Timeline for Why do colleges attempt to teach students who lack prerequisite skills?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 17, 2021 at 10:33 | history | edited | Massimo Ortolano | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 17, 2021 at 10:11 | history | edited | RedSonja | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 15, 2021 at 14:31 | comment | added | Jochen Glueck | @RedSonja: Yes, I agree that their are some disadvantages of this system (although I think it's an overstatement to say that students who fail in the first semester were "stamp[ed] as losers"). My point is that there are some advantages, too (for instance, studying a topic for one semester gives a much more realistic view on whether one should continue in the program than of short admission test ever could). I do not necessarily disagree with your conclusion that something should be changed about admissions in Germany. I just disagree with the very one-sided assessment as "obviously absurd". | |
| Dec 13, 2021 at 7:41 | comment | added | RedSonja | @JochenGlueck Look at Konstanz: My daughter considered doing Chemistry there. They have more students in the first semester than in all other semesters put together. Because most of them fail. This costs a lot of money and stamps those students as losers. | |
| Dec 11, 2021 at 16:49 | comment | added | Daniel R. Collins | Thanks for this. Now imagine if all the people who didn't have any Abitur could also go to college and take any program, and you have the U.S. system. | |
| Dec 11, 2021 at 9:51 | comment | added | Jochen Glueck | I downvoted for two reasons: (i) I can't see why the situation described in the second paragraph would be "obviously" absurd (I do recognize that this system has some disadvantages, but it has some advantages, too). (ii) Your last sentence presents a speculation as a fact (cloaked by a vague reference to history). | |
| Dec 11, 2021 at 9:38 | comment | added | Jochen Glueck | @DanielHatton: I upvoted your comment since I'm a fan of snarky jokes. :-) But to avoid that anybody takes this at face value, one should probably add that, in fact, even the most incompetent engineer typically has no chance to kill many people unless a lot of further engineers (and/or management guys) make various mistakes, too. | |
| Dec 10, 2021 at 18:09 | comment | added | user128581 | @NeilMeyer As the old and rather macabre joke goes, even a really incompetent surgeon can only kill half a dozen people in a day's work; a really incompetent engineer can kill ten thousand people in a day's work. | |
| Dec 10, 2021 at 18:04 | comment | added | user128581 | 'We all know stories of people who pulled themselves up by their bootlaces and managed to finish Engineering after a bad start. But we know many more who failed miserably.' Actually, I've seen probably 3-4 times as many Engineering students succeed from a weak starting point as I've seen fail. | |
| Dec 10, 2021 at 11:36 | comment | added | Neil Meyer | Medicine high academic standards have to me traditionally been more because a mediocre doctor takes his mistakes to the grave. It literally is a case of life an death. | |
| Dec 10, 2021 at 7:37 | history | answered | RedSonja | CC BY-SA 4.0 |