Posted as a reply to my comment on a story in the New York Times :
Peter C
is a trusted commenterBear Territory
If your engineering story is true, how did the engineering program get accredited by ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. )? Most American do not realize that certain professions are accredited and that the University is as well. Most educational accreditation entities are in turn accredited by the US Dept of Education. As an author of three self studies/site visits for a university basec professional program, it is very difficult to hide your bad students and professor under a rug.
(I did reply to Peter, but what he wrote is the essence of this post. For completeness, here is my reply.)
Mark Feldman
Kirkwood, Mo
Here are the facts.
The school was Washington University in St. Louis.
You can find the detailed, documented story on my blog. It is “A Tale Out of School – A Case Study in Higher Education”.
On the page with the story you will find a letter from a father to the Deans of A&S and Eng. There is a follow-up letter from the son, a D student who doesn’t even read all the homework problems. The Deans, or the Math Chair, requested the letter to get the “student” viewpoint, so that the Math Chair “improve” the course.
As for how schools can teach, you will also find, among the documents, a letter from a student-tutor who says he can’t do many MIT problems, but made an A when the course was taught in the “usual” way. He clearly felt that if he was an A student and he couldn’t work the MIT homework I assigned, then I shouldn’t be teaching the course. My class was doing homework on a regular basis. (They laughed when I told them what the tutor said.)
If you want to know more about either my course, or the “cookbook” course, which is how it is normally taught, go to Wash. U. math department page and look at the tests.
I do want to point out that neither the students, nor the professors are “bad” – in the sense of not being highly qualied. In my observations, the students are just victims of a shameless system. When asked, most will work hard and learn. (The 180 students in the differential equations class that I taught did great, with very few drops.)
Recent Comments