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A comment on Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017). Parent comment

Re:Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison t... by rvense on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @03:49AM (#22943216)
In Denmark, universities (and possibly high schools too, I don't know for sure) get paid by the government based on the number of students passing exams every semester. I think this is part of what's called "new public management" where you attempt to bring market-like incentives to the public sector.
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Re:Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison t... by a-saleh on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @04:03AM (#22943284)
Interesting, universities in Czech republic went through a simmilar scheme, but they'd get disproportionately more funds per head-count of first-year students (on-boarding, I guess?)

Several universities switched from entrance exams to a system of "Everybody gets in, it is the first semester that will probably kill you" :-)

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Re:Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison t... by TeMPOraL on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @06:52AM (#22944221)
Same in Poland for more than a decade. It's an open secret here that universities admit many more students than they can handle in order to capture extra funding, and then get rid of the excess after the first year.

On my first year, the amount of students was 2x the actual capacity. The first semester was very math-heavy, and everyone knew we had the toughest and CS-unrelated subjects delivered up front in order to weed out half of the year.

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Re:Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison t... by GoblinSlayer on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @12:35PM (#22947396)
My university did it, but because the entrance exams can't evaluate students well, while a semester is quite a more precise and prolonged test.
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Re:Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison t... by a-saleh on Thursday April 23, 2020 @02:31AM (#22953377)
Yes, I agree it can work out fairly well :-)

On the other hand, I have seen a prof. literaly say something along the lines "Dear students, my purpose here is not to teach you anything, just weed out 50% of you"

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Re:Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison t... by rgblambda on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @04:57AM (#22943558)
That actually sounds like it might work. I know a lot of people who just scraped through exams but excelled in University as well as a number who aced their exams but struggled and/or dropped out in University (admittedly this was more due to picking easy subjects in High School).
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Re:Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison t... by jpxw on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @04:11AM (#22943315)
Attempting to force market-like incentives on the public sector often ends up working even worse than a purely public system, it seems to me. Use public or private, but mixing the two leads to odd incentive issues and bad outcomes.
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