Experts: 'Weed Out' Classes Are Killing STEM Achievement

[eridani]

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/stem-education/2012/04/19/experts-weed-out-classes-are-killing-stem-achievement

Not enough American students are showing interest in studying for degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, but what experts are more shocked by is the fact that colleges are throwing out the students who are interested.

Nearly half of all students who begin studying for a STEM degree switch majors, according to several studies. "Weed-out" classes, curve grading and a lack of faculty involvement are to blame, experts said at a Bayer Corporation forum on STEM in higher education in Washington Wednesday.

"We need to wash out the 'weed-them-out orientation' in the classroom," says Mary Fox, co-director at the Center for Study of Women, Science and Technology at Georgia Tech. "That is not a hospitable climate for students, we have to teach students to move along rather than have them sink or swim."

[pnwmom]

1. Right. People keep saying students "choose" the wrong majors, but they don't understand

that many students are prevented from majoring in the STEM fields simply because of the lack of available slots.

For example, I don't know what the current figure is, but years ago the U.W. would only take 25 computer majors a year, no matter how well qualified. They said that's all the Department could support. So they were weeding out dozens of highly qualified students every year. (Now the dept. is much bigger, but they still accept only a fraction of those who apply.)

And biology and chemistry are considered "weeding-out" courses for medical school. So people who want to major in these subjects find themselves in a GPA race with everyone applying to med school, whether they are interested in that or not.

[BadgerKid]

5. GPA race motivates cheating, too.

Having been a teaching assistant in a science, it was pretty evident the cheating that went on -- especially in lab sections. I believed the pre-meds thought of the class as yet another hoop since the idea of being a doctor was so motivating.

[Confusious]

2. Yep, that's what happens at my school

Calc teacher was kind of a prick. I got through it, but it was awful.

At the start of class, no partial credit on some problems which took 10 minutes or more.

Later on he changed the rules, after a bunch of people dropped out of course.

If I hadn't taken it before, I wouldn't have survived.

( Of course, everyone says how awful the math dept. is there. Seems everybody knows, except the math dept.)

[Warren Stupidity]

3. STEM is hard.

You really have to have a solid grasp on the underlying fundamentals in math and science for your chosen field. Those fundamentals are difficult. And it doesn't necessarily get easier after you get past the big entry level requirements.

The 'weed out' courses are generally the entry level courses that form the basis of a STEM degree. Calculus, Physics, etc. If you cannot master the basics you really do need to consider career alternatives.

[pnwmom]

6. Some of the limits are artificial. They're not based on a student's understanding

of the material, they're based on a limited number of available slots.

In many schools, large numbers of students are turned away who have a solid grasp of the fundamentals. And the more we encourage students to choose these fields, the more this will happen -- unless we also start supporting public universities with more funds. STEM fields are expensive to teach compared to humanities classes, so universities limit the number of students in these majors.

[Warren Stupidity]

7. Well sure, schools do not have infinite capacity.

Meanwhile we are something like 48th in the world in terms of pre-college STEM education. I think that is a larger factor than college level resources.

A friend of ours takes in foreign exchange students as boarders. We went to lunch with one of them, a girl from Shenzhen China. I asked her how she liked attending high school here, at one of the best public high schools in the country. She said it was fun because it was so easy and she had so much free time.

We have a serious problem. It isn't that STEM requirements at the college level are too hard.

[pnwmom]

8. I'm not saying that the STEM requirements are too hard.

I'm saying that many students achieve them who still are denied a spot in a major -- or even a spot in any major at the major state universities.

The required high school GPA just for entering the University of Washington is now about 3.7 -- even higher in STEM subjects. And because the UW is short of funds, they make money by accepting a large number of foreign students instead of in-state students with much lower tuition payments.

And students with the highest math test scores often aren't necessarily the best math and science students -- or the highest achievers in the rest of their life. Every year schools like MIT turn away students with perfect 800 SAT scores and 4.0 GPA's and accept bright students with less than perfect scores who have other evidence of strong math and science ability.

So why do so many of foreign students want to come to the U.S.? Our system is more likely to produce the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world than a system based on cramming, rote memorization, conventional thinking, and the highest test scores.

[Jim__]

9. Not enough American students are showing interest in studying for degrees in science,... colleges...

... are throwing out the students who are interested.

If that first sentence in the article is correct, I'd say that it strongly supports your claim.

STEM is not that hard. Most interested students who satisfy the entrance criteria can get through it. It does sound like the colleges are not set up to handle it.

[Igel]

14. It's a mix.

Some poster make it sound like an all-or-nothing kind of scenario--weeding out is just because of limited slots or just to eliminate inferior candidates.

My nephew is being weeded out. He has trouble with calculus. He's at the bottom 10%. Granted, it may be how it's taught. But three different professors? He shouldn't be an engineer. He's also scraping along with the minimum possible grades in his science classes.

Yes, he could be taught the math. But it's a waste of resources. If you have the option of two kids, one of whom can take calculus and pass it and one who needs to take the same course several times, with tutors, you'd take the first. In fact, you'd also be able to take another student, because the second takes up the resources necessary for training two engineers. Might he be excellent in the end, a real Einstein? Sure. But to bet that way? No thanks.

At the same time depts. have limited resources. My entering engineering class had 40 students too many. Chemistry was told to get the number of freshman who passed down to 400. This the professor announced on the first day of class. Why? They weren't going to hire new professors and add labs. They didn't have the room, and that was after adding evening and weekend lab sections.

[mopinko]

4. it was like this in art school, too.

i went to an "ivy league" art school, and i can't tell you how many times i heard the words "xyz doesn't belong here". a lot of the staff thought that it was their job to sort the students out instead of just teaching them.
i got some of it because i was a single mom who could only go part time. i didn't get to hang around and be a part of the whole campus thing. fortunately, i had a couple teachers who really saw my gifts.
the funniest thing, tho, is that the prof who was probably the hardest on me ended up as a friend many years later. his wife explained to me that he was just a social idiot, and covered it up by being sarcastic and mean. and he is a marshmallow inside.

i hear tell they aren't like that there any more. but it took some work for them to root it out of the culture.
i agree that calculus is a little different than life drawing, but the culture could be as much of the problem as the students.

[eppur_se_muova]

10. How many are only majoring in science to get into medical school ?

Many premeds choose Biology or Biochemistry as their best major. But their reasons for choosing a science major have nothing to do with wanting to be scientists -- medicine is considered one of "the professions", and the allure of the prestige and money attached to medicine is, for all too many premeds, their only justification for wanting to be doctors. For others, it's a decision that their parents pressured them into. When they get into college and discover they don't have an aptitude for exactly the subjects they need to study for that major, they have every justification for changing their plans. Others get their first realistic idea of what's actually involved and decide that field is not for them. I've seen a few students for whom the decision to change their major was the first important decision they ever made without giving in to their parents' "advice", and represents their first really independent decision to take charge of their own education/career. For some of them, it may well the beginning of their maturity.

"Experts" always seem to be called in to assign blame. No one considers the possibility that maybe these students are making the right decision.

I guess Bayer (the sponsor of this symposium) is pained by the lack of cheap, abundant, technically skilled labor, so they want more taxpayers' money spent to produce graduates just bright enough to do the job, but not bright enough to make trouble.

[Nikia]

11. Most of my science classes that were graded on a curve had a lower average

If the high score on an exam was an 80 and the median score was a 50, most students were happy to be graded on a curve rather than fail the course or get a grade that would lower their GPA. The question though is whether the professor is doing something wrong in their teaching approach if most students do that poorly on their exams.
Being a biology major, I took the intro courses. I found the intro to biology courses to be harder than the intermediate courses because they covered so much material that did not directly tie to other material. My calculus professor seemed to be a math elitist who did like failing people and required that we be able to do complicated proofs on exams that were not covered in the book nor in his lectures. Into to chemistry required speed quizzes every week in which most students would have done better if they were allowed more time to solve the chemistry problems. Organic chemistry could have definitely been taught differently as it seemed to be purely about memorizing chemical reactions although in lab, we did learn some useful lab techniques. Physics required strong math skills and memorizing equations. Geology was easy as it was the lab course most often taken by non science students.
My department, biology, definitely focused on students who planned to go on to medical school or graduate school. Our college did boast a high percentage of medical school acceptance and students who eventually earned PHDs. Professors did not seem to pay attention much to students who did not have this ambition or whose grades would not lead to this.
With an undergraduate degree in biology, I have found that most available jobs do not pay well though. Most entry level lab tech jobs do require 4 year degrees and they usually pay under $30,000/year and often under $25,000/ year. Without further education, they often don't pay much more than that with experience.
Maybe the professors know that without the aptitude to go onto to professional or graduate study, the student may as well major in something else.

[eppur_se_muova]

13. The last sentence.

People have become so accustomed to questioning traditional authority -- usually with good cause -- that they have thrown out the baby with the bath water. Sometimes the people in authority do know what they are doing, and it may have taken them years of experience to learn it. Considering the amount of self-selection, peer review, and competence-based selection that's involved in making it to a senior faculty position, you should at least seriously reconsider your plans if your professors are suggesting you've picked the wrong major.

[Odin2005]

12. So the answer is dumbing down the classes? What crap.

[HereSince1628]

15. Curve grading? Really?

Over my 30 years in higher ed, I never knew of a faculty member who discouraged students by grading on a curve.

Scaled outcomes, and the application of sliding grade brackets to such scales was by far the most common.

Considering the interests of the young colleagues I left behind in 2009, I'd be very surprised if any of them could or would spend the time to figure out how to make an Excel spreadsheet produce a standard curve that could be used for actually applying curved grades.

But, I suppose that doesn't preclude their use of an an i-phone app for that.

[HereSince1628]

17. I was one, and I have known up-close and personal a handful of Department Chairs of science depts

I must say it is quite surprising to me, that anyone would think that Department Chairs are greedy and that the instructors they supervise have Asperger's syndrome.

I'll be very honest here and tell you I will not say what I would very much like to say in response to your unfair sweeping condemnation.

But I will say that your remarks do not reflect reality. You are stereotyping in an intentionally cruel way when you assign mental illness to an entire class of people who are, on the whole, basically very well meaning people.