Current HN title: "UBC Engineering removes online classes, obstacles for international students"
Article title: "UBC Engineering removes all upper-year online classes as obstacles remain for returning international students"
The shortened HN title, upon my first and second readings, implies that UBC removed obstacles for international students. In fact, the opposite is the case, as the article title clarifies.
How do you separate lists of things that themselves have commas in them, if not with a semicolon?
Example: San Francisco is home to law firms such as Campagnoli, Abelson & Campagnoli; Carlson, Calladine & Peterson; and Carter, Carter, Fries and Grunschlag.
Style guides for a number of other languages do it by treating organization names like titles or labels and enclosing them with quotation marks. Unambiguous!
I don’t know exactly what a chemical engineering degree entails, but I feel safe to assume it involves a lot of labs with specialized equipment. That sort of thing, along with music ensembles, food prep, and many other courses of study just don’t bode well for effective remote learning. In due time I think that can change, but it would be a different solution for each field.
This looks a misleading title. The person mentioned in detail is not affected by online classes removal, they are affected because their visa was denied and they can’t come back to Canada to attend the physical classes.
There are all sorts of reasons immigration can deny visa, but this has nothing to do with removing online classes.
I for one am glad provinces are mandating in person classes again.
In my experience, online classes were across the board _significantly_ worse than in person classes. Yes, you do have to haul your ass into class every day, but in person interaction is so much more natural than interaction over zoom.
It’s natural to talk and collaborate with people around you in a physical classroom, but it feels so incredibly forced to interact with people in prescribed breakout rooms.
Not to mention it’s been a year and almost no curriculums have actually been adapted to an online format. If we’re going to shove a curriculum based around in person attendance down everyone’s throats, you might as well have the students show up in person.
Should that really be mandated by the province though. Perhaps there is an incantation on online classes that will work now, but if in person is mandated we'll never find it.
> the tests / scores do not reflect the actual value or performance of someone
Yes. 100%. In my physics class last term, performance was so consistently poor on exams that the minimum score on exams was 40%, and you could earn 15+% on top of your final exam just for showing up to class. Instructional quality was very poor, due in part to the online format. Knowledge retention was equally poor.
If college is to move online, it needs a fresh start. Classes need to be designed for online interactions rather than in person.
> People who are there for the piece of paper generally don't give a rats ass about the rest.
Good schools typically want to filter out these people; You want an environment where people are there for learning and passionate about their field, not just checking stuff off a checklist.
Exactly, the people who argue for online courses as if they are entitled to them are quick to jump to the defence of them, yet they are totally unpractical for swaths of fields.
The government seems to be worried he will illegally stay past his visa, either due to his past history or because his country might impose restriction on him coming back due to Covid.
This would be trivial to avoid with something simple like a safety deposit; You leave 10k and you get it back once you legally depart the country at the end of your visa. Overstay and lose it. Alternatively, the home country could underwrite it. This would remove any incentive they have for keeping a student from returning home.
Even before the convenient excuse of Covid, it seems overstaying or illegally working on a student visa was quite common in Canada [0].
Some universities are addicted to foreign student money and could not survive long without it (not even the tuition premium: just having 40% of students from abroad).
Some others are pretty much living off endowments. They could shut down international admissions and give full rides to everyone and still make profits.
Majority of the research at universities is powered by graduate students, most of whom are in turn internationals. This makes a lot of sense- which US/Canadian citizens with bachelor degrees in their right mind would do graduate research for less than minimum wage (international grads are paid for max 20 hours of work in the US), when they can make double or more by flipping burgers at McDonald's? So yeah, do your best for "primary" student population, this is pretty much how you give up scientific leadership and technological supremacy (to China).
You can say that, but the article was about an undergrad, and I'm pretty sure the user you replied to had undergrads in mind when they replied (for whom classes are the focus), not research-focused grad students. And in any case, you can consider that as a possible approach that wouldn't have the downside you suggested.
What's the point of plowing money into maintaining technological supremacy when they can walk into our servers every five years and take everything we invented?
Your generalizations are (AFAIK) largely accurate in the United States, but not in Canada. The immigration policies of the two countries differ substantially.
International students in Canada can get work permits without much difficulty, and have a relatively easy path towards permanent residency & naturalization once they graduate.
The reason so many international students enroll in graduate studies have nothing to do with how much they can get paid flipping burgers, and everything to do with why they are enrolling in a foreign program in the first place. A graduate degree significantly improves their career prospects at home, and opens a lot of immigration doors abroad.
> Engineering said that it would not be logistically feasible to offer a fully online option, citing a relatively small number of students in Hasan’s situation and the difficulty of recording separate online lectures.
That's almost malicious and here's why.
What happens if a student catches covid? They stay at home and just miss class for 2 weeks? What if a student is a close contact? Do they still go to class or do they stay at home? You're incentivizing students to go to class despite possible exposure.
My school has mandatory vaccinations and is a small school but 1 week in there's already 68 positive cases. Thankfully everything is live streamed and stored for future viewing, and some classes will also host a zoom with a TA for live questions during lecture.
It's extremely common for students to miss classes - which is apparent when you are on the teacher side of things.
For example, in Fall 2019 (before Covid), I had 60 students across my various courses. Three of them missed weeks of classes each because they had some significant medical issues. Others missed a week of classes because they were going to some extracurricular competition. Nothing bad happened to them. We just accommodated for their issues.
If universities go online their value plummets. It's vital they keep their IP and brand offline to continue to have value. This is a tightrope walk atm with global travel restrictions and the money overseas students supply.
You might want to smash the universities into the ground, but their logic is sound.
A world with one university, like one Uber, is possible if you can sort out all the known issues with MOOCs.
I would say it's not a better world. Sitting at home for most of an degree would benefit some people but would be a loss of an experience for most. And there is no between, once the race to the bottom happens, like Uber you just won't have the choice.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 405 ms ] threadCurrent HN title: "UBC Engineering removes online classes, obstacles for international students"
Article title: "UBC Engineering removes all upper-year online classes as obstacles remain for returning international students"
The shortened HN title, upon my first and second readings, implies that UBC removed obstacles for international students. In fact, the opposite is the case, as the article title clarifies.
Example: San Francisco is home to law firms such as Campagnoli, Abelson & Campagnoli; Carlson, Calladine & Peterson; and Carter, Carter, Fries and Grunschlag.
x, y, and z; a, b, and c; and i, j, and k make common groups of variable names.
Anyway, agree it's at best ambiguous.
I for one am glad provinces are mandating in person classes again.
It’s natural to talk and collaborate with people around you in a physical classroom, but it feels so incredibly forced to interact with people in prescribed breakout rooms.
Not to mention it’s been a year and almost no curriculums have actually been adapted to an online format. If we’re going to shove a curriculum based around in person attendance down everyone’s throats, you might as well have the students show up in person.
All I see is dinosaurs trying to fight in every possible way to try and keep their right to exist. Feels a lot like mp3 in the 90s.
People who are there for the piece of paper generally don't give a rats ass about the rest.
People who are really interested in their field have so many other ways to gather knowledge and experience.
Yes. 100%. In my physics class last term, performance was so consistently poor on exams that the minimum score on exams was 40%, and you could earn 15+% on top of your final exam just for showing up to class. Instructional quality was very poor, due in part to the online format. Knowledge retention was equally poor.
If college is to move online, it needs a fresh start. Classes need to be designed for online interactions rather than in person.
Good schools typically want to filter out these people; You want an environment where people are there for learning and passionate about their field, not just checking stuff off a checklist.
For an area such as chemical engineering, how are you supposed to do lab exercises at home? Not to say, exams are a shit show with rampant cheating.
This would be trivial to avoid with something simple like a safety deposit; You leave 10k and you get it back once you legally depart the country at the end of your visa. Overstay and lose it. Alternatively, the home country could underwrite it. This would remove any incentive they have for keeping a student from returning home.
Even before the convenient excuse of Covid, it seems overstaying or illegally working on a student visa was quite common in Canada [0].
[0] https://thewalrus.ca/the-shadowy-business-of-international-e...
Some universities are addicted to foreign student money and could not survive long without it (not even the tuition premium: just having 40% of students from abroad).
Some others are pretty much living off endowments. They could shut down international admissions and give full rides to everyone and still make profits.
My understanding was the discussion is about undergraduate study ("second-year chemical engineering student").
International students in Canada can get work permits without much difficulty, and have a relatively easy path towards permanent residency & naturalization once they graduate.
The reason so many international students enroll in graduate studies have nothing to do with how much they can get paid flipping burgers, and everything to do with why they are enrolling in a foreign program in the first place. A graduate degree significantly improves their career prospects at home, and opens a lot of immigration doors abroad.
That's almost malicious and here's why.
What happens if a student catches covid? They stay at home and just miss class for 2 weeks? What if a student is a close contact? Do they still go to class or do they stay at home? You're incentivizing students to go to class despite possible exposure.
My school has mandatory vaccinations and is a small school but 1 week in there's already 68 positive cases. Thankfully everything is live streamed and stored for future viewing, and some classes will also host a zoom with a TA for live questions during lecture.
Whatever they'd have done if they caught the flu in 2019.
For example, in Fall 2019 (before Covid), I had 60 students across my various courses. Three of them missed weeks of classes each because they had some significant medical issues. Others missed a week of classes because they were going to some extracurricular competition. Nothing bad happened to them. We just accommodated for their issues.
You might want to smash the universities into the ground, but their logic is sound.
A world with one university, like one Uber, is possible if you can sort out all the known issues with MOOCs.
I would say it's not a better world. Sitting at home for most of an degree would benefit some people but would be a loss of an experience for most. And there is no between, once the race to the bottom happens, like Uber you just won't have the choice.