Weeding out.. good or bad?

sky · March 26, 2006, 8:18pm

I’ve noticed several threads lately about people bashing (forgive me if that was not your intention) schools that have a weed-out (sink or swim) policy in undergraduate engineering programs. It this really so bad? Don’t you want your engineers to be only the ones that have demonstrated that they could survive in a rigorous program under difficult conditions? Clearly everyone who does well in high school is not cut out to be an engineer. Just because they can get their foot in the door does not mean they should be carried through the doorway to the other side of the room.

Would you be happy if the US Marines babied every single recruit through training? The US Marines certainly employ a sink or swim policy in order to get the very best and strongest members. Any healthy young person can attempt to join the Marines… not everyone can (or even should) become one.

But back to the engineering topic, the ones that survive a weeding out process are the ones who have the best motivation, intelligence, time management, initiative, and who can work under pressure. Sure, given enough time and resources, even the ones that got weeded out can probably be productive engineers. But engineering is a vital profession where many people’s lives are at stake. Do you really want to settle? Or do you want only the best individuals who posses the qualities aforementioned?

If an individual cannot cut it, then perhaps they shouldn’t be engineers. There are plenty of other professions out there. Aside from civil engineering, almost no engineers are licensed or tested once they graduate. So there is no way to verify that practicing engineers are the strongest candidates for the job. I don’t think that anyone out there is going to claim that everyone should be able to enter a profession that they desire. Everyone should be able to try, but clearly we do not want fighter pilots who can’t see, doctors who aren’t good at studying, or engineers who can’t do math. If you can’t succeed in a rigorous program, then there is nothing wrong with getting weeded out of it. I don’t think anyone here will advocate that we give anyone an easy ride through these types of programs.

With college expenses as high as they are, do you think it would be cost effective or even possible to give every student the individual attention that it would take to get every student through a rigorous program? Not to mention that no one in the professional world is going to give you that kind of courtesy. You can either do the job or they will get someone else who can.

I have absolutely no issues with any program that weeds out many undergraduates. I think it is for the best. There might be a few exceptions of programs that could have more fair rules (like at least being able to transfer out of an engineering program instead of having to withdraw from school altogether.

Thoughts?

dr_reynolds · March 26, 2006, 8:40pm

I think there’s a difference between weeding out and setting high standards. To me weeding out is allowing a certain amount of students into the program with the intention of failing half or whatever the percentage may be. Some of those who failed out may have been excellent engineers who just didn’t get enough help. Setting high standards is something every program should do - but then it should help students achieve that standard. I hold 20 office hours a week and give out my cell phone number to students so that I can help them meet the high standards. My program does not aim to weed anyone out but we certainly do have dropouts, usually students who don’t ask for help. Sometimes it is a student who cannot do the work even with help.

Citan · March 26, 2006, 9:33pm

weeding out is a stupid policy because you never know the full potential of a student as an engineer by just looking at his performance in lower level classes.

sky · March 26, 2006, 9:56pm

Citan,

How can you expect a person to do well in upper level classes if they cannot perform in lower level classes? Plus, the lower level classes establish the baseline for what every engineer is expected to be able to handle. What good is an engineer if they can’t do freshman/sophomore level calculus or physics? In upper level classes, you can’t have students who struggle with the basics. There is enough material to cover that when a professor proves a theorem during lecture based on thoerem taught in a calculus class, it is expected that the student already know the basics without having to teach it again during the upper level courses.

I think performance in lower level classes is very important, and shouldn’t be brushed off as simply busy work.

dr_reynolds,

You make a valid point. But I think what many people see as weedout courses are simply programs that have established a very high standard, but perhaps do not put forth the effort to help every student along (some of which are incapable, as you said, regardless of the amount of help). I went to Georgia Tech, a school many people categorize as a weed out school. However, even in “weed out” classes, never did I see any systemic policies where a certain percentage of students were failed. Yes, I have seen many people fail classes, but it is not because they were in some arbitrary percentage that had to fail. They failed because they did not learn the material up to the expectations of the professors. These were tough courses, and the bar was set high, but I can say with a large amount of certainty that no student who knew the material was failed. Perhaps there are schools that fail students based on an arbitrarily set percentage (according to a normal distribution or otherwise). I would certainly like to hear about it if that is indeed the case. I have not heard of any such program. I have had plenty of classes that failed a large portion of the class, but again, it is not because of any requirement that the professor did so, it is because many people did not perform.

I have seen these types of rigorous classes all the way through my senior year. But I can say for all of those classes that if you knew the material, you would pass, regardless of your position along the grade distribution. However, many people did not learn the material, and subsequently failed. I am much more bothered to read about programs where, if you put forth the effort, you will at least pass. Setting high standards leads to setting a bar that some people will not be able to reach.

lkf725 · March 26, 2006, 9:56pm

I think that schools should be more particular with admissions in the first place. I know some kids who have declared an engineering major at different schools, and I can’t imagine how they will survive. Some are ill-prepared and have not shown the willingness and ability to do the required work. IMO, it would be kinder to invite them to reapply to engineering when they have better credentials.

sky · March 26, 2006, 10:06pm

lkf725,

To some degree, I agree with you. However, it is very hard to predict college level performance simply by looking at a high school senior’s application. With the variability of high school programs in terms of difficulty and preparation, I don’t think the admissions committees can do much more when admitting students.

I think having a rigorous program (which will certainly include what some people categorize as weedout courses) is a fine solution. Give everyone the same opportunity to perform. If they can’t, there is nothing wrong with dropping them from the program. If they don’t have the preparation, they can go to a different program that suits them better. If they want to come back at a later date and try again, then that would be fine. But I certainly don’t believe that everyone who gets into an engineering program should be expected to graduate.

I also don’t think that categorically denying students admission to institutes is any better. If they are clearly ill prepared, then ofcourse I think they should be denied. But the weedout issue comes about because there are many students that appear to be well prepared based on high school credentials, but don’t have what it takes to cut it in an engineering program.

Slorg · March 26, 2006, 10:21pm

Weeding out is good if you’re not a weed.

lkf725 · March 26, 2006, 10:28pm

Yes sky, I can see your point. Everybody should get a chance and with the wide variety of high school experiences, it is hard to tell who is really qualified. My own kid doesn’t have a problem, but I feel bad for some kids who I know will be eaten alive.

sky · March 26, 2006, 10:40pm

“Weeding out is good if you’re not a weed.”

Hehe. Very true! But you’re bound to have weeds in a field of grass. The weed wants to be there, but for for whatever reason, they do not have the desired features to let them stay. So we do what we must.

I think much of the argument against weeding people out comes from a purely intellectual side of it. These kids are “smart,” surely they can get whatever degree they want. But I think being an engineer is much more than just being smart. Of course, it takes plenty of intelligence, but it also takes a certain personality and temperament. You have to be able to sit down and wrestle with a problem for many hours at a time. You have to be able to struggle through material and teach it yourself. There is no finite set of knowledge that an engineer needs to have; courses should test the ability of an engineering student to learn material on their own. Students need to be able to work alone, in groups, under pressure during tests, and in many different combinations of situations. Engineering is not about how well a person can recite material. I think many programs that hold the student’s hand through the undergraduate program do not prepare engineers for the real world. Sure, it’s great because it reduces the pressure to perform, and gives you a certain assurance that if you just put forth a good effort, you will at least pass the course. IMHO, that is definately not the way to do things…

caa5042 · March 26, 2006, 11:18pm

i think its the best way for a student to know whether or not engineering is for them(freshman/sophomore students) BEFORE ITS TOO LATE.Well its never too late.You can change your major your junior year but who the he ll wants to do that?. I am a freshman majoring in engineering(well i havn’t began with the actual engineering curriculum) but i’m taking physics,chem,calc courses,the usual for freshman engineering students.Physics is a pain in the ass.Dont get me wrong, its fairly easy to grasp the concepts(at least for me).But one cant always INSTANTLY(20 complex problems-1 hr. 15 mins) know how to apply the theory to complex problems that appear on the exams(problems that dont even remotely look like any of the homework problems assigned) and get the write answers on the exams. Most of time you need to ponder for a while.A long long while. Basically you have to KNOW YOUR STUFF.If you dont, then you’re simply not cut out for upper level engineering courses(notice i dont say an “engineering profession” because i dont know how often a working engineer has to sit down and find the angular momentum of a cat glued to one of the blades of a spinning ceiling fan)

dr_reynolds · March 26, 2006, 11:19pm

Sky,

<pre><code> Certainly schools are not going to advertise that they expect a certain failure rate. But many will plan for a certain failure rate, kinda like how airlines overbook flights. What they do is throw a bunch of students into big classes with little resources for help and professors that don’t have much time for them. I understand why they do it and I can see how it could ensure some level of quality. But that’s not how I want to run an engineering program. I prefer a program that sets the bar high and works hard to help every student achieve it.
</code></pre>

sakky · March 27, 2006, 12:52am

To me, the issue is not whether there should be weeding or not, but rather what happens to those students who do get weeded out.

I have no quarrel, conceptually, with the idea of setting high standards and of not allowing students who don’t meet those standards to continue in the major. I strongly prefer lkf725 notion of simply not admitting such students in the first place, along with dr_reynolds idea of setting high standards, but aiming to help students meet them.

But to me, the most egregiously unforgiveable aspect of weeding the way it is currently practiced is that the weeding permanently damages the academic records of those students who are weeded out. Why? What purpose does this serve? But why continue to hound those students after they’ve left by sticking them with a bad grade on their permanent record? The purpose of the weeders are to get rid of those students who aren’t good enough to meet your standards. Since these students have now left the major, the weeders have fulfilled their purpose. I see no benefit of sticking bad grades on the transcripts of students who have been weeded out of the major.

To give you an example, I know a guy who started out in EECS at Berkeley and got weeded out with terrible grades. He is now trying to switch over to Economics. Still, he will always have those terrible EECS grades on his permanent Berkeley academic record forever. So even if he does extremely well in Economics and later decides he wants to go to law school or business school, those poor EECS grades will forever haunt him. {What’s even worse is that the Berkeley Econ major is capped meaning that there is no guarantee that he will be able to get into the major; his chances are determined by his grades, and obviously his terrible EECS grades are holding him back. So the upshot is, because of his bad EECS grades, he may be barred from majoring in Economics. Why should that be?}

I think a far far more humane way of running weeders is to simply not report weeder grades unless the student actually graduates with a major in that subject. For example, if you end up majoring in English, who cares what your grades for some weeder Chemical Engineering classes are? Those weeder courses should therefore be delisted from your transcript, as if you had never taken them. Another way is to simply make all weeders graded as P/No-record (such that if you don’t pass, no evidence of that weeder exists on your transcript). Students would be privately told what their letter grade would have been if the class was graded normally, but for official transcript purposes, those letter grades would be hidden.

My point is, if you try out engineering and get weeded out, you should be allowed to go to some other major with a clean slate. Why should people be punished forever by having their academic transcripts ruined just because they wanted to try something out? By the same token, some people who might otherwise have made quite good engineers are afraid to even try it out because they fear that they might get tagged with a whole bunch of bad grades in the weeder courses.

For example, I know a guy who had an outside scholarship that paid his whole way through Berkeley as long as he maintained a 3.0 GPA. He expressed great interest in being an engineer, and I think he would have made quite a good one. But he wouldn’t dare to try to major in engineering for the simple fact that he was not going to risk his scholarship. He knew full well that the engineering weeders might pull his GPA under a 3.0 which would cause him to forfeit his scholarship, and that’s something he couldn’t risk.

Bottom line. I don’t oppose the concept of weeders. But I do vigorously oppose the punitive nature of weeders. I agree with weeding out those students who don’t meet certain standards. However, I do not agree with the notion of hounding those students forever by sticking their transcript full of bad grades. That’s simply gratuitous.

sky · March 27, 2006, 1:09am

sakky,

On some level, I agree with you there. While I don’t think that the grades should be all together banished, I think they should be in some way mitigated. However, I do not think it should be removed from anyone’s record.

For one, imagine those students who might attempt to enroll in another engineering program at a later time. Doesn’t the second school deserve to know that this student has already failed out of another engineering program? On that basis alone, they have every right to refuse admission. I think it would be quite fair of the second school to require that the applicant show that they are capable of doing the work and graduating.

It’s just like any other permanent record (or semi-permanent). Your car insurance record, your credit reports, your criminal record, all serve as a way of gaging what kind of individual you are. Sure, people make mistakes, and some genuinely change, but that doesn’t eliminate history.

It’s not like an academic record is a frivolous reflection of an instantaneous event. Failing one course isn’t going to ruin anyone’s record. If you have a hardship during the semester, many schools have provisions that will allow you to drop the entire semester’s grades without penalty. I think anyone that gets weeded out of a program has consistently (at least several semesters worth) shown that they are perhaps not suited for the program.

Personally, I think schools do enough to ensure that no one is arbitrarily weeded out. Many have academic warnings and probation periods before dropping anyone from a program. Since I went to Georgia Tech, I can also say that they have instituted a new program within the last year to allow freshmen to substitute a limited number of grades by retaking the course. The substitution is noted, but they have a chance to recover their GPA in case the freshmen academic shock was a bit too much for them.

sakky · March 27, 2006, 1:20am

No, actually here, I disagree. Presumably that second school would also have weeders and if this hypothetical student were to get into this 2nd school and perform poorly there too, the weeders would snag him again. If the guy can actually pass those weeders at that 2nd school, then he has proven that he is good enough for the 2nd school, so why would we want to prevent him from going there?

I would also point out that my idea is not completely novel. MIT and Caltech do precisely what I have described for the first semester (MIT) or first year (Caltech). They hide your records from the outside world. If you go to MIt or Caltech and completely bomb your first semester, no trace of that fact will be shown to outside parties.

See, what you’re talking about actually reinforces my point. For example, you talk about credit reports. Well, the fact is, bad credit problems are automatically expunged from your record after a certain period of time. For example, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act law, bankruptcies are automatically wiped from your credit report after 10 years. Most credit bureaus will wipe out Chapter 11 and Chapter 13 filings after 7 years. The same with your driving record - I believe your record is automatically refreshed after a certain number of years.

In the case of your criminal record, most courts will allow for the means to seal criminal records for minor crimes for first-time offenders, or even a way to expunge the record completely if certain restitutions are enacted. And in any case, I don’t think that failing weeder classes can be compared to committing crimes. It’s not a crime to be a substandard student.

So maybe that’s just another technique we can use. For example, perhaps colleges should enact a policy where failing weeder grades are automatically expunged after, say, a couple of years, and particularly, if you end up not majoring in that subject anyway.

lkf725 · March 27, 2006, 1:59am

Isn’t there the possibility of withdrawing from a class if you know that you are going to do poorly? Why don’t more people just get out while the gettin’s good?

sky · March 27, 2006, 2:08am

“Isn’t there the possibility of withdrawing from a class if you know that you are going to do poorly? Why don’t more people just get out while the gettin’s good?”

Yes, but only on a limited basis. Most schools have a “drop date” up to which point you can drop the class. Dropping a class is usually marked as a withdrawal on your record. Certainly this doesn’t look good on your transcript (when done numerous times), but much better than a failing grade.

More people don’t do this because the drop date is usually somewhere right after midterms. So you only know your performance through no more than half of the semester. For many classes, between finals, projects, and major tests, the vast majority of your grade is going to come from work you do after the drop date. Therefore, there is still a very good chance that although you did well through midterms, you might do poorly in the second half of the class. Some people feel they can pull up their grade during the second half of the course. If you put forth the effort during the first half of the class, most people are going to be very reluctant to just throw that away and withdraw from the class.

lkf725 · March 27, 2006, 2:17am

Oooo. I didn’t realize you had to decide that early in the term. Unless they can clearly see the writing on the wall, most students are probably still holding out hope of maintaining or improving their grades. What a dilemma.

I like the idea of pass/fail classes. Even though my son is making A’s, he thinks there is way too much emphasis on testing and grading, which gets in the way of education. He may be right!

sky · March 27, 2006, 2:28am

"I didn’t realize you had to decide that early in the term. "

Well, let me add a bit more information to be more accurate. Many schools have drop dates around the mid point of the semester. Others have later dates. I have read that Stanford’s drop date is about 3/4th of the way through the semester, while MITs is very similar. But regardless if the drop date is 1/3, 1/2, or 3/4 of the semester, there are still a lot of grades at the very end of the semester that can wreak havoc with the final grades. However, the later the drop date, the less excuse a student can have for taking a failing grade in a class.

“I like the idea of pass/fail classes.”

Well, perhaps, but do you really think pass/fail classes are the way to go? Don’t you think there has to be some way of differentiating good students from not-so-good students? If every program went to P/F only, then a huge percentage of the class would have perfect records. How do you differentiate the top 10% from the 50% percentile? Both of these individuals might have never failed a class. In fact, some schools (such as Georgia Tech) have contemplated adding in a +/- system into the scoring in order to give professors more freedom in assigning grades (which is not new, there are several engineering programs that already do this). Even the standard letter grades do not seem to give professors enough freedom to accurately grade the students.

lkf725 · March 27, 2006, 3:00am

The world does run on competition and evaluation. It probably isn’t practical in the real world, but I think it would be great to be able to learn as much as you can unencumbered by contant testing and comparison to others. Dumb idea, I know.

sakky · March 27, 2006, 1:48pm

There is a more sinister side to this. Certain profs in certain programs have been known to mislead or deliberately lie about how students are doing before the drop deadline, by telling people that they are getting better letter grades than they actually are, therefore tempting people to not drop the class and therefore get a bad grade. For example, the prof might show the course histogram and then say that, if the class was to end today, people with certain scores would be earning B’s, when in reality, they would be earning C’s or worse.

I am not advocating P/F for ALL classes. Just for the weeders. Once you get past the weeders, I am fine with having classes graded normally. However, the weeders are special classes whose very purpose for existence is different from other classes. The primary purpose of most classes is for students to learn something. The primary purpose of weeders is to eliminate students. Learning is therefore only a secondary purpose. Since weeders are special classes, I think they should be graded under special rules.

I’ll toss out another idea. MIT has just started offering this idea of an ‘exploratory class’ for sophomores. This idea allows a student to designate any one class (but only one) per semester as exploratory, such that the student takes the entire class, including the final exam, and gets his final grade. If he doesn’t like his final grade, he can drop the class retroactively by just changing his class grade to L (Listener, which is the same as ‘Audit’). The idea is that you can try a difficult class with the security of knowing that if you get a poor grade, you can get out of the class.

I think this is a brilliant strategy that all engineering programs should apply to their weeders. I think all students should be allowed to drop weeder engineering classes retroactively. Such a person would not be allowed to complete that engineering major, but that person would be able to switch to another major with a clean slate.

Berkeley and many other schools have such a policy also. Howver, where’s an inherent weakness in this idea as it relates to weeders. The whole purpose of weeders is to weed out students. So if a person takes weeders and fails, then that person should be gotten weeded out and directed to do some other major, not to be encouraged to take that weeder course again.

For example, let’s say a guy takes a Berkeley Chemical Engineering weeder and fails out. That means that the ChemE department is signalling to that student that he isn’t good enough for ChemE and should major in something else. Fine. But that student also understandably wants get rid of that F on his transcript. He also realizes that he doesn’t like ChemE and doesn’t want to major in it. But he still feels compelled to take that ChemE weeder again just to be able to replace his F. So the ChemE department doesn’t want him around. The student doesn’t want to be around the ChemE department. Yet he has to be around anyway because he’s trying to wipe that F from his transcript. That’s a bad situation for everybody.

A far better situation would be to simply wipe any trace of that ChemE weeder from his transcript completely. The ChemE department can make a note for its internal records about how badly this student did, to prevent him from coming back. But if the guy ends up majoring in History and graduating, who cares what his ChemE weeder grade was?

The weeder course has fulfilled its purpose - it has weeded out a student who didn’t meet the ChemE standard. Fair enough. The weeder has served its purpose. I just don’t see what more is to be gained by then permanently tagging that student’s academic record with a failing grade. That’s just kicking a man when he’s down.

One analogy is that you can think of weeder courses as guard dogs for your property. It is appropriate to use your dogs to scare off an unwelcome guy from your property. But once the guy is already on the street, it is not appropriate for your dogs to chase that guy down the street and rip him to shreds. The purpose of your guard dogs is to safeguard the integrity of your property, not to gratuitously maim somebody who is no longer on your property.

Weeding out.. good or bad?

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