[kitsune_]

I think you misunderstand me. I didn't use this phrase in a philosophical way. I'm talking about professors teaching statistics and not knowing the difference between the median and the mean. I'm talking about that level of incompetence.

Imagine a course on compiler design where the professor doesn't know what top-down parsing and lexical analysis is. I'm certain that you would call that class a failure, or not?

[mjdwitt]

Of course that class would be worthless. Not all (and in my experience, almost no) classes, however, are like that when one selects a college which has a quality program for the degree of interest. Furthermore, I would go so far as to lay much of the blame for a poor education on the student who fails to select a good school for their degree.