[abdullahkhalids]

My understanding is that weed-out courses largely only happen in the US, and not in Europe or Asia. In the latter, students are usually admitted into a major, sometimes after passing an entrance exam. In the US, admissions are much more "holistic" and students have much more freedom to choose their major. This inevitably results in some people who have very low aptitude for a major enrolled in it. So Departments have decided that, because they can't change the admission process, the next best thing is to weed out students with a difficult course. This usually results in a large number of qualified students also being forced out, which is very unfortunate.

I don't think there is any solution to this other than fixing the admission process. If you ever become a professor, you will quickly realize, how much even a handful of bad students can bring down the level of a senior elective. The 80:20 rule applies, where 80 percent of your time gets spent on 20 percent of the weakest students. Its a zero-sum game with the profs time. This does not discount the fact that the academy is filled with profs who have no interest in teaching.

> a 3 unit course should require no more than 9 hours of work / week

As a prof, I don't agree. Semester enrolled credits x 3 should be the total time the student has to work per week. Its ridiculous notion to normalize each course to the same amount of time/week - some subjects are simply more difficult. Its up to the department to thoughtfully structure the curriculum so students have a mix of difficult and easy courses in every semester. Even as a student, I was quite glad that I got to spend 20hrs/week on Quantum Mechanics 2, and 5hrs/week on Intro to Journalism in that same semester.

[adastra22]

> Its ridiculous notion to normalize each course to the same amount of time/week - some subjects are simply more difficult.

Those courses should have higher credits.

[abdullahkhalids]

In an ideal world, yes. But, it is all administrative issues. Regulation demand that every undergrad degree be 4 years with something like 130-150 credits. The other constraint is that you have to teach the undergrad enough material. And simply speaking a degree in mechanical engineering requires mastering a lot more material than a degree in journalism. So inevitably, the average mechanical engineering course will require more time and effort than the average journalism course.

Its just all stupid regulations. I don't even understand why all courses have to run 16 weeks, when a lot of them have filler content at the end. Just let the course end early, and gain the benefits of student motivation.

[than3]

I agree with a lot of what you've said, most of the issues are regulatory, or structural issues. Some teachers also simply don't want to teach, and prefer to be gatekeepers, but not all of them.

I was one of those who had been weeded out of an engineering degree at the Mechanics of Solids level, attempted it something like 9 times before giving up, passed the labs with A's. B average up to the required math for engineering which included Discrete Mathematics, Differential Equations, and Linear Algebra (iirc) all those were already completed for most of those attempts.

Tests were 3 questions, 5-10 steps, Answer to the 2nd was dependent on the first correct answer, Third dependent on the second. If you one, you could potentially have failed the class by week 4 which was just outside the withdrawal date for a full refund. Its pretty sad when you have a large number of people pass upper division math, who then in turn can't pass basic physics because of academic structure. I remember getting an award on one of those labs for being the only group to have their egg survive a 3 story drop with just a plastic baggy full of water (at my insistence).

Almost all professors in my local geographic area had decided to push that structure. Economics for Business had issues with deterministic tests. Professionally I deal with a lot of automation so ensuring determinism in systems we use gets back-checked quite often.

Its a sad state of affairs, and most of those issues are solveable with proper incentives and design, but getting to that point would require firing a lot of vested interests. I don't know what it is about a central structure that tends to gravitate towards the lowest common denominator in terms of work.

High performing people often get socially punished for making the people slacking off look bad. Such a backwards system.