers liked
some features and didn't like other features of my book, but the several
"like-lists" were almost totally disjoint from one reviewer to another,
and the "dislike-lists" had the same problem. Several reviewers loved
my exercises, "the best part of the book," while others characterized the
exercises as "too difficult" and in the case of one reviewer, "contrived"!
[I did however delight in the fact that for one particular facet of my
book, the VAST MAJORITY of the reviewers said, "I like this, but nobody
else will," quite a remarkable irony! :-) ]
Another problem was the "dumbing-down" that we are starting to hear about
grade-school and high-school books; some reviewers want this trend in the
universities!
>The publishers have little to say with what text is adopted in a given course,
>though their representatives are always trying to get books adopted. Textbooks
A real problem is that almost all publisher's sales reps have no technical
background at all. How can they sell a book?
>are expensive because a great deal of care and effort goes into their
>writing and because the market for a text is relatively small. Desktop
Yes, these SOUND LIKE reasonable explanations for the high price of
textbooks. But oligopolistic market structure is a much better explanation.
The plain truth is that publishers "have students over a barrel" -- the
students MUST buy the books, and so the publishers can to a great extent
charge what they want.
Here is a little experiment you can do to see this: There are a great
many softcover books on "Unix for programmers" on the market. Most are
intended to be sold to nonstudents, but the one by Paul Wang is aimed
as a textbook for university courses. It is of very similar content to
other books, but is considerably more expensive (check this yourself).
>a text is serious business. If you do it well, then you get royalties because
>the book sells.
No author will refuse royalties, but even with the high book prices, it's
just not **financially** worth the time and effort in the majority of
cases. I would claim that most authors of textbooks write the books
because they feel that they have something special to say, not because
of the money.
>I sympathize with your having to pay for textbooks, but consider that a
>cost of going to college. The text was hardly used? How should a text be
>used? An instructor shouldn't necessarily teach directly from a text. Even
>if you're not assigned specific readings, find the chapters in the text that
>supplement what's going on in the classroom. In that way, you can get every
>bit of value out of the text and add to what happens in lecture.
Yes, excellent points. I would add the following: Consumers of texts in
engineering/CS will end up with salaries which are in the upper strata
among American incomes -- and before even reaching the age of 30!
[Check the statistics if you are skeptical about this; it's true.] In
that light, a few lousy dollars for a textbook is really a small
investment that pays big dividends.
Norm Matloff
The Cybermat Rider
>With respect to the effort of the writers:
>Yes it's true that the authors work pretty hard to produce the book.
>And they oughta get paid for it.
>Unfortunately, they often come out with 2nd 3rd, Nth editions to
>ensure that all the poor kids can't buy a used text. (generally, at
>least in math, the only thing that changes is the problem sets)
>This is a major problem in the more competitive areas such as
>introductory Calc, Chem, etc.
>So what. A really well-written text can serve as a reference for
>the user (you know, what we become after we graduate) for years to come.
I think the main reason the Nth edition is published is simply because
developments in the field concerned demand a new edition. As such, a
"really well-written text" might serve as a reference for years, but it
wouldn't be UP-TO-DATE......
Of course, that's not gonna stop me from keeping EVERY text I'm using now....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrian Ho a.k.a. The Cybermat Rider University of California, Berkeley
c60a...@web.berkeley.edu
Disclaimer: Nobody takes me seriously, so is it really necessary?
Jon Trowbridge
>I think the main reason the Nth edition is published is simply because
>developments in the field concerned demand a new edition.
This is certainly valid in the case of more advanced texts, but when was the
last time there was a major development in introductory Calculus?
All the first-year Calculus books that I've seen recently look like they
were designed for visual appeal instead of content. How much do things like
splashy color covers, fancy production values, elaborate layouts and
slick graphs and diagrams add to the cost of a textbook?
Edward C Horvath
> As the author of several textbooks, this gives me nightmares. There is more
Jan, your article is thoughtful and informative. But you're wasting your
breath. The same arguments have been advanced about free software --
i.e. you will get what you pay for -- but either you think your time and
effort are worth something or you don't.
If "information should be free" and anyone who sells information is somehow
"immoral," then it is not only software but textbooks, newspapers, the
contents of all libraries that should be free.
Also all the lectures given by all the professors. Shucks, it's just
information and ideas, it should be free.
And consulting ought to be free, too. After all, if I need information
and expertise that I don't have, to make a better product, that will make
the world a better place, and you have that expertise, you ought to be
morally bound to provide it. Free, of course, it's just information.
The real blind spot of the Free Whatever Foundation is a failure, or a
refusal, to recognize that there is some value-added in the reduction
of an algorithm to practice, in the correlation, organization, and
exposition of the information in a textbook, in the interpretation of
raw data into comprehensible presentations in editorial content of
publications.
And that the QUALITY of the effort to organize/reduce to practice/
interpret the raw data is quite variable, and depends on talent and
sweat. As soon as you concede that not everyone can do the job
equally well, and that there is a cost associated with handling
information effectively, economic and political forces inevitably arise
that tend to assign the most talented practitioners to the most
"critical" needs. If ANYBODY could write a Lotus, or a Feynman
lecture, on the first draft, there'd be little market pressure to
reward the better authors.
Like democracy, the market is the worst method for making sure quality
products are available -- except for all the others. If you want to
donate your time and talent to a good cause, you have my admiration.
But that is YOUR choice. You do not have the right to dictate that I,
too, am morally obligated to donate my time and effort. And you
certainly don't have the right to impose your morality on me, nor to justify
stealing the fruits of my labor because, by your lights, I should have
given them away anyway. I own my labor, and I will set the price of my
labor; YOU can take it, negotiate it WITH ME, or leave it, or go into
competition. If you steal it, it is YOU who are morally bankrupt.
=Ned Horvath=
Eric Green
> In article <5...@aoa.UUCP> ca...@aoa.UUCP (Carl Witthoft) writes:
>>Unfortunately, they often come out with 2nd 3rd, Nth editions to
>>ensure that all the poor kids can't buy a used text. (generally, at
> developments in the field concerned demand a new edition. As such, a
> "really well-written text" might serve as a reference for years, but it
> wouldn't be UP-TO-DATE......
That is certainly true in Computer Science... for example, an
Architecture course I recently took used Tannenbaum's book, written in
?'82?. In the same year David Patterson published his article "The
Case for a Reduced Instruction Set Computer." Needless to say,
Tannenbaum's book spouts the "conventional wisdom" of the time (make
instruction sets larger to make programs smaller, and you'll have a
faster machine). Unfortunately, so does the professor ;-) (but that
can be excused, since his main area of specialization is
object-oriented systems).
However, I have a Calculus textbook from the 1950's. I have two
editions of a recent Calculus textbook. Between them all, I can find a
number of notational differences, but the content is almost identical.
Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, none of them change much or far at
the introductory level. The process of integrating and differentiation
hasn't changed much in the last hundred years, except that now we have
computer programs that can do some of the grunge work for us. But such
programs are not even mentioned in introductory Calculus anyhow.
So while there are obviously places where the technology changes so
fast that you need new editions every year (but don't get them), it's
obvious that there's only one reason for edition changes for
introductory math and science courses: GREED.
Ik betwijfel 't....
kind) of books that hasn't been mentioned here and will probably only
make sense to old farts *over* the 30 years during which they're making
fantastic salaries is the relatively recent change in the rules for
inventory. My experience has been that it's been monumentally to blame
for driving the cost of some texts through the roof.
Back in the old days when you didn't get chased down the street by
angry mobs for admitting some interest in Liberalism, the rules on
the books for accounting and tax purposes stated that you could print
thousands of copies of your perhaps less than mainstream text (thus
keeping your printing costs/copy somewhat in line) and then keep them
in your inventory over a large number of years, getting a decent tax
break on your business expenses for your inventories. If you knew that
your text on Elementary Fregmolization was maybe going to move 500
copies per year, you simply ran off 2000 of them and kept a lid on
your prices (since printing costs are also fluid as well).
The current rules of this kinder and gentler America are now such that
there are restrictions on doing that which effectively make it
impossible to do. The net result has been that the small to moderate
runs of scholarly texts all over the map either go out of print
completely (which makes theft of said texts from libraries a crime I'd
be willing to turn over to the Shi'a Islamic courts any day), or that
they're printed in much smaller editions and thus subject to dramatic
rises in cost per printed copy at the first run and then as the book
is reprinted. Since the standard number of review copies necessary to
find the people who'd actually *use* the text remains essentially the
same in spite of these increased costs, the availability of review
copies is also totally messed up (making it harder to find the books
if you're looking for something like them). Nasty business.
Of course, there was something of an outcry among a number of us back
when the rules went into effect, claiming that this would have a major
impact on the price and availability of everything except for Tom
Clancy and Jacqueline (and, I suppose, Gardner's History of Art)
Collins. The great sadness of all this for me is that I guess I was
righter than I thought.
One final note and essay questions: Have any of you budding analysts
looked into the average profit margins of the currently constituted
publishing market? While the desktop route has some real promise (and
some real hazard, judging from the atrocious design and layout I've
seen in a couple of "new" desktop computer and engineering texts), the
business still has the usual constraints, and those margins are a lot
tighter than I'll bet a number of you budding engineers would be willing
to live with in *your* business life.
Greg (trying to figure out whether I should use that $40 University of
Chicago text on Foucault and Post-Structuralism for the seminar text
or fall back on using Jean Auell's "The Clan of the Cave Bear" like I
did last semester ....;-) Taylor
--
the end of the road is the end of the line/the end of the line is the
place in your heart/where the searchlights cut the dark and define/the
place at which the fences start/over the line/over the wall/an arbitrary
border/after all/you cannot move/with equal ease/may i see/your passport
please/greg taylor/Heurikon/3201 Latham Dr./Madison, WI 53716/608-271-8700
david ross
>
>However, I have a Calculus textbook from the 1950's. I have two
>editions of a recent Calculus textbook. Between them all, I can find a
>number of notational differences, but the content is almost identical.
So let's all go back to using Courant and John :-)
--
_ _ _ David A. Ross (Dept.Math.&Stat.,U.ofMN,Duluth)
/ \/ \/ \ BITNET: dross@umndul UUCP: dr...@ub.d.umn.edu
/ /--/--/ (...all the opinions expressed herein are facts,
/__/ / \ hence they belong to nobody, least of all me...)
Charles Mills
> ...The same arguments have been advanced about free software --
>i.e. you will get what you pay for -- but either you think your time and
>effort are worth something or you don't.
The arguments have been advanced, but it's worth noting that in the case of
free software, there are also large amounts of it available, and guess what?
Some of it's terrible, some of it's medium, and some is the best of
its kind. The quality, from where I sit, doesn't seem to be
distributed markedly differently in free software from how it is
in expensive software.
>If "information should be free" and anyone who sells information is somehow
>"immoral," then it is not only software but textbooks, newspapers, the
>contents of all libraries that should be free.
Speaking for myself, I'm not saying that `information should be free',
any more than in buying a friend a drink I'm saying that `beer should
be free'. I am merely contemplating giving some away. If I wrote what
I thought was a ground-breaking calculus text, the main reward I would
expect from it in any case would be the gratifying feeling of having
helped to hold back the rising tide of ignorance. If my giving it away
has the effect that more people read it, so much the warmer is this
gratification.
>Also all the lectures given by all the professors. Shucks, it's just
>information and ideas, it should be free.
I can't recall that I've ever known a professor who wasn't willing to
give his ideas away at great length to any who would listen
attentively--- and not many non-professors, come to that.
>The real blind spot of the Free Whatever Foundation is a failure, or a
>refusal, to recognize that there is some value-added in the reduction
>of an algorithm to practice...
Not at all--- at least not, as I've pointed out, for me. I don't
propose to give the stuff away because I think it's valueless,
or even because I don't think I could make money from it. I propose
to give it away because that, I think, is the best way to make it
effective in doing what I meant it to do.
>Like democracy, the market is the worst method for making sure quality
>products are available -- except for all the others.
If you want it done right, do it yourself! The point is, the market isn't
a method for making sure quality products are available, or a method
for distributing them: it's merely a milieu in which to exchange them for
other things of value.
Very few authors, even of the best textbooks, make enough money off them for
the money alone to justify their efforts: I think they generally have other
benefits in mind, as I hinted above; and I think it's worth hoping, for an
individual to whom those other benefits are important, that some such medium
as the [Cheap, Free] Textbook Foundation (I propose the name be changed,
anyway) may make it easier to obtain those benefits.
>...If you want to
>donate your time and talent to a good cause, you have my admiration.
>But that is YOUR choice. You do not have the right to dictate that I,
>too, am morally obligated to donate my time and effort. And you
>certainly don't have the right to impose your morality on me, nor to justify
>stealing the fruits of my labor because, by your lights, I should have
>given them away anyway.
I may have missed something (I have been away for a week), but I haven't seen
anyone dictating any such thing--- and when I do, I'll join you in
shouting them down. In any event, I don't see that the whole thing has
really so much to do with morality--- unless, of course, someone is
proposing to distribute *your* work for free without consulting you.
--
fred (...!cornell!oravax!fred) *** No entity without identity! ***
Vicki Powers
(which I never asked for). This is a big book, list price $40. (The publisher
is North-Holland.) The company wants my input on the book, and is trying
to convince me to adopt it for a course. However, I am not teaching linear
algebra, and most likely won't be in the near future. This got me thinking -
is this habit of sending textbooks to academics contributing to the high cost?
As I look at my shelves, I see about 5 books that I got this way, and I've
only been teaching 3 1/2 years! I know of someone who was on a commitee to
pick a calculus book and who received many, many free (unsolicited) copies of
calculus textbooks. While I like receiving free textbooks, I wonder if
this practice is a good idea.
Vicki
--
Vicki Powers | vi...@mathcs.emory.edu PREFERRED
Emory University | {sun!sunatl,gatech}!emory!vicki UUCP
Dept of Math and CS | vicki@emory NON-DOMAIN BITNET
Atlanta, GA 30322 |
Mr Background
As a matter of fact, my favorite introductory calc text is one I used in
high school - 2nd ed of G. Thomas. (not Thomas and Finney, now in it
's infinity-th edition.... bleh)
From: evw...@athena.mit.edu (Eric V Wong)
Path: athena.mit.edu!evwong
+------------------------------------------------------+
| Eric V Wong, Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| ARPA: evw...@athena.mit.edu BITNET: WONG@MITWIBR |
| CIS: 72117,431 GEnie: E.WONG2 |
Eric Green
> fantastic salaries is the relatively recent change in the rules for
> inventory. My experience has been that it's been monumentally to blame
> for driving the cost of some texts through the roof.
Not only has it been to blame for driving the cost of textbooks
through the roof, it has also reduced backlists throughout the
publishing industry to near ZILCH. Books appear on the shelves, spend
their 3 weeks in the limelight, and then are destroyed and written off
as a loss -- that's the ONLY way to get them written off.
The same thing also has happened in many other industries, e.g.
railroads are ripping up tracks left and right because of tax laws
that make it cheaper to destroy than to maintain.
> Of course, there was something of an outcry among a number of us back
> when the rules went into effect, claiming that this would have a major
> impact on the price and availability of everything except for Tom
> Clancy and Jacqueline (and, I suppose, Gardner's History of Art)
> Collins. The great sadness of all this for me is that I guess I was
> righter than I thought.
See Don Lancaster's monthly columns in Computer Shopper, which often
laments the situation (he had to resort to self-publication of his
older books... since they were not "best sellers", and were of a
hobbiest rather than academic nature, nobody was interested in
carrying them on the shelves for more than 6 weeks).
> One final note and essay questions: Have any of you budding analysts
> looked into the average profit margins of the currently constituted
> publishing market?
Low. Real low. Even for academic books -- your local bookstore gets a
VERY small percentage of that cover price. The reasoning of the
publisher is, "they have a guaranteed market and sell hundreds of the
things, so they don't need a big margin". This also means that you
will not find books intended for academic use in a normal bookstore --
regular bookstores won't tolerate such tight margins.
--
Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509
"We have treatments for disturbed persons, Nicholas. But, at least for
the moment, we have no treatment for disturbing persons." -- Dr. Island
Edward C Horvath
> ...it's obvious that there's only one reason for edition changes for
> introductory math and science courses: GREED.
(*sigh*) Have you ever written a book? Dealt with a publisher? Would it
undermine your prejudices too much to learn that the author's royalties
often DECREASE with a second edition (it costs the publisher money
to reset the type. You want to revise it, the cost comes out of your cut).
This is especially true with small-run items like textbooks.
=Ned Horvath=
Norman Matloff
In response to a posting which mentioned some reasons why the high
prices of textbooks might be justified, I had said:
>Yes, these SOUND LIKE reasonable explanations for the high price of
>textbooks. But oligopolistic market structure is a much better explanation.
>The plain truth is that publishers "have students over a barrel" -- the
>students MUST buy the books, and so the publishers can to a great extent
>charge what they want.
>Here is a little experiment you can do to see this: There are a great
>many softcover books on "Unix for programmers" on the market. Most are
>intended to be sold to nonstudents, but the one by Paul Wang is aimed
>as a textbook for university courses. It is of very similar content to
>other books, but is considerably more expensive (check this yourself).
In case anyone is interested, I just checked a few. Wang's book was
around $38, but most other books which were similar in content were
around $25. Wang's book was intended for the textbook market, while
the others were intended for the general market. It definitely does
appear that publishers are conscious of the fact that students must
buy the **assigned** text for the course, i.e. no alternate choices,
and thus will to a great extent be willing to pay whatever the
publisher wants, and that the publishers are taking advantage of
this.
Norm
John Hofbauer
>I think the main reason the Nth edition is published is simply because
>developments in the field concerned demand a new edition. As such, a
>"really well-written text" might serve as a reference for years, but it
>wouldn't be UP-TO-DATE......
I wish I could agree but all too often it is simply greed. For three years
I taught a 'computer literacy' course at a local university. The text was
COMPUTERS TODAY by Donald Sanders, a typically wretched book in this genre.
(These are to computer science what introductory calculus texts are to
mathemetics.) A third edition appeared two years after the second edition.
I was amused and appalled to read a story in the business section of the
local newspaper about how McGraw-Hill was shorting the interarrival time
of editions because too many used copies were eroding their sales. The
Sanders book was cited as the primary example.
The difference between the two editions was marginal. A few chapters were
moved around and a few cosmetic "improvements" were made. I have yet to
find a decent 'computer literacy' book just as another poster bemoaned
the non-existence of a calculus book that isn't just a catalogue of
tricks.
John Hofbauer
>As I look at my shelves, I see about 5 books that I got this way, and I've
>only been teaching 3 1/2 years! I know of someone who was on a commitee to
>pick a calculus book and who received many, many free (unsolicited) copies of
>calculus textbooks. While I like receiving free textbooks, I wonder if
>this practice is a good idea.
>
Unfortunately you often don't want them. When I taught a section of a
10-section, 1200 student 'computer literacy' service course I was constantly
visited by publisher sales reps who were trying to convince us to switch
to their book. By the time I left I had a self full of useless (to me)
books. I managed to trade some in for books I wanted. In one case I traded
in three such books for two I wanted. The sales rep was happy because it
made his quota look better (one fewer given away) and I was happy too.
As for it being a good idea... well, it is their way of advertising. Without
getting the book in your hands how will you discover their great book. :-)
Undeniably it adds to the cost of books, so I try to give a useless book
back whenever I can. I just wish publishers would take more care in not
publishing yet another useless calculus book. But what do they know about
mathematics or anything else; they are just publishers! It will be up to
us to write those wonderful new books and get them in their hands.
John Murray
* If publishers sent their promotion copies to campus libraries or
bookstores, and then solicited support from the faculty at that
location, wouldn't that provide them with greater exposure than
dumping copies on the desks of individuals who don't even teach
the topic? Anyone browsing through the "Review Texts" section
could have the opportunity to provide them with input, including
students. I wonder what proportion of a text's sales go to libraries
rather than individual students (and profs not on the mailing list)?
* As for rewarding the authors, many profs seem to write their texts
"during working hours", so to speak. Taking a sabbatical to write a
book appears to be more common for advanced topics rather than for
introductory texts, which often evolve out of class handouts over
several years. Thus, the author isn't really "dependent" on the
income in the same sense that a professional writer is. It seems to
me that the royalties are sometimes just a way for instructors to
make a little extra money. What would the royalties on a typical,
mediocre intro text be, anyway? $500? $5000?? $50000???
* The Wang Unix book was mentioned as an example of over-pricing.
Presumably it was marketed in the usual textbook fashion. How
often do profs prescribe texts they've received free, rather than
going through the contents of their local bookstores? By not
looking for good, cheap books on a subject (such as the myriad
of Unix non-textbooks), they inadvertently contribute to this
disgrace.
* It gets worse when BOTH a textbook and a half-baked version of
the prof's forthcoming work need to be bought by the student.
Sometimes a non-textbook supplemented by good course notes would
more than suffice.
- John M. (My own opinions, etc.)
Vidhyanath K. Rao
>that students must buy the **assigned** text for the course[...]
Ultimately the blame must fall on the students (as somebody else pointed
out). You see, in basic courses, I would rather ask the students to buy a
problem book, and may be one (or more :-) books out of a short list.
Unfortunaltey, students feel uncomfortable about this. In fact, a biologist
collegue of mine was bemoaning the fact that students wnat to know which
pages of the text were going to covered on a given day, rather than knowing
the name of the topic alone. I often feel the same way. In fact, when I
lecture, I give only the name of the topic. But student think that that is
too little. If that the way they feel, they deserve to be gouged.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nath
v...@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu
Greg Hennessy
>Ultimately the blame must fall on the students (as somebody else pointed
>out).
WHAT!!! You want to blame ME for the price of text books!?!?! Yet
another case of blaming the victim! Get real!
-Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia
USPS Mail: Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA
Internet: gs...@virginia.edu
UUCP: ...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w
Norman Matloff
>Ultimately the blame must fall on the students (as somebody else pointed
>out). You see, in basic courses, I would rather ask the students to buy a
>problem book, and may be one (or more :-) books out of a short list.
>Unfortunaltey, students feel uncomfortable about this. In fact, a biologist
>collegue of mine was bemoaning the fact that students wnat to know which
>pages of the text were going to covered on a given day, rather than knowing
>the name of the topic alone. I often feel the same way. In fact, when I
>lecture, I give only the name of the topic. But student think that that is
>too little. If that the way they feel, they deserve to be gouged.
This brings up another topic. With the (possible!) exception of a place
like MIT, I feel that most engineering (including CS) students are far too
focussed on the short term, i.e. getting a good grade in the course, rather
than on the long term, i.e. preparing for their careers as engineers. The
more structured the course is, the better they like it, because the clearer
it is exactly what will be required to get a good grade. They don't like
a vague assignment which asks them to learn a topic on their own, by
immersing themselves in the topic, exploring it, posing and answering
their own questions on it, etc. -- even though this is much better
preparation in a career sense. They would rather that they be required
to memorize facts and techniques, with the exam questions being warmed-over
variations of homework problems. This is a real shame.
I do make them explore, and my exams are aimed to reward those that do.
Consistent with the philosophy that students will (to a great though of
course not unlimited extent) "rise to or lower themselves to" the
professor's expectation of them, I find that this approach works out
pretty well. However, some of the students do resent it; once one of
them, in filling out his/her evaluation of my teaching, wrote, "Professor
Matloff wants us to think, but we engineers don't have time to think"! :-)
Norm
Trip Martin
> writes:
>>[...] It definitely does appear that publishers are conscious of the fact
>>that students must buy the **assigned** text for the course[...]
>
>Ultimately the blame must fall on the students (as somebody else pointed
>out). You see, in basic courses, I would rather ask the students to buy a
>problem book, and may be one (or more :-) books out of a short list.
>
>Unfortunaltey, students feel uncomfortable about this. In fact, a biologist
>collegue of mine was bemoaning the fact that students wnat to know which
>pages of the text were going to covered on a given day, rather than knowing
>the name of the topic alone. I often feel the same way. In fact, when I
>lecture, I give only the name of the topic. But student think that that is
>too little. If that the way they feel, they deserve to be gouged.
Being a student who's had to deal with buying textbooks for the past 3.5
years, I feel this is unfair. I've taken a number of courses (including
one currently) where problems were assigned out of the required text, and
these problems had to be handed in for a grade. Thus, we must buy that
particular textbook so we can get the problems, or have to rely on getting
the problems from other students (this is a REAL pain -- I've tried it).
There are other factors which conspire against students being able to
simply shop around for the best book. For one, the college bookstore
usually stocks only the required or recommended books for each course
(This might not be a problem for a large university, but is certainly
is for RPI and many other schools). Second, how does a student decide
which text is the best one to use? After all, the student doesn't already
know the material to be covered, and thus is certainly not in a good
position to judge the quality of each text (Granted, there are some things
which a student can look out for to get an idea, but that often isn't
enough). Third, suppose a student gets a text and it turns out the text
doesn't cover all the material (Possibly a couple of minor topics not
mentioned in the syllabus)?
I certainly wouldn't mind being given a list of books to choose from,
instead of having a single required text. Having students track down
good textbooks on their own is different story. And I resent being
blamed for not taking the time and effort to track down such texts. I
think that that time and effort would be better spent on other things
(like classes).
--
Trip Martin
ni...@pawl.rpi.edu
ni...@paraguay.acm.rpi.edu
Rahul Dhesi
writes:
>...your local bookstore gets a
>VERY small percentage of that cover price. The reasoning of the
>publisher is, "they have a guaranteed market and sell hundreds of the
>things, so they don't need a big margin".
The bookstore decides what margin it wants; publishers have no say in
deciding at what price a bookstore will sell textbooks.
--
Rahul Dhesi UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi
Herman Rubin
> In article <17...@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> mat...@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff)
> writes:
> >[...] It definitely does appear that publishers are conscious of the fact
> >that students must buy the **assigned** text for the course[...]
>
> Ultimately the blame must fall on the students (as somebody else pointed
> out). You see, in basic courses, I would rather ask the students to buy a
> problem book, and may be one (or more :-) books out of a short list.
>
> Unfortunaltey, students feel uncomfortable about this. In fact, a biologist
> collegue of mine was bemoaning the fact that students wnat to know which
> pages of the text were going to covered on a given day, rather than knowing
> the name of the topic alone. I often feel the same way. In fact, when I
> lecture, I give only the name of the topic. But student think that that is
> too little. If that the way they feel, they deserve to be gouged.
>
This is even the case in multi-section course in which the other sections are
doing this. I do not necessarily follow the same order as the other sections.
But the students want to know what will be covered on a given day, and what
will be on the examinations. Our examinations should have at least half the
questions things which can be done by someone who understands the concepts
but not the manipulations, and cannot be done by someone who has merely
memorized the various types of manipulations. I suggest that the liberal
use of crib sheets be allowed in mathematics examinations. A formula can
always be looked up in the real world; a definition can be looked up; a
theorem can be looked up; the understanding of what these mean cannot be
looked up.
Students want to be told how. This must be resisted; the must understand why.
Setting up problems is the important thing, except for theoreticians. The
student from outside, and most of our teaching is to such, does not have to
know how to solve a well-formulated problem, but how to formulate the problem
so that an "expert" can solve it, if the solution procedure is known.
If there is not a good book in a given area, it will take at least two man-
years and multiple authorship of the entire book to produce a reasonable book
for a one-semester course. And the students will hate it, and few faculty
will be willing to make the effort to teach the concepts. It is much easier
to teach plugging into formulas, it is much easier to grade, and the students
like it much better. One can even use multiple choice tests, so it is not
necessary to take the effort to grade! So why are the students so ignorant?
--
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
Phone: (317)494-6054
hru...@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet, UUCP)
Richard Bumby
In article <49...@bsu-cs.UUCP> dh...@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
> In article <63...@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> e...@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green)
> writes:
> >...your local bookstore gets a
> >VERY small percentage of that cover price...
>
> The bookstore decides what margin it wants; publishers have no say in
> deciding at what price a bookstore will sell textbooks.
Actually both are right. Until very recently, the publishers marked
the retail price on the book and offered the bookstore a discount from
that price. The latest trend is to sell to everyone at the same price
and let the store decide on its price. This means that you should be
able to order direct from the publisher at the wholesale price. In
some cases this is possible, but it is more likely that the publisher
will deal with the public through its own retail outlet. The real
effect of this is that the stores now treat all prices as wholesale
prices, e.g. the Rutgers store sells Spivak's "Joy of TeX" for $42.70
on those rare occasions when it is in stock, but you can order it from
the AMS for $25 if you are a member (and not that much more if you
are not). Similarly, when I used some modules from COMAP for a
course, the store sold them for between $2 and $2.50 apiece when they
were advertised as available for $1. each. The store can only meet
its operating expenses through the markup on what it sells, and there
is no better way to get a Calculus book into the hands of thousand
diverse students scattered around the campus, but the lower volume
stuff needs a different method of distribution.
--
--R. T. Bumby ** Math ** Rutgers ** New Brunswick **
(in one form or another for all kinds of mail)
[bu...@math.rutgers.edu]
Jason Coughlin,221 Rey,84176,
>Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.physics,comp.edu
>Subject: Re: How to beat the high cost of text books!
>
>Ultimately the blame must fall on the students (as somebody else pointed
>out). You see, in basic courses, I would rather ask the students to buy a
>problem book, and may be one (or more :-) books out of a short list.
>
>Unfortunaltey, students feel uncomfortable about this. In fact, a biologist
>collegue of mine was bemoaning the fact that students wnat to know which
>pages of the text were going to covered on a given day, rather than knowing
>the name of the topic alone. I often feel the same way. In fact, when I
>lecture, I give only the name of the topic. But student think that that is
>too little. If that the way they feel, they deserve to be gouged.
I think this is really malicious and unfair! Please tell me exactly
what problem you're solving by raising the cost of books!! I'll tell you
what problem you aren't solving! You aren't solving the problem of
motivating students to READ the textbooks and UNDERSTAND the textbooks.
And, your incurring the problem of obtaining the textbooks. I'm ahead
of my schedule. I'm only a sophomore and I have Tanenbaum's OS book and
"The Dragon Book" on my bookshelf which I intend to read well in advance of my
OS and Compilers course. Want to know how much I paid for those two books? I
paid $100 for 2 books. NOT PRETTY! At this price, I can understand why a lot
of students wouldn't be willing to buy them!!
>From: c...@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
>Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.physics,comp.edu
>
>I will not even give out in advance what topic I will cover on a given day.
>This is even the case in multi-section course in which the other sections are
>doing this. I do not necessarily follow the same order as the other sections.
And what problem fits this solution? I'm thankful my professors give
me an itinerary for the entire semester. I read the material before the
lecture, go to the lecture, and well-la, I've been exposed to the material
twice. By looking at the material ahead of time, I get a perspective on the
concept so that I can ask questions about the application. Don't tell me that
you understood physics and calculus the first time you were exposed to it in
a classroom because I don't buy it (Pun intended!)
>But the students want to know what will be covered on a given day, and what
>will be on the examinations. Our examinations should have at least half the
>questions things which can be done by someone who understands the concepts
>but not the manipulations, and cannot be done by someone who has merely
>memorized the various types of manipulations. I suggest that the liberal
>use of crib sheets be allowed in mathematics examinations. A formula can
>always be looked up in the real world; a definition can be looked up; a
>theorem can be looked up; the understanding of what these mean cannot be
>looked up.
Now THIS is a solution! And I agree entirely!! In fact, so does
my comp sci professor. All examinations are open notes and open book. Any
data structure, any formula, any algorithm already written can be looked up.
However, his problems are new faces on old people. One must find the solution
not just the forumla.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Coughlin,
j...@clutx.clarkson.edu, or
jk0@clutx, or
coug...@clutx.clarkson.edu, or
coughlij@clutx
Herman Rubin
> >From: c...@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
> >Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.physics,comp.edu
> >I will not even give out in advance what topic I will cover on a given day.
> >This is even the case in multi-section course in which the other sections are
> >doing this. I do not necessarily follow the same order as the other sections.
>
> And what problem fits this solution? I'm thankful my professors give
> me an itinerary for the entire semester. I read the material before the
> lecture, go to the lecture, and well-la, I've been exposed to the material
> twice. By looking at the material ahead of time, I get a perspective on the
> concept so that I can ask questions about the application. Don't tell me that
> you understood physics and calculus the first time you were exposed to it in
> a classroom because I don't buy it (Pun intended!)
For one thing, it is not necessary to follow the order of the material in the
textbook. I may want to use some of the material in chapter 6 before some of
the material in chapter 2. Or I may feel that a digression, explaining some
of the concepts in more detail, is justified.
Also, there are parts of the book which are irrelevant and are being omitted.
But the worst situations, which I attempt to warn the students about well in
advance, are those where the book is just plain misleading. Books in
mathematics and statistics are particularly bad in presenting algorithms or
special cases in such a way as to make the concepts very difficult to
understand later. The student who believes that integral is antiderivative
must disabuse himself of this in order to understand the 4500+ year old
notion. Computing the amount of a bill is a much better example. A concept
may involve the use of formulas, but it is not the manipulative procedure.
I expect the student to read the book in advance of class, and most of them
do not. But in most courses, the warnings about the misleading nature of the
book are necessary.
I also do not read the textbook in class. I expect the students to read the
relevant parts, and they do not like this. Also, do not tell me to write a
book. I know what is involved in writing a textbook, but few of the textbook
authors seem to do anything but copy bad books.
> >But the students want to know what will be covered on a given day, and what
> >will be on the examinations. Our examinations should have at least half the
> >questions things which can be done by someone who understands the concepts
> >but not the manipulations, and cannot be done by someone who has merely
> >memorized the various types of manipulations. I suggest that the liberal
> >use of crib sheets be allowed in mathematics examinations. A formula can
> >always be looked up in the real world; a definition can be looked up; a
> >theorem can be looked up; the understanding of what these mean cannot be
> >looked up.
>
> Now THIS is a solution! And I agree entirely!! In fact, so does
> my comp sci professor. All examinations are open notes and open book. Any
> data structure, any formula, any algorithm already written can be looked up.
> However, his problems are new faces on old people. One must find the solution
> not just the forumla.
I can assure you that this is not appreciated by students in service courses in
mathematics and statistics. The students are accustomed to having only the
regurgitation of memorized formulas, and routine manipulation.
The only reason that I do not customarily allow open book, and limit the
amount of notes, is that otherwise students unaccustomed to this approach
will spend all the time looking things up.
Jeffrey James Bryan Carpenter
>memorized the various types of manipulations. I suggest that the liberal
>use of crib sheets be allowed in mathematics examinations. A formula can
>always be looked up in the real world; a definition can be looked up; a
>theorem can be looked up; the understanding of what these mean cannot be
I fully agree with this. I could never understand why there was so
much emphasis on memorizing formulas when it is the concepts and ways
of applying the formulas that counts. You can give everyone the
formulas, but if the students don't know what to do with them, then
the formulas are not much help. My bigget problem in math classes was
trying to remember all the formulas.
--
Jeffrey J. B. Carpenter, University of Pittsburgh, Computer Center
USMAIL: 600 Epsilon Drive, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15238
j...@cisunx.UUCP | AT&T 1 412 624 6424 | J...@PITTVMS.BITNET
J...@VMS.CIS.PITTSBURGH.EDU
H. Conrad Cunningham
>deciding at what price a bookstore will sell textbooks.
True, but I think most publishers give a suggested retail price for
their books. I suspect college bookstores stick fairly close to that
price.
Eric Green
> Xref: killer sci.math:4953 sci.physics:5165 comp.edu:1644
> In article <63...@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> e...@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green)
> writes:
>>...your local bookstore gets a
>>VERY small percentage of that cover price. The reasoning of the
>>publisher is, "they have a guaranteed market and sell hundreds of the
>>things, so they don't need a big margin".
> The bookstore decides what margin it wants; publishers have no say in
> deciding at what price a bookstore will sell textbooks.
True enough, BUT, if you look at "Books in Print", the publishers tell
you the cover price of the book, i.e. what the bookseller SHOULD sell
it for. But, since the "cover price" is nowhere on the cover of any
academic textbook, the bookseller can, indeed, sell it for any
price... just stick any old label on it.
That, of course, only works if the bookseller has no competition. What
generally happens when there IS competition, e.g. on the USL campus,
is that the competing bookstores have a "gentleman's agreement" to
keep prices high. E.g. "look, you get the Pell grant students, so just
let us charge 50 cents less than your 100% markup, and we'll be
satisfied and won't make a hassle for you with the Pell Foundation".
George W. Leach
>In article <10...@l.cc.purdue.edu> c...@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>>memorized the various types of manipulations. I suggest that the liberal
>>use of crib sheets be allowed in mathematics examinations. A formula can
>>always be looked up in the real world; a definition can be looked up; a
>>theorem can be looked up; the understanding of what these mean cannot be
>
>I fully agree with this. I could never understand why there was so
>much emphasis on memorizing formulas when it is the concepts and ways
>of applying the formulas that counts.
This was standard practice in the Calculus courses I took. In fact,
the crib sheet was a preprinted, on both sides, card that could be purchased
from the bookstore! In fact, in many ways I would have preferred NOT to have
open book tests because they were HARDER. Of course, you learned quite a bit
more about REAL problem solving that way.
--
George W. Leach Paradyne Corporation
..!uunet!pdn!reggie Mail stop LG-129
Phone: (813) 530-2376 P.O. Box 2826
Largo, FL USA 34649-2826
Hugh LaMaster
>as the [Cheap, Free] Textbook Foundation
An excellent idea. Naturally, the first thing it will require is a
champion with network access and a willingness to devote some disk space
to the job.
--
Hugh LaMaster, m/s 233-9, UUCP ames!lamaster
NASA Ames Research Center ARPA lama...@ames.arc.nasa.gov
Moffett Field, CA 94035
Phone: (415)694-6117
Hugh LaMaster
>the non-existence of a calculus book that isn't just a catalogue of
>tricks.
Try looking at Spivak's book. Of course, many people won't like it,
because it takes too long to get to the "tricks".
Tony Goodloe
> In article <10...@l.cc.purdue.edu> c...@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
> >memorized the various types of manipulations. I suggest that the liberal
> >use of crib sheets be allowed in mathematics examinations. A formula can
> >always be looked up in the real world; a definition can be looked up; a
> >theorem can be looked up; the understanding of what these mean cannot be
>
> I fully agree with this. I could never understand why there was so
> much emphasis on memorizing formulas when it is the concepts and ways
> of applying the formulas that counts.
It is much easier for the prof to make and grade a test that is "plug-n-chug"
rather than thought-provoking. Also, some profs end up teaching a class
that they really don't understand. We had a professor, sort of a utility
professor, that taught digital design, emag, electronics, and
communications, and couldn't answer a question about any of it ...
unless he had HIS cheat sheet in front of him. If you knew the
formulas, you could get a 100%. Teachers like that really piss me off.
They are just wasting my time and money.
> Jeffrey J. B. Carpenter, University of Pittsburgh, Computer Center
Tony Goodloe, Intergraph Corp.
John Murray
The publisher has the source of the book available on-line. The bookstore/
university/professor/library/student orders the book by electronic mail,
charging it to their account number/tuition bill/credit card or whatever.
The publisher sends out the textfile and it is printed/reproduced locally,
or alternately simply used online. (I'm not going to discuss the problems
of copy protection, etc. We know all about them from software experience.)
The advantage is that the source can be revised each year, so that people
always have to get the latest version.
It seems like the system would work best if most or all the texts for a
given subject were distributed in this manner. (New topics with relatively
few general texts, such as nanotechnology or cognitive engineering, seem
to be potential candidates for such a system.) Thus, if you intended to
be involved with the subject, it would be assumed that you were registered
with the system (much as you would with Compuserve or Lexis). The authors
also benefit, by doing their submissions and reviewing on-line too. It may
be that the publisher would prefer to deal directly at the bookstore level
(or perhaps professor/department level), rather than the general public.
So why hasn't some enterprising publisher established a system along these
lines? Many are into software distribution and on-line services in a big
way in any case, and the text of many books is in machine form somewhere
already. Someday, professors might tell sales reps they won't recommend a
text unless it's available on-line. On the other hand, people weren't
banging on the doors of banks and lotteries for on-line access, but it
happened anyway.
Recently, there was some discussion about the "value of information" here.
It comes to mind that the "value" in legal text systems (like Lexis) is
not in the contents; court decisions and the ramblings of judges are in
the public domain. However, the publishers make their profits out of
their copyrights on the indexes and tables of contents. Given the opinion
of some posters, who feel that students should be encouraged to learn more
than just how to apply a memorized formula, we might think how traditional
textbooks might be transformed into a realistic "knowledge base", perhaps
using some form of local hypertext system.
Any opinions?
Sarah Belcastro
Yeah, i hardly see how you can blame the student. Some teachers use the texts
extensively and others not at all; how was i to know that my Analysis prof.
would never use the text and that my Algebra prof. would assign us to read
sections not covered in class? We don't have _any_alternatives in our book-
store that i've seen. I suppose i could get on a train and go to U Penn if
i wanted a copy of Herstein really badly, but it would be a real pain. And
that assumes that i know what other book i want.
i think i am babbling.
--sarah marie belcastro.
Bitnet: s_belcastro@hvrford
Sarah Belcastro
> >Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.physics,comp.edu
> >Subject: Re: How to beat the high cost of text books!
> >always be looked up in the real world; a definition can be looked up; a
> >theorem can be looked up; the understanding of what these mean cannot be
> >looked up.
>
> Now THIS is a solution! And I agree entirely!! In fact, so does
> my comp sci professor. All examinations are open notes and open book. Any
> data structure, any formula, any algorithm already written can be looked up.
> However, his problems are new faces on old people. One must find the solution
> not just the forumla.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Jason Coughlin,
i prefer the type of tests that my profs tend to give: open-book, untimed.
just no collaboration. These allow students to schedule them when they need
to and learn new concepts on the tests themselves, or to take as much time
for a proof as they need. Of course, i suppose this only works if you have
an honor code like we do.
--sarah marie belcastro
Bitnet: (PLEASE!!!) s_belcastro@hvrford
John Hofbauer
>> deciding at what price a bookstore will sell textbooks.
>
>True enough, BUT, if you look at "Books in Print", the publishers tell
>you the cover price of the book, i.e. what the bookseller SHOULD sell
>it for. But, since the "cover price" is nowhere on the cover of any
>academic textbook, the bookseller can, indeed, sell it for any
>price... just stick any old label on it.
>
giving a suggested list price for many textbooks. They tell you to contact
the publisher. They do continue giving a price for trade books. Hmmm, do we
smell a rat here?
Chris Torek
>hofb...@csri.toronto.edu (John Hofbauer) asks about
>>the non-existence of a calculus book that isn't just a catalogue of
>>tricks.
In article <19...@ames.arc.nasa.gov> lama...@ames.arc.nasa.gov
(Hugh LaMaster) suggests:
>Try looking at Spivak's book. Of course, many people won't like it,
>because it takes too long to get to the "tricks".
I presume this means Spivak's `Calculus', from Publish or Perish Inc.
Well, *I* liked it. (We used it in freshman Honors Calc., in which
I did not do well. Sigh. But I still remember his peculiar derivation
for the trig functions....)
--
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain: ch...@mimsy.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris
Gerald Edgar
One of the national copying chains has a program called "Publication on
Demand" (or something like that). They recruit authors to publish with
them. They keep one copy at their store, and then when a purchaser
wants to buy it, they copy it for him.
--
Gerald A. Edgar TS1...@OHSTVMA.bitnet
Department of Mathematics g...@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu
The Ohio State University g...@osupyr.UUCP
Columbus, OH 43210 70715,1324 CompuServe
Robert J Frey
>In article <881204031...@king.csri.toronto.edu> hofb...@csri.toronto.edu (John Hofbauer) writes:
>>a calculus book that isn't just a catalogue of tricks...?
>
>Try looking at Spivak's book. Of course, many people won't like it,
>because it takes too long to get to the "tricks".
>
I second this recommendation; Spivak's _Calculus_ is one the best books in
the field. His _Calculus on Manifolds_ is another superb text if you're
interested in multi-variate methods.
==============================================================================
|Dr. Robert J. Frey | {acsm, sbcs, polyof}!kepler1!rjfrey |
|Kepler Financial Management, Ltd.|------------------------------------------|
|100 North Country Rd., Bldg. B | The views expressed are wholly my own and|
|Setauket, NY 11766 | and do not reflect those of the Indepen- |
|(516) 689-6300 x.16 | dent Republic of Latvia. |
==============================================================================
John Hofbauer
>>tricks.
>
>Try looking at Spivak's book. Of course, many people won't like it,
>because it takes too long to get to the "tricks".
>
calculus book for a service course that isn't a catalogue of tricks.
Jason Coughlin,221 Rey,,
Enough professors now (like try to find one who hasn't!) have stated
that they feel their courses and the books that they use have degenerated,
and they attribute this degeneration to their students. So what's really
happening here? Are all the professors wrong? Do the professors expect too
much of us today? Or is it really the students? And if it IS the students,
what's happened? Is it a loss of motivation (, and just what are we
motivated to do these days)? I think this is a VERY important issue which
needs to be addressed, and maybe solved?
Now listen, DON'T flame me because of the questions! This is the
beginning of a discussion. I'm not giving any answers here, but rather I'm
pulling out some questions. The end-goal for all of us is to determine
what happened to our academic integrity.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Coughlin
BITNET: jk0@clutx
ARPA : j...@clutx.clarkson.edu
Pete Holsberg
=This got me thinking -
=is this habit of sending textbooks to academics contributing to the high cost?
Yes and no. A few years ago, many oublishers not only stopped sending
unsolicited texts, they stopped sending solicited ones as well!
However, they quickly realized that they were stopping their best advertising.
If you can't use the book, you might either pass it along to a colleague
who could use it, donate it to your library, or return it to the publisher.
Pete
--
Pete Holsberg UUCP: {...!rutgers!}princeton!mccc!pjh
Mercer College CompuServe: 70240,334
1200 Old Trenton Road GEnie: PJHOLSBERG
Trenton, NJ 08690 Voice: 1-609-586-4800
John Murray
> ....(profs) feel their courses and the books that they use have degenerated,
> and they attribute this degeneration to their students. . . . .
> . . . is it really the students? And if it IS the students,
> what's happened? Is it a loss of motivation (, and just what are we
> . . . . The end-goal for all of us is to determine
> what happened to our academic integrity.
The answer to what has happened to academic integrity appears in another
posting to this newsgroup.
> From: g...@spam.istc.sri.com (Greg Skinner)
> Message-ID: <15...@joyce.istc.sri.com>
> I took a class called Social Psychology in my senior year. . . .
> . . . . at the first class meeting, the
> professor passed a sheet around that you could sign which would
> guarantee you an A if you did not attend any more classes. However,
> you forfeited your guaranteed A (you had to take the final and earn it
> instead) if you returned to class.
Absolutly incredible!!! And some professors have the audacity to blame
the students for degeneration and loss of motivation!
Gerald Edgar
>If you can't use the book, you might either pass it along to a colleague
>who could use it, donate it to your library, or return it to the publisher.
There are characters who come around to my office frequently (and I mean
frequently: sometimes more than one a day) who want to BUY these sample
textbooks from me. What is the ethics of that?
Herman Rubin
>
> that they feel their courses and the books that they use have degenerated,
> and they attribute this degeneration to their students. So what's really
> happening here? Are all the professors wrong? Do the professors expect too
> much of us today? Or is it really the students? And if it IS the students,
> what's happened? Is it a loss of motivation (, and just what are we
> motivated to do these days)? I think this is a VERY important issue which
> needs to be addressed, and maybe solved?
1. The courses have degenerated. I do not trust the students coming out of a
mathematics course to know the manipulations presented, not to say the
concepts. It is too easy to confirm that this is the rule. I am not saying
that things were good N years ago, but one could expect the students who had
the calculus course to be able to do the manipulations 1-2 years later in a
course with an explicit calculus prerequisite even on an in-class exam then,
but cannot get it on a take-home exam now.
2. I believe that the major reason for this is that the teachers of
mathematics courses have allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by the claims
of the educationists. The major one of these claims is that it is unimportant
what is learned in the course is essentially irrelevant, and only for the
purpose of getting a relative standing. Also, even this is not important.
3. It is not just a problem of mathematics, but the idea that one learns for
the future, and not just for the grade in the current class, seems to have
disappeared. People are taught how to study for grades, but not how to learn
the material. It is possible to put enough in short-term memory to get an A
on a regurgitation exam. Thus
4. There is pressure to examine the trivia. At the college level, this means
that methods of routine manipulation are emphasized on examinations. One
reason for doing this is that the examinations are easy to grade. Concepts
cannot be tested on multiple choice examinations. It is more time-consuming
to read through the work to see if the method was essentially correct, but a
minor arithmetical error gave the wrong answer.
5. The teachers at the elementary and secondary levels can only teach
plug-and-chug operations. Even proofs are memorized. The students expect
such, and object to a teacher even mentioning anything else. They consider
it an intolerable imposition on them if an examination question is given
which cannot be done by following exactly the steps of a problem in class.
There is resentment of taking class time to give an understanding of the
material. Any statement made by the teacher is at least implicitly
challenged by "Is this going to be on the final?" Not whether it will
help in doing the exams, but whether it will be explicitly on the exams.
6. At the college level, it is politically difficult to require that the
students have knowledge prerequisites. That someone got A's in their high
school mathematics courses is no guarantee that s/he know anything from
high school mathematics. That someone got an A in last term's calculus
course is no guarantee that the material of that course can be used in this
one. I have advocated that knowledge prerequisites be used, and that
remedial courses be provided, and even taught with the understanding that,
while it may be on the students' records, some of the students may not even
have seen the relevant material.
7. Emphasize "word" problems. I would make the ability to formulate word
problems at the high school algebra level of arbitrary length THE mathematics
requirement for non-remedial entrance to college. And do not make the
mistake of teaching or expecting parsimony in the use of variables. The
high school algebra courses do much damage by asking the students to
formulate problems in one variable.
8. Encourage students to think, and to ask questions. "The only stupid
question is the one which is not asked." Encourage reasoning. Encourage
the recognition of structure; while it is sometimes necessary to look at
the trees, it is important to see the forest. This is not limited to
mathematics.
9. We can, and should, teach concepts without manipulation. The concepts
and the manipulations are largely separate. The student who has the
impression that antidifferentiation is integration cannot learn the
easy concept of integral, which can be taught at the high school algebra
level. Facility with arithmetic calculations does not help in learning
the structure of the integers; I think it can interfere. Whether Johnny
can add is not particularly important; what is important is whether Johnny
knows what addition means, and when to add.
10. We must fight the attempts to reduce out courses to what the badly-
taught students want. Can a student judge the quality of teaching in a
course, especially if the student does not have the prerequisites? Can
a student steeped in plug-and-chug appreciate the importance of learning
concepts? Should the evaluations by such students be considered in
deciding promotion, salary, and tenure?
At least 10 more paragraphs can be written. The situation is BAD. Our
Ph.D. programs are now dominated by foreign students, because the
American ones do not exist. I have put forth some suggestions.
Gregory Martin Amaya Tormo
>textbook. I may want to use some of the material in chapter 6 before some of
>the material in chapter 2. Or I may feel that a digression, explaining some
>of the concepts in more detail, is justified.
So why can you not tell the students this? Assuming you have
planned your path around the textbook in advance, and are not making it up
as you go along, a simple syllibus would tell students what to read in
advance, or even just announce it a few weeks in advance. Your students
will be with you as you talk, and will probably get more out of it, than if
they are hearing it for the first time.
>Also, there are parts of the book which are irrelevant and are being omitted.
>But the worst situations, which I attempt to warn the students about well in
>advance, are those where the book is just plain misleading. Books in
>mathematics and statistics are particularly bad in presenting algorithms or
>special cases in such a way as to make the concepts very difficult to
>understand later. The student who believes that integral is antiderivative
>must disabuse himself of this in order to understand the 4500+ year old
>notion. Computing the amount of a bill is a much better example. A concept
>may involve the use of formulas, but it is not the manipulative procedure.
>I expect the student to read the book in advance of class, and most of them
>do not. But in most courses, the warnings about the misleading nature of the
>book are necessary.
So make them. If the book is too loaded with them, why use it?
>I also do not read the textbook in class. I expect the students to read the
>relevant parts, and they do not like this. Also, do not tell me to write a
>book. I know what is involved in writing a textbook, but few of the textbook
>authors seem to do anything but copy bad books.
I do not like a prof who teaches right out of the book. If you take the
time to make your own teaching notes, you are doing the student the service
of presenting the material in a way YOU understand it. However, I do
expect my profs to follow what is in the book within reason. Nothing is
more confusing when I read one explanation for something in the text, and
then have the prof say something completely different. You are imparting a
lot of information in a very short time, and clarity is very important to
ensure all students have a chance to learn. remember, college is not
survival of the fittest. Each student pays tuition to learn, not to be
weeded out from those to who the subject comes naturally.
> The students are accustomed to having only the
>regurgitation of memorized formulas, and routine manipulation.
>
This is so stereotypical it makes me sick. Thats right. All students are
the same, in college only for the grade and the GPA that will get him a
good job so he can make more than the prof. It sounds to me like no one
has any respect for the students!
Let me give you some textbook examples. A CE law and society class and we
were told to buy a 1000+ page book of law cases. We went though less than
200 pages and the prof ended up DISAGREEING with the decisions made by the
respective supreme courts in many of the cases. I paid $49.95 for that
book; that comes out to $.25 per page used. In a "devices" class, we had a
book on developing assembly programs for 68000 computers. The prof
mentioned the book once: "This is the text for the course." He then
proceeded to teach the course from his HEAD (no notes), and never
referenced the book once. I stopped trying to read the text, because it
had nothing to do with what the prof whas teaching. That one cost $30. On
the flip side, I had two courses this semester without textbooks. In one,
I could not find any continuity in the weekly projects. There was no
sylibus, or anything - only the prof's lectures. In the second course, we
were bombarded with xerox copies, some that were of poor quality and
unreadable. It is hard to organize your approach to a course as a student
this way when everything is so disjointed. The problem on the surface is
the high cost of texts, but the real problem is how they are used. In
closing, I just spoke to a friend who paid $70 for a text. However, he
said it was worth every penny for the help it gave him, and for how the
prof integrated it into the course. We are not professional students.
Profs have a responsibility to teach the material in a way that all
students can learn, not just those who learn the best.
David Deitch, Computer Connection
dwd0238%wuc...@wucec3.wustl.edu
Fido 1:100/22
( Please mail to me, do not reply )
Colin Plumb
>> From: g...@spam.istc.sri.com (Greg Skinner)
>> Message-ID: <15...@joyce.istc.sri.com>
>> I took a class called Social Psychology in my senior year. . . .
>> . . . . at the first class meeting, the
>> professor passed a sheet around that you could sign which would
>> guarantee you an A if you did not attend any more classes. However,
>> you forfeited your guaranteed A (you had to take the final and earn it
>> instead) if you returned to class.
>
>Absolutly incredible!!! And some professors have the audacity to blame
>the students for degeneration and loss of motivation!
This sounds not like the prof saying "don't bother me", but rather like an
ultimatum: you can learn something, or you can learn nothing. If you really
want to learn nothing, just get the credit, I'll oblige you right now.
Otherwise, I assume you want to learn something.
How many people signed that list? I bet most felt pretty uncomfortable
about it. (A psych professor should be good at that!)
--
-Colin (uunet!microsof!w-colinp)
B.TONGUE
>
> that they feel their courses and the books that they use have degenerated,
> and they attribute this degeneration to their students.
Before I add my 2 cents' worth of opinion, I'd like to give a bit of
background on myself and my career. I was a math major from Rutgers
University, class of '86, founded the Rutgers University Math Club,
and obtained gainful employment from Tandy/Radio Shack (computer marketer,
lasted 3 months 2 days - I can't sell my way out of a wet paper bag,)
The Prudential (financial consultant - read "insurance marketer,") back
to the Shack as a Senior Systems Engineer/Educational Support Specialist,
to my current (and hopefully last!) position as a systems designer for
AT&T Bell Labs. The article to which I'm replying contains issues that
the Rutgers Math Club tried to address, some with success and some
woefully without.
> So what's really
> happening here? Are all the professors wrong? Do the professors expect too
> much of us today? Or is it really the students? And if it IS the students,
> what's happened? Is it a loss of motivation (, and just what are we
> motivated to do these days)? I think this is a VERY important issue which
> needs to be addressed, and maybe solved?
>
I was of the opinion then, and I am still of the opinion now, that the
majority of students in the general sciences courses are for the most
part just plain apathetic. Many students approach mathematics as a
subject to be passed and buried as quickly as possible; after all,
corporations today aren't exactly beating down the doors of math
majors, thus not giving an incentive for proficiency to the graduates
of tomorrow. This is wrong, for I've discovered that it wasn't the
formulas I memorized which helped me in my career today, but instead
the patterns of logical deduction upon which mathematics is
built. But is that aspect emphasized to the students?
This brings up another question. *Should* it be emphasized?
If a student lacks motivation to learn for the sheer joy of education,
why should professors extend themselves pointlessly? One of the
major complaints from students is the eons-old adage, "Publish
or Perish" - often this happens at the expense of the students.
I think we will all agree that both teaching and research is
important, but has there ever been a case of a professor obtaining
tenure because he makes mathematics come alive for the students
while at the same time publishing nil? On the other hand, has
a tremendous researcher ever *failed* to obtain tenure, even
when his students suffer from his lack of commitment in the
area of education?
This is a double-edged sword. The potential is there, but it
cannot be solely the professor's duty to offer support - students
must be receptive as well. I remember one of my professors
offering extended office hours after 1/2 half of the class
failed the first hourly (senior-level course) - not one person
showed up! Great incentive for a continued interest in "reaching"
the students! One of my meetings concerned "Departmental Policies -
voice your concerns!" Six students showed up, and four of us
were the officers! With those kind of conditions, it's under-
standable that professors at times believe the students couldn't
care less - it's admirably demonstrated time and time again.
There has to be a time when a student takes responsibility for
their own education; they have to give as much as does the
professor. But how can that be communicated? And when will
universities place upon student education the same emphasis
that is bestowed upon research?
--
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%% The Speaking Tongue, AT&T %% C Code. C Code Run. Run, Code, RUN! %%
%% (..att!..)homxc!ela0!bgt %% PLEASE!!!! %%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Oliver Juang
>I don't know which kind of high school or college you attended; I
>attended public schools in K-12 and a private university from then on.
>My experience is that the students were VERY different in the two cases.
>The major difference I see between these is that in the first case
>there was a lot of, for lack of a better phrase, "dead weight."
>That is, there were many students for whom school literally
>was a day care center, and who simply refused to advance their minds
>in any way whatsoever, and not only that, insisted on repeatedly disrupting
>the classroom so that even those who wanted to learn were sometimes hindered.
>The way I see it, a teacher simply cannot conduct a course when
>there are both "geniuses" and "dead weight" in the same classroom.
>What is called for, in my opinion, is segregation of students from day one
>according to their ability AND WILLINGNESS (VERY important) to learn.
>The latter seems much easier to guage than the former, though.
>Those who are able, willing, and ready to learn should not have to be
>dragged down by those who simply need a babysitter during the day.
>My classes were segregated in grades 1-3 (somehow--I didn't pay much
>attention to the methods used at the time!).
>But teaching children who were able and willing to learn in separate classrooms
>and at a faster speed than those who were either unable or unwilling (or both)
>then became unfashionable and "elitist," and from then on, except for
>_ADVANCED_ elective classes in high school, there was almost always
>"dead weight" in my classes--and of course, the rate of learning
>was determined by the slowest student(s) in the classroom. Comments/criticisms?
>=======================================
>Mark R. Kaufmann
>UUCP: ...!uunet!wucs1!wucfua!wuphys!mrk
> wuphys!m...@uunet.uu.net
>Internet: m...@wuphys.wustl.edu
>=======================================
Unfortunately, although I agree with the idea of segregating the "dead
weight" from the "geniuses", there are quite a few problems with making this
happen effectively in real life. Especially with regards as to which people
are "dead weight", or "geniuses". How do you propose to distinguish them?
Their grades? (what if a previous teacher graded unfairly)
IQ tests? (I'm sure IQ test have been discussed before on this newsgroup,
but I'm new to it)
Finances of parents?
Nationality?
The letter their name begins with?
Also, what happens when you have someone who would be considered a "genius",
except that he/she is "learning disabled (or whatever the popular term is
now)", or can't read English, or was sick the day of the evaluation, etc.
I should perhaps note that I went to a public schools system where K-5 was
students mixed at random and in 6th they started "honors" courses. In high
school they had different "tracks" or some such word in which they
recommended (did I spell that right? Shows my education, I guess) different
courses. It also had "competency" tests which you had to pass to graduate.
(questions like "which way do you cut with a knife" "a. left" "b. right" "c.
towards you" "d. away from you").
Well, anyway this is getting long so I'll end it here. Flame me if you
wish, but send e-mail as I figure people want to read only follow-ups with
something to say to everyone.
Oh, perhaps a disclaimer: My views do not represent the University of
California at Berkeley. The posters on my wall have an entirely different
subject matter.
Address: c60a...@web.berkeley.edu <-- this is arpanet, I think, but I'm
new to this stuff.
Scott Duncan
>the future, and not just for the grade in the current class, seems to have
>disappeared.
While I think I have a feeling for what is meant here, I must admit that, in
many ways, even 20+ years ago when I was in college, the purpose of learning
was pretty vague. College faculty did not make a big deal of why you were
learning, except, of course, to go on to the next degree program. So, if you
wanted to be critical, it was a self-serving image presented. I never felt
it was that, as I loved to study and learn, and faculty encouraged me greatly
and life was great. However, I did NOT sense any great direction from them
when I participated in general class situations, i.e., they were encouraging
to me personally but pretty vague about why you were there in an open class
situation. Love of learning sort of came through, but no sense of future.
>5. The teachers at the elementary and secondary levels can only teach
>plug-and-chug operations. Even proofs are memorized. The students expect
>such, and object to a teacher even mentioning anything else. They consider
>it an intolerable imposition on them if an examination question is given
>which cannot be done by following exactly the steps of a problem in class.
>There is resentment of taking class time to give an understanding of the
>material. Any statement made by the teacher is at least implicitly
>challenged by "Is this going to be on the final?" Not whether it will
>help in doing the exams, but whether it will be explicitly on the exams.
This was true when I was a graduate assistant 20 years ago, too.
>6. At the college level, it is politically difficult to require that the
>students have knowledge prerequisites. That someone got A's in their high
>school mathematics courses is no guarantee that s/he know anything from
>high school mathematics. That someone got an A in last term's calculus
>course is no guarantee that the material of that course can be used in this
>one. I have advocated that knowledge prerequisites be used, and that
>remedial courses be provided, and even taught with the understanding that,
>while it may be on the students' records, some of the students may not even
>have seen the relevant material.
I tried to solve this by having my own standards for what had to be known.
If someone was lacking, as a teacher, I tried to help them make it up. But
there were always limits, and I pointed this out to people. I made it clear
to those supervising me (as a graduate assistant) what I expected and they
always felt comfortable with it. If a student complained about the help I
was able to give, the supervising faculty checked it out. I never had to
explain myself and the student ended up getting the message.
Perhaps I was just lucky, but I established what I expected and made the
faculty feel comfortable with that. As I noted in another posting, I also
let people know at the very outset what they would have to know -- at least
as far as it was under my power to tell them -- for the end of term exam. I
never suggested they not attend class. No one ever tried to do so and just
show up for tests. (Yes, I did have people drop-out, but nothing dramatic.
And it was usually over other problems.)
>8. Encourage students to think, and to ask questions. "The only stupid
>question is the one which is not asked." Encourage reasoning. Encourage
>the recognition of structure; while it is sometimes necessary to look at
>the trees, it is important to see the forest. This is not limited to
>mathematics.
I tried REALLY hard as a graduate assistant to do this. Not having control
over some final and mid-term exams made this hard. Even I didn't know what
might be asked, so it was hard to not "cover the material" in some sense.
>10. We must fight the attempts to reduce out courses to what the badly-
>taught students want. Can a student judge the quality of teaching in a
>course, especially if the student does not have the prerequisites? Can
>a student steeped in plug-and-chug appreciate the importance of learning
>concepts? Should the evaluations by such students be considered in
>deciding promotion, salary, and tenure?
This was a controversy years ago and it seems it has not changed. I am
pretty ignorant about where this stands today. What power do students
have over things?
>At least 10 more paragraphs can be written. The situation is BAD. Our
>Ph.D. programs are now dominated by foreign students, because the
>American ones do not exist. I have put forth some suggestions.
Is this suggesting something wrong with having good foreign students. If the
point is to bemoan the state of public education in this country, I think a
better way to express it could have been found. It sounds like the aim is to
be sure "foreign students" don't "dominate" us rather than to just worry
about improving our educational practices. (sorry if I'm wrong but it sounds
like a condemnation of foreign students.)
Speaking only for myself, of course, I am...
Scott P. Duncan (dun...@ctt.bellcore.com OR ...!bellcore!ctt!duncan)
(Bellcore, 444 Hoes Lane RRC 1H-210, Piscataway, NJ 08854)
(201-699-3910 (w) 201-463-3683 (h))
The Cybermat Rider
my education under the British system in Singapore (General Certificate
Examinations and all that). As such, the comments that I'll be making below
are from the standpoint of a DIFFERENT EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. No one has to
agree with them - they're just the way things are in my home country.
I'm also NOT TRYING TO SUGGEST CHANGES TO THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM!
Educational institutions here enjoy a MUCH GREATER autonomy than Singaporean
ones, particularly with respect to exams and grading. As such, any
suggestions I post will probably be impossible to apply (and are likely to
draw flames, too :-)
With that in mind, let us proceed to THE MEAT OF THE DISCUSSION:
In article <12...@bellcore.bellcore.com> dun...@ctt.bellcore.com (Scott Duncan) writes:
>In article <10...@l.cc.purdue.edu> c...@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>>3. It is not just a problem of mathematics, but the idea that one learns for
>>the future, and not just for the grade in the current class, seems to have
>>disappeared.
>
>While I think I have a feeling for what is meant here, I must admit that, in
>many ways, even 20+ years ago when I was in college, the purpose of learning
>was pretty vague. College faculty did not make a big deal of why you were
>learning, except, of course, to go on to the next degree program. So, if you
>wanted to be critical, it was a self-serving image presented. I never felt
>it was that, as I loved to study and learn, and faculty encouraged me greatly
>and life was great. However, I did NOT sense any great direction from them
>when I participated in general class situations, i.e., they were encouraging
>to me personally but pretty vague about why you were there in an open class
>situation. Love of learning sort of came through, but no sense of future.
In Singapore, on the other hand, there is a definite pressure on students to
excel - a kind of educational "meritocracy" (not very suitable, but I can't
think of a better word right now) brought about by the harsh realities of
later employment. (It has been said that engineering students had better
aim for AT LEAST A MASTER'S DEGREE in order to be assured of a good job, and
in certain fields, even THAT is not enough - the competition is JUST TOO
FIERCE!).
As a consequence, the general philosophy among students is: "If I wanna
get a good job and live fairly comfortably for the rest of my life, I'd
better work REAL HARD NOW and study to the best of my abilities." This
attitude seems to pervade from elementary school right up to university
level. Not the ideal reason for learning, I'll grant you that, but it DOES
seem to be VERY EFFECTIVE - students are more concerned with GENERAL
PRINCIPLES rather than specific methods (perhaps partly through the constant
drumming of the above into our thick skulls by our beloved teachers :-)
Which is not to say, of course, that there are those who LOVE learning......
>>5. The teachers at the elementary and secondary levels can only teach
>>plug-and-chug operations. Even proofs are memorized. The students expect
>>such, and object to a teacher even mentioning anything else. They consider
>>it an intolerable imposition on them if an examination question is given
>>which cannot be done by following exactly the steps of a problem in class.
>>There is resentment of taking class time to give an understanding of the
>>material. Any statement made by the teacher is at least implicitly
>>challenged by "Is this going to be on the final?" Not whether it will
>>help in doing the exams, but whether it will be explicitly on the exams.
>
>This was true when I was a graduate assistant 20 years ago, too.
But it's not true in the British system. Demonstrated proofs are used as
EXAMPLES of general problem-solving techniques, and a student can be at
least 95% sure that the problems presented will NOT appear in the exams in
any immediately recognizable form.
>>6. At the college level, it is politically difficult to require that the
>>students have knowledge prerequisites. That someone got A's in their high
>>school mathematics courses is no guarantee that s/he know anything from
>>high school mathematics. That someone got an A in last term's calculus
>>course is no guarantee that the material of that course can be used in this
>>one. I have advocated that knowledge prerequisites be used, and that
>>remedial courses be provided, and even taught with the understanding that,
>>while it may be on the students' records, some of the students may not even
>>have seen the relevant material.
>
>.....
>
> As I noted in another posting, I also
>let people know at the very outset what they would have to know -- at least
>as far as it was under my power to tell them -- for the end of term exam. I
>never suggested they not attend class. No one ever tried to do so and just
>show up for tests. (Yes, I did have people drop-out, but nothing dramatic.
>And it was usually over other problems.)
We do it on a larger scale - students are provided at the outset with a
DETAILED SYLLABUS (common to all institutions within the British
Commonwealth), so we are able to do a LOT of self-study, the better ones
even MOVING BEYOND the guidelines provided.
>>At least 10 more paragraphs can be written. The situation is BAD. Our
>>Ph.D. programs are now dominated by foreign students, because the
>>American ones do not exist. I have put forth some suggestions.
>
>Is this suggesting something wrong with having good foreign students. If the
>point is to bemoan the state of public education in this country, I think a
>better way to express it could have been found. It sounds like the aim is to
>be sure "foreign students" don't "dominate" us rather than to just worry
>about improving our educational practices. (sorry if I'm wrong but it sounds
>like a condemnation of foreign students.)
I'm probably gonna get flamed for this, but I've just come from a Math
lecture, and I was TAKEN ABACK at the majority of questions asked during the
review session for the finals: "Is topic XXX gonna come out for the finals?"
and (my personal favorite) "What do we have to know about YYY?"
(EVERYTHING WE'VE BEEN TAUGHT, obviously!)
There have been rumors (note that - RUMORS!!!) circulating amongst
Singaporean students that some American universities plan to impose quota
restrictions against foreign students. If this is true (I hope FOR ALL OUR
SAKES it isn't), such a measure WOULD NOT HELP AMERICAN STUDENTS AT
ALL!!!!! The solution is not to reduce/eliminate foreign competition, but
TO MAKE LOCAL STUDENTS MORE COMPETITIVE. I hope my point is taken.
>
>Speaking only for myself, of course, I am...
>Scott P. Duncan (dun...@ctt.bellcore.com OR ...!bellcore!ctt!duncan)
> (Bellcore, 444 Hoes Lane RRC 1H-210, Piscataway, NJ 08854)
> (201-699-3910 (w) 201-463-3683 (h))
And for myself (and my multiple personas),
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrian Ho a.k.a. The Cybermat Rider University of California, Berkeley
c60a...@web.berkeley.edu
Disclaimer: Nobody takes me seriously, so is it really necessary?
Son of Knuth
>In article <14...@cisunx.UUCP>, j...@cisunx.UUCP (Jeffrey James Bryan Carpenter) writes:
>> I fully agree with this. I could never understand why there was so
>> much emphasis on memorizing formulas when it is the concepts and ways
>> of applying the formulas that counts.
>
>It is much easier for the prof to make and grade a test that is "plug-n-chug"
>rather than thought-provoking. Also, some profs end up teaching a class
>that they really don't understand. We had a professor, sort of a utility
>professor, that taught digital design, emag, electronics, and
>communications, and couldn't answer a question about any of it ...
>unless he had HIS cheat sheet in front of him. If you knew the
>formulas, you could get a 100%. Teachers like that really piss me off.
It's also because most students don't like tests that make you think.
As an undergraduate the teachers who had the most thought provoking
tests were the ones criticized the most by students for giving tests
"unrelated to the class material". Profs who made you regurgitate
homework problems, except with different numbers (this was in EE) were
well liked, especially if they had nice curves (no, not the kind of curves
you're thinking about :-)) too.
Yes, this relates to the earlier discussion about students wanting to
be spoonfed in buying textbooks, even though I disagree with the idea of
not having a required textbook.
Daniel Yaron Kimberg
>This sounds not like the prof saying "don't bother me", but rather like an
>ultimatum: you can learn something, or you can learn nothing. If you really
>want to learn nothing, just get the credit, I'll oblige you right now.
>Otherwise, I assume you want to learn something.
>
>How many people signed that list? I bet most felt pretty uncomfortable
>about it. (A psych professor should be good at that!)
Well there's at least one degenerate solution to that problem that I can see,
which is the reason I would instantly sign my name to the list and leave the
room with no guilt whatsoever (unless I thought the material were extremely
interesting, which wouldn't be the case for an intro social psych class). The
solution I have in mind would be to sign the list, and spend the time I would
otherwise have spent on the class reading, probably some of the same literature
that I'm missing by merit of not majoring in english (or whatever). So the
professor has overlooked one possibility if the above caricature is accurate,
which is that you can take the option, and still learn something. This might
not be what any actual person would do, including myself, but the implied
assumption behind the professor's thinking is that students are incapable of
learning on their own. Either that, or the professor is simply acknowledging
that he/she feels that whatever administrative screwup forces students to take
the course against their will is stupid, in which case it's more of a friendly
gesture. In either case, I'd probably take the option, unless I were actually
interested in taking the course.
-Dan
David Pletcher
college bookstores, but I have an example which may shed some light:
Two years ago I bought H&R Physics parts I & II at Caltech NEW during a
summer science program for $20.00; the program was selling the books at
cost, I believe. At the beginning of this semester, I was shocked to see
the exact same book selling for $56.00 in our college bookstore.
Strange but true...
David Pletcher dple...@hmcvax.bitnet
(714) 621-8000 ext. 2065 dple...@jarthur.claremont.edu
Norman Matloff
>why should professors extend themselves pointlessly? One of the
>major complaints from students is the eons-old adage, "Publish
>or Perish" - often this happens at the expense of the students.
This is sometimes true, but MUCH less than you think. Read on.
>I think we will all agree that both teaching and research is
>important, but has there ever been a case of a professor obtaining
>tenure because he makes mathematics come alive for the students
>while at the same time publishing nil?
Unfortunately, yes (as long as "nil" is defined to be "much less
than what is usually required").
I know a couple of cases. It's good that they were inspiring, but
in each case, the inspiration was more a question of personality
than of someone who truly interested the students in mathematics.
If the professor is himself/herself interested in mathematics,
then he/she in most cases will do research. Maybe not a lot, but
much more than the "nil" we are talking about above.
>On the other hand, has
>a tremendous researcher ever *failed* to obtain tenure, even
>when his students suffer from his lack of commitment in the
>area of education?
Believe it or not, this has happened in several cases that I know
of -- though your scenario happens too, unfortunately.
>professor. But how can that be communicated? And when will
>universities place upon student education the same emphasis
>that is bestowed upon research?
I don't know about the word "same" here, but believe me, the
university (at least those I have been associated with) DOES
care about teaching. You would be amazed to see a group of
faculty talking together; generally they get MUCH more animated
and excited when the conversation turns to teaching, than to
research. In fact, what's even more amazing is that even those
faculty who are the poorest teachers express a real interest in
those discussions.
Ideally, research and teaching activities should complement each
other. Of course, we don't meet the ideal, but I claim that we
DO approximate it.
Norm
Norman Matloff
>There have been rumors (note that - RUMORS!!!) circulating amongst
>Singaporean students that some American universities plan to impose quota
>restrictions against foreign students. If this is true (I hope FOR ALL OUR
>SAKES it isn't),
Adrian, UC already has such restrictions. NOW NOTE CAREFULLY THAT WE
ARE TALKING ABOUT ***FOREIGN*** STUDENTS, NOT NON-WHITE AMERICANS.
Here at UC Davis, there is a restriction of 25% for FOREIGN engineering
students, though the administration lets this slide to about 35%. There
is a similar restriction at UCB; I don't know the numerics of it, but I
do know that they have been giving heavy preference to domestic students
in the last 2 years.
Again, this is for FOREIGN students. It does NOT apply to U.S. citizens
or permanent residents. Even someone with a newly minted green card is
classified as domestic. Any brand-new immigrant, whether from Hong Kong,
China, Taiwan, Singapore or wherever, is classified as domestic, and does
not get subjected to the above quotas.
UC is a state institution. The legislature held hearings about 3 years
ago, and felt that the proportion of foreign students was too high for
an institution supported by tax monies. I felt this was shortsighted
(I even called the Legislative Analyst about it), because almost all
the foreign engineering students get hired by U.S. companies and become
(taxpaying Americans), but I think the legislature does have a point.
Norm
Herman Rubin
> In article <18...@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> c60a...@e260-4b.berkeley.edu (The Cybermat Rider) writes:
>
> >There have been rumors (note that - RUMORS!!!) circulating amongst
> >Singaporean students that some American universities plan to impose quota
> >restrictions against foreign students. If this is true (I hope FOR ALL OUR
> >SAKES it isn't),
Unfortunately, a few are doing this. In some cases, this is done in such a
way that the large numbers of American students in those fields which do not
have many foreign applicants (such as education) can be used to balance the
totals. In other areas, there are large numbers of American students intersted
in terminal Master's degrees, and they can be counted. For example, at Purdue
we have a dead-end Applied Master's degree in statistics; the only foreign
students we support in this program are those who fail in the Ph.D. program.
About 1/3 of our students are American students in this program. Another
example is Computer Science, where I have been told by some of our faculty
that most Ph.D. students are foreign, but there is a large number of American
students wanting an M.S.
> Adrian, UC already has such restrictions. NOW NOTE CAREFULLY THAT WE
> ARE TALKING ABOUT ***FOREIGN*** STUDENTS, NOT NON-WHITE AMERICANS.
>
> Here at UC Davis, there is a restriction of 25% for FOREIGN engineering
> students, though the administration lets this slide to about 35%. There
> is a similar restriction at UCB; I don't know the numerics of it, but I
> do know that they have been giving heavy preference to domestic students
> in the last 2 years.
Since WWII, most of the strong Ph.D. programs in statistics have been dominated
by foreign student. This has not been the situation in mathematics until
recently, but the proportion of American Ph.D.s in mathematics from American
universities has dropped from 80% ten years ago to 50%. In mathematics, Purdue
is ranked in the top 25 institutions. The recent admissions to the Ph.D.
program are about 85% foreign. The American students do not exist. It is
not necessary to use quotas to protect the American students. I believe that
the Ph.D. programs in engineering are more than half foreign. The only thing
that quotas can do is to require the wasting of money on weak students who will
flunk out anyhow.
> Again, this is for FOREIGN students. It does NOT apply to U.S. citizens
> or permanent residents. Even someone with a newly minted green card is
> classified as domestic. Any brand-new immigrant, whether from Hong Kong,
> China, Taiwan, Singapore or wherever, is classified as domestic, and does
> not get subjected to the above quotas.
>
> UC is a state institution. The legislature held hearings about 3 years
> ago, and felt that the proportion of foreign students was too high for
> an institution supported by tax monies. I felt this was shortsighted
> (I even called the Legislative Analyst about it), because almost all
> the foreign engineering students get hired by U.S. companies and become
> (taxpaying Americans), but I think the legislature does have a point.
>
> Norm
Lee Lady
>>
>> So what's really
>> happening here? Are all the professors wrong? Do the professors expect too
>> much of us today? Or is it really the students? And if it IS the students,
>> what's happened? Is it a loss of motivation (, and just what are we
>> motivated to do these days)? I think this is a VERY important issue which
>> needs to be addressed, and maybe solved?
>
>I was of the opinion then, and I am still of the opinion now, that the
>majority of students in the general sciences courses are for the most
>part just plain apathetic. Many students approach mathematics as a
>subject to be passed and buried as quickly as possible;
> This is wrong, for I've discovered that it wasn't the
>formulas I memorized which helped me in my career today, but instead
>the patterns of logical deduction upon which mathematics is
>built. But is that aspect emphasized to the students?
>
>This brings up another question. *Should* it be emphasized?
>If a student lacks motivation to learn for the sheer joy of education,
>why should professors extend themselves pointlessly?
>
>cannot be solely the professor's duty to offer support - students
>must be receptive as well.
>
>their own education; they have to give as much as does the
>professor. But how can that be communicated?
Complaining about students is a favorite pastime for faculty. Just as
students like to complain about professors, businessmen like to complain
about employees, and farmers complain about the weather. There's a certain
comfort in fruitless complaining about the environmental variables in
one's life, in playing the victim. "How can I do a good job when this is
the material I'm given to work with?" Like the sculptor complaining that
his stone is too hard, or the violinist complaining about the music the
composer wrote.
Students and faculty have amazingly idealistic expectations of each other,
and it is amazing how reciprocal these are. If I come to class unprepared
one day, students think I'm totally irresponsible and inept. If I were to
explain that I was at a fantasic party the night before and that having a
good time took precedence over being ready for my students, they would be
totally outraged and write letters to the campus newspaper about the
unfairness of the tenure system that prevents me from being fired immediately.
Hey, I got to tell you guys, there are lots of times when it's just a job!
When I'm in the classroom teaching some grungy statistics course, I'm counting
the days to the end of the semester just like my students are. You think
this makes me a villain? Just take a little survey among the faculty you
know: How many of them would teach if they didn't get paid for it?
I do my teaching, do a fairly good job, and earn my salary. When a student's
main interest in my class is to earn whatever grade is acceptable to her, I
totally sympathize. It wasn't her idea to take the course, after all.
Some clown who drew up her major department requirements decided she
*needs* to know this stuff and so she should be *forced* to learn it.
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) : Insert as needed.
Now if a student *never* takes any courses for any reason except to earn a
grade, then she has the true mind-set of a victim and I feel very sad for her.
Why does she force herself to keep doing something she gets no joy from?
But it's not my responsibility to force her to be a different person.
What *is* my responsibility is to give my students the opportunity to learn
as much mathematics as they *want* to learn, and to show the ones who are
receptive why it's worth learning, and occasionally to sneak up and catch
the interest of a few of those who never realized before that they were
capable of being interested in mathematics, because they had never before seen
that mathematics is beautiful.
I have mostly lost my desire to motivate students by cramming things down
their throats: "This stuff is beautiful, goddamn it, and you'd better learn
it even if you hate it, cause I'm putting it on the final!"
Almost all mathematics faculty think it is *very important* for beginning
calculus students to understand and learn the Mean Value Theorem. So one
have three choices: 1) Present this in such a way as to really convince
students that the MVT is worth knowing about. 2) Do a good job of
presenting it, but realize that most students are just going to shrug it off.
3) Cram it down their throats by letting them know it will be on the test.
Now given that students are who they are, 1) is beyond most of our abilities,
and for many faculty 2) would be immoral. So one chooses 3). Now I
propose a little test of the effectiveness of this stragegy: See how many
of your Calculus IV students have even a vague memory of what the MVT is.
Being a professor is a great job. For every grungy basic statistics course,
or Calculus II course to be taught for the 92nd time, there are plenty of
other courses that are really exciting to teach. And yes, maybe I _would_
teach some of them for free. (Ever hear of seminars?) And I get to go into
the classroom and play god. I get to impose my values on students, and they
have no choice but to accept them until they get their final grade. But let's
not get carried away with the whole thing, and think that students are
unreasonable because they're not *enthusiastic* about the process.
--
Lee Lady
la...@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu Dept of Mathematics
l...@kahuna.math.hawaii.edu University of Hawaii
la...@uhccux.bitnet Honolulu, HI 96822
Norman Matloff
Adrian Ho had said that there is a rumor in Singapore that some American
universities have quotas for foreign students. Herman and I both said
that such quotas exist at our schools (Purdue and UC Davis). [Again, I
must emphasize that these are quotas limiting numbers of foreign students,
not limiting the number of non-white American students.]
Adrian had surmised that these quotas were to "protect" American students,
in much the same way as import quotas are aimed to protect jobs in the
country imposing the quotas.
Herman points out that this is not the case:
>program are about 85% foreign. The American students do not exist. It is
>not necessary to use quotas to protect the American students. I believe that
I agree. The schools we are talking about are tax-supported institutions;
this is why the quotas are imposed. As far as I know, the private
universities have no such quotas.
Norm
Herman Rubin
.......................
> Herman and I both said
> that such quotas exist at our schools (Purdue and UC Davis).
I did not say that quotas exist at Purdue. I do know of their existence at
other places and some of the methods around them.
Hai-Ning Liu
>In article <10...@l.cc.purdue.edu> c...@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>
>Adrian Ho had said that there is a rumor in Singapore that some American
>universities have quotas for foreign students. Herman and I both said
>that such quotas exist at our schools (Purdue and UC Davis). [Again, I
>must emphasize that these are quotas limiting numbers of foreign students,
>not limiting the number of non-white American students.]
>
>this is why the quotas are imposed. As far as I know, the private
>universities have no such quotas.
>
> Norm
Ok, how do you explain the "nondiscrimination statemant" appears
in every application form? I quota part here:
The Uninversity of Calfornia, in compliance with Title VI of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education
Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the
Age Discrimination Act of 1975, does not discriminate on the
basis of race , color, NATIONAL ORIGIN, sex , handicap, or practices
nordoes the university discriminate on the basis of sexual origin
orinentation. This nondiscrimination policy covers admission and
access to , andtreatment and employment in, university programs ...
When it comes to talk about nondiscrimination stuff, I find
most admistors slap their own faces.
--liu
haining liu
CSE UCSD
Eric Green
> This is a double-edged sword. The potential is there, but it
> cannot be solely the professor's duty to offer support - students
> must be receptive as well. I remember one of my professors
> offering extended office hours after 1/2 half of the class
> failed the first hourly (senior-level course) - not one person
> showed up! Great incentive for a continued interest in "reaching"
> the students! One of my meetings concerned "Departmental Policies -
> voice your concerns!" Six students showed up, and four of us
> were the officers! With those kind of conditions, it's under-
> standable that professors at times believe the students couldn't
> care less - it's admirably demonstrated time and time again.
Note that the average student of today is NOT the average student of
20 years ago. I am 24 years old, work, and live in a house 3 miles
from campus. While I try to go to each instructor's office at least
once during office hours during the semester, often that simply IS NOT
POSSIBLE. For example, I was not able to make a single ACM meeting
this entire semester -- they were all held at 3pm or 4pm in the
afternoon. Either I lounge around campus for 3 hours after my last
class, which is a total waste, or I come back to campus 3 hours later
-- which means interrupting whatever work I'm doing, then coming back
to it an hour later. The days when students were all between 18 and
21, all lived in dorms, and all could attend activities on campus at
any time, are long since gone.
I won't comment on whether this change in student demographics is
beneficial or not, except to note that it was beneficial in my case
(today, I can take courses at my own pace, without feeling
pressured... something that was impossible at age 18).
--
Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509
"We have treatments for disturbed persons, Nicholas. But, at least for
the moment, we have no treatment for disturbing persons." -- Dr. Island
Greg Skinner
>Well there's at least one degenerate solution to that problem that I can see,
>which is the reason I would instantly sign my name to the list and leave the
>room with no guilt whatsoever (unless I thought the material were extremely
>interesting, which wouldn't be the case for an intro social psych class).
The readings weren't all that interesting, but the class discussion
was worth time spent in class. I will have to go back and look at my
class notes, but I can recall that some stimulating discussions came
up.
>This might
>not be what any actual person would do, including myself, but the implied
>assumption behind the professor's thinking is that students are incapable of
>learning on their own. Either that, or the professor is simply acknowledging
>that he/she feels that whatever administrative screwup forces students to take
>the course against their will is stupid, in which case it's more of a friendly
>gesture. In either case, I'd probably take the option, unless I were actually
>interested in taking the course.
I don't believe either of these were the case. The course was not an
MIT requirement. I don't recall if it was required by the Psychology
department. I have an idea that he wanted to show that some MIT
students were more interested in getting good grades than learning.
Another cute thing he did that pissed the hell out of a friend of
mine was to post everyone's name, id #, and final grade on his door.
My friend was embarrassed because he didn't get a high grade. I, on
the other hand, thought it was unethical. I don't believe he had the
right to divulge everyone's grade to all of MIT. I don't know how he
managed to get away with this (unless there is no law at MIT that
prohibits faculty from publicly posting student grades by name), but I
suspect it was another of his case studies.
--gregbo
Richard A. O'Keefe
>>not necessary to use quotas to protect the American students. I believe that
>I agree. The schools we are talking about are tax-supported institutions;
>this is why the quotas are imposed. As far as I know, the private
>universities have no such quotas.
Would it not be better to accept as many foreign students as want to come,
but charge them? (If it costs K dollars to admit a foreign student, and
N foreign students can be afforded, then by charging K/2 dollars to each
student, 2N foreign students could be afforded.) Better still, why not
come to reciprocal arrangements with various foreign countries? Or some
sort of scholarship system could be worked out whereby a foreign student
could be accomodated at a tax-supported instititued if s/he agreed to work
a certain number of years in the USA. How much does it cost to have a
foreign student at a state university?
Thomas Maddox
>In article <63...@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> e...@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green)
>writes:
>>...your local bookstore gets a
>>VERY small percentage of that cover price. The reasoning of the
>>publisher is, "they have a guaranteed market and sell hundreds of the
>>things, so they don't need a big margin".
>
>The bookstore decides what margin it wants; publishers have no say in
>deciding at what price a bookstore will sell textbooks.
Unless things have changed radically in bookstores in recent
years, bookstores in most instances follow publishers' prices with
essentially mindless fidelity.
The baselines used to be these:
"trade book" (hardcover, large paperback)--discounted 40% to
the bookseller (he pays $6.00 for a $10.00 book);
"textbook" (a classification assigned by the publisher and
including not only books obviously intended only as texts but certain
others that the publishers had found sold *mostly* as
texts)--discounted 20% to the bookseller (he pays $8. 00 for a $10.00
book);
miscellaneous others at 30% (small paperbacks gotten from a
local wholesaler, etc.);
certain very privileged books (ones that the publisher is
hustling, such as very large run popular novels)--50% (i.e., what a
retailer expects on damned near everything).
In all these instances, the bookseller pays postage (both ways
on returns, quite common with texts).
So if you want to know why obscene operations such as
Waldenbooks and B. Dalton are taking over the world, look at these
figures to begin with. Then consider the commented-upon fact that
publishers no longer can take a tax break on backstock and that most
mundane of facts, the high price of mailing books. Combined with
computerization of the book trade, these add up to an oligopoly of
massive wholesaler sells to massive retailer, and the individual
bookseller, once the backbone of the trade, struggles at best.
One could probably tell a similar story about grocery stores.
Anyone want to comment upon, add to, or update these figures?
Herman Rubin
It is a violation of federal law to divulge anything about a student's
performance to another person without explicit authorization, unless that
information is required as part of official duties (for example, the student's
advisor or an official departmental review committee) or for legitimate
educational purposes (someone studying the relation between grades in course
A and course B). In the latter case, the person getting that information
must put his/her name in the folder indicating this.
Gerald Edgar
>performance to another person without explicit authorization, unless that
There was a case here a few years ago. A student refused to show her grades
to her father. He called Ohio State, but they (citing state law, not
federal) refused to show them to him, even though he was paying the
tuition. I believe the legeslature changed the state law because of this.
RAMontante
be allowed in] -- Indiana University is a state school, and state-tax
supported. They have a policy which, while I don't personally like it,
makes a lot more sense than quotas for foreign students. They simply
charge (much) higher rates for out-of-state students than for in-state
students.
Rationally, this is probably the most intelligent legislative move
Indiana has ever made. (Irresistible cheap shot: shuffling Dan Quayle
off to D.C. where he couldn't hurt anything here was the second most
intelligent :-) (Irresistible cheap shot #2: Mr. Quayle is a scary
example of what happens when money and nationality are favored over
academic ability as admission qualifications :-( )
For I.U. to turn away the better-qualified foreign students in favor of
the less-qualified domestic ones would be academic suicide, especially
when they're willing to pay for it.
--------
As an Associate Instructor (elsewhere known as Graduate Assistant), I
see a lot of foreign students in computer science classes. Generally
they seem to be a _lot_ more motivated, and to take their studies much
more seriously.
At risk of stereotyping, I will say that I have the impression these
foreigners (mostly Asiatic, BTW) have the attitude that this
instruction is something they've fought hard to earn (note that word),
and that their future well-being depends on how well they absorb the
education that's available to them. They are also far more willing to
put time and effort into studying for a course on their own.
I had one young woman in a class, who couldn't have understood as much
as half of what I said, and answering her questions in my office hours
was an excruciating experience for both of us. But she worked _every_
problem in the textbook just for the practice (I'd assigned maybe 3% of
them as homework), and she was one of the few who did come to office hours.
On the other hand, the American students have been through 12 years of
schooling because the law said they had to, not because their parents
struggled to win them the chance. Some of them seem to feel that what
they've earned is a 4-year party as a reward for having reached
puberty. They expect to have enough education fed to them to get them
through the graduation ceremony, then they'll go get a job.
I don't think colleges or faculty are primarily to blame for any of
this -- they have to work with the students they get, and the best
students are too often the foreign ones. Nor do I blame the
primary/secondary schools exclusively. I think the real root of the
problem is that our entire culture sees education as something to do
with the kids until they're old enough to leave the house. If the
parents don't care, their children won't either. They'll do the
minimum they have to to get by.
American parents who _do_ want good education for the children must
either find a "good neighborhood" to live in, with an adequate school,
or pay for private schooling. Unfortunately this strands deserving,
bright, but "under-privileged" students in schools that will do them as
much harm as good. (I was lucky -- my mother scrimped and save to do
both for me as long as she could, and I survived the public zoos that
came later. But I learned more history in 3rd and 4th grade than some
of my high school teachers knew, and taught myself trigonometry because
the high school "college prep" math curriculum didn't extend that far.
Then I got to MIT and had peers who already knew calculus....)
--------
l...@beowulf.UCSD.EDU (Hai-Ning Liu) writes:
[...stuff about quotas for foreign students...]
>
>basis of race , color, NATIONAL ORIGIN, sex , handicap, or practices
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I don't think that "National Origin" means the same thing as
"Nationality" in the context of non-discrimination policies. Consider
that at one time, Boston was notorious for anti-Irish discrimination.
Now, I can't detect any significant racial differences between Irish,
Scottish, Welsh, and English people (them white folks is all alike :-);
but the U.S. citizens of English national origin (and dominant social
position) were discriminating against U.S. citizens of Irish national
origin (and subordinate social position). Such discrimination is now
held to be illegal, but this is different from discriminating against
someone with Irish (or English) citizenship.
As another, hypothetical example, if UCDavis receives applications from
two U.S. citizens, one the child of Taiwanese parents and the other the
child of parents from mainland China, it cannot choose one over the
other merely because it prefers one country or the other, but it can
choose either over an anglo-saxon with, say, Singaporean "nationality"
(I'm sorry, I don't know -- is that P.R.C.? U.K.?)
B.TONGUE
> in article <45...@homxc.UUCP>, b...@homxc.UUCP (B.TONGUE) says:
> > This is a double-edged sword. The potential is there, but it
> > cannot be solely the professor's duty to offer support - students
> > must be receptive as well. I remember one of my professors
> > offering extended office hours after 1/2 half of the class
> > failed the first hourly (senior-level course) - not one person
> > showed up! Great incentive for a continued interest in "reaching"
> > the students! One of my meetings concerned "Departmental Policies -
> > voice your concerns!" Six students showed up, and four of us
> > were the officers! With those kind of conditions, it's under-
> > standable that professors at times believe the students couldn't
> > care less - it's admirably demonstrated time and time again.
>
> Note that the average student of today is NOT the average student of
> 20 years ago. I am 24 years old, work, and live in a house 3 miles
> from campus. While I try to go to each instructor's office at least
> once during office hours during the semester, often that simply IS NOT
> POSSIBLE.
I'm sorry, but I just can't buy that. However, let us first look
at the basic premises - each math class (on the average) meets for
3 hours per week. Assuming that each semester is 12 weeks long,
that's 36 hours of classtime not counting recitation. It's always
amazed me that students can muddle through classes, attend office
hours *ONCE* and expect to absorb a semester's worth of material.
But that's another issue entirely; let me now address the
non-possibility of office hour attendence at all.
> For example, I was not able to make a single ACM meeting
> this entire semester -- they were all held at 3pm or 4pm in the
> afternoon. Either I lounge around campus for 3 hours after my last
> class, which is a total waste,
A total waste??? Ever hear of bringing your homework, that material
for which is the purpose of office hours, and working on it until
the professor arrives? That's a great way of having the questions
fully formulated in your mind, which gives meaning to the study!
> or I come back to campus 3 hours later
> -- which means interrupting whatever work I'm doing, then coming back
> to it an hour later. The days when students were all between 18 and
> 21, all lived in dorms, and all could attend activities on campus at
> any time, are long since gone.
Let's get one thing straight here - office hours are not "activities"
like club meetings or social events; like seminars in the corporate
world they exist to provide the tools (understanding) for you to
do your job (comprehend and pass with a respectable mark your course)
in a better fashion than is otherwise possible. So what if they are
not at a convenient time! That's life! If you need the extra help,
you make sacrifices to attend. Period. If you absolutely cannot
attend then you call during hours and work the questions out over
the phone. Professors are obligated to have office hours, students
should be obligated to use them. Making up an excuse, however
reasonable, is just that - an excuse. If the phone lines are cut,
you schedule hours with another professor - I have *never* met
any professor in mathematics at Rutgers who was not willing to
help me when I asked (and there were times that I gave a new
meaning to the word, dense.)
The help is there. Lack of interest on the part of the students
is what makes it difficult to find.
Doug Gwyn
>basis of race , color, NATIONAL ORIGIN, sex , handicap, or practices
National origin and citizenship are two entirely different things.
Discrimination on the ground of national origin, for example, might
consist of excluding American citizens of Polish descent. It makes
sense, however, for publicly-funded organizations to not subsidize
foreign citizens, since the taxpayers presumably would not support
that. (I'm opposed to taxes anyway, but that's a separable issue.)
Doug Gwyn
>Another cute thing he did that pissed the hell out of a friend of
>mine was to post everyone's name, id #, and final grade on his door.
At Clark, we often posted grades and associated SSNs (student ID #s).
Interestingly, one could often figure out who belonged to many of the
SSNs simply by their performance..
I don't see any ethical problem with posting grades by name. It's
just a fact, not a judgement. I mean, who but Mary Smith cares what
grade she gets?
ethan miller
-> In all these instances, the bookseller pays postage (both ways
->on returns, quite common with texts).
->
-> So if you want to know why obscene operations such as
->Waldenbooks and B. Dalton are taking over the world, look at these
->figures to begin with. Then consider the commented-upon fact that
->publishers no longer can take a tax break on backstock and that most
->mundane of facts, the high price of mailing books. Combined with
^^^^^
Hardly a fact. If you use 4th class (book rate) to mail books, it's
less than 30 cents per pound to mail cross-country. I don't know if
it's lower for shorter distances. I do know that when I moved to CA
from Boston, I paid around $11 for each box of books that weighed
around 40 pounds. Now, I've never seen a college text that cost less
than $15/pound, and many cost much more. That's $.60 postage _both
ways_ for $15, and, as I said, most books cost even more than that.
->computerization of the book trade, these add up to an oligopoly of
->massive wholesaler sells to massive retailer, and the individual
->bookseller, once the backbone of the trade, struggles at best.
->
-> One could probably tell a similar story about grocery stores.
->
-> Anyone want to comment upon, add to, or update these figures?
---------------- "Quod erat demonstrandum, baby." ------------------------
WHO: ethan miller | WHERE: bander...@ernie.berkeley.edu
HOW: (415) 643-6228 | WHAT : overworked underpaid graduate student
david ross
>in every application form? I quota part here:
>
> The Uninversity of Calfornia, in compliance with Title VI of the
>Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education
>Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the
>Age Discrimination Act of 1975, does not discriminate on the
>basis of race , color, NATIONAL ORIGIN, sex , handicap, or practices
A California-residing, US citizen born in (e.g.) Singapore will
presumably not be discriminated against in any way, including admission.
A foreign national will always be discriminated against in lots of ways;
for example, many campus jobs will be denied for reasons totally outside
the university's control, e.g. "national defense" reasons or because INS
hasn't issued the appropriate work permits.
Note that UC also discriminates against US citizens from Illinois -
tuition is much higher.
--
_ _ _ David A. Ross (Dept.Math.&Stat.,U.ofMN,Duluth)
/ \/ \/ \ BITNET: dross@umndul THISNET: dr...@ub.d.umn.edu
/ /--/--/ (...all the opinions expressed herein are facts,
/__/ / \ hence they belong to nobody, least of all me...)
Matt Crawford
On the day of the final exam the professor said, "Anyone who is satisfied
with a B may put their name on this list and leave now." When those who
wanted to do so had signed and left he said, "The rest of you get As."
Matt
Norman Matloff
>Would it not be better to accept as many foreign students as want to come,
>but charge them?
The UC system does charge much higher tuition to foreign students.
There are SOME tuition waivers available to foreign students, but not
enough for all of them.
Your suggestion sounds good but is exactly contrary to the best
interests of our country. As I said, the majority of foreign students,
at least in engineering, come to this country because they hope to be
hired by a U.S. employer and sponsored for immigration by that employer.
These people make a tremendous contribution to our country, and our
country is in some ways being invigorated by their immigration. Thus
it is clear we want the BEST foreign students to come here, not the
RICHEST ones.
>sort of scholarship system could be worked out whereby a foreign student
>could be accomodated at a tax-supported instititued if s/he agreed to work
>a certain number of years in the USA. How much does it cost to have a
As I said, the majority of foreign students would be delighted to do this,
because their whole goal is to immigrate to the U.S. (permanently). Those
from poor countries such as India and China would be especially pleased
with your plan, since they have no family funds to rely on while they
are in school here.
In my original posting, I said that the CA state legislature was being
VERY shortsighted about this. If they only had a chance to tour the
Silicon Valley and see what a huge proportion of S.V. engineers are
people who came here originally as foreign students, they would understand
that foreign students SHOULD be considered (future) taxpayers.
Norm
david ross
>20 years ago.
Quite right. Reagan cuts aside, today's students have access to *many* more
sources of support than did those of 1968.
>The days when students were all between 18 and
>21, all lived in dorms, and all could attend activities on campus at
>any time, are long since gone.
In fact, they never existed.
Many of my students do work hours that conflict with my office hours; I
try to accomodate them as much as possible. However, if a student
needs help, can't make my scheduled office hours, can't work out an alternate
time convenient to us both for outside help, then does badly in class,
I feel sad but not sorry for the student: he or she has clearly made some
prioritizing decision, in which math lost out, and must accept the
consequences.
Norman Matloff
>makes a lot more sense than quotas for foreign students. They simply
>charge (much) higher rates for out-of-state students than for in-state
>students.
As I said, UC does this too, and a number of other state schools that I
am aware of do this, but it is contrary to the public interest, because
it selects for the RICH foreign students rather than for the SMART
foreign students.
>At risk of stereotyping, I will say that I have the impression these
>foreigners (mostly Asiatic, BTW) have the attitude that this
>instruction is something they've fought hard to earn (note that word),
>and that their future well-being depends on how well they absorb the
>education that's available to them. They are also far more willing to
Yes, part of this is cultural, but the major factor is to do well enough
in school so as to be hired by a U.S. employer and sponsored for U.S.
immigration.
>As another, hypothetical example, if UCDavis receives applications from
>two U.S. citizens, one the child of Taiwanese parents and the other the
>child of parents from mainland China, it cannot choose one over the
>other merely because it prefers one country or the other, but it can
>choose either over an anglo-saxon with, say, Singaporean "nationality"
>(I'm sorry, I don't know -- is that P.R.C.? U.K.?)
Yes, this is true. The preference is to the taxpayers. And again, they
don't even have to be citizens; U.S. permanent residents (i.e. recent
immigrants who can become citizens in a few years) are just as "domestic"
as citizens for admissions purposes.
Singapore is an independent country. [What was that you were saying about
the quality of the schools you attended? :-) ]
Norm
Greg Hennessy
#I don't see any ethical problem with posting grades by name. It's
#just a fact, not a judgement. I mean, who but Mary Smith cares what
#grade she gets?
Would you like the entire school know that you failed (for example)
German last semester?
-Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia
USPS Mail: Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA
Internet: gs...@virginia.edu
UUCP: ...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w
Chris Long
> It is much easier for the prof to make and grade a test that is "plug-n-chug"
> rather than thought-provoking.
More types of tests:
find-n-grind (you are allowed to use a formula sheet)
drunk-n-flunk (obvious)
try-n-die ("Maybe you are clueless, but give it that old college try")
try-n-cry (same as above, but not as bad)
joke-n-choke ("It'll be a piece of cake, hee hee")
wail-n-fail ("I wailed on that test, in fact, I think I aced it")
race-n-ace (the test is so trivial, you are racing to be the first done)
--
Chris Long
"The proofs are so obvious that they can be left to the reader."
Lars V. Ahlfors, _Complex Analysis_
Dylan Yolles
>mine was to post everyone's name, id #, and final grade on his door.
(The following isn't particularly relevant to sci.math. Oh well.)
If he warned your class in advance that he'd do this, then I'd say that
you're right, this probably was another one of his social psychological tricks.
Believe it or not, the *warning* that he would do this probably made people
try a little harder in the class--no one wants to be embarrassed in front of
one's friends. The fact that he actually *posted* the results is despicable,
though--he shouldn't have carried through with his promise.
--Dylan
RAMontante
>>makes a lot more sense than quotas for foreign students. They simply
>>charge (much) higher rates for out-of-state students than for in-state
>>students.
mat...@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) writes:
>
>As I said, UC does this too, and a number of other state schools that I
>am aware of do this, but it is contrary to the public interest, because
>it selects for the RICH foreign students rather than for the SMART
>foreign students.
I really don't think this is a concern. The best (foreign) students are
also coming here, getting scholarships in their own countries (and some
financial aid here, too, in the form of teaching positions and the
like). And even the "rich" (an extremely relative term) foreign
students are quite smart, compared to the Americans. We shouldn't be
excluding ANY of them. Quota systems select for one student at the
expense of another, and they select for the ones who can manipulate the
system the most skillfully.
Beating on this some more, the problem of American colleges in the past
few years has been too few applicants (especially Americans). The "rich
foreigners" aren't taking slots away from anyone who could make any use
of them, they're just contributing to a higher-quality and more diverse
environment than the American kids are used to. Conversely, foreigners
who've been educated in the U.S. are less likely to think of the U.S.A.
as a monolithic "Great Satan".
>Yes, part of this is cultural, but the major factor is to do well enough
>in school so as to be hired by a U.S. employer and sponsored for U.S.
>immigration.
You're agreeing with me here. Why aren't the Americans inspired to work
as hard for that better job? (I'm not sure they aren't; but the U.S.
notion of "hard work" at school is far different from the Japanese
notion, or the West German notion, or the Russian notion...)
>Singapore is an independent country. [What was that you were saying about
>the quality of the schools you attended? :-) ]
Umm, heh heh heh ... Well, actually, I'd read about Singapore as a
seaport for the sailing ships of the 1800's, and never realized there
was an island-nation with the same name. Then I spaced out about the
rejoining of HongKong (another old seaport) to China, and confused the
two.... But hey, I got the right continental shelf! :-)
Anyway, the good school I went to taught me about Ancient Greece in the
fourth grade. In high school one of my classmates asserted that
Columbus first touched land in Pittsburgh. Another one had a lifelong
ambition to see Zanesville, Ohio (two counties away). And the most
memorable moment in Civics class was when Terry stuck his pocketknife
blade in the wall socket one day (a drastic cure for boredom, but
effective).
[I may as well mention that the Mathematics Department was also the
assistant football coach and team bus driver. We went 120 miles on a
freeway once, before Haymow finally pointed out to him that the bus'
transmission had a "High" range as well.]
Daniel Yaron Kimberg
>at the basic premises - each math class (on the average) meets for
>3 hours per week. Assuming that each semester is 12 weeks long,
>that's 36 hours of classtime not counting recitation. It's always
>amazed me that students can muddle through classes, attend office
>hours *ONCE* and expect to absorb a semester's worth of material.
>But that's another issue entirely; let me now address the
>non-possibility of office hour attendence at all.
Why is 36 hours a week plus time spent doing homework not enough to learn a
semester's worth of math? I've never taken a course where I thought the time
allotted wasn't plenty, given that sufficient time was spent on assignments.
Of course, some professors try to cover too much of a broad topic, but that's
a different problem. The only reason I've ever been to a professor's office
hours has been for something administrative like working out a paper topic -
not for additional instruction.
>Professors are obligated to have office hours, students
>should be obligated to use them.
I disagree with this completely. I think office hours are useful for students
who are having difficulty with course material or for students who want to
discuss some point with the professor, or work out a paper topic, or things
like that. But I don't see any good reason why a student who is doing well
in a course, who is having no trouble picking up the material, and who has no
other real reason to see the professor, should be obligated to go waste
someone's time. As far as I'm concerned, office hours exist because situations
come up during the course of a semester when some students need to see the
professor, not because individual conferences are invariably a necessary part
of the curriculum.
-Dan
George W. Leach
>..............our entire culture sees education as something to do
>with the kids until they're old enough to leave the house. If the
>parents don't care, their children won't either.
Bingo! It is not enough for a parent to CARE about education.
Parents must be an integral part of the education process. From the
moment a child is born they are absorbing everything around them. If
children are put into an environment where learning is encouraged,
then they will react appropriately. I have read in many places that
the preschool years are where a child's future may be shaped. It is
here where they will discover just how important education is.
Do parents expect the children to keep busy watching TV or
playing with toys, ALL THE TIME. Or do parents take the time to
talk to children or perhaps read books to them or take them to a
museum. There are many fantastic hands-on or technology centered
museums around these days. If you ever go to one, just look at
how the kids react. Children are naturally inquisitive. But they
need direction from parents.
Another thing to consider is just how important education
appears to a child will have an awful lot to do with how a parent
spends their free time. Many adults become couch potatoes and do
little but watch TV every night. My feeling is that education is
an ongoing process. There is so much in this world that we do not
know about. If we can show our children that even adults need to
continue to learn, then perhaps the idea that education is important
will sink in. The motto: "do as I say, not as I do" will not be
enough!
>American parents who _do_ want good education for the children must
>either find a "good neighborhood" to live in, with an adequate school,
>or pay for private schooling.
Well, maybe. There are many children who are sent to private
schools who still lack motivation. Money is not the answer to
everything.
--
George W. Leach Paradyne Corporation
..!uunet!pdn!reggie Mail stop LG-129
Phone: (813) 530-2376 P.O. Box 2826
Largo, FL USA 34649-2826
Lawrence V. Cipriani
the professor told the students to write down on their papers what
grade they though they deserved. He gave them the grade they wrote
down. There was only 1 A in the class, my friends father.
On grade posting ...
In the comp sci dept At Ohio State grades some are posted but the
"identification" is a codeword the students write on their finals.
This seems to be a good way to post grades privately. I suppose
there is the possibility that two students could write down the same
code word. In that unlikely event the student could get a hold of
the instructer.
--
Larry Cipriani, AT&T Network Systems, Columbus OH,
Path: att!cbnews!lvc Domain: l...@cbnews.ATT.COM
Ken Arromdee
--
"Unfortunately, Ultraman, the superman of Earth-3 who gains powers from
Kryptonite, fried your poor machine-gunner..."
--Kenneth Arromdee (ins_...@jhunix.UUCP, arro...@crabcake.cs.jhu.edu,
g49i...@jhuvm.BITNET) (not arrom@aplcen, which is my class account)
John Murray
> . . . When a student's
> main interest in my class is to earn whatever grade is acceptable to her, I
> totally sympathize. It wasn't her idea to take the course, after all.
> Some clown who drew up her major department requirements decided she
> *needs* to know this stuff and so she should be *forced* to learn it.
>
> Now if a student *never* takes any courses for any reason except to earn a
> grade, then she has the true mind-set of a victim and I feel very sad for her.
> Why does she force herself to keep doing something she gets no joy from?
Frequently, she does it in order to get a half-decent job. Period.
This could be the result of a system which demands that maybe half of
the nation's high school graduates "need" a college education as well.
Under other education systems, perhaps only 10% get to go to college. It
seems wrong somehow to expect an individual to survive four years in an
"institute of higher learning and academic research", when clearly all
they want is sufficient grades to leave and get a entry-level job. If
high school standards were higher, the "need a college degree" mentality
might be lessened.
- John Murray (My own opinions, etc.)
Norman Matloff
>>As I said, UC does this too, and a number of other state schools that I
>>am aware of do this, but it is contrary to the public interest, because
>>it selects for the RICH foreign students rather than for the SMART
>>foreign students.
>I really don't think this is a concern. The best (foreign) students are
>also coming here, getting scholarships in their own countries (and some
>financial aid here, too, in the form of teaching positions and the
>like).
Not true, in most cases. The bulk of the foreign students, even the
best ones, are NOT supported by their home countries. In fact, those
who come here under a J-1 visa (e.g. China, Israel) tend to refuse
support from their government even if it is offered, because U.S.
law stipulates that if they accept such support, they MUST return
home after graduation -- which is contrary to their goal of getting
a U.S. company to sponsor them for American immigration.
>Beating on this some more, the problem of American colleges in the past
>few years has been too few applicants (especially Americans). The "rich
>foreigners" aren't taking slots away from anyone who could make any use
If you reread my postings, you'll see that I basically agree with this.
There just aren't enough Americans interested in gard school.
However, the comment on the "rich" ones had to do with someone (you,
I think) suggesting that since political considerations, e.g. state
legislatures, dictate that some way be devised to limit the number of
foreign students at state schools, that the way to do it be to charge
higher tuition. I'm saying that this is not the way to do it, because
rich != smart.
>who've been educated in the U.S. are less likely to think of the U.S.A.
>as a monolithic "Great Satan".
Good point, but entirely wasted, since the majority don't back to their
home countries.
According to TIME magazine, over 90% of the students from Taiwan (which
has by far the largest contingent of foreign students in the U.S.) do
not return to Taiwan after graduation. For engineering (including CS)
this figure is very close to 100%.
Among the foreign students we've had in our CS grad program here at
Davis: NONE of the Taiwan students has returned; NONE of the PRC
students has returned; only ONE of the Hong Kong students has returned;
NONE of the students from India has returned. [These countries comprise
almost all the foreign students.]
>You're agreeing with me here. Why aren't the Americans inspired to work
>as hard for that better job? (I'm not sure they aren't; but the U.S.
There's a definite problem with the anti-intellectual attitude which
prevails in the U.S. I agree completely. I post a lot in the newsgroup
soc.culture.china, and I have mentioned there the following "Far Side"
cartoon:
There is a picture of a school, with a sign in front saying "School
for the Gifted." An extremely nerdy-looking kid has just climbed
the steps to the front door. The door has a sign saying "Pull" on
it, and the kid is PUSHING with all his might to try to open the
door. :-)
My DEPARTMENT CHAIRPERSON laughed uncontrollably at that cartoon --
but you would NEVER find such a "laugh-at-the-eggheads,-who-totally-
lack-common-sense" cartoon in Asia.
But getting back to the question of the "better job", it turns out
that the Americans DO work hard for that better job (I'm talking
mainly about the Silicon Valley, where I have the most information).
There are a lot of people in the Silicon Valley who weren't willing
to "walk that extra mile" when they were students, but did have a
lot of intellectual curiosity, and really blossomed once they got
into the industry.
And what is also interesting is that they frequently surpass the
foreign students (now immigrants) in the work environment, due to
the Asian system of rote-memorization-based education which leaves
them with a severe lack of insight. [I'll add more on that if anyone
is interested.]
>two.... But hey, I got the right continental shelf! :-)
This :-) and those that followed it were much appreciated, thanks.
Norm
Steven Ryan
>
>interests of our country.
UC and CSUCS are not funded by the country, they are funded by the state.
They were created to educate Californians for work in California. Most of
the resident students have been living with their families in the state,
and paying taxes, for some time and they would be loth to leave on
graduation.
While many of nonresident students may remain in the state, there is no
legal way to force them to remain, so it is not as sure they will stick
around to pay taxes for the next generation.
> Those
>from poor countries such as India and China would be especially pleased
>with your plan, since they have no family funds to rely on while they
>are in school here.
Though in some cases, foreign students are sponsorred by their government
for the specific purpose of bringing their education back home.
--
-- s m ryan
-----------------------------------
My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
my Bonnie lies over the sea,
my Bonnie lies over the ocean.
Oh, please mend my waterbed for me.
Daniel Yaron Kimberg
>Why is 36 hours a week plus time spent doing homework not enough to learn a
>semester's worth of math?
Argh, I meant 36 hours, as in over the whole semester, or 3 hours a week.
Please withhold all flaming objects, I did read the original message. (thanks
to Bob Ayers for pointing this out via email)
-Dan
Benjamin Alexander
>>
>> [Things are bad in the mathematics classrooms]
>
>1. The courses have degenerated. I do not trust the students coming out of a
>mathematics course to know the manipulations presented, not to say the
>concepts. It is too easy to confirm that this is the rule. I am not saying
>that things were good N years ago, but one could expect the students who had
>the calculus course to be able to do the manipulations 1-2 years later in a
>course with an explicit calculus prerequisite even on an in-class exam then,
>but cannot get it on a take-home exam now.
Just an idle question: How do you confirm this "rule"? I'm not sure that
you are quite justified in stating these bland accusations at all of the
mathematics students across the country. I certainly don't find this the
case with myself or my peers.
>2. I believe that the major reason for this is that the teachers of
>mathematics courses have allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by the claims
>of the educationists. The major one of these claims is that it is unimportant
>what is learned in the course is essentially irrelevant, and only for the
>purpose of getting a relative standing. Also, even this is not important.
I'm sorry, I don't understand this. You seem to be say the following
Educationists have a major claim. They say the following:
"It is unimportant what is learned in the course is essentially
irrelevant, and only for the purpose of getting a relative
standing. Also, even this is not important."
I would be surprised if anyone would take such a claim seriously, if I could
only find a sentence in there somewhere ....
>3. It is not just a problem of mathematics, but the idea that one learns for
>the future, and not just for the grade in the current class, seems to have
>disappeared. People are taught how to study for grades, but not how to learn
>the material. It is possible to put enough in short-term memory to get an A
>on a regurgitation exam. Thus
Perhaps regurgitation exams should not be given as finals. As midterms,
yes. Understanding methods is as important to other fields as concepts are
to mathematics.
>4. There is pressure to examine the trivia. At the college level, this means
>that methods of routine manipulation are emphasized on examinations. One
>reason for doing this is that the examinations are easy to grade. Concepts
>cannot be tested on multiple choice examinations. It is more time-consuming
>to read through the work to see if the method was essentially correct, but a
>minor arithmetical error gave the wrong answer.
Oh, you are sooooo wrong. Concepts CAN be tested on multiple choice and
true false tests! The hardest math test I ever had was a true false test.
It asked things about the reasons certain intervals were open or closed in
certain proofs. And the "trivia" must be mastered. Just like algebra must
be mastered. Adding and subtracting is trivial (my calculator can do it)
but if you can't add 5x and 8x (my calculator can't do that) then you're in
serious trouble!
>
>5. The teachers at the elementary and secondary levels can only teach
>plug-and-chug operations. Even proofs are memorized. The students expect
>such, and object to a teacher even mentioning anything else. They consider
>it an intolerable imposition on them if an examination question is given
>which cannot be done by following exactly the steps of a problem in class.
>There is resentment of taking class time to give an understanding of the
>material. Any statement made by the teacher is at least implicitly
>challenged by "Is this going to be on the final?" Not whether it will
>help in doing the exams, but whether it will be explicitly on the exams.
Don't you think that is severly and painfully wrong! My high school teachers
would be morally offended if they heard you! They taught me all the math I
know (I'm a freshman, not a Ph.D) and I understand concepts! Proofs must be
memorized, because if you misremember the hypothesis and misapply the
theorem, you will get wrong answers! Using L'Hopitals rule on an expression
that is of a form 6/2 might give you the wrong answer entirely. Or hadn't
you though of that! I never thought it an imposition when a problem was
given on a test that hadn't been covered umpteen times in class. I have
always resented it when a teach takes too much time going over stupid
examples and not enough time explaining how this type of problem needs to be
approached. If my teacher only explains one way of doing a problem, I ask
for, or suggest, another. That is the important thing!
>6. At the college level, it is politically difficult to require that the
>students have knowledge prerequisites. That someone got A's in their high
>school mathematics courses is no guarantee that s/he know anything from
>high school mathematics. That someone got an A in last term's calculus
>course is no guarantee that the material of that course can be used in this
>one. I have advocated that knowledge prerequisites be used, and that
>remedial courses be provided, and even taught with the understanding that,
>while it may be on the students' records, some of the students may not even
>have seen the relevant material.
I think I agree with you, but I am not sure. What do you mean by "knowledge
prerequisites"? Do you mean a big multiple choice exam at the beginning of
every semester? I don't think you do, and I don't think it would be easy to
implement.
>7. Emphasize "word" problems. I would make the ability to formulate word
>problems at the high school algebra level of arbitrary length THE mathematics
>requirement for non-remedial entrance to college. And do not make the
>mistake of teaching or expecting parsimony in the use of variables. The
>high school algebra courses do much damage by asking the students to
>formulate problems in one variable.
Finally! Here I agree with you. It is important to know how to approach a
problem. That skill is not exercised if a student is asked:
y = 7a + b.
What happens to y if a = 3 and b =2 and a is then doubled?
There are more important things to teach and to learn.
>8. Encourage students to think, and to ask questions. "The only stupid
>question is the one which is not asked." Encourage reasoning. Encourage
>the recognition of structure; while it is sometimes necessary to look at
>the trees, it is important to see the forest. This is not limited to
>mathematics.
What school did you go to, anyway! I don't understand why you even mention
this. Are you trying to say that this is unusually. I certainly don't feel
any different. It's scary to think how much more stupid I would look and
feel if all the *really* smart people in my class had this advantage.
>9. We can, and should, teach concepts without manipulation. The concepts
>and the manipulations are largely separate. The student who has the
>impression that antidifferentiation is integration cannot learn the
>easy concept of integral, which can be taught at the high school algebra
>level. Facility with arithmetic calculations does not help in learning
>the structure of the integers; I think it can interfere. Whether Johnny
>can add is not particularly important; what is important is whether Johnny
>knows what addition means, and when to add.
It is EXCEEDINGLY important for an average person to learn how to add.
Recognizing addition in daily life makes living that much easier. If adding
is some kind of mystery black box machine (push the buttons for the first
number; push the holy and sacred Plus sign; push the buttons of the second
number; push the almighty Equals key) then ordinary people like Johnny will
be deceived by clever people throughout his entire life. Polititians will
lie to him not with clever words and non answers, but they will say to him:
"Don't worry, it all Adds up". Salesmen will tell him about their wonderful
Patented Snake Oil, Addition version -- "It will Add to you". Why make
Johnny any more at a disadvantage than he already is? And if Johnny is
going to be a Mathematician when he grows up, he will need to know how to
add. How can you stand there and say it is not important whether or not
Johnny can add. Figuring out when to add and what it really means can only
be done with practice. You can't think for Johnny, so leave him alone and
let him figure it out for himself.
>
>10. We must fight the attempts to reduce out courses to what the badly-
>taught students want. Can a student judge the quality of teaching in a
>course, especially if the student does not have the prerequisites? Can
>a student steeped in plug-and-chug appreciate the importance of learning
>concepts? Should the evaluations by such students be considered in
>deciding promotion, salary, and tenure?
Oh of course, sir. Of course students won't know what they've been taught.
They have no way of understanding if you have misled them or if you have
confused them in class. How could they tell if one of your lectures was
well prepared or informative. After all, your lectures aren't going to lead
them to a higher plateau of reasoning. Your lectures aren't going to
explain the map of the forest to your students! Why should they have any
valuable ideas on what confused them at the beginning of class, because your
lectures aren't going to change that, will they! After all, oh most
venerable sir, the students are not the reason your lecturing in class, are
they. No sir, you're in the classroom for "promotion, salary, and tenure".
>At least 10 more paragraphs can be written. The situation is BAD. Our
>Ph.D. programs are now dominated by foreign students, because the
>American ones do not exist. I have put forth some suggestions.
I must admit that I have no suggestions. I find fault with what you have
said here, but have no better solution to this problem, which you are
convinced exists. I feel that the problem lies not with the institutions,
but rather in the apathy of individual students. I am not apathetic, and I
don't see this problem around me.
>--
>Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
>Phone: (317)494-6054
>hru...@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet, UUCP)
Benjamin Alexander
Freshman at University of Rochester
bjal...@uhura.cc.rochester.edu