The undergraduate experience

[colonelslime]

You know, I've never bothered soliciting opinions from a forum before, at least not about anything important; but I'm three years into my Public Affairs degree now, and I'm wondering if anyone else shares the opinion I've developed about undergraduate post-secondary education. I also feel like ranting about my frustration, and this seems a safe enough place to do it. Full disclosure: I'm in Canada, in Ontario specifically, and the problems with university (as opposed to trade school or technical college) here in particular are well known.: Large classes, too few teachers. etc.

But the main issue I've had with my experience is it seems so shallow. It would be hyperbole to say that I have learned nothing form my time, but the vast majority of my classes simply rehashed knowledge I had already acquired. (Full disclosure: I am a nerd who reads up on science and politics for fun, and it seems this makes me a little bit of anomaly in the student body). My program is fairly restrictive in its admission, and he biggest dichotomy I've seen are between it and the general courses I need to take for my degree. They seem devoted to parroting on preconstructed theories and models, without explaining the underlying logic or construction. For instance, in political science, we will be presented models of international relations, and be expected to memorize and regurgitate all of their precepts for an exam, and apply them to issues in simplistic and uncreative ways for essays. Hasn't really been a problem for me, but I can't say I found the experience rewarding or useful either. I get As easily in most classes, and the once or twice I've gotten a B is usually because I wrote the paper the night before due to total disinterest. Critical though is kind of stomped down in favour of cookie-cutter analysis and blind acceptance of models, and any attempts I've made to engage with the professors themselves have usually been ignored or resulted in seemingly befuddling the prof.

Horror stories (from my PoV anyway):
- One instance involved an argument between me and an economics professor who maintained that rate-of-return incentives were irrelevant to a macroeconomic model on interest and exchange rates. I argued with him until I got him to admit that economic phenomena don't operate like the laws of physics, and that the interest rate does not rise because the money supply decreased, but because of behavioral patterns triggered by the change.

-Another case was in a statistics course, were a PASS (Peer Assisted Study Session) student used a graph to "prove" that attending PASS increased grades. A part from the obvious "correlation does not imply causation" fallacy she was committing, her methodology for sampling was terrible (number of cases varied wildly by group, 30 in the case of those who attended, average grade B+, 150+ in the case of those who didn't, average grade C). When I pointed this out, the prof seemed confused by my reasoning, though he did admit I was right a little bit later (when the topic of statistical misreading came up)

Has anyone else felt that university has failed to meet their expectations when it comes to fostering critical though and understanding? Is it just a Canadian thing, or does the problem cross borders? Am I expecting too much from professors, some of which do have Ph.D.'s? Is graduate work better, or still just as narrow? I've talked with a few of my peers, and some seem to agree. I just wonder if it's a more general sentiment. Feel free to share bad experiences of any kind as well, my school's administrative staff has pulled some really stupid ****, and I'm sure that is a more common experience.

I await with anticipation.

[Meta]

Absolutely. I'm into my fourth year of school now, and I took a break. I work as a Production Assistant in Los Angeles now, and I feel like I learn more everyday AND it's very practical knowledge. University is not all it's cracked up to be IMO. The degree matters more than what you actually learn, and these days that degree is worth less too.

[arguskos]

As someone who has attended a university much like yours, a pair of community colleges that were jokes, and is now at a really good university, I can say with authority that it all depends on the institution you are at. My current university, Ohio Wesleyan University, is FANTASTIC. I've learned more in the last three months of class than I have in the last three years at my other schools. It's a place where critical thought and challenging studies are the name of the game.

Before I started at OWU, things were different, and I'd have flat-out agreed with you. But it's not like that everywhere, not by a long shot.

[Meta]

As someone who has attended a university much like yours, a pair of community colleges that were jokes, and is now at a really good university, I can say with authority that it all depends on the institution you are at. My current university, Ohio Wesleyan University, is FANTASTIC. I've learned more in the last three months of class than I have in the last three years at my other schools. It's a place where critical thought and challenging studies are the name of the game.

Before I started at OWU, things were different, and I'd have flat-out agreed with you. But it's not like that everywhere, not by a long shot.

Interesting. I did a little checking on USNews (they always have those lovely breakdowns) and our schools are pretty similar. Yours is a touch more expensive, male, and with a few more faculty. It looks like really nice school and with small classes. I'd go there. Despite all that, still only 53% of people graduate on time. (Considered a medium rate apparently)

[arguskos]

Interesting. I did a little checking on USNews (they always have those lovely breakdowns) and our schools are pretty similar. Yours is a touch more expensive, male, and with a few more faculty. It looks like really nice school and with small classes. I'd go there. Despite all that, still only 53% of people graduate on time. (Considered a medium rate apparently)
Cause it's really damn hard. It's a very difficult school and quite demanding. Something about how all of my professors are PhD holding experts in the fields they're teaching in and how they kinda expect a lot from their students. :smalltongue:

It's not a perfect school and frankly, for the price I pay, better be damn good. :smallbiggrin:

Out of curiosity, what's your university, the one that seems to be not what you're looking for?

[Meta]

Cause it's really damn hard. It's a very difficult school and quite demanding. Something about how all of my professors are PhD holding experts in the fields they're teaching in and how they kinda expect a lot from their students. :smalltongue:

It's not a perfect school and frankly, for the price I pay, better be damn good. :smallbiggrin:

Out of curiosity, what's your university, the one that seems to be not what you're looking for?

I go to Seton Hill University. I've never taken more than 2 classes anywhere else so I can say how great it is in comparison. I do know it's got some great minds and plenty of doctors though. Like pretty much any university, really. College's not included, but I've had some pretty intelligent community professors. I don't know if I buy into fewer people graduating because of how hard it is. That said, it's a solid university.

For instance, wesleyan loses about 18% of it's first year students. SHU about 24%. Not good numbers. I worked as an RA at SHU and universities definitely want those number to drop. SHU accepts 66% of its applicants, OWU about 70%. Pretty similar.

SHU graduates only 39% of it's students on time, but I don't think that means it's any harder that OWU.

For the sake of looking at all sides, Harvard accepts a whopping 7% of it's applicants. It's looking to have the best and the brightest (or the most networked, but that's for a different thread) Even with those extreme entrance requirements, Harvard graduates 87% of it's students on time. On the flip side, they accept only what they consider the elite and still over 10% of their students have some sort of sizable road bump. Or it could be what you said, and Harvard is simply the easiest of the three schools compared. I don't think that's it though.

My goal isn't to start some hopelessly cliched school pride war, but I do think it needs to be said, that although you are taking to it like a fish to water, clearly there are a lot of people who aren't, at your university and those more and less prestigious. I personally feel that secondary education has become less of a benefit, no matter where you go.

[Icewalker]

It also depends on your major. Something like public affairs you could probably study a lot of on your own, so if you're very well read you'll find loads of redundancy. Something like, say, aerospace engineering? You'll be learning a lot in a lot of those classes, cause you can't become skilled in aerospace engineering by flicking through textbooks on your own and reading articles, whereas for things like public affairs or history you could get some (or, compared to a poorer institution, perhaps even all) of the same content on your own with the right tools and maybe a bit of guidance here and there.

I'm not learning a huge amount right now as an undergrad, but that's because I'm just starting my second year and am still doing primarily lower divs, and I knew most of the basic chem and physics we're learning from APs in high school. But now I'm doing Organic chemistry, and moving into upper div stuff starting next quarter, so I'm starting to get into new material. (Bioengineering and Neuroscience double major).

Also, by the way, I don't consider graduating on time necessarily important. From the start I have planned to graduate in five years, not four. I'd rather stay longer. Too much to learn. (And with THAT double major? Four years would be craaaaaazy.)

[factotum]

In the UK, certainly universities are not like that. The main difference between the school qualifications and university ones is that you are required to do a lot more than just regurgitate facts in university, even at undergraduate level!

[AtlanteanTroll]

Before I started at OWU, things were different, and I'd have flat-out agreed with you. But it's not like that everywhere, not by a long shot.

I'm going to say that this has to do with the difference between a big State school and a small, liberal arts college.

I could be wrong though, not knowing where you were before.

[colonelslime]

It also depends on your major. Something like public affairs you could probably study a lot of on your own, so if you're very well read you'll find loads of redundancy. Something like, say, aerospace engineering? You'll be learning a lot in a lot of those classes, cause you can't become skilled in aerospace engineering by flicking through textbooks on your own and reading articles, whereas for things like public affairs or history you could get some (or, compared to a poorer institution, perhaps even all) of the same content on your own with the right tools and maybe a bit of guidance here and there.

I'm not learning a huge amount right now as an undergrad, but that's because I'm just starting my second year and am still doing primarily lower divs, and I knew most of the basic chem and physics we're learning from APs in high school. But now I'm doing Organic chemistry, and moving into upper div stuff starting next quarter, so I'm starting to get into new material. (Bioengineering and Neuroscience double major).

Also, by the way, I don't consider graduating on time necessarily important. From the start I have planned to graduate in five years, not four. I'd rather stay longer. Too much to learn. (And with THAT double major? Four years would be craaaaaazy.)

I figured as much. My friends in the hard sciences seem a whole lot happier than I am. Funny thing is I consider going into biochem before I went with public affairs, since I like pretty much everything. I choose PA because there was a special program at a University in my city, allowing me to mooch of my parents and curb some of the student debt burden. I love policy discussions so it seemed like it would have been a good fit.

It's not just the redundancy I find annoying, though it also appears as different courses spending classes reexplaining material from their prerequisites (which I find mind-boggling. Why are you in 3rd year IR class if you haven't got basic IR theory down?). A big problem I have is that a lot of my courses are more social science focused, and I find the assumptions people make in them to be ridiculously presumptuous:

"This is the way the world works, and always has"

Or

"The recent development in Global Politics is totally new and unprecedented"

are the main variations, despite the fact that there are easy ways to point out these theories as wrong. And so many of the different disciplines seem hellbent on keeping away from one another. Nothing is integrated, despite the fact that on some level all of it is group psychology. Assignments always focus on explaining things through the narrow bounds of one theory or another, and attempts to explore alternatives, or actually develop our own understanding, are rebuffed. I don't have a problem with realism or pluralism necessarily, but applying them as if they were actual scientific theories, rather than philosophical ones, is really missing the point, and this is what the main task of my PoliSci courses seems to be. That all they can provide as evidence for their theories is that a superficial analysis of politics over the last century supports them (and every other theory, depending on what you focus on) doesn't exactly boost their case either. A lot of this stuff seems justified on the premise that other, more important people thought it first, so they must be right. See also philosophy courses, which will try to talk about Aristotle or Plato without challenging any of there suppositions. My twin brother, who feels much the same, and who has since jettisoned his English degree for training in civil engineering (most likely a much better choice), had multiple arguments with a prof about the platonic ideals, both in getting her to admit that Plato spoke about them (since she denied it until she reached that point in her lesson plan, for some insane reason) and in trying to get her to engage in a serious topic on whether or not they made sense as a concept. History varies, I've had some good, some bad.

I sort of wonder if this isn't due to Political Science trying to cloak its more moralistic and normative ideas in the legitimacy of hard science. Maybe if I had chosen biochem, I'd be happier, since at least then I wouldn't be constantly be forced to try to get people to justify their views.

[phoenixineohp]

Well hello. I'm sad to hear that your experience isn't proving to be what you are hoping for.

I went to the University of Guelph and had a very different experience. I am most curious to see where you are currently attending.

[Recherché]

I'm at University of California Santa Cruz, and I actually had the opposite experience with the divide between hard and social sciences. I started out doing Bio and found the amount of memorization of things I could easily look up in books intolerable.

So I ended up switching to Anthropology. While my first year involved some memorization, all of my upper division courses involve large amounts of research and arguing with professors.

While I don't agree with all of my professors I've never had trouble because of it. At one point I actually got an A on a paper arguing that one of the teacher's basic premises was wrong!

Some of this may be just the nature of Anthro; while there are a bunch of theories there are only a few holy cows and people tend to switch theories often based on which one is useful in a given situation.

[THAC0]

For my degree, I think my university did a very good job, even though they tried to cram a 5-year degree into 4 years. I never had fewer than 20 credits except for my first and last semesters, and while most classes are 1 hour = 1 credit, mine averaged 2 hours = 1 credit. There was also a very high attrition rate in my degree, where most people took more than four years to graduate (or didn't graduate). However, my degree was not a liberal arts degree.

My husband took liberal arts majors, and I took a few classes. Pretty much I concluded that the value of the class depended first and foremost on who you happened to get as a professor. It also then depends on what you put into it.

[Castaras]

So far, we've been going over stuff we'd done at Secondary, but in more detail and in more "grown up" terms. And it's going to get harder.

The course is pretty good. The actual undergraduate experience of being on your own for the first time and enjoying life to the extreme is awesome. :smalltongue:

[sparkyinbozo]

I'll throw a couple cents in here...

I felt like a lot of my undergrad was really wasted, maybe 75% of it. However, those times that were good/useful really counted for a lot (like running research my senior year). It was definitely a big growing up and developmental time for me, socially and other ways.

Also, OP, tell your Econ professor to live in the now...behavioral econ is where it's at. :smallbiggrin:

[colonelslime]

Well hello. I'm sad to hear that your experience isn't proving to be what you are hoping for.

I went to the University of Guelph and had a very different experience. I am most curious to see where you are currently attending.

Carleton, specifically in Kroeger College, which is a small separate program designed for policy analysis and creation (which is what public affairs is in practice). I think it might have to do with my Uni choice, since I've noticed a big difference in quality between real professors and contract instructors, and a lot of the courses not specifically created for my degree seem to be taught by the latter. No disparaging is meant, since I'm sure you can be a good contract prof, but I can only remember 1 who was actually competent. I've determined I'm going to slog it through till the end, because why not, since the degree is fairly well recognized.

It might be that I'm overly critical too. I mean, I don't party, I don't drink; I stay home Saturday nights to read the economist or scientific american. Even I think I'm crazy sometimes. But I do usually end up knowing a lot about a subject before I actually take a class on it, so my perspective may be a little skewed.

Also @sparkyinbozo: Don't get me started. Arguing with my profs about the usefulness of behavioral science and complexity/systems theory is amazingly difficult. Some of them seem to think that the only valid theories are those with axiomatic precepts like physical laws. But, I do have 1 prof this year who seems to get it, again in a class specifically tailored for my program.

[Mauve Shirt]

Stop being smart and you'll find the undergraduate experience challenging and educational! :smallbiggrin:

[Manga Shoggoth]

So far, we've been going over stuff we'd done at Secondary, but in more detail and in more "grown up" terms. And it's going to get harder.

The course is pretty good. The actual undergraduate experience of being on your own for the first time and enjoying life to the extreme is awesome. :smalltongue:

Yup. That's pretty much what the first year of my course was. It is intended so that at the start of the second year, everyone is at the same level, and the real work can start.

[DeadManSleeping]

Generally, you need to be taking courses at the 300+ level for them to even have a chance of being intellectually stimulating, and at the 500+ level for them to be stuff you really could never get done on your own.

Though there's really no substitute for language classes at any level.

[Xyk]

I've found this as well in my first semester at the University of North Texas. I've learned a few things in my history classes, nothing new in my environmental science class, and nothing at all in my english or music classes.

I like the word "shallow" you used for describing the undergraduate experience. I find it applies not only to the classes but also to the social structure of universities. I don't like it at all and will most likely not be returning this spring.

Instead of paying a university to teach me things, I will be using a mixture of Khan Academy and Wikipedia/Special:RandomPage (and going through a few different links on there) to complete my education.

[Weezer]

I'm at University of California Santa Cruz, and I actually had the opposite experience with the divide between hard and social sciences. I started out doing Bio and found the amount of memorization of things I could easily look up in books intolerable.

That's just how bio is and is the main reason that I, as a chem major, will never take a bio class. Memorizing facts and processes that we have no explanation for irritates me to no end.

[houlio]

I study anthropology and computer science at a fairly small (10,000 people) private university. I've found that generally, classes which everyone can and often have to take (English 101, History 101, Computer Science 101, Anthropology 101, and so on) tend to involve a lot of stupid memorization and regurgitation, while classes that are only offered every so often or that require a lot of prerequisites are fairly interesting and challenging.

I've also found that I get much more out of classes when I decided to work harder at them. For example, if I come up with a really creative English paper, the teacher will give me much better feedback than when I simply spit out a few buzz words and filler.

[colonelslime]

I've also found that I get much more out of classes when I decided to work harder at them. For example, if I come up with a really creative English paper, the teacher will give me much better feedback than when I simply spit out a few buzz words and filler.

This depends on the class and professor, at least in my experience. I've done really excellent papers that received good grades (A - A+), but basically no feedback. And there was once where I turned my paper into a critique of the theory, and I was told to stick to the wrote application of it.

[houlio]

This depends on the class and professor, at least in my experience. I've done really excellent papers that received good grades (A - A+), but basically no feedback. And there was once where I turned my paper into a critique of the theory, and I was told to stick to the wrote application of it.

True, it really depends upon the professor and professor. I still think it's fair to say that professors are willing to give more/better feedback on work they find more interesting.
Although my classes tend to have less than 30 students in them, and this may be a big factor in this too.

[Sipex]

I'm from and went to college in Ontario too (not University mind you, but college) and I found only really my first semester was anything like yours. The remaining semesters were challenging and engaging.

Mind, I went for computer science and I'm not the type of person who codes on his off time for fun so that might change things.