Like I mentioned to the other poster, there are people who do all the homework and still fail the class.
I aced every single project, midterm, and final. I can understand most topics the first or second time I learn them, and when I don’t I will do some homework. But for the most part I personally didn’t need it and I got penalized. I also worked during college so I could afford to not commute, so i was glad I didn’t need to do the homework to do well in everything else.
So explain that to me. I recall students who did homework would still fail and then the professor would do some last saving grace move where you do some BS work to get an extra five percent.
Someone who understands the material would ace the exams. In my experience most people did not ace the exams and in fact would hate on me and some others who would “kill the curve”.
Finally fwiw I went to a lower ranked state college not some MIT tier place. They were the only college who offered the most financial aid so I was able to graduate with under 7k owed while affording to live on campus.
Paid off my debt in the first months paycheck lol.
You're special. Congratulations! You have a unique capability to absorb knowledge. In my experience, this means one of two things: either (1) you truly are brilliant and will exceed at anything you apply to, or (2) at some point you will run into something that you _don't_ understand after the first or second try, and you'll be entirely unequipped and unprepared to deal with that. Also in my experience, (2) is far more common than (1).
Bashing your head against difficult things in a low-stakes environment where folks are literally paid to help you navigate failure is a great way to extend the runway until (2) hits. Again - you're _paying_ for this opportunity in college.
> ... then the professor would do some last saving grace move where you do some BS work to get an extra five percent.
Maybe it's not BS work? Maybe there's something to creating relationships with the people you work with, and creating alternative avenues for them to help you, since it's literally their job?
I had an undergrad once who did reasonable on their homework problem sets, but just could not get it together in the written exams. Turns out their was an anxiety issue involved. But they came to my office hours for help, and put in the effort, so I was more than happy to see what I could do to ensure that not only would they learn the material to the best of their ability, but that we could soften the blow of a less-than-perfect final mark in the course. I wouldn't go to such lengths for a name on a paper who I saw in lecture but otherwise had no interaction with... how do I know they actually put in the effort and knew the material?
> Someone who understands the material would ace the exams. In my experience most people did not ace the exams and in fact would hate on me and some others who would “kill the curve”.
Depends entirely on the exam. I've taken exams for coursework that I truly thought I had mastery over and utterly bombed them. I've also taken exams for courses that I was convinced I was going to fail, and done well, too.
In my experience, it's actually very difficult to write an in-person exam that rewards mastery over course material. I've encountered very few such exams in my life that didn't resort to gimmicks or "gotchas" in the material. It's much easier in a timed, in-person setting to write busy work that has tricks built in so things simplify away and get rid of a lot of the manual work.
It’s just that I’m seeing all these so called solutions to problems in education like removing SAT while students who need to be well equipped to learn like a sponge and retain that knowledge are imo/ime just left to the side.
It’s cool that you seem really invested in helping people succeed. That wasn’t my experience, because I recall my professor calling me out all the time because I was late to his class. Like bro I’m sorry no disrespect meant but I’m doing my best and it’s not like I am failing your class. Unless you make it so I do because you grade stuff like showing up on time.
Again education is a paid for expense. It isn’t a charity, and I’m paying to learn. Not do charades.
And IRL you are either getting paid to do a job or busting to make a dollar. Totally different world imo.
If I could do it over again, I’d probably have taken that 200k risk and gone to the best school I got into but didn’t offer any fin aid. And I’d probably have studied CS and Math instead of business because I ended up teaching myself software engineering.. it just sucks that education isn’t tailored to the student, and people want to do all the things except grade people on what they can demonstrate (tests/material).
I firmly believe that the final exam is what shows whether a student understands the material. When graded on anything besides that, I personally don’t care anymore. That’s just my opinion. Otherwise just remove grading completely and do pass/fail. Or just pass everyone for giving them the check each semester.
What discipline did you study in undergrad?
In many majors - or even just in well-taught classes - work outside of lecture or recitation is designed to complement what you are learning. It _is_ the education you're paying for. It isn't high school where it's a bunch of repetition of the same concept (although I'd vigorously defend that, too) intended as practice. Problem sets ought to be the application of the material you're introduced to in lecture, done so in a way that forces you to grapple with and connect core concepts to other material in your major.
For example, in grad school I TA'ed an upper-level undergraduate course that would typically have 15-20 students. The problem sets I created with the professor I worked for had problems split across two themes. The first was discover; we'd take something that seemed ho-hum or rote from class, and apply it to an oddball setting which yielded surprising results. Sure, that straightforward equation works - but why does it go so weird in this curated example we're providing? There's extraordinary opportunity for learning there.
The second theme was connection across disciplines. Introduce a mathematics, computer science, or other concept and use it to extend something from lecture in an interesting way. These problems were intended t be challenging. We referred students to other textbooks and invited them to work together or come to office hours to fill in gaps in their background, because (a) this is a _vital_ skill to learn, and (b) it led to really cool and interesting problems and solutions.
There simply is not time in lecture or recitation to cover the stuff we introduced in these homework assignments. That's why the course credit hours tallied up to 3x the amount of time spent in lecture. I'll also note that while challenging, we did not allow poor marks on or incomplete problem sets derail a student's grade. If in lecture/recitation participation and on exams they clearly knew the core content, we'd work with the students to ensure they got a high grade. But if someone shirked off the homework entirely but aced the exams? Well, the exams aren't testing everything we're teaching you in this course, so you better believe they'd get poor grades at the end of the term.
So your perspective seems warped. If you weren't doing the homework, then you didn't get the education you paid for, and that's on you - not the university.