Re:Why Do They Hate Us?
by sophacles on Wednesday September 29, 2010 @12:14AM
(#1738298)
Many universities do their own course prep for 2 separate reasons.
1. Schools recruit by bragging about famous/accomplished graduates -- all taught by the $UNIVERSITY_NAME method.
2. Many schools research teaching methods, and therefore new things and materials are actually part of some experiment.
There is actually a 3rd, sort of meta-reason. In academics it is considered "incestuous" for students to undergrad->phd->position at the same university. They like to send people around various places as a way of spreading ideas. This mostly plays out in graduate levels, but that same thinking applies to "different schools teach different ways".
A final thought -- just like it is good to have multiple varieties of plants in fields, multiple brands of networking gear in a security conscious network, and so on, perhaps multiple teaching methods are good too, as a way of innocculating against "bad thinking".
1. Schools recruit by bragging about famous/accomplished graduates -- all taught by the $UNIVERSITY_NAME method.
2. Many schools research teaching methods, and therefore new things and materials are actually part of some experiment.
There is actually a 3rd, sort of meta-reason. In academics it is considered "incestuous" for students to undergrad->phd->position at the same university. They like to send people around various places as a way of spreading ideas. This mostly plays out in graduate levels, but that same thinking applies to "different schools teach different ways".
A final thought -- just like it is good to have multiple varieties of plants in fields, multiple brands of networking gear in a security conscious network, and so on, perhaps multiple teaching methods are good too, as a way of innocculating against "bad thinking".