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by mgfist 1228 days ago
A 70% attrition rate is awful. How many of those kids could become fine engineers if they had more runway to fail and learn without being weeded out?

All this tells me is that if CS concepts don't click for you instantly you were out - even though this is a terrible heuristic for who would make a good engineer (or good computer scientist, whatever the goal is).
4 comments
hutzlibu 1228 days ago
Hm, it depends how "attrition" is defined. I read it the way it is done in german universities, meaning 70% and above indeed fail the weeding courses (usually math) at the first try, but you had 3 tries and still could attain the next semester, without passing.

But for quite some, it was indeed eye opening and they left for something else. It is a bit brutal, but effective and it gets the message across. If you don't want to struggle to learn the basics, you are wrong in computer science.

That doesn't mean, you cannot become a programmer, there is another formal path of doing so, but attaining a university does mean playing at another level. (or well, if should mean that, I got to learn too many who just learned to play the bullshitbingo)

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lmm 1227 days ago
> How many of those kids could become fine engineers if they had more runway to fail and learn without being weeded out?

This question is worth taking seriously. I've seen a study of a slower course that found that, nevertheless, there was no difference in the number of students who could understand basic variable assignments between the start and at the end; either they "got it" straight away or not at all.

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wyager 1227 days ago
I bet after that initial 70% attrition rate, the subsequent attrition rate was close to zero. As opposed to the current state of affairs, where people are slowly and painfully abraded away over the course of years (or graduate at a standard that may not have been acceptable, say, 20 years ago).
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yencabulator 1227 days ago
Perhaps, but also, UTCS = University of Texas Computer Science department, and universities don't make engineers, they make scientists and researchers...

Computer Science != programming. This memo by Dijkstra is pretty much agreeing with that (though complaining about the existence of non-CS programming).

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