The college bubble

[bigbadwolf]

I must disagree.

1.Due to historical reasons they force everyone to take courses that aren't from their field, college graduates are the modern equivalent to scholars of the old times hence you cannot be a genius in math and not know who was Stalin and what happened to Kennedy.

Why not? European and British universities are doing just that: narrow technical education in math, physics, engineering. The stuff on who Stalin, Beria, Khrushchev, Trotsky were will have been covered in the 'O' and 'A' levels. Completely redundant and time-wasting at tertiary level to those who want to go into the sciences and engineering. And it's not even as if American college graduates have much of any breadth (let alone depth): there will have been a course or two on "world history," which they'll have had to take to fulfil distribution requirements, the contents of which will be promptly erased from memory once the final exam is complete. All these courses and prerequisites are so much dross the modern bureaucratic American university pushes down the throats of its hapless students to make more money out of them, to waste more years of their lives, and to employ a bunch of worthless professors.

 

[Andy D.]

I'm in agreement with BBW and IlyaKEightSix here.

I'm very much into History and enjoy the subject immensely. I've done work with organizations in the UK that work with English Heritage and spend a fair amount of my vacation time visiting museums and historic sites. However I see no point in taking a course in Tudor history whilst studying Software Engineering. If you are intersted in such suibjects, there are plenty of places that offer courses and an outlet for your interests. For example I took a class in the evenings with Oxford Uni's Department of Continuing Education in a subject that interested me, but wasn't relevant to my job.
However when I am studying SE I don't want to be bogged down with courses on "World History" probably a subject that would be taught at such a basic level it would be beyond a waste of my time.

As BBW alluded too, students by the time they go to college, should be versed in the basics of History, Geography, Literature etc. The purpose I've always believed Undergrad degrees serve is to specialize in a field, not an extension of high school.

 

[Yike Lu]

And I'm sure if people looked hard enough, they would be able to find more excess coursework to just throw out the window. This would substantially reduce college costs, accelerate how fast someone entered grad school (and/or ultimately started their career).

I agree with this for the most part. I know that the UK system is like this. On the other hand, I've talked to UK professors who acknowledge it as a limitation because one cannot easily draw from an interdisciplinary knowledge set. Innovation and inspiration come from a lot of different places.

Now I know some people might think that not taking physics courses for engineers might be tantamount to heresy, but do we really need to remember which way electrons travel on some sort of charged rod of infinite length or whatever else it is?

Man you picked the worst possible example.

If you ever want to do anything on the cutting edge you need the physics/chemistry/material sci background. Remember that all engineering is just an abstraction from physics to make the problems tractable. This is perfectly fine when we are dealing with macroscopic black boxes (i.e., this is a resistor, this is an engine), but technology is getting to small enough scales that anyone who works at the cutting edge cannot afford to ignore these fields. And as I alluded to before, many of the top institutions train innovators/researchers.

The converse is also true - physics is getting to the point where one cannot ignore technology. Many of the most interesting problems are not analytically tractable and require numerical methods, other interesting problems require massive computing power to deal with the data flow. LHC scientists I believe set data throughput world records. I wonder if their physics background had anything to do with that....

 

[Ohad]

I'm in agreement with BBW and IlyaKEightSix here.

I'm very much into History and enjoy the subject immensely. I've done work with organizations in the UK that work with English Heritage and spend a fair amount of my vacation time visiting museums and historic sites. However I see no point in taking a course in Tudor history whilst studying Software Engineering. If you are intersted in such suibjects, there are plenty of places that offer courses and an outlet for your interests. For example I took a class in the evenings with Oxford Uni's Department of Continuing Education in a subject that interested me, but wasn't relevant to my job.
However when I am studying SE I don't want to be bogged down with courses on "World History" probably a subject that would be taught at such a basic level it would be beyond a waste of my time.

As BBW alluded too, students by the time they go to college, should be versed in the basics of History, Geography, Literature etc. The purpose I've always believed Undergrad degrees serve is to specialize in a field, not an extension of high school.

If this is all you are looking for than don't go after a degree, take technical courses only, take courses from the program you like individually.

Think about it like this, sometimes you get the best ideas when you're not even thinking of the problem , I must admit that most of my best ideas come when I shower Probably due to the relaxing activity.General courses are the same.

Also,a X major can come and say that in his profession the most math that is needed can easily be done by a simple pocket calculater hence he doesn't need to know any ammoutn of math/computer skills , than what? College graduates that don't know how to add numbers?

The academia isn't a branch of GE/GM/etc it's a place that comes to broaden your horizons on many levels.

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

Yike, I'm not talking about those engineers who want to do something on the cutting edge of electromagnetic circuitry. Obviously, if you want to go the electrical engineering route to design circuitry, you damn well know your basic electromagnetic physics (and probably quantum physics as well!), but for someone doing, say, operations research or civil engineering, they aren't dealing with those microscopic elements.

At Lehigh, no matter what kind of engineering major you were--heck, if you attended Lehigh in the school of engineering, you needed to have mechanical physics, chemistry, and electromagnetic physics. Those three courses alone, in terms of total credit hours, equaled 14, and far more in terms of actual time spent per week. (EG 3 lectures+3 hour lab). Do I really remember much of those physics? No. Will I ever need to? Very unlikely.

Yes, if you're an electrical engineer, you need to know how electricity works. That's obvious. Similarly, if you're a mechanical engineer and you're building things, you need to know what kinds of materials to use for what so your widget doesn't suddenly blow apart mid-operation. But as an electrical engineer, do you need to know industrial engineering? Probably not.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

Yeah, because being an engineering robot with no other knowledge or interests is highly desirable when hiring people. lol

 

[Ohad]

Yike, I'm not talking about those engineers who want to do something on the cutting edge of electromagnetic circuitry. Obviously, if you want to go the electrical engineering route to design circuitry, you damn well know your basic electromagnetic physics (and probably quantum physics as well!), but for someone doing, say, operations research or civil engineering, they aren't dealing with those microscopic elements.

At Lehigh, no matter what kind of engineering major you were--heck, if you attended Lehigh in the school of engineering, you needed to have mechanical physics, chemistry, and electromagnetic physics. Those three courses alone, in terms of total credit hours, equaled 14, and far more in terms of actual time spent per week. (EG 3 lectures+3 hour lab). Do I really remember much of those physics? No. Will I ever need to? Very unlikely.

Yes, if you're an electrical engineer, you need to know how electricity works. That's obvious. Similarly, if you're a mechanical engineer and you're building things, you need to know what kinds of materials to use for what so your widget doesn't suddenly blow apart mid-operation. But as an electrical engineer, do you need to know industrial engineering? Probably not.

To some extant you are right but the potential of making the situation worse than it is now is much bigger.

You seem to be very unappreciative on how productive a broad viewpoint is, engineer by definition is interdisciplinary it's math/physics/real world needs put together.In the real world everything gets mesh together.

I gained allot of knowledge from courses that weren't exactly what I thought I wanted to do , heck man, I used to hate probability and here I'm aspiring to make a career out of it. I used to think I want to do semiconductors, but I went the optics route on my thesis and who knows what next. If my base was too narrow I wouldn't be able to have such diversity and variety in my choices, I really appreciate this aspect

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

Yeah, because being an engineering robot with no other knowledge or interests is highly desirable when hiring people. lol

Because we spend all of our time in the classroom, and can develop no interests outside of that, yes?

What I do (or want to do in the future, whatever) at work isn't my only knowledge base or interest. I like (good) Japanese animation (however utterly rare it is), a good story, etc..., but it doesn't mean I should be shelling out $50,000 a semester (prior to financial aid) to have all sorts of periphery shoved into my curriculum. Majors get declared at the end of freshman year, if I'm correct. Inside of those curricula for majors are introductory classes to who knows what.

Yes, a math base is essential, since all sorts of data analysis gets done with matrices. Now green's theorem, stokes's theorem, etc...are they really useful? No, not generally. But iterated integrals or partial derivatives? Very much so. But once again, my intro to electrical engineering (though the professor was an amazing guy) simply is washed from my memory today. Ditto with intro to mech engineering, ditto with mechanical physics, ditto with electromagnetic physics. What I retained is compsci concepts and optimization concepts--the thrust of my major, and the econ and finance background I chose to devote coursework to.

All of those one-and-done courses really don't help much.

 

[Andy D.]

Yeah, because being an engineering robot with no other knowledge or interests is highly desirable when hiring people. lol

I'm not sure a group of 3 credit courses in "World History" are going to solve that problem though.

There is nothing more pointless than teaching at degree level a single course on say Beowulf - in modern English only for example.
Waste of time, you can buy the book for $10 and read it yourself.

If this is all you are looking for than don't go after a degree, take technical courses only, take courses from the program you like individually.

Well as I already have a degree, and am working on a second I beg to differ. I can study the things I am interested in, in my spare time and do of course. By the time you get to college you should have studied the basics that many of the Freshman year units cover.
If you get to college and don't know what the Periodic Table of the Elements is, you already have a big problem in my opinion.

However maybe until high school education is improved, it is a necessary evil and if ultimatley it fills in the gaps for many students, on subjects they should have grasped earlier in life, then I suppose I am for it.

And this isn't a US versus the rest of the world problem, I think many countries have some distinctive weaknesses when it comes to high school education.

 

[bigbadwolf]

However maybe until high school education is improved, it is a necessary evil and if ultimatley it fills in the gaps for many students, on subjects they should have grasped earlier in life, then I suppose I am for it.

This

This is the 2010 University Challenge final, with Magdalen trouncing York. The point is that though the contenders are specialising in one subject at U they still happen to be polymaths -- which says something about their school education, and possibly also about the general level of national culture.

If American colleges didn't spend so much time on academic fluff, maybe students wouldn't be so deeply in hock, and take less time to graduate to boot.

 

[Yike Lu]

Yike, I'm not talking about those engineers who want to do something on the cutting edge of electromagnetic circuitry. Obviously, if you want to go the electrical engineering route to design circuitry, you damn well know your basic electromagnetic physics (and probably quantum physics as well!), but for someone doing, say, operations research or civil engineering, they aren't dealing with those microscopic elements.

With any complex system you need a basic understanding of the components of the system and where they may possibly break. For a Civil Engineer, something with the materials you use could cause some kind of electrical flaw in a building you design, or a chemical flaw that makes it degrade over time due to the elements. Would you build a limestone building? These are just two very basic considerations that I came up with off the top of my head.

The same goes with operations research - the broader your knowledge set, the more you can hone in on the possible problem while on a job. While you may not need to know the essential details of E&M, you need to have at least a broad overview. There are better ways to accomplish this in an engineering school (i.e., engineering physics courses rather than hard physics courses).

At Lehigh, no matter what kind of engineering major you were--heck, if you attended Lehigh in the school of engineering, you needed to have mechanical physics, chemistry, and electromagnetic physics. Those three courses alone, in terms of total credit hours, equaled 14, and far more in terms of actual time spent per week. (EG 3 lectures+3 hour lab). Do I really remember much of those physics? No. Will I ever need to? Very unlikely.

I certainly don't remember the solutions for things like the infinite conducting rod and other such nonsense. I imagine less than 10% of physicists have it memorized. What they do remember is the methodology used to arrive at the solution, so that they can derive it from scratch every time if need be. In fact, this is what you should remember from your physics courses - the method of thinking.

I do not remember specific derivations, and I am a physics major. But I am very confident I can spit out the basic principle you use for most of those problem within a minute, and that given about an hour, I could redo the whole derivation. Even in finance applications, I have the intuition to suggest a basic solution methodology even when I have no real knowledge of the subject. Basic ideas like dimensionless measures and consistency conditions show up everywhere. One example just this semester:

Prof: What other condition do we need to make sure a density is a transition density?
Me: Two transition densities must be consistent, that is the transitions from x to y, then y to z, must be consistent with x to z.

I had missed the previous class and I did not even know the definition of transition density, and was barely familiar with the Markov property at all.

If you don't have this skill, you missed the point entirely. And probably suffered much more than someone who understood these ideas.

Yes, if you're an electrical engineer, you need to know how electricity works. That's obvious. Similarly, if you're a mechanical engineer and you're building things, you need to know what kinds of materials to use for what so your widget doesn't suddenly blow apart mid-operation. But as an electrical engineer, do you need to know industrial engineering? Probably not.

Nothing you've mentioned suggests that an electrical engineer would need to take an IE course. In fact, everything you've mentioned suggests the more specialized engineers (IEOR, CivE) need to take more generalized courses. The analogy is not nearly the same the other way around.

Whereas the specialized engineering disciplines (IEOR) need basic broad knowledge because of the different problems they deal with, the generalized engineering disciplines obviously do not need specialization outside of their own field.

If you wondered why at Lehigh you needed to take physics but not IE... there's your answer. The curriculum won't be that backwards...

 

[cgorac]

Latest Recruitement & Hiring Survey from Notices of the AMS.

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

Uh Yike, it was the other way around, too. Every engineering discipline had to take coursework from other engineering disciplines. Most of that knowledge (if not all of it) has long been forgotten. The whole idea of derive from principles, find a model, plug in and chug can apply under any field. One need not necessarily have to take an EM physics course to do that. In fact, I do understand how that works, but I work from an IEOR context. EG given an objective function and constraints, find a way to model that.

Any quantitative discipline will beat into your head how to derive stuff from stuff you already know. But the context of it also matters. By the time someone from an IE major is doing anything in a capacity in which they'll be responsible for understanding the exact workings of complex pieces of other engineering, those classes will have long been a memory.

 

[Yike Lu]

Uh Yike, it was the other way around, too. Every engineering discipline had to take coursework from other engineering disciplines. Most of that knowledge (if not all of it) has long been forgotten. The whole idea of derive from principles, find a model, plug in and chug can apply under any field. One need not necessarily have to take an EM physics course to do that. In fact, I do understand how that works, but I work from an IEOR context. EG given an objective function and constraints, find a way to model that.

I quoted you and you specifically were complaining about physics, not engineers having to take cross-disciplinary engineering. You are changing the subject. And in any case, you AGAIN missed my point.

Is it not clear that EE is broader than IEOR? And therefore it makes more sense for an IEOR to take EE than the other way around? And therefore this generalizes to the idea that it makes more sense for an engineer to take physics than a physicist to take engineering?

Any quantitative discipline will beat into your head how to derive stuff from stuff you already know. But the context of it also matters. By the time someone from an IE major is doing anything in a capacity in which they'll be responsible for understanding the exact workings of complex pieces of other engineering, those classes will have long been a memory.

Again, I never said you need to know the exact workings. While I did use an example of derivation (perhaps poorly), this is not the skill I am talking about. Rather it is the ability to use your intuition to jumpstart the problem solving process. It is not plug and chug, it is recognizing that this piece of the puzzle comes from e.g. chemistry and it has a well-defined methodology to go with it, this other piece comes from physics, EE, etc.

Feynman once talked about a student of his who was a great mathematician but terrible physicist. When he asked Feynman for help, Feynman asked him "Where do you push on a three-legged table to make it fall over."

The student pulled out pencil/paper to do calculations... Feynman just walked over to the table and demonstrated by pushing near an edge, about midway between two legs.

The point is to have that type of intuition for problem solving. Having broad exposure to the more generalized fields (physics, chem, mechE, EE) allows this intuition to develop, something especially useful for more cross-disciplinary fields. So when your building crumbles when acid rain falls on it... oh hey I shouldn't have built it out of limestone.

And in case this sounds far-fetched, I know a very good mathematician (he is in fact one of my professors) who readily admits he has terrible physical intuition and routinely doesn't understand the source of scaling arguments (whereas I spot their use immediately).

Finally, you continue to misread me. If this continues, there is no point in me even talking to you on this subject. You are either deliberately or through lack of reading comprehension changing your story and argument.

 

[Anthony DeAngelis]

Since this is a quant forum, I can expect a bias toward quant subjects, but it is myopic to think that a university is nothing but a technical school. If you are an engineering student, the majority of your classes will be in your field. In the beginning, students have to take general classes because many kids are not married to a career at day one. It also gives people an opportunity to learn and meet people who think differently and have different opinions.

Youth unemployment is an issue all over the world. Lets not make this out to be only an American issue because of our "crappy" college system.

 

[rishab dhar]

I might be wrong in jumping straight away into this discussion, but I couldn't but help.

So when your building crumbles when acid rain falls on it... oh hey I shouldn't have built it out of limestone.

Well, I think you needn't care about these things for the following reasons:

1) You obviously on your own can't build a building. If you and only were building, you wouldn't just need to know science, you would also need to know finance, business, marketing, English, French, German etc, because first of all you need to do cost analysis. Then you need to be able to sell your plan to your creditors, for which you need to know their language which could be English,Hindi,Chinese, etc. There is no limit!
2) Such knowledge cannot be attainted by a single person.
3) Therefore we need specializations. We hire Chemical engineers and not computer engineers to deal with corrosion. A single topic on Chemistry is hardly enough to understand the deep workings of Chemsitry. Instead, you hire computer engineers for modelling. You hire Civil engineers/ Mechanical engineers to study materials. You hire architects for design. You hire MBA for getting financing. You hire Accountants to keep books. You hire Marketing people for marketing the product.

Now if the aim of the education at college is to teach you to do all these things on your own, then I guess the education is pitiful. Even a Caltech Engineer can't do all these things on his own. You need colleagues, who are strong in areas where you are weak.

What you do need is deep knowledge in your subject, for no one is gonna question you on the code you might have written for simulating, for you were hired for that job, assuming you were the best.

The best said proverb is " Incomplete Knowledge is Dangerous. "

Even great Chemists, with PhDs, couldn't unravel all the mysteries of this subject. Now to trust anyone, who has taken a single course on Chemistry, for doing a job such as taking into account all the Chemical effects is like giving a kid a matchbox to play with.

Can you ever imagine a computer engineer being given the job of Chemical/Civil engineer. At-least, in India, it doesn't happen.

 

[bigbadwolf]

1) You obviously on your own can't build a building. If you and only were building, you wouldn't just need to know science, you would also need to know finance, business, marketing, English, French, German etc, because first of all you need to do cost analysis. Then you need to be able to sell your plan to your creditors, for which you need to know their language which could be English,Hindi,Chinese, etc. There is no limit!
2) Such knowledge cannot be attainted by a single person.
3) Therefore we need specializations. We hire Chemical engineers and not computer engineers to deal with corrosion. A single topic on Chemistry is hardly enough to understand the deep workings of Chemsitry. Instead, you hire computer engineers for modelling. You hire Civil engineers/ Mechanical engineers to study materials. You hire architects for design.

...
What you do need is deep knowledge in your subject, for no one is gonna question you on the code you might have written for simulating, for you were hired for that job, assuming you were the best.

Yes, but as a civil engineer you still need enough exposure to, say, chemistry, so that when a corrosion expert speaks to you, advises you, you can understand his analyses, arguments, and objections. Your one or two courses on chemistry will not make you a chemist nor learn how to "think like a chemist" but will have given a bit of exposure to the subject and hopefully something will remain after the final exam is over. Technical specialists have to be able to speak to other technical specialists in a technological civilisation. My argument is not against this. My argument is against the inclusion of utterly irrelevant subjects like world history, psychology, sociology, English composition at the US undergrad level. This should have been finished in school. Life isn't long enough for all this. Debt is being incurred for this and semesters and years wasted. A technical specialist doesn't need to talk to a specialist in 18th century French literature.

 

[rishab dhar]

The chemistry that is usually taught at engineering level is already covered by students in India at 12th grade level. Infact, I would say that while preparing for entrance exams -IIT-JEE students study chemistry of much higher level than is taught at under grad level. Therefore, it is utterly useless to teach these courses at University level.

Studies in India at most levels are much more rigorous than in US. It's the practical knowledge that students lack, and this practical knowledge of how things react or perform in real life is, unfortunately, never given even at University level , even though tuition fees are sky high.

The education given at school level in India is more than enough to understand what the other guy might be saying, in let us say Chemistry. Heck, I might even say that math at 5th grade level in India is similar to 8th or 9th grade level math in US.

Reading this form and your replies, I realize that education in US is at even more commercialized than in India. But hey, you still have choice to study and take higher level courses in subjects that you like. But, unfortunately, most universities and colleges in India do not allow this. I liked math right through my engineering, but I never got the opportunity to take tougher math - Stochastic calculus stuff etc. The math taught at college used to be walk in the park for me.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Heck, I might even say that math at 5th grade level in India is similar to 8th or 9th grade level math in US.

Yes, that is believable (as long as we are not talking of college level).

But hey, you still have choice to study and take higher level courses in subjects that you like. But, unfortunately, most universities and colleges in India do not allow this.

Yes, but as Ilya pointed out, there are usually prerequisites for the courses -- prereqs that make no sense, just more stupid hoops to jump through. Also, there are distribution requirements -- you can't circumvent a whole swathe of utterly irrelevant courses -- designed for the bottom line of the university and to provide employment for its professors and support staff. Thus, for example, prospective medical students are supposed to have got through calc 1, which is being used as a filtering device on medical student applications. So pre-med students -- often with no math aptitude at all -- are taking calc 1 again and again, trying to pass it. The university math departments -- which exist on the basis of these service courses -- adore these "repeat customers." That's where naked commercialisation comes in.

 

[rishab dhar]

I do agree with you that this is totally nonsensical, and hence clearly agreed that education is more commercialized in US.

In India the situation is slightly different; the universities just don't have funds to educate hundreds of thousands of would be engineers. Hence, they just follow the system of affiliation, wherein affiliate colleges teach the same curriculum as the university does, but they never invest in their infrastructure more than that is bare minimum. As a result not only the quality of education suffers, but also the education system becomes even more rigid, as you never get the opportunity to study graduate level courses ( Most of the engineering colleges are only interested at teaching at under grad level because this is where the real money is)

The only facilities that are invested in are : Expensive buildings with central AC's . This is the only thing at which they can easily beat government colleges such as IITs, NITs.

I have no idea why IIMs are expensive. They have pathetic infrastructure. Teachers work at pathetic government scale $10k -$20k/annum. Student Teacher ratio barely 1:15. At some It is close to 1:25 or 1:30 (the IIMs). Still, the tuition fees are close to $40k -$50k, a cost too high for normal Indians.

It's not just US; It is everywhere. But heck, the salaries paid to professors are even worse. That is why the quality of education at graduation and PhD level suffers. No one wants to study after a Bachelors (except for an MBA). In a country where 1 million engineers graduate (Bachelors) every year, only 1000 PhD engineers graduate every year, a pathetic statistic, compared to even US, let alone Europe, where 3 times more PhDs graduate per 100k people.

Therefore, it is almost impossible to find PhDs for IITs. Any PhD can easily find a job at a private institute, working at 2 times more salary, or at Industry, working at even high salaries. As a result student: teacher ratio even at IITs is barely 1:20, though the requirement is 1:15 (There are close to 15k faculty opening at IITs-this is the degree of shortfall).

Infact, such is the shortfall that government recommended that a Masters in Engineering be considered equivalent to PhD to fill these faculty positions!