| > If they made it to college, and can program, they're clearly smart and motivated. You clearly write from the perspective of the US-American university system. In Germany, basically everybody can enroll into a computer science program at a university, assuming the person has a Abitur (Allgemeine Hochschulreife) certificate (these terms are difficult to translate into English) from the grammar school [1]. So, "have it made to college" is like "not having been a complete failure in school". [2] So, making it to the university is no achievement in Germany, and also no sign of motivation either. > If these courses are so important, they should be taught in a way that students can understand. These courses are taught in a way that students can understand, but not in a way where you can afford to slack off. It is basically a consensus in Germany that a university is clearly a wrong place for you if you are incapable of closing knowledge gaps on your own (for example by reading books from the library), and you don't have the self-motivation to sit over the lecture material for hours to finally understand it. So yes, I would say that among the possible options, weed-out courses in mathematics are in my opinion likely the least bad one. --- [1] In years where there was an insane demand for places at the university to study computer science such as during the dot-com bubble, there were some restrictions (numerus clausus), but for computer science, this was always the exception to the rule. [2] There exist good reasons for puns like "Abitur: nichts gerafft und doch geschafft" (Abitur: Didn't get a thing, yet still passed) or "A-bier-tur" (a portmenteau of "Abitur" and "beer", which suggests that even pupils who are more into drinking than learning typically get their Abitur certificate). |