D in the ix magazine about "programming today"

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote in message 
news:hhgac3$1vcm$1 at digitalmars.com...
> "retard" <re at tard.com.invalid> wrote in message 
> news:hhg67l$1ljq$2 at digitalmars.com...
>> Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:13:07 -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>
>>> "Sean Kelly" <sean at invisibleduck.org> wrote in message
>>> news:hhetss$26er$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>>
>>>> Intro courses in the sciences are often intended to weed out the people
>>>
>>> There's a *lot* of things wrong with the way schools work. Deliberate
>>> "weeding out" is a clear red flag that a school cares more about their
>>> own statistics (graduation ratio, etc)
>>
>> In fact many schools have made the courses much easier nowadays to get
>> better statistics. The graduation ratio doesn't matter that much if it's
>> a public school - they get funding based on the amount of people who have
>> graduated. I think this model is much more common in Europe, at least.
>
> It all depends on things like what metric they're going for and how they 
> expect things to work, but it almost always (if not always) boils down to 
> being insincere or otherwise disrespectful to the students. A few 
> examples:
>
> 1. Public colleges these days, at least in the US, ...
>So, if they weed out students in introductory classes, they hope that those 
>students (who are likely to be "undecided" majors anyway), will be pushed 
>towards the areas they can sail through the easiest (not necessarily what 
>they would actually like the most or be best served by), which maximizes 
>the throughput of their revolving-doors.

This also allows them to get by easier with mediocre teachers.