Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

I guess to elaborate on that, many schools have a peer network. All the freshman in Mat E as well as other departments have peer mentors as well as regular study nights to work on stuff related to classes they all are taking. Just because a school is large does not mean they do small scale networking to try and get kids the help they need. Learning communities are a big part of many schools I have visited too.

Regardless gen eds are a problem I will acknowledge but school size is not so much an issue as the peer network or lack thereof in my mind.

I have too much on my mind right now to battle over semantics and misinterpretations as a result of converting thoughts to text.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Next time, say the bolded part straight out. If you had done so in the first place, instead of making generalizations, we would still be on the main topic.

The other thing that I'd like to point out is something that was pointed out earlier--the fit of the school is more important than the size. If the school doesn't fit the student or vice-versa, it doesn't matter how big the school is, the student will probably drop out. Two years ago, at the school I'm going to, there was a student who attended a school that has a FIRST team; he played football for the college. Last year, I didn't see him at all; I'm almost certain he changed schools. On the other hand, I know a student who was initially planning to just get general courses out of the way at a particular school, but wants to go to that school for a degree now--the school is a good fit.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Has anyone thought about the quality of the high school educations that the colleges and universities are inheriting when they accept students into their sciences or engineering programs? The problems start before college. Way before.

Jane

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

I agree Jane. The students we have in our high school classes are not graduating with the academic skills necessary to complete a rigorous engineering curriculum in college - even at an Associate Degree Engineering Technology program.
I'm not sure where the loss is happening. I feel that the loss of traditional "shop" classes, music, and other elective courses in the schools may be a big part of the issue. These cuts, whether due to the shrinking budgets, cuts or apathy towards early application of skills are certainly factors in my opinion.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Way before indeed. A big achievement gap exists even on the first day of kindergarten, and it never goes away in subsequent years of schooling. The engineering colleges would be better off if the students inherited by kindergarten teachers were better prepared. AND, I think that would make a significantly bigger difference than reforming high school and/or college education (though I am in favor of making smart changes to those, too).

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

I'm a huge fan of reforming our education system pre-college. I haven't had enough college yet to determine how I feel about its methods of education and I'm not entirely sure how I would reform the system if I were given the chance, but I still don't think that reforming is a bad idea.

However, there is a man, Sir Ken Robinson who has given TED Talks (as well as a shorter spliced-speech animation) about the failings of our system. I would discuss the content of the videos in length, but I'm having a hard time linking the information to both the new and old topics in this thread. Nonetheless they are out there, because I believe that everyone should hear his ideas.

I will quickly say that he argues that college does not begin in Kindergarten. Part of what I believe he in implying (and this is using other information from the second link) is that college is not for everyone. Some people where born to dance, others to be engineers and so on.

This leads me to think that one the bigger failing of our system is pushing everyone to attend college and get a degree and live happily ever. Sir Robinson tells the story of a firefighter who had wanted to be a firefighter since he was kid and as he got older his teachers told him that he is wasting his time and his potential. The man did not let this get in his way, and we went on to live a fulfilling life saving people.

And now that I've thought this out while writing this post, I don't think I blame the education system. In fact, while there are some things I would change*, I almost congratulate the education system. Weeding kids out doesn't only get rid of those who won't work hard, but its also removes the kids who don't really want it (read: it prevents miserable people).

*There are still a lot of things that could be changed/improved. See Sir Ken Robinson Paragraph.

Long Story Short: Maybe "Its just too hard" is not a bad thing.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

I do agree that there can be severe issues when transitioning from an easy high school curriculum to a college-level engineering curriculum; however, blaming the high drop-out rate from STEM fields is just scape-goating the issue.

The freshman curriculum at most schools is designed to do two things: start a good college education while providing a transition to the rigor of college. At the same time, I've noticed that it also easily turns off anyone who is not really that interested in a STEM job that requires a lot of math/science.

Many, many students in middle/high school these days are told that you need a college degree to earn money and do big things with your life (I'm not going to debate this, it just happens). Given the glorification of the STEM field and how there are always news reports about how more and more STEM graduates are needed than currently graduate, I think that part of the reason that the dropout rate is so high is because capable students with not much prior STEM exposure enter the university prepared to graduate with a STEM degree. However, after the first year, I think quite a few of those students realize that they really do not want to do what STEM graduates do for a living, and so switch majors to something else.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

I went to a state-funded magnet school for three years of high school, and was definitely significantly more ready for college because of it. I even had so many AP credits I am graduating a year early carrying a normal course load for my 3 years of college.

However, I'm not really an exception. Four of my friends are/were in a similar situation, and all of them went to a typical high school, albeit in nice suburban areas. I agree there are certainly big leaps that can be had in certain segments, but on a whole I think the Honors/AP kids get a pretty good education. At any rate, I'd say its the students who receive a quality high school education that get the "opportunity" to drop out of a collegiate engineering/science program, the kids who get the really subpar high school educations likely don't make it that far. :(

I think being a good engineer requires passion. There are just so many facets to doing it well that you really don't get in a 4 year education unless you spend time outside of class working on those issues. The "I'm just doing engineering to make big bucks", makes it very hard to actually find a job when you don't have any relevant experience. To be honest I think the relevant experience bit has really significantly brought up how prepared engineering graduates are, with design teams like Steel Bridge, Formula SAE, Formula Hybrid, AeroDesign, etc.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Thank you for clarifying; this makes a lot more sense. However, it's still a generalization. I haven't found this problem at all in my large state school. Disclaimer: I am in the university's honors college. While this is quite small (<2%) and ranked highly, it is not a separate educational entity. I take classes with everyone else, though it does help open a lot of the ever-numerous doors at such a large university. (Also, scholarships--did I mention this is basically free? there's something my RPI cohorts would love to say.)


I go to a public university with 39,000 undergrads. 8,600 of us are engineering students, and 814 are in mechanical engineering with me. The largest class I've ever had to take was ~40 students. (I've taken a few lectures deliberately.) This less than a third of what most of my friends at smaller universities have to take. Most of my professors have contacted me personally for other opportunities, including every single one I made an effort to get to know (which is quite easy and which I often do). They've also worked with me to facilitate my many academic goals, including a double major and 6 minors/certificates across both engineering and political science. Many of these opportunities, support mechanisms and resources simply aren't available at smaller universities. I've never gotten "lost" or felt a lack of rigor here.

As to retention via practical experience, I agree this is crucial. Design is integrated into many classes, and I've had almost as many design courses as primarily theoretical ones. I've also had constant and countless extra opportunities since first semester freshman year. Of the several I've taken, all have been incredible. Most recently, I worked in Kenya this summer and am now publishing at least two peer-reviewed articles on the work. In contrast, my friends at smaller universities often lament at the scarcity of even local opportunities. This doesn't even consider my intriguing political science research, in addition to training at the arguably the top AFROTC detachment* in the country. This thread isn't about other disciplines, but excellence across them is another benefit to good larger universities to those interested.


*The military training has made me less familiar with co-ops and post-graduation job offers, but almost all of my graduating friends have jobs or graduate schools lined up. Penn State constantly tops the charts in job recruitment (#1 WSJ 2010) and career services (#3 Princeton Review 2011), in addition to excelling international rankings (94 QS, 51 Times).

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Related story in the Wall Street Journal

Generation Jobless: Students Pick Easier Majors Despite Less Pay

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...98573518.html?

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

While I'm sure that you yourself are quite an outstanding student (especially given what you've said), I was making generalizations also because this is a statistical phenomena, and isn't related to any few people. Studies have shown that,

http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2009/01...egree-get-you/

Specifically, this small text: => assuming Ivy's are pretty small, yet the quality is high, =>
(I'm aware it's not directly relatable to the main topic, It's about the next part) that great students (There are probably quite a few who are in/have been attracted to FIRST, and are thus on CD) generally do well wherever they go, be that big, small, or whatever other options there are. Statistically speaking, the issue is with up to half of the other 99% of your class that might end up dropping school/switching majors because they either just can't handle the work or hate what they're doing (some observations from yourself would be great on the matter concerning the entire student body).


That's an interesting article, RoboMom. It seems to show that it might be just as much of a strange psychological issue as it is a course material issue, given that students across the board appear to be dropping just because they don't want to really do all the work. However, based on what was said about how GIT remodeled their CS course, instead of making it easier, but making it more interesting and applicable to the student's futures, I think that's probably the best way to move forward while trying to see what sticks and keeps students in these programs. Ex. There's no use forcing CS majors to go through statics if they're going to like to work on databases, etc. or as the article put it, making architects learn the computing theory.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Yes, free would have been nice, then again if I went to school for free I wouldn't have the joy of paying back loans now. If you ever feel that your missing out on paying loans let me know, I'd be happy to share mine.



It is almost impossible to compare small schools and big schools. I am almost certain (though I have no data to back it up) that on a whole a school like RPI has a higher percentage of undergrads doing research and has more resources per student to provide. This is simply because RPI doesn't accept the same number of students as a big school like Penn State. By SAT score (a terrible way to characterize students, but the best I can easily find) the top 75% of students at RPI score about the same as the top 25% at Penn State. These two groups are probably academically comparable and I think that if you were to compare the educational and professional opportunities presented to these two groups you would see a lot of simmilarities. The whole of Penn State with 40,000 students is obviously not comparable to RPI, comparing Penn State's Science and Engineering departments to RPI would be a much more apt comparison.

As far as interdisiplinary opportunities not being available at smaller private schools, just as unfair as it is to group all Big Schools into the party and skate by mentality it is also unfair to group all small school engineering programs into one category, the people at CMU, Stanford, Dartmouth and any number of other schools with top tier humanities and engineering programs would have something to say about it. I agree that big schools offer more opportunity outside of Engineering, however if you aren't pretty much convinced you want to be an engineer you don't go to a school like RPI. Even my humanities at RPI were focused on things like Engineering Ethics, Sustainable Development and Cognitive Science. It is a specialty school, and as the campus has seen with recent attempts to diversify, the Alumni don't want to see it as anything other than a Science and Engineering school.


Those studies are always very subjective there isn't any good way to track job placement and success of students.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

I would personally hate it and I think that it would hurt student retention severly. There is something to be said for being in lecture and recitation and being able to ask and answer questions. I think that videos are very useful to fill in the blanks that you discover as you get into home work and test prep but I definitely don't think they are a viable replacment for the live lecture.

There is certainly a learning curve in industry for new engineers. However I think it varies greatly depending on the engineer's background. I came in and withi the first couple of weeks was working on projects on my own, I credit this to the faact that in school I was able to get practical experience in class, in the research positions I had and through internships. I know other engineers who after a couple of months are still only doing support work for their supervisors.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

I go to the University of Wisconsin, which has an enrollment of 42,000 and I have never once felt that it was difficult to get additional help. For all the gen ed classed (basic chem, physics, math) office hours for all TAs in the course are open to any student. They also have various tutoring programs, and free tutoring for math at the dining halls twice a week.

It is also very easy to get help from your peers, your lectures are ~300 students, thats 300 people you can form study groups with, etc. Each gen ed class also has discussion sections 1-3 times a week, with ~20 students with a TA. These are a very relaxed feeling, where you can ask any question.

I have never understood why so many people seem to be dead set against large schools.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

People don't pay to go to school so they can learn from their peers ( I hope, there are better things money can be spent on if that's the case); they pay to go there to learn primarily from the professors, and their work. Conferences led by TA's definitely help, though.