New study shows college students lack common skills

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
You are missing the point.

A great deal of what goes on in our society requires a simple set of skills. The ability to express oneself clearly and concisely in written language and in oral discussion. That's an extremely useful skill and one that graduates of science programs aren't taught (I should know: I get to mark their papers. Some of them are functional illiterates).

Have you ever sat down and looked at some of the business letters people write? Repetition, redundancies... ambiguities... the list goes on.

That's what liberal arts educations are for if you aren't going in to academia.

It's what high school is supposed to teach, but no longer does. So people like me have to pick up the slack while simultaneously trying to do right by the 10% of students who have some real interest and ability in the subject.

You have bad paragraph structure.

I've seen my share business letters (and memos) written by people with arts degrees, as well as documentation they attempt to write for products. I think you're deliberately misguiding people if you are asserting that people with science or engineering degrees cannot write, while people with arts degrees can.

In fact, it's my experience that many people with the arts degrees are fundamentally dumber than people with science degrees. Entrance requirements are ridiculously low, workload is ridiculously light, and problem-solving skills are ridiculously poor. These same people may even criticize the writing styles of science pupils, but then they make errors in the same post.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Asher

Entrance requirements are ridiculously low, workload is ridiculously light, and problem-solving skills are ridiculously poor.

[Asher]

You need like a 70% average to get into social science/humanities studies here, and something like 75% is guaranteed admission.

Guaranteed admission for engineering is like 89%, IIRC.

These kids manage to fail CPSC 203, which is "introduction to Microsoft Office".

It's just funny when they try CPSC 231 instead, which is "Introduction to computer programming".

[Seeker]

Where are you? At my school it was an OAC* average of 85%.

*for benighted non-ontario residents that is Grade 13.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
Guaranteed admission for engineering is like 89%, IIRC.

That doesn't mean anything. It depends on the school. Or are you talking about public exams?

Originally posted by Asher
These kids manage to fail CPSC 203, which is "introduction to Microsoft Office".

I don't know what's more pathetic: University of Calgary has such a course or some people actual fail it.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Asher
You need like a 70% average to get into social science/humanities studies here, and something like 75% is guaranteed admission.

Guaranteed admission for engineering is like 89%, IIRC.

Whoah. Planet Canada must be a very different place.

Admission to my engineering programme is essentially guaranteed if you have the "special prerequisites", which essentially amounts to having passed a highschool course in calculus. OTOH, many humanities courses have high grade requirements to enter. (What's really tough to get into, however, is medicine. I had the 2nd highest grades of my class in highschool, and they had not sufficed to get into the physician programme.)


Needless to say, alot of people drop out during the first year of my programme.



Edit: Lest someone conclude I went to a ghettoified highschool, my grades were 19.93/20.00. The one guy who beat me had 20.00/20.00.

[Fake Boris]

Nice to see that Asher got his impression of philosophy from the University of Calgary. Only in such institutions, I see, the workload for liberal arts is "ridiculously low".

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I don't know what's more pathetic: University of Calgary has such a course or some people actual fail it.

Believe it or not, but a lot of people don't have adequate skills in Microsoft Office.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Nice to see that Asher got his impression of philosophy from the University of Calgary. Only in such institutions, I see, the workload for liberal arts is "ridiculously low".

A lot of reading and a lot of papers, but still ridiculously low compared to say, the engineering department.

Hell, outright they take less courses even -- it's 6 courses/term for 4 years for engineering, and 5 courses/term for 4 years for liberal arts.

The University of Waterloo is the same way, with admissions for liberal arts to be quite the joke, and engineering far higher. And again, liberal arts with a joke of a workload, engineering far higher.

I take 2nd-year arts courses (mostly Psychology) because they are a joke. The psyc course I'm in right now is Social Psychology, and it's entire mode of evaluation are 3 equally-weighted non-cumulative exams.

And don't get me started on the 3 philosophy courses I took -- I stopped going to class and only reviewed the night before the exams and still did very well.

As a comparison, I've got a 100-page design document due for a distributed database system on Monday (~3 weeks into the term), and then I've got to actually implement it. The workload factor between that course and the liberal arts course is about 20:1.

[MrFun]

Isn't comparing dramatically different types of classes such as science courses with other courses like comparing apples and oranges anyway?

(with neither group being bad, in my opinion -- although prejudiced, snobbish science majors would think otherwise)

[Asher]

No, if you're comparing workload per course credit it seems pretty fair.

And the workload between the average science and engineering class and the average arts class is a huge difference.

This is why many people with arts degrees can cruise through school and get a job at McDonalds. The degree doesn't mean much if it isn't really challenging.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Asher
No, if you're comparing workload per course credit it seems pretty fair.

And the workload between the average science and engineering class and the average arts class is a huge difference.

This is why many people with arts degrees can cruise through school and get a job at McDonalds. The degree doesn't mean much if it isn't really challenging.

At the university I went to for undergraduate school, my history courses did challenge me -- and before you come back with a dumbass remark, no it's not because I'm "slow."

And when I took graduate classes towards my Masters in American History, the workload was intense enough, IMO.

[Last Conformist]

For what it's worth, everyone I know here who has taken both tech/sci courses and humanistics courses would agree that the workload per credit is much higher for tech/sci courses.

Now, if it were only me (I've taken courses in German and Latin), you could argue I've just got more of a brain for humanistics stuff, but that's hardly true of all the dozens of engineering students I know with the same opinion.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Asher

You have bad paragraph structure.

I've seen my share business letters (and memos) written by people with arts degrees, as well as documentation they attempt to write for products. I think you're deliberately misguiding people if you are asserting that people with science or engineering degrees cannot write, while people with arts degrees can.

In fact, it's my experience that many people with the arts degrees are fundamentally dumber than people with science degrees. Entrance requirements are ridiculously low, workload is ridiculously light, and problem-solving skills are ridiculously poor. These same people may even criticize the writing styles of science pupils, but then they make errors in the same post.

What errors were these?

The central rule about paragraphs is quite vague because what counts as a new idea is a matter of degree in many cases.

And as for

n fact, it's my experience that many people with the arts degrees are fundamentally dumber than people with science degrees.

If this is true, then congratulations for bucking the trend.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
What errors were these?

The central rule about paragraphs is quite vague because what counts as a new idea is a matter of degree in many cases.

The same idea is spread out across several paragraphs, some of which are only one sentence long. If you don't understand how to structure paragraphs by now, then it just becomes additional proof for the second statement you've quoted.