|
Page 3 of 3 |
spankie
VIP Member
Posts: 2958
Location: Belgium
|
Posted: Wed, 25th May 2011 10:52 Post subject: |
|
 |
With all due respect for my fellow professors, but huge amounts of university courses are just BS.
They are given on a questionable manner, professors just give it because they have to, lots of the 'advanced' courses are recycled less advanced course with 1 extra chapter and the use of a lot of course is still very unclear to me.
There are very few courses that really changed my view on science, added something substantially to my career/skills or were genuilly interesting. The worst thing is that most professors are too arrogant to admit it and are considered wizards of the world because they possess some skill (such as differential equations) noone understands and almost noone needs/uses.
I have the feeling a lot of university work is just their escape from the real world. 'Let's specialize in some super advanced differential equations'. Nobody understands/cares/dares to fight it, and nobody bothers you, so you have jobcertainty for 40 years or so.
Luckily there are some other people, which mostly come from industry and came back to academie, who dare to publicly admit that during your 4 or 5 year uni education, you will use max 5 courses in your future life. They are the few people who realize that they should make lessons interesting, suited for future applications and realize they are not god.
I had to go through courses linear algebra, advanced calculus, differential equations, statistics I, II, III,IV, quantummechanics, simulation and modelling, artificial intelligence, machine learning and i am probably forgetting some courses because it has been a while...
and I am using 0 of those skills nowadays. Why? Because I graduated as a applied biology engineer in biotech, i am not a mathematician. If there is any maths to do, 'just call the maths people'. And I cannot blame them, because although I had considerable amounts of maths, those math people come up with clever and advanced solutions, which I even never heard of.
If you don't use the math day in day out, you lose the touch, so why bother students with it all the time? I do enjoyed some of the math courses as an intellectual challenge, but some of the bullshit you have to take is ridiculous. inverting 4x4 matrices by hand, yeeaaay. Doing calculus without calculator, yeaaay. Doing integrals without the use of a formularium. Fluidics exams where we just had to memorize 2-3 line long formules. I mean come on!
/rant mode. A lot of frustration in there. I am trying to change the system in the course I am giving though 
|
|
Back to top |
|
 |
garus
VIP Member
Posts: 34200
|
Posted: Wed, 25th May 2011 11:39 Post subject: |
|
 |
|
|
Back to top |
|
 |
Page 3 of 3 |
All times are GMT + 1 Hour |
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
Powered by phpBB 2.0.8 © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group
|
|
 |
|