The faculty fallacy -- how university education confounds pleasure and applicability and miseducates millions

Whenever I see a fresh university graduate struggle to find a job I feel sad. The choice of university program to take seems so easy and seamless for someone who just graduated from High School. Many students will just think of their grade school subject which they liked the most and study that. So easy back then! Such a nice transition.
But once education is over and young people have to choose an actual career, things can be way harder for them. Of course, some university programs have a strong connection to practice and lead directly to a certain kind of job or group of jobs. But there are other programs where the mapping is harder and jobs often require a range of skills which are not covered by the university program at all. And then there are programs which could lead to a whole lot of different jobs and besides needing some decision or commitment to a certain area they also often need additional skills and training which the university program doesn't provide. Often students just have to learn really important things during internships because there is just no course on it. (And I am talking of skills that are actually teachable in courses. It's simply that academia is not interested in teaching those important skills.) Even worse, there are programs which lead to a certain group of jobs, but the number of jobs available in the area is consistently and gapingly smaller than the number of students educated in that field. The gap is sometimes and order of magnitude. And this has been so for decades without anybody fixing it.

Old universities still have structure that too much resembles their medieval (and pre-medieval!) roots than their presumed contemporary purpose. When the first universities were founded, their purpose was not prepare the majority of young people for their adult professional life, but they were educating a small minority of people of the upper classes who didn't need to work. Only later they started "professional education" for theologians and lawyers. But, on the other hand, "liberal arts" and the "humanities" in particular are still to a large extend based on an education ideal of the leisure class from two thousand years ago.

A recent McKinsey report found that a large proportion of college graduates feel "overqualified and underprepared" at the same time. Many students even from the top 100 universities "couldn't get a job in their chosen field". For liberal arts graduates the report blandly states that "they fare worse than average in all measures". In my opinion the reason for this is very simple:

• universities teach a lot of not-very-useful things
• universities don't teach a lot of very important skills (especially soft skills like self-management, project management, interpersonal communication, holding meetings, ...)
• the catalog of courses of a university mentions highly practicably applicable courses (like medicine, most or all kinds of engineering, marketing, law, ...) next to courses who don't have any direct (or even just not any) application in professional life. There is no warning sign for the latter kind of courses!

I think the fact of mixing professional classes like the ones mentioned with leisure-and-passion type classes like literature, fine arts, and music is not necessary a problem per se. Aesthetics and beauty are part of being human and there is nothing wrong with that kind of beauty flourishing at universities. But what would be fair towards all the hopeful young people who enter university is to tell them clearly which courses have professional value and which ones mainly serve the spirits. 

Of course, it is possible to study music or literature and later make a living as a musician or a writer. But for the majority of music-making or fiction-writing people, this art will rather be a hobby than a profession. And it might all be fair and right that universities don't just prepare for the work life, but also prepare for a good human life by teaching some good hobbies and high-cultured pass-times. If you think that those intellectual subjects teach at least some critical thinking skills then that's wrong for about half of the students according to a studies explained in a book which is aptly called "Academically Adrift". 

The problem with the current system is simply that those hobbies are listed right next to the professional courses with the effect that our society is in the double-crises of lacking professionals in fields like engineering, medicine, and leadership, while at the same time being confronted with tens of thousands of arts majors of whom only a fraction can actually make a living of their original education while most of the others (according to the Kinsey study) end up "in restaurants and retail".

PS: If you're interested in alternatives to the current broken system, UnCollege seems to be a promising one. Forgo college until it is fixed ;-)

grad school memories, part X

α) It's better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all.

β) It's okay to fail as long as you tried as hard as possibly could. (I don't claim I did!)

γ) Procrastination is okay, but is has to be limited and most importantly: the desire to procrastinate a lot has to be taken as a sign that something is wrong with the work and this has to be fixed!

δ) Everybody has their limits in what they can achieve. The question is not how big or small your limits are, but how you can expand them – and the latter is usually done by overcoming bad habits.

ε) Everybody has to live with the talent they have – the only thing we can change are our attitudes and our habits.

ζ) If you are stuck on a small problem, you might just take a break (procrastinate, yay!) and try again later.

η) But if you are stuck on a bigger problem, procrastination doesn't help. First of all, you need to embrace the new problem as a challenge. Then you get out your toolbox to attack it systematically.

Counter-intuitive happiness

If someone has one thing to do in their life on the completion of which depend many other things, one would think that progress in that one thing would always give that person a sense of accomplishment, advancement and satisfaction.

My Master's thesis is such a thing. And on some days I make progress on it. But usually I fell very down and unaccomplished on the end of such days. Why am I happier on days when I don't write anything on my thesis? Why does good progress on the thesis still leave me unsatisfied and empty?

After a normal day of work, I just need some food, chat, and rest to be good for the next day of work. After a day of thesis writing, even if it just has a couple hours of writing, I am in desperate need of some extra-ordinary reward to make me feel human again. Usually I do something creative, like writing, but I don't have enough energy to make it into some good writing like an interesting blog post or an extension to a Wikipedia-article.

I started grad studies because I wanted to have a creative career. Now, I have to consider the option of taking a less demanding job and rather be creative in my free-time. This didn't work that well, last time I tried, but I haven't tried many pass-times yet.

Now, this was my creative writing for the day. Let's go back to the grind.

Professoren und ihre Sklaven

Ich meine ja nicht unbedingt, dass all Professoren böse sind. Vielmehr unwissend oder so. Sie richten Schaden an, ohne es zu wissen. Aber was kann man ihnen denn auch vorwerfen. Sie leben und arbeiten nun mal für Ihre Forschung. Viele von Ihnen kennen gar nichts anderes, weil sie vom Studenten zum Doktoranden über Postdoc irgendwann Professor geworden sind. Und die größte Nähe zur Industrie hatten sie vielleicht mal über ein Praktikum oder eine Forschungskooperation mit einer Forschungsabteilung einer großen Firma wie IBM, die selbst ziemlich weit vom normalen Geschäftsablauf entfernt ist.
Der Professor sagt seinem Studenten immer, dass er sich nicht zu viel vornehmen soll, denn nach dem Master kommt ja noch die Promotion, da kann man die Arbeit dann besser machen. Für den Master muss es ja noch nicht wirklich gut sein. Und in der Promotion muss es zwar schon irgendwie substantiell sein, aber man muss nichts so wirklich abschließend gut behandeln, schließlich will man ja nachher als Postdoc auch noch etwas veröffentlichen.
Was diese Generalstrategie der immer währenden Imperfektion nicht behandelt ist einen Ausstiegsplan. Es ist einfach nicht vorgesehen, dass ein Student nach der Promotion nicht weiter in der Wissenschaft bleiben will. Wenn man nämlich nicht selbst in der Wissenschaft bleibt und seine eigenen Ergebnisse weiter entwickelt und immer wieder anderen Forschern vorstellt, dann werden sie ganz einfach sehr schnell vergessen! Der Kandidat erhält zwar seinen Titel, aber die Arbeit ist im Prinzip für die Katz. Für den Papierkorb.

Nun wie ist das bei mir? Ich hatte mich zwar auch ein bisschen auf einen schönen Doktortitel gefreut, aber für so eine Belohnung konnte ich noch nie gut arbeiten. Meine eigentliche Motivation war an einem schönen Thema zu arbeiten, und wenn ich in dem Thema nicht weiter komme, oder es am Ende dann doch niemanden interessiert, dann ist auch meine Motivation weg. Spaß wird zur Quälerei und ich sollte meine wertvolle Zeit und mein Talent besser woanders investieren.

Ich glaube, dass ich in den letzten Monaten nicht zustande gebracht habe, weil ich unterbewusst schon wusste, dass ich mit nur einer Masterarbeit oder einer Promotion meine schöne Idee des Programmbeweisers verwirklichen kann. Leider hat das aber weder mein Professor, noch die lieben Kommilitonen verstanden und konnte mir helfen, meinen eigenen Weg zu finden. Gestern habe ich endlich jemanden gefunden, der mich versteht. Jemand, der mir einfach zuhören kann und sich dann in meine Lage versetzen. Ich habe das Gefühl, dass dies eine Gespräch an einem Nachmittag mich in einen anderen Zustand versetzt hat. Heute konnte ich plötzlich richtig gut arbeiten! Ich kann endlich wieder an die Arbeit denken, ohne gleich Kopfschmerzen zu bekommen oder müde zu werden. Ich weiß jetzt, dass meine Idee nicht mehr zu retten ist. Sie wird vergessen werden, sobald mein Betreuer die Arbeit zu Ende gelesen hat. Aber was ich in der Zeit hier gelernt habe, werde ich nicht vergessen. Und meinen Master-Titel hole ich mir. Man weiß ja nie, wann ich den mal gebrauchen kann! Um Dozent am College oder einer Fachhochschule zu werden, ist er sicher von Nutzen!

Mein lieber Professor hat von all dem leider keine Ahnung. Ich sagte ihm, dass meine vielen Probleme an der Masterarbeit doch sicher kein gutes Zeichen für eine Promotion sind. Doch er meinte nur, ich soll mich ans Schreiben machen und dann wird alles schon werden.

Jetzt, da mir das alles egal ist, da ich keine Sorgen um die Promotion mehr haben muss, geht die Arbeit doch viel leichter von der Hand! Und wozu brauche ich einen Dr.-Titel, wenn ich immer noch (FH-)Professor werden kann!?
Haha! Die Prophezeiung aus dem Kindergarten, wo sie mich Professor Willi nannten, muss doch irgendwann zur Wahrheit werden!

Motivationsschreiben einer Freundin

Einfach nur, weil sie es so schön geschrieben hat:

Oktober 1999 war ein kritischer Wendepunkt in meinem Leben. Denn zu dieser Zeit begann ich meine Ausbildung zum Englischlehrer und fing an, Deutsch zu lernen. Anfangs betrachtete ich das Deutschstudium lediglich als eine persönliche Herausforderung. Jedoch mit fortschreitendem Studium wurde mir mehr und mehr bewusst, dass ich nicht einfach nur eine Sprache lerne. Vielmehr erlangte ich neue Erkenntnisse und Einblicke in ein Land gefüllt mit Kultur, Kunst und Geschichte.

Deutschlernen und Lehrkarriere erlaubten es mir, nicht nur die Welt mit einer neuen Perspektive zu betrachten, sondern auch mich selber. Ich bin der Überzeugung, dass man jede einem sich bietende Gelegenheit nutzen sollte, um sein Wissen zu erweitern. Ferner bin ich stets auf der Suche nach Möglichkeiten, die mir helfen mein Potential auszuschöpfen, meine Ängste zu überwinden, meine Grenzen auszuloten und dazu beitragen, mich als Persönlichkeit weiterzuentwickeln. Das Studium an der Sun Yat-sen Universität und im Ausland ist nach meiner Meinung bestens dazu geeignet, all dies zu erreichen.

high-intensity productivity

Most people will probably agree, that scientific research is a more mind-intensive activity than other jobs and that a researcher has probably less productive time per day available than most other people, may they do physical work or clerical work.
Once we have admitted to ourselves that we can only give the best to our research for two or three or maybe four hours a day; and once we have admitted that all this aimless internet-browsing, and facebook-scourging for the rest of the day is indeed useless, but can not be replaced by just being hard against ourselves and forcing ourselves to do more work. Once we gained that insight, we can grow on it and ask: what other useful activity could we do to fill the remaining eight hours of day? What activity can give us energy to work on research the next day? What activity keeps us happy, does not leave us with bad feelings about not working on research and at the same time does not consume our mind so much that it distracts us from research?
I have found that even such a simple pass-time as sailing can distract too much from research work, when I start thinking of sailing moves during lone moments at night, instead of my work.
As grad students we are TAing, attending presentations, discussing our work and theirs with others, organizing things, ...
Isn't it a big part of the problem of productivity to schedule those activities so that they become a useful time-filler for the time that's non-productive in research?

PhD advice

Ravin Balakrishnan of our department gave a talk on "How to succeed in Grad School". I think he's a very good presenter and certainly knows what he's talking about.
For my memory, I am noting his most notable points:

1. Your supervisor is not there to supervise you, but rather to give you advice. Therefore he should be called "advisor". Every PhD student can only be responsible himself for what he is doing. (Ravin instantly convinced me of this and I am now using the term "advisor" exclusively.)
   
2. Publish only in first-rate conferences. Second-rate is just not worth it.
3. The "related work" section in your paper is to pay respect to those people who are most likely reviewing the paper. This is not a dirty trick, since there is too much citable related work out there anyway; you are just making a smart selection.
4. Choose a risky research area. If it does not have possibility of failure, it is more likely to be development than research.

I have tried to evaluate my own research project according to its risk and I find that there is actually a lot of risk because I am claiming that my method will be able to do something which many people say is just not possible. (Namely, I am claiming that the grind-work of formal proof which others say has to be done automatically can in fact be done by humans and not be utterly boring. I am claiming that this actually trains humans and helps them also formally prove other things which computers can not (yet) automatically prove.)
But I have to admit, that I would probably not have the courage to pursue this risky road, were there not a safety line: no matter how well my little proof tool will fare in research, I think that it has relatively safe chances to be useful as a teaching tool. That's why I can sleep well at night. And still dream about and hope for some modest success as a researcher.

relief!

Not entirely good news, but at least the removal of some long-lasting uncertainty. So it's at least something less to worry about during the Christmas holidays. Wonder what I am talking about?? Here's the long story.

I talked to the professor who has to decide whether I can waive some of the breadth requirements of the PhD program due to the courses that I already took back in good old Ilmenau. He instantly dismissed all of the math courses (you'll soon see why) as not being eligible and then we talked a lot about the algorithm courses that I wanted to use to waive my theory credit. The material that I had brought was not sufficient, so he kept asking questions which I couldn't answer to his satisfaction either. After all, I had already given him all the material that I had!

Finally it came down to one thing: he wanted to know how difficult the courses were! He said that a graduate course is only taken by the best of all the students who do undergrad courses and those students get much lower marks on the graduate course. Should I have told him that in Germany just the contrary is true? Obligatory courses filter students. Optional courses educate students. (Okay, this was largely exaggerated.)

Result of the meeting: I have to come up with some more supporting evidence that the courses are really hard enough. After all, the mark will go to my official transcript, so I understand that some caution must be taken. (Actually I have to ask whether the mark really goes to the transcript. Because if it doesn't, everything should be quite a bit easier to handle.)

So now why am I relieved nevertheless? There is still some really good news! Just after leaving that prof's office, I went the the grad office and the nice people there told me that my request for course reduction was granted in full extend! So I only have to take six courses overall for the PhD!

Well, it might happen that I still have to take more than six to cover all my breadth requirements. That's the pigeon hole principle reversed: how can I cover six areas with six courses if I am already taking two courses in each of my favourite areas?

So you see, some relief has taken place, but the race is still exciting. He, he.

why are there so few women in science?

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

I'll dare to leave this article almost uncommented, waiting for your comments. I am really interested how you like it. I have some thoughts of my own on the subject (which don't contradict Phil's article) and which I'll post at some later time here.

Die Bologna-Lüge und wie ich damit umgehe

Liebe Leser,

gemäß der Erklärung von Bologna werden alle europäischen Universitäten ihre Studienabschlüsse internationalen Standards anpassen, um Absolventen Auslandsstudien und Auslandsberufstätigkeiten zu erleichtern. Wir haben also Bachelor und Master. Allerdings dauern diese 3 und 2 Jahre. Während in Nord Amerika ein Bachelor allein schon 4 Jahre dauert. Allerdings manche auch 3 und andere 5. Wo ist da der Standard?

Als ich mich hier für die Promotion beworben habe, zählte mein guter deutscher Diplom-Ingenieur nur als Bachelor und ich musste mich für den Master nochmal einschreiben. Gerade versuche ich mir einige Studienleistungen für den Master anerkennen zu lassen und musste dabei meine Vorstellungen um einiges zurück stellen. Erst hatte ich auf eine Anerkennung von 80% der Vorlesungen gehofft, um dann zu erfahren, dass ich sowieso nur höchstens 40% anerkennen lassen kann und das die Ansprüche ziemlich hoch sind. Keine Vorlesung darf auf einen vorherigen Abschluss angerechnet sein. Wenn die Leute das ernst nehmen, bin ich mit meinem Diplom echt bestraft! Ich habe ja länger studiert als jemand mit einem Bachelor der University of Toronto (4 Jahre) und müsste dann trotzdem nochmal genauso viele Vorlesungen hoeren.

Bin mal gespannt, wie die Sache ausgeht. Ich werde jedenfalls dranbleiben, denn auch wenn viele Vorlesungen hier sehr gut sind, bin ich doch zum Forschen hier und nicht zum Studieren.

Soweit sogut,. Wir werden sehen, was für mich dabei heraus kommt.

the wicketh language

Dear audience,

for today's course, please read the paper Advice for Foreign Students Wishing to Pursue Graduate Study in Computer Science at UCSC by Jim Whitehead.

This paper is only the top of an iceberg, the big issue that I am thinking about. So let's just grab the main points:

• the department of computer science at UC Davis receives many hundred applications from foreign students each year (my remark: so does the University of Toronto and many other schools in North America)
• it is a lot of work to select students out of these masses and that's why students should write applications that make the selection fast and easy
• taking international students is more expensive for a professor and demands more advisory work and more reviews of the student's writings, but still the finished papers of international students are usually not as good as those of domestic students.
  

You might feel that I am misrepresenting these points, but if you read the paper you'll see that he actually repeats them in the paper, so it can't be too unimportant.

Now, an emotional reaction to the paper: If I am, as an international student, going to be an extra burden for my advisor, taking up his precious funding money and his scarce working time, but my work will be worse than other student's work anyway, why then should I go to that great foreign university at all?

Of course, I see that for many students in many countries, going to an international university is seen as a way to get them a degree that will assure them a well-paid job and a save future. And I think it is okay for him, to inform those people about his side of the equation and encourage them to be more responsible when doing their applications. But has he ever thought what impact his writing has on the average shy genius, that wants to go to an international school just because that's the best place to nourish his interests and his talent? Won't that poor shy guy be quite scared by reading such a statement?

Okay, this was the top of the iceberg. When you've finished thinking about it, come on and dive into the deep water.

Imagine you are an international student doing PdD research in a great international university. What do you think about the suggestion that your research will be worse on average than that of domestic students? How important do you think is language for research?

For my part, the researches that I admire most, are also Great Masters of their language. And in Computer Science that means: Great Masters of the English language. Several people come into my mind whose writings I adore for their clarity and also their imagination when it comes to including "real-life" analogies or even making word-plays on idiomatic expressions. And it's true: most of the people that I remember for doing this are native speakers of English. Although there is one exception that I cannot forget, one French engineer who became not only a Great Master of Computer Science, but also a Great Master of the English language. Perhaps the latter is easier for life-savouring perfectionists. Like Bertrand Meyer.

I just can't stop wondering how people like Bertrand or some of my friends who are foreigners in Germany can achieve such a mastery of the language, being better writers and better talkers than many native speakers, while others can spend years of the life in a foreign country and still have some problems with basic communication!

Well, I see that not everyone can be as talented for languages as a Bertrand Meyer and Pavol Kurina. And I know that some people just get frustrated at some point, being misunderstand so often they perhaps give up on improving their language? And if I tell them how important language is then they feel even more bad about themselves and rather want to ignore the subject.

Okay, I know that I can write a positive ending here, but not at this time of day. Thanks for reading up until here and please come back soon to read my optimistic outlook which I'll hopefully write until then.

Yours sincerely,
Jack the foreigner