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by whakim 1594 days ago
Yeah - you've probably got the right one. I think the real thing this shows is that if you teach intro classes well (and try really hard to get people from atypical backgrounds to take those intro classes in the first place), students don't drop out the moment the going gets tough because they feel unsupported and assume STEM "isn't for them." (I certainly was in that category and would never have studied computer science if I had had a different introduction to the subject.) The failure to teach many more intro classes this way is all the more acute at Ivy+ institutions because they're not lacking for resources.