Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Free tuition at US public Universities?

Well, I won't grant that at all. Not unless you didn't know from the outset just WHETHER it was possible to achieve this outcome, or how precisely to go about the attempt. Neither of those things seems to have been the case. LHC is another example-- that isn't really a "research" thing, at least the construction itself is not, because the method and protocol is pretty well-defined to start with. If I build the world's LARGEST reflector telescope, is that "research?" Not really, unless I'm using some untested/new idea or material in its construction. It's merely "D" not R &D at that point otherwise.


And to add to the notion that communication and "soft" skills matter,

See what Neil deGrasse Tyson has to say about how important this is.

One can argue that he's more educator than scientist, but I doubt that one can dismiss what he is saying there. Science influences public policy-- er, or it should, at any rate. When it doesn't, in the modern age, we are in a lot of trouble, since those without a good grasp of scientific literacy are the ones deciding what makes it into school curricula, what message the CDC is allowed to promote for public health, and the scope of the FDA, DEA, and USDA missions. That seems fairly important.

Precisely. This also cuts both directions-- to earn a B.A. degree in the humanities requires science coursework, too.

Many years ago, Morgan Stanley was looking at super computer power and I was working with them when they thought about using Cray. It was soon after that Cray got bought and left MN. Interesting story on Cray. There were many different solutions being introduced to super computing and continues to this day. There is a conference on these issues every year out west and the biggest names in CIOs that attend are the ones that sounded the alarm to me. It was one of these that heads up the IT at one of the biggest global manufacturing firms in the world, yes US, that said the US is losing. But perhaps you know better. I admit to heresay, I am not longer in the midst of it.

"Losing" what exactly?

The race to...uh...computational utopia?

If I recall correctly, the technical writing course I took was in the school of engineering, not the arts. If you mean to imply that a liberal arts education has a monopoly on teaching effective communication, I think you're mistaken.

I don't mean to imply any such thing.

However, there's a difference in quality. One person can attend a fine culinary institute, and another can attend Burger U, and both can say with 100% truth, "I learned to cook." Yet they're not really saying the same thing.

Funny my son loves to cook. It is a pity that schools don't better cater to multi-faceted interests. If he could choose his college path now, I believe he'd have a math major with culinary science, computer science, and fiction minors. Maybe colleges could have plans to teach "backup skills" for majors with more complicated prospects. Like a Drama & Hospitality.

Well, food science IS a real thing at STEM-oriented schools. Nebraska has an enormous (and very prestigious) program in this area.

I mentioned earlier that I took a lot of humanities courses as an undergrad. Looking back on those years, I estimate that I wrote at least 400 typed pages as part of my coursework. This total does NOT include the lab reports I wrote for my science minor. In later years, all that practice meant that writing my M.Sc. and Ph.D. theses was fun and easy.

I understand that a tech writing course can teach some important skills, but it simply won't teach a person how to write the way it's learned by writing a hundred or more essays. The latter approach teaches how to analyze an argument, how to craft a counter-argument, how to make your main points, and how to put it all in order. The English professors at my (liberal arts) college tore our papers apart and made us keep rewriting them until they were good. They picked on everything: grammar, spelling, style, you name it.

I've worked as a tech writer. I get paid a lot because I'm very, very good and because I can get the job done very quickly. None of the other writers I've worked with seem to have as solid a grasp of writing as I do (which was presumably why they earned half what I did). These people are intelligent people, but they just don't have the mental discipline that I've developed in this area. Obviously, I can't say why, but on my end, I know that my education was a major contributor to my current skill level.

I'm not saying that everyone should write a hundred essays (20-25 might be good). But I do think that the gen. ed. courses offered today are often too heavy on multiple choice tests and too light on rigorous evaluation of each student's essays.

This criticism may also be readily applied to today's Gen Ed courses in STEM, for that matter-- too little analytical problem-solving, and too much memorizing.