Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Go, Lubos, Go!
The "Reference Frame" has its best posting yet: http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/10/curricular-anti-academic-coup.html
Wow. I really do not want to see Harvard adopt this. Check out the proposed "core curriculum" and you'll understand.
I couldn't imagine Harvard with a core like this. The one at Columbia is ridiculous enough, but this one is even worse. First of all, why is there just ONE physical science course? Even a math course isn't required! Students at arguably (if you're insane enough to argue) the most elite university in the world aren't even required to take calculus? Or physics (physical science could be chemistry or geology instead)? What kind of "elite" university would Harvard become?
Here are the requirements of some of the TECHNOLOGICAL universities:
RPI requires a year of calculus (of some variety.) There's the standard Calc 1 and 2 sequence, and there's the Calc for Management/HSS with Contemporary Math Ideas sequence. If you're an engineer, you have to take diff eq (unless you're an EE, in which case you need multivariable). If you're a physics major, you take diff eq, multivariable, and advanced calc (I'm in advanced calc right now). I'm not sure what the science requirements are for all the majors, but everyone has to take a good amount of science...
MIT requires 8.01 and 8.02, which have the famous video lectures that I loved to watch in Physics C in high school. They also require 18.01 and 18.02 (or calculus with theory). They manage to compress single-variable calculus in one semester; Cornell's engineering program does the same.
Caltech requires FIVE quarters of math (single-variable calc, linear algebra, multivariable, diff eq, and probability) and FIVE of physics, in addition to biology and chemistry. For every student.
Harvard may have lost its "elite" status...
Now for good news: the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded yesterday to TWO physicists who worked on projects measuring the anisotropy of the CMBR.
Congratulations. ¶ 8:06 PM
Wow. I really do not want to see Harvard adopt this. Check out the proposed "core curriculum" and you'll understand.
I couldn't imagine Harvard with a core like this. The one at Columbia is ridiculous enough, but this one is even worse. First of all, why is there just ONE physical science course? Even a math course isn't required! Students at arguably (if you're insane enough to argue) the most elite university in the world aren't even required to take calculus? Or physics (physical science could be chemistry or geology instead)? What kind of "elite" university would Harvard become?
Here are the requirements of some of the TECHNOLOGICAL universities:
RPI requires a year of calculus (of some variety.) There's the standard Calc 1 and 2 sequence, and there's the Calc for Management/HSS with Contemporary Math Ideas sequence. If you're an engineer, you have to take diff eq (unless you're an EE, in which case you need multivariable). If you're a physics major, you take diff eq, multivariable, and advanced calc (I'm in advanced calc right now). I'm not sure what the science requirements are for all the majors, but everyone has to take a good amount of science...
MIT requires 8.01 and 8.02, which have the famous video lectures that I loved to watch in Physics C in high school. They also require 18.01 and 18.02 (or calculus with theory). They manage to compress single-variable calculus in one semester; Cornell's engineering program does the same.
Caltech requires FIVE quarters of math (single-variable calc, linear algebra, multivariable, diff eq, and probability) and FIVE of physics, in addition to biology and chemistry. For every student.
Harvard may have lost its "elite" status...
Now for good news: the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded yesterday to TWO physicists who worked on projects measuring the anisotropy of the CMBR.
Congratulations. ¶ 8:06 PM
