Economics & math (was: What you learn from a CS degree)

[Neil Crellin]

Jim Kingdon <kin...@panix3.panix.com> writes:
> > Universities judge departmental teaching productivity by the number of
> > butts registered for seats, multiplied by the number of hours each is
> > registered for. . . .
> > You are seeing this from the student perspective. I'm seeing it from an
> > administrative perspective. In many cases, nobody in this situation
> > really cares whether or not the student learns chi-square until two years
> > later
>
> Well, I may be reading something into this which isn't there, but
> based on this description it sounds to me like noone really cares
> whether the student learns period.
>
> If the criteria are set up so that one can achieve "success" by
> filling classrooms with a bunch of students that don't want to be
> there, sitting in front of a professor who doesn't want to be there,
> and people aren't getting much out of it, then we need new criteria.

Maybe. It's also like the joke about the social worker and the
lightbulb. The student has to want to learn to get much from the
experience, whether the System(tm) cares or not.