Sean Kelly:
> and the grades derived from a combination of homework and actual problem-solving quizzes and exams.<

In my university (biology, computer science) most grades come from:
- How well you do practical tests and exercises done in laboratory (usually programming exercises in computer science, and written documents in biology labs), even in math classes.
- One, two or even three written tests along the way along each of the 1 semester courses, where you have to explain and write down things, write code on paper, etc. (surely not multi-choice quizzes).
- And finally nearly all courses have one final oral examination (sometimes even two, because the lab assistant may ask some questions too), that is usually the harder thing, each student has to discuss with one or two teachers for 20-40 minutes (once I have seen a 70 minutes long oral examination for a botany-related course). Usually oral examination is the things that has more effect on the final result of the exam.
So cheating isn't much useful, you just make the teacher trust you even less. And teachers tell to each other what students are more likely to try to cheat.

Only 5-7 of the first classes are filled with 50-200 students, all the following courses are filled with 10-40 students.

Bye,
bearophile

> In my university (biology, computer science) most grades come from:
To add:
- How much you pay your Professor

At least that's what I heard about Italian universities.

"Georg Wrede" <georg.wrede@iki.fi> wrote in message news:gr3f91$92a$1@digitalmars.com...
>
> But I agree, higher education in the US is the top, no question.

If that's the case it just goes to show how terrible "education" is worldwide.

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Georg Wrede" <georg.wrede@iki.fi> wrote in message news:gr3f91$92a$1@digitalmars.com...
>> But I agree, higher education in the US is the top, no question.
> 
> If that's the case it just goes to show how terrible "education" is worldwide. 

There may also be a few perspective illusions involved. I think most people all over the world would agree that universities like Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc. are absolutely among the best in the world. (Of course, in many countries there are a couple of excellent universities, too. But the point is, there are quite a number of them in the US.)

Most universities fall in the middle category, in the majority of countries.

But, there are also a huge number of not-so-good universities in the US, while most of the universities in, say, the Nordic countries fall within a narrow range near each other.

And, depending on what one has seen personally, of course, the views may vary.


It would actually be quite interesting to have some listings, like countries listed by the worst 10% of universities, the best 10%, the best average, etc. Or to see a list of universities by academic citations, or the same divided by turnover or student count. Or some metric on alumni success. (But since few of us genuinely have much freedom in choosing worldwide the university for our kids, it'd probably only depress us...)

Like, there are quite a few countries that do not have a single university with a Nobel laureate on the faculty.

grauzone:

> To add:
> - How much you pay your Professor
> At least that's what I heard about Italian universities.

Yes, in the some universities of the south (and probably some in the center) this happens now and then. But it's much less common in natural sciences (because you have to know what you have studied in past courses to understand the following ones). And it's almost unheard of in my university. And about 60-70% of the teachers are good enough.
Students of the south that want a good university sometimes go to the center or north.
Then there are things like CEPU that help students face exams, and despite being legal they produce nothing good, just more ignorant people.

Bye,
bearophile

bearophile wrote:
> grauzone:
> 
>> To add: - How much you pay your Professor At least that's what I
>> heard about Italian universities.
> 
> Yes, in the some universities of the south (and probably some in the
> center) this happens now and then. But it's much less common in
> natural sciences (because you have to know what you have studied in
> past courses to understand the following ones). And it's almost
> unheard of in my university. And about 60-70% of the teachers are
> good enough. Students of the south that want a good university
> sometimes go to the center or north. Then there are things like CEPU
> that help students face exams, and despite being legal they produce
> nothing good, just more ignorant people.

That has to do with the overall corruption in the region so the
information content is low. Going to a crappy school in an overall
corrupt region kind of sets up the stage nicely :o).

If anything, the university will be a local moral maximum. I went to university in a corrupt country and at a corrupt historical time. However, professors had integrity. Our class of 30 bought a bottle of whiskey for one who was known to need some greasing, but that was all. I learned there about Banach spaces and by golly if I'd forgotten all about them I couldn't have proved a quintessential theorem in my dissertation 19 years later.


Andrei

dsimcha wrote:
> == Quote from Walter Bright (newshound1@digitalmars.com)'s article
>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> If there's one thing my
>>> school experience taught me, it's that teachers are only interested in
>>> focusing on the low-to-mid-range students.
>> That wasn't my college experience at all (Caltech). I was a
>> low-to-mid-range student there
> 
> ...Which kind of proves the point that the way knowledge/learning in college is
> measured is pretty flawed in that it doesn't predict who will be successful
> afterword.  I just finished undergrad a couple years ago and I feel that the kinds
> of multiple choice exams you get in huge lecture-based classes are good at testing
> rote memorization and superficial understanding and the ability to get inside the
> professor's head, where as what's important is the ability to take your knowledge
> and apply it to something useful or use it to create more knowledge.


Multiple choice exams were against the rules at Caltech (even though we did have a few huge lecture-based classes).

I'll still hold forth, however, that you're going to get out of it what you are willing to put into it. If you're only going to target getting a degree, I wouldn't hire you. If you are in college to get the most out of the experience (and there are huge opportunities for that in college), your results will be far better.

90% of the classes I took I selected because they interested me and I thought they were important. I made sure I understood front to back every single homework problem, and every exam problem I got wrong. I also paid for most of it out of a part time and summer job, and I'm sure that paying the tuition bills influenced my attitude as well <g>. I wanted my money's worth.

Another factor was the attitude that Caltech had towards its students. It treated them like adults. I had never experienced that before. Caltech does not proctor exams, does not have curfews, does not attempt to control what goes on in the dorms, professors are not allowed to take attendance, etc. Most of the students quickly responded to that and behaved like responsible adults.

And then we had great events like Carl Sagan coming to dinner at our dorm, guest lectures from folks like Richard Feynmann, and the people running the JPL probes, etc. If all you got out of all that was a degree, too bad, so sad <g>.

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Exactly. I remember this one class I had (wasn't cs though) where I tended to do poorly on the essay portions of the exams. At one point I decided to answer one of the essay questions by quoting the prof's lecture nearly verbatim, and got a perfect score.  Way to reward plagiarism and discourage independent thought. That was the final straw that killed off any last shred of interest I may have had in getting a decent grade. 

I had exactly one quote-the-perfessor exam. I have nothing but contempt for that professor for that (among other) reasons.

Georg Wrede wrote:
> OTOH, to make things really happen, we need the other kind of guys. Those of us who want to understand. They're the ones who advance the state of the art, and without that, we'd still be traveling on steam trains. I just wish there were more schools and pedagogic knowledge (and good teachers, of course) to make things interesting and fun for us others. But without that, many students get by with so-so grades, having invested only 10% of their effort into it. I know I did. What a waste.

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that a professor should make the material entertaining. Sometimes I get frustrated with Nova and all its eye-candy, and want to yell at them to get to the meat.

I see many efforts to remove the work from learning difficult concepts. I think they're all failures. You actually have to work to learn things, and work takes effort and sweat. No pain, no gain.

If you need entertainment and inspiration, go watch Star Trek <g>.

Sean Kelly wrote:
> And some of the stories are just that: stories.  Here's a quote from Michael Shara,
> a curator at the New York Museum of Natural History's exhibit dedicated to
> Einstein:
> 
>     "This myth that Einstein was a mediocre student is definitely not true," says
>     Shara. "He was highly inquisitive; asked questions all the time. And we have his
>     report card. You see that he was an excellent student — straight A's, of course,
>     in physics and trigonometry and geometry.

I saw part of a bio of Einstein on TV. His life was a lot more interesting than I'd suspected.