Higher (Mis)Education Part III

Following Higher (Mis)Education Part II ....

Brandenburg Technical University

Since I had not done well in the pre-university math review at BTU, I decided to sit in on lectures in mathematics at BTU and to hire a private tutor to help me with the material.  I was also simultaneously signed up as a student in Urban Design, so I was taking those classes as well. Since then, I have attended some lectures at the Technical University of Dortmund in the department of Spatial Planning, since we now live in the Ruhr area.

These experiences really formed the foundation of my opinion about higher education in Germany.  I also talked to professors, teaching assistants and gathered stories about university experiences from my German friends and from Lars, my partner. 

The math course I sat in on was Math for Business Majors, more or less.  It was supposed to be easier than the courses the engineering or physics students would take, so I figured it was my best shot.  I went to the lectures every week and sat in on the course lab as well.  So, altogether, I had the real experience of taking the class and I can honestly compare this course with a typical American university math course.

The first difference I noticed is that all lectures consist of hundreds of students.  There is no syllabus and no course textbook.  There are no course hand-outs online or elsewhere. There are no weekly practice problems either, actually.  The professor simply recommends some theoretical books on the topic at the beginning of the course.  Every week, the professor just plans his lecture, gives it and that was that.  The university bookstore doesn't necessarily offer the books that the professor recommends, but the library usually holds the books in the reference section.  However, the professor doesn't have to tell you what part of what books are relevant or when they are relevant; that would be up to you, the student, to figure out. 

In one of my classes (Urban Design), I actually approached the tutor once and asked him where I could read about the topics we were learning that week.  I explained that, as a non-native German speaker (duh), it was really hard for me to understand everything in the lectures and that I would understand more if I could read about the material as well.   He said that all the recommended books should be in the course section at the library (no reference to which book or what section).  I went to the library and looked and looked.  I even had the librarian help me find the reference section for my course.

Guess what?  It didn't exist.  There were no books on hold for my course.  (Scheiße!)  So, there was nothing I could do except try to become an oral learner. 

At a German university, courses usually have labs so that you can "apply" the knowledge you (orally) learned at the lecture.  Sounds like a good system, except that it's not true.  The problem with the labs I went to was that the the things we worked on were not at all related to what was taught in the lecture.  So, maybe those two groups didn't really interact very much.  Maybe those teaching assistants just really had no idea what we were learning in the lecture. 

For those of you who didn't happen to study at an American university, let me fill you in on what it is like there.  (I really am just trying to be objective, for now.)

At an American university, every course has a syllabus with a reading list.  It informs the student about the grading scale and exactly what is expected from the student in order to get a good grade (See Noten as a footnote below).  Also, the reading list is pretty much required and you can buy the books new or used at the university bookstore or at local used bookstores under the course name.  You can buy the books online even, because there are so many books around.  You can really get organized and buy your books way out in advance, say from Singapore, for a good deal.

I'm not going to deny it, course books are super expensive.  And usually they pay homage in some way to the professor of the course.   Like, really?  Is it legal to require that your own students buy your own book?  On the other hand, why would you not recommend your own book? 

Coursebooks  are also way more expensive than a regular book at a book store.  But then again, so is a college education, which you could also basically get just by reading books at the library.  The university helps the student by giving him/her an organization of the material and by telling the student what and how to study.  If you don't get that, what are you paying for? (I assume that is what Americans think, and I certainly think so, but more on that later in the next post.)

Lots of homework assignments are assigned and graded and there are usually two big exams per course and lots of minor tests.  The student's class participation has actual weight; I mean, the student has to comment and participate in the class discussion for a "participation grade."  This means that if the student doesn't ask a question or comment at all in class, he will get a 0 or a negative grade for participation, and this will affect his overall course grade.

Because course books are assigned, courses are typically organized in a way that follows the sequence of topics introduced in the book.  That way, the professor, the assistants and the students can maximize their time in teaching or learning.  Also, these textbooks tend to be sold by big-time publishers with a team of educational and marketing professionals who constantly evaluate which books are the best sellers and apply the latest theories in education in their books.  The books usually comes with a media disc (cd/dvd) and with on-page referrals to the book's online website, where the student can find more non-textbook resources.

Most importantly, the quality of education among American universities is regarded as better if there is a low student to faculty ratio.  Columbia University, for example, prides itself on having a 6 to 1 student to faculty ratio, and in the physical science department, it's gets as low as 2 to 1.

Private universities justify their higher prices on this educational belief that smaller lectures mean better education.  Why pride yourself on large lecture halls?  The research supports this principle for quality education.  "An experiment at the State University of New York at Stony Brook found that students did significantly better in classes limited to 35 students than in large classes with 150 to 200 students.  For a calculus course, failure rates were 19% for the small classes compared to 50% for the large classes.  The percentages of A's were 24% for the small classes and 3% for the large classes.  These results suggest that students benefit from smaller classes, which allow for more direct interaction between students and teacher," reports a margin article in the textbook Essentials of Statistics Fouth Edition by Mario F. Triola.


All the Americans are going, yeah, yeah, of course! That's normal.
 

Actual, it's not so normal in many countries. (How many other countries teach using the aforementioned methods?)
TO BE CONTINUED in Part IV of Higher (Mis)Education

Footnote on "Noten"

Grades or "Noten" in Germany are different in the US.  They have a number system instead of a letter system.  The letter 1 is best, then comes 2, 3, 4,5, and 6.  Basically, a 1 is about 92% correct or better.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with American "grades," a letter grade can be an A, B, C, D or F.  A letter grade of an A is about a 1 in the German system.  There is no E grade.   The grade of A typically means that the student got 90% correct on an assignment or test, or did work about a qualitative nature equivalent to the best.  So, Americans like to say, "You get an A!" which means that you are awesome, or you had less than a 10% error rate in this class.  Obviously, not all work can be quantified, so grades are flexible in this way.  A letter grade can equate to qualitative or quantitative success.