So: you went to college determined to find a path through it that would let you "get straight A's" and "graduate as quickly as possible", and then treated each course as a list of stuff to "check off"... and you're upset that you didn't get very much out of college?
Well, duh.
Every year I get a number of students whose entire motivation to be in my class is that they want to get the piece of paper. This sort of purely extrinsic motivation does not tend to make them very good students (although occasionally I have one that does well and gets an A, good for them). I'm always a little disappointed in them, because the class is more fun for both of us if they're more internally motivated; sometimes I can manage to get them actually interested, and then they perk up and are happier (and often do better), but sometimes they've just decided that they're not going to like college, and you know what? I can't force them to.
So, I guess they "win" that argument. But, it's an expensive argument to win; and it's kind of a shame, really.
As an aside, I also wanted to respond to this line:
> Getting an A is as easy as doing everything
Yes and no. In my class, and in those of my colleagues who have not overinflated their grades, As are gotten by the students who impress us with their outstanding work. Part of that is, of course, making sure they do all the pieces (don't skip anything, make sure it all works, check your work, etc), and the smart-but-sloppy students who skip things tend to be my A- and B+ students rather than my A students. But the students whose primary priority is checking everything off on a checklist, just "doing everything", rather than "getting it" or "making a cool thing" or whatever, almost invariably don't succeed in getting the A. It sounds like your background meant that you'd already learned a lot of the material independently, so your situation is different, but I think comments like the above are rather misleading for the bulk of students, who are learning this material on their first time around.
I think his point was more that it was possible to get high grades simply by checking things off.
In my experience , some people are better at doing things this way than others, while you will also get students (like me) who enjoy learning things but have little motivation for doing things like coursework when the coursework is something like "implement a BST" or "implement Newton's method for root finding".
I know people who got high grades (in CS) at college who couldn't write a practical program to save their lives and are now working in some business role. I also know people with mediocre grades who are busy doing interesting stuff with machine learning and cloud computing.
This was exactly my point. I enjoy learning things too, and the first time I went to school I had a hard time doing the kind of coursework that you describe because I was not motivated at all. When I went back, I literally just forced myself to walk through the checklist.
The problem is, there are a lot of students that can grind a checklist that are worthless.
I think it's possible to underestimate the value of effective checklist grinders. On the one hand it's unlikely to make you an innovator or entrepreneur but the world needs people who can identify exactly what is required for X and make sure that it is done.
So: you went to college determined to find a path through it that would let you "get straight A's" and "graduate as quickly as possible", and then treated each course as a list of stuff to "check off"... and you're upset that you didn't get very much out of college?
No, I went to college determined to learn a lot, spent about 2 years on pre-reqs, then dropped out because I wasn't really learning anything. Starting a company was far more interesting than going to school at the time, and still is. When I went back, I decided to go as fast as I could, because I wanted to get it over with, fully aware that there wasn't much to learn from earlier experience.
There were some instructive classes. I had a professor that was passionate about assembly, and another that I had for several classes, that gave me an FPGA board and told me I could build whatever I wanted, and he would grade me on that, since the coursework would be very easy for me. I built a basic processor, with an assembly language I devised, which was more instructive than anything I ever actually did in a class. The vast majority, however, were not worth much.
What's interesting is that I was interested enough in the subject to learn tons about it on my own over the course of more than a decade. A couple years of institutional bullshit was enough to change that. Today, I'd much prefer to do Udacity or Coursera courses than go to an actual school. At least I can study exactly what I want, and the assignments are well thought out.
Every year I get a number of students whose entire motivation to be in my class is that they want to get the piece of paper. This sort of purely extrinsic motivation does not tend to make them very good students (although occasionally I have one that does well and gets an A, good for them). I'm always a little disappointed in them, because the class is more fun for both of us if they're more internally motivated; sometimes I can manage to get them actually interested, and then they perk up and are happier (and often do better), but sometimes they've just decided that they're not going to like college, and you know what? I can't force them to.
Doesn't that really depend on the material. I flipped through some of the assignments you have on your website, and while you do have some interesting assignments, you also have stuff like Homework 5 in your sys admin class, where the student has to use traceroute to learn about the topology of the school's network. I am certain I could have done that assignment in 6th or 7th grade without difficulty. If I had to do it now, I would absolutely hate it. It is a fine assignment for students that have never troubleshot a networking issue, but if you have any experience whatsoever, its simply tedious and not particularly instructive. Nobody is going to be motivated by tedious easy assignments.
In my class, and in those of my colleagues who have not overinflated their grades, As are gotten by the students who impress us with their outstanding work. Part of that is, of course, making sure they do all the pieces (don't skip anything, make sure it all works, check your work, etc), and the smart-but-sloppy students who skip things tend to be my A- and B+ students rather than my A students. But the students whose primary priority is checking everything off on a checklist, just "doing everything", rather than "getting it" or "making a cool thing" or whatever, almost invariably don't succeed in getting the A.
I believe that you sincerely believe this. I sincerely believe it is not true. Checking boxes is indistinguishable from outstanding work, by your metrics. Somebody that is checking a checkbox by definition won't miss anything, the truly interested student is more likely to deeply explore one area and go lightly on another, becoming the A- or B+ student. If you have knowledge going in, the easiest thing to do is juke the stats and grind out as fast as possible.
I am certain I could have done that assignment in 6th or 7th grade without difficulty.
That's the problem in a nutshell. If you choose a major where you already know 50%+ of the material, you won't get much out of it. I take it you took computer engineering (based on the FPGA class), but what if you had gone back to school and learned biophysics? You probably would have gotten more out of it.
I have lived this. I taught myself to programm in 5th or 6th grade. By 8th grade I was whipping up 3D games using OpenGL and what not. When I was picking majors and I absolutely did not want to go into computer science. I knew it was going to be a waste of my time.
My main 3 options were mechanical engineering, economics, and history. I based this solely on other areas I was interested in. I chose mechanical engineering and ended up taking about a dozen computer science courses for my major after testing out of the lower level classes. I learned a lot about AI, computer graphics, computer vision, and the like but skipped the BS 'learning how to programm' classes that would have been a waste. It worked out well. My mechanical engineering classes were all completely new material for me and I got a lot more out of it than if I had just taken CS.
To anyone who is a self taught programmer, I would suggest getting a minor in CS or double majoring. Simply getting a CS degree isn't enough new material to make it worthwhile. Math, physics, bio, chem, and economics all compliment a CS background very well. Obviously mechanical, chemical, computer, or electrical engineering match up very well with CS (but a double engineering major is TOUGH).
Ugh, yeah, I'm not really happy with the sysadmin class either, for all sorts of reasons I'd rather not go into here (although if you're curious you can take it to email).
I think I agree completely with this last sentence:
> If you have knowledge going in, the easiest thing to do is juke the stats and grind out as fast as possible.
I guess my larger point is that a lot of your argument hinges on that first clause---"if you have knowledge going in"---which is not true of the typical student; and that even when you do have the knowledge going in, the "easiest" way is not the most productive, not the most effective use of your tuition money, and not, in general, the best.
While I understand what you're saying, I'm not sure that the purpose of a university education is to "make it fun" for professors.
More likely, the purpose of a university education is to learn.
And that does not necessarily require the professor to happen.
There should never be anything wrong with doing work outside of class, or any implication that doing the work is "not enough". Often learning happens in that time outside of class spent "just doing the work", not "in class" where a professor is struggling to "have fun".
Did you really read my post and see its central theme as being about "fun"? No, of course it's about learning; but if you go into it determined to make it un-fun, and succeed in doing so, you can't turn around and complain about how dreary and pointless it is.
You're also right that learning doesn't necessarily require a professor. But, if you're the sort of student that could learn something without the prof, and yet you have the prof right there, I bet that if you thought about it you could think of some relevant questions to ask that would let you learn more (or faster); and I can almost guarantee that if you're that kind of student the prof would be more than delighted to answer.
As I noted above, the problem is not that doing the work isn't enough; it's that if you go in thinking, hey, I just gotta check every box and I'll get an A, you're a lot less likely to actually succeed in getting the boxes checked in the first place.
I think the key is curiousity. Without it, if the process is reduced to just checking boxes, you're right. Something is lost.
Asking questions is crucial. If you cannot formulate the right questions, you cannot progress in learning.
This student sounds like a self-starter. I just think it's uncalled for to question what he did. Even if he thinks of it as "just checking boxes". He might not think of it that way in years to come.
He did the work. He kept his GPA up.
Hopefully he was intellectually curious and he formulated questions (even if he never got the chance to ask them). If he has aspirations for grad school, "it's not over yet".
There's still plenty of time to reconsider viewing his education as "checking off boxes" and to become more curious.
Meanwhile he did the work. And that's more than many students do.
Well, duh.
Every year I get a number of students whose entire motivation to be in my class is that they want to get the piece of paper. This sort of purely extrinsic motivation does not tend to make them very good students (although occasionally I have one that does well and gets an A, good for them). I'm always a little disappointed in them, because the class is more fun for both of us if they're more internally motivated; sometimes I can manage to get them actually interested, and then they perk up and are happier (and often do better), but sometimes they've just decided that they're not going to like college, and you know what? I can't force them to.
So, I guess they "win" that argument. But, it's an expensive argument to win; and it's kind of a shame, really.
As an aside, I also wanted to respond to this line:
> Getting an A is as easy as doing everything
Yes and no. In my class, and in those of my colleagues who have not overinflated their grades, As are gotten by the students who impress us with their outstanding work. Part of that is, of course, making sure they do all the pieces (don't skip anything, make sure it all works, check your work, etc), and the smart-but-sloppy students who skip things tend to be my A- and B+ students rather than my A students. But the students whose primary priority is checking everything off on a checklist, just "doing everything", rather than "getting it" or "making a cool thing" or whatever, almost invariably don't succeed in getting the A. It sounds like your background meant that you'd already learned a lot of the material independently, so your situation is different, but I think comments like the above are rather misleading for the bulk of students, who are learning this material on their first time around.