Reply to Over 280 University of California STEM faculty members have signed an open letter calling on the UC Board of Regents to

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Over 280 University of California STEM faculty members have signed an open letter calling on the UC Board of Regents to "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Specific to the UCs, they have always been research focused, sink or swim environments. Excellent for the highly capable and highly motivated. They have always admitted more undergrads toward majors that have fewer seats, hence the deflationary weeder courses. This is the sink or swim and those courses are more rigorous and harshly graded than equally or even higher ranked schools. There have always been kids that fail and need to retake it or drop to a non stem, non economic or non business major. In the past it was the white frat boy who got bumped out of STEM and today it’s the FGLI kid getting bumped as the frat boy never got in during admissions. It doesn’t really matter to the kids who got through the weeder courses what the demographic or deficiency gap of the bottom students was. It doesn’t matter to the faculty and it doesn’t impact research. The bottom kids never make it into upper division courses with weeder requirements.

What’s driving STEM faculty crazy is that their fields have exploded attracting many capable but not suited for the field students. 30-40 years ago when these faculty were pursuing their PhD they were surrounded by others who were truly passionate and borderline obsessed with their PhD field. The only grinders without STEM talent were the premeds but they were only there to knock out the requirements. Engineering is a unique field and a unique way of thinking about things. Now too many students who thirty years ago would have been looking to go into medicine, law or business or applying for engineering. It’s not going well. Kids are miserable, faculty are frustrated.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics