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| Authored by: Prabhakar Ragde on Monday, May 23 2005 @ 10:21 PM CDT |
Thanks in return for thinking seriously about the issues instead of posting a
drive-by comment.
The rules involving "excluding" courses are applicable immediately, for all
students, retroactive to September 2004. (Senate has to formally approve the
rules, but they are likely to view it as a faculty matter; in the meantime, the
Math Faculty will start to apply them.) This gives the first-year class just
finishing up a chance to recover, instead of being hoofed out now or next
term by the old probation rules. It may be too late for some senior students
who fell below threshold in fall 2004 and have spent one or two terms in
General when they might have been able to stay in Honours at least a while
longer had the rules come into force earlier. It's unfortunate, but it's not clear
how to work it otherwise.
I think instructors of second-year courses have now been sensitized to the
fact that they may have more marginal students coming into their courses
than usual. We'll have to see how this plays out. As a course coordinator and
instructor of a first-year Math CS core course, I am revising my materials for
next fall to try to provide more guidance in work and study habits, and will
try to intervene at earlier stages to prevent problems from developing.
It is possible that the measure is a half-measure and that nothing much else
will get done. Personally, I am going to do my best to see that this is not the
case. There's an old saying about the Chinese word for "crisis" being a
combination of "danger" and "opportunity" (which isn't true, I think, but it's a
nice saying nonetheless). This may be the impetus for changes that in the
normal scheme of things would be dismissed as unnecessary. But it is clear
that this measure or something like it has to be a first step to gain the time
necessary for further measures.
Is there an ideal attrition rate? I don't believe that there are students
incapable of earning an Honours degree in Math. There are unprepared
students, there are unmotivated students, there are students with bad study
habits, but any student who works hard and listens to advice should be able
to manage it. On the other hand, there are some programs in Math -- CS and
Actuarial Science come to mind -- of which it is hard to get a real impression
at the time of application. I can see an attrition rate of 10-15% as a result of
people changing their mind and moving to something else, perhaps reduced
by transfer students. (I saw the figures this month regarding students in each
Faculty who complete degrees as a percentage of the incoming class, and I
don't remember the exact numbers, but for Arts it is well over 100%, because
people transfer there from other Faculties.) If we're managing recruitment,
admissions, and instruction properly, it shouldn't be much above that. --PR
[ Parent ]
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