College-Industrial Scam

[Daniel Duffy]

So, for example, virtually everyone posting here is talking about C++ but no-one (as far as I know) about lambda-calculus.

Functional programming is on the up and even now C++ 11 has some support for it. For example, who believes that all OOP GOF design patterns can be done much more easily with lambda and functional programming?

For PDE models, Crank Nicolson and ADI are popular even tho' they are by no means the best in all situations.

 

[mhy]

Very interesting that C++11 added support for lambdas.

Some firms use functional-heavy languages (OCaml at Jane Street, for instance) and groups within larger firms also follow this trend. I know groups at almost every investment bank using some functional language.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Very interesting that C++11 added support for lambdas.

C# has had it for years but this is not what I'm talking about -- I mean the formal lambda calculus and things like the Y combinator used to define recursion.

 

[Yike Lu]

Functional programming is on the up and even now C++ 11 has some support for it. For example, who believes that all OOP GOF design patterns can be done much more easily with lambda and functional programming?

Let over lambda over let over lambda.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

Let over lambda over let over lambda.

Yes/NO?

 

[Yike Lu]

Oh that's a whole object system right there.

 

[bigbadwolf]

http://rense.com/general96/seriouscourses.html

College Algebra

Because the passing rate of College Algebra is so unsatisfactory in administrative eyes, many campuses offer an “Explorations in Algebra” type course, a fake course with “Algebra” in the title so it at least sounds like it might be a real course. ... After years of diligently working to make a college degree represent no more than a high school diploma, college administrators, by promoting “Explorations” type courses, are now working to make a college degree as meaningful as graduating from the 8th grade. This is why books like Academically Adrift can easily show that about half of college graduates have no measurable increase in cognitive skills over what they had in high school; 6 years of college, and all the student gets is a worthless piece of paper and a mountain of debt."

Basic Mathematics (pre-sub-remedial)





This course covers perhaps 3rd to 5th grade material, from how to add and subtract whole numbers, to plotting points on the number line. Every homework problem must be done in class because no understanding of the material can be taken for granted.

I’ve never seen or heard of a student going from this course to anything like a successful college career. With over 90% of “normal” remedial students failing to have a college career, this isn’t surprising. For one semester, we offered an even more basic math (a sub-pre-sub-remedial course). This course was promoted by one instructor as “taking out the math they don’t need, like squares and rectangles,” and allowed to offer it after singing the “better retention” siren song to administration.

There’s a huge issue of integrity in the pre-sub-remedial course. If you’re teaching 3rd grade material to an adult, you consider that adult to have the cognitive skills of an 8 year old at best. There’s nothing wrong with trying to improve education and learning, but at some point, someone should think “This student didn’t learn this in 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. Maybe he doesn’t want to learn this and we shouldn’t loan him money to learn it.” Failing that, admissions should think “Maybe loaning this person money that goes right to us would be taking advantage of someone with a mental disability and it would be not be acting with integrity to do that.” So far, these possibilities have never been raised at any meeting concerning remediation, and administration continues to sell these courses to anyone willing to go into debt to take them.

 

[Yike Lu]

LOL, that guy has an amusing blog.

Question is, what do we do about all this?

 

[Daniel Duffy]

we offered an even more basic math (a sub-pre-sub-remedial course). This course was promoted by one instructor as “taking out the math they don’t need, like squares and rectangles,”

LOL

 

[bigbadwolf]

LOL, that guy has an amusing blog.

Question is, what do we do about all this?

There's no "we." But I suppose if those of us here on this forum were to offer constructive criticism, one key point would be that high school and college freshman curricula and texts aren't what they used to be. Take a look at today's "college algebra" texts, for example. They're shockingly devoid of real content -- this is junk McEducation. The same holds for high school texts on algebra and geometry. The reason high school and college students are having problems with calculus is that they never learnt algebra and analytic geometry properly to begin with. The texts (and curricula) of sixty, seventy and a hundred years ago are incomparably superior to what's used today. Arguably the reason for this is that they weren't trying to educated everyone those days -- none of today's egalitarian nonsense that "everyone can learn." Even single-celled organisms learn -- but not the way more complex life forms do. In like manner, the old school geometry course was only being successfully passed by 20% of the school population -- but maybe that's what it should be. The real effect of fiddling with curricula to make "more people successfully learn" has been to lower the bar so much that even those who could handle more rigorous material aren't learning much of anything and subsequently have trouble with real college courses. More people are getting through the high school math courses -- but the stupid ones aren't learning any more than they were previously (maybe even less) and the smart ones aren't being challenged enough to be able to handle the more daunting courses ahead.

 

[Lyosha]

I say we just kill all the stupid people, so that only the smart ones are left!

 

[bigbadwolf]

I say we just kill all the stupid people, so that only the smart ones are left!

That's what they do in the SF short story, The Marching Morons.

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

Honestly, IMO, it's just a case of "a fool and their money are soon parted". The reason that MOOC providers like Udacity and Coursera even *have* a place and a reason to exist is to pop the education bubble. The problem, IMO, isn't with the degree providers--it's the demand for a degree in the first place. There are so many ways to assess if someone even remotely knows what the heck they're doing. For instance, check this out: http://www.rebellionresearch.com/jobs.html . Honestly, I think anyone that can do well enough on it at least warrants someone speaking with them--after all, if they spend some rather long amount of time (for a job application anyway) going through all of that, and do *well* on it, it probably shows at least some necessary level of dedication that they can be spoken with rather than thrown out without a second thought (i.e. recruiters at Goldman Sachs spend all of 7 seconds looking at a resume, and in this day and age of machines, you're not even guaranteed that a human being will ever even see your resume--a machine can just scan your resume for GPA, educational background, and so forth, and screen you right then and there).

IMO, considering that MOOCs have systems that can automatically gauge someone's knowledge (to an extent) without human intervention, why do we still allow proxies for knowledge to even be considered? I honestly don't see why it can't be legislated to not ask for proxies for knowledge, but to force companies that want to hire to put in a tiny modicum of effort into making a meritocratic hiring process?

At this point, it screams conspiracy theory to me perpetuated by those with the money.