Berkeley's Grade "Deflation" Is A Myth?

mathboy98
Sat, 24 Apr 2010 03:05:00 +0000

I agree, but that begs the question of precisely what these important concepts are, and crucially, whether those concepts are being tested currently. The (sad) fact is, as most working engineers would surely attest to, engineering coursework, and especially engineering coursework exams have relatively little to do with the actual engineering job. As I alluded to above, no engineer actually goes around frantically deriving a long series of equations by hand within the space of 90 minutes as a regular part of his job, yet that is precisely what engineering coursework exams require you to do. Yet if you can’t do that, then you flunk your coursework and you won’t be hired for an engineering job.



I agree, on behalf of engineers I know who would very much back this up.

Though, I guess this is why there is a balance between the exam and project sides of engineering. I think the fact that engineering coursework does not correlate perfectly by any means with “real world engineering” is ultimately taken into account by grad schools, and professors from Berkeley itself have said in as many word that they take into account things outside of class, such as research experience, extremely seriously. I think projects are NOT judged on the same standards as exams. Exams are something you survive, projects are things you do really properly, or so engineering friends of mine tell me.

My own view is that the engineering system probably doesn’t need to be modified too much, except of course to stop admitting students who can’t handle the work, and to make the material taught relevant to current day stuff. Certainly some professors are horrible at running classes, but I guess those unfortunately exist in any discipline. Well, I guess I will also add that I think exams should probably correlate a little better with just learning the material. I agree the 40-50% means are ridiculous and rather pointless. I think the extent to which stuff taught in class is relevant to actual research varies from professor to professor and across the different degrees of specialization. For instance, in a graduate engineering class I just sat in on for kicks, things were all about what’s going on in research and how to actually approach a problem. There were plenty of derivations and equations discussed, but more conceptually, and the exams usually tested things like the assumptions made from a practical standpoint.

In a more fundamental course, however, I think it is important to teach the basics based on derivations, not because it will be used directly, but because the purpose of the fundamentals is to mess around with the different relevant factors affecting things that one may have to think about later. And in a more advanced setting, one can focus entirely on the actual design + real research problems, having learned the basics properly. Or, in the worst case, if one knows the basics pretty well without having taken the fundamental course, hopefully just skip it and take something more specialized. The fundamental courses should alert one to how people think about the material, not the actual material people think about, in a pedagogically sound way.

This is sort of the same in many fields, including mathematics, where there is no “practical-theoretical” distinction. That is, the fundamental classes introduce you to the streamlined material that tells you of important philosophies behind how people were led to think about the more current things. To REALLY get into specialized things, one needs to read research articles and go to grad school and talk to an advisor. This doesn’t make the fundamental classes irrelevant at all, because the ideas are important, and messing around with them for a few semesters helps. Of course, this isn’t ALL that someone should do with the time. It’s important to make transitions, certainly.

As for the discussion about humanities vs. engineering, I agree teachers in the humanities should try to make their classes no-BS, though I think one of the reasons engineering is just made tough on purpose is that it’s probably one of the few degrees that somewhat prepares you for a career in the field, and employers like to see that students met a certain streamlined program that is hard. I imagine it’s the same in the tough engineering schools overall.