About 18 months ago I was laid off. In my haste to figure out what to do with the next 1/3rd of my life, my fiancee and I talked about me going back to get my CS degree. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I started with a full set of basic classes. I started registration late and had to choose from a very limited supply of classes. My semester consisted of: Western Civilization, Microeconomics, US Government and Java Programming. Java Programming was online, so I didn’t deal much with the other students or the teacher in that class. I met the teacher only for the mid-term and the final.
The first week I walked into my classes, every teacher gave their version of the same speech: read the book, do the homework, study for the tests. They each had their own version of a “the system is out to get you” lecture. Every one of my teachers was a crackpot conservative. My Western Civ teacher was a Birther.
Every one of them said something similar about attrition as well. They said that the class would have 70% fewer students by finals.
I was going to community college. It was a good community college (California has some of the best), but it was still full of people who, for one reason or another, weren’t going to a State or UC college. I was also one of the oldest students in two of my classes (My Civ class had a grandma in it). In the first 4 weeks, I would go into classes, do the reading, do the homework, and follow the instructions the teachers gave out. I assumed my fellow students were doing the same thing.
My first hint that my professors might be on to something was my third week. Our Western Civ teacher gave us an assignment. It wasn’t a difficult assignment in my mind as I’d already done it four weeks earlier, even before the class had started. The assignment was to buy the course book. You didn’t have to carry the book into the class, all you had to do was come into class with proof you had purchased the book. This was worth 5% of your grade.
About 25% of the class failed this assignment. This was about the same number of people who forgot to take the “doesn’t count on your grade” pre-test in Microeconomics that my instructor begged us to take.
About 4 weeks in I had one test in each of my 3 humanities courses. Each one was relatively easy for me because I had followed the instructions of the professors: I had read the material, done the homework, and studied for the tests. This time period was an unmitigated disaster for many of my fellow students. Each class had students freaking out about what the tests contained and how all the tests were too difficult. Each teacher was stereotyped as an uncaring career sadist who delighted in pedantic lecturing that had nothing to do with the real world.
The class sizes began to dwindle. We lost a lot of people in my Microeconomics class right after the first test. My Government class started with 250 people, so at first it was hard to tell how many people were left. I sat in front in my Western Civ class, so I didn’t pay too much attention at the time.
At about week 11, I looked up my post mid-term grades and had a minor meltdown. I had taken two tests on the same day in week 9 while trying to play goalie to a child that refused to sleep in his own bed. From the grade scores, I had assumed that I had blown both. My Fiancee talked me down by telling me not to assume anything. Her suspicions proved correct; I learned that the curves in those classes were so low that my grades were putting me in the High B / Low A range. She was particularly annoyed at how little studying I was doing. She didn’t see me doing a lot compared to what she did in undergrad.
After my second test in Western Civ, my professor told the class that as a matter-of-fact, 45% of the class had failed both tests. What was amazing about that number was that the teacher did the following for every test:
- Gave the questions to the tests during lecture,
- Defined all of the vocabulary 3 times,
- Told us where to read to get the answers for the essays, and
- Provided outlines for her lecture.
In order to fail a test in her class, you had to lose 15 points out of 25. Oh, did I mention she also drops your lowest test score when doing your grade?
My Microeconomics teacher gave two tests. They admittedly were difficult. It was not an easy course.
My Government class had 3 tests, all of them open book. He put in his class notes the areas that each test covered. His tests were so heavily curved that it was possible to miss 40 questions out of 60 and pass it. He gave students 15 extra credit questions on one test, and two extra credit book reports that would count for the equivalent of one free test’s worth of points. There were still people petitioning to curve the second test because it was “too hard.”
I think a lot of students hear “Open Book Test” and think it means “I don’t have to read the book.” I sat in a row of 5 people, and I asked every week for 3 weeks if anyone had read the chapters (yeah, I’m that guy). I was the only one. I took lecture notes, but I didn’t reread them in this class because they weren’t that useful.
Of all of my teachers, my Government teacher was probably the most useful because he was typical of the type of instructor at a university. He lectured abstractly about the material and expected the students to do the reading on their own. He didn’t tell you to learn the material, you just wouldn’t pass his class.
And he was despised for it. If you look at the reviews for him on RateMyProfessor.com, you’ll find hundreds of angry students going back years complaining about his teaching style. Of course, if you look harder, you’ll find the students who actually learned something in his class. It’s a small list.
My Microeconomics class had 27 students in it on the day of the final. We started with 120, with more people who were trying to petition to enroll. My Government class had less than 80 out of 245. My Western Civ class had 40 out of 120, and of those 10 of them still were failing the class. This was after she told everyone who failed the first two tests to drop the class.
Remember my Java Class? I didn’t have a lot of contact with the students except for the class forum. There were usually 6 kids and me in it. There were 60 people enrolled in the class. I earned a high B / low A in the class and thought I wasn’t pulling my weight because a lot of students had better homework grades. Then we took our first test. I was in the top 7 in tests, among the other 6 kids who were the only commenters in the forum. I don’t want to believe the other students copied homework, but the test scores and the behavior during the test indicated that some of them couldn’t even open the program to start the test. I spent 30 minutes watching one of the “A” students struggle to open the first assignment.
My last test was my Government class. The students had been complaining about this test for the past three weeks. It covered 16 chapters in two books, about 300 pages of reading. I spent the weekend before reading one of the books, and had already read the other material in the other book. Here is how you take a test when it is open book:
- Read the book
- Do the homework
- Study the material
It doesn’t hurt to make note cards with chapter names for the questions you might have to look up. Also, the index is your best friend.
One of the selling points for this particular school was that this was the best feeder school to the UC system. They boasted about it in all of their literature. Later on I found out what that rate was: 5%. There were 20,000 Freshman.
