Ask HN: Imposing a feedback on a school.
I am EE student in a small school of engineering at one of the unis in Europe. Every day I feel this is a waste of time, as most courses are conducted in downright wrong fashion, and yet I am forced to stay because I actually need a diploma.
Lectures are delivered by professors who dumb down every single topic because of their insufficient command in english. At extreme cases, writing a test requires me to limit my vocabulary and I don't even find myself fluent.
Programming classes are half-assed to a degree my colleagues don't know what pointer is after three semesters of C/C++ or find ls to be a mystery of unix world. Some of those people can become TAs in two years and contribute to making next generations of students even lousier programmers via kind of a negative feedback loop.
But this doesn't end there, there were classes which were sort of free credits, because profs implicitly told us they are incapable of teaching in english. And thus I don't know how interpret stats in a research paper which is pathetic to be honest.
There were a few solid classes, mostly about the basics, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I would like you to ask a question, is it possible to influence quality of teaching from the bottom? If not for me then for the next years of students, otherwise this country will never be innovative and stay piece of shit forever.
4 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 18.4 ms ] threadStart by making sure you're confident in that statement. Depending on your desired path, it well may be true. Many never bother to ask themselves the question.
And seek out people in your desired field. Imagine the role you want to be in in 5 years and go introduce yourself to someone in that role. Even if it has to be via email. They likely will have a better pulse than your instructors on what you should be learning.
Sounds like America, but then...
"small school of engineering at one of the unis in Europe"
If you're saying school in Europe is bad... try getting worse education in United States and then also being in $50,000 debt for it.
I would say people at the bottom usually have to vote with their wallets. Education is becoming distributed and you can learn from high quality courses online for free now a days.
Highly unlikely, university bureaucracies are engineered to be resistant to change. This is an age-old problem in all disciplines.
There's a wonderful Mark Twain quote— "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education".
Best advice- complete your degree program requirements, get the credential, and move-on quickly as possible.