College

[trust]

It was required because I was in the International Baccalaureate program.

The one perk of going to a crappy, poor school.

The school gets a ton of grant money for having the program. Out of all of the schools in the city (public anyway) ours is easily the one with the most funding, newest technology, etc.

[d&q]

Yeah but schools like mine waste it on stupid shit; today, they invited the radio station "102 JAMZ" to play rap music all day long. My teacher was pissed because evidently, it cost a shitload of money. They still haven't fixed the cable in our school, nor the air conditioning in many buildings, or the projectors in some classrooms. 

[Sidoh]

Well they aren't called just 'credits' (that's something else entirely), even though that's what everyone calls them.  Anyway, I know it is, as my schedule is 25 hours of class plus tutoring, even though I only have 20.5 registered "credit hours".  So eh?  And that's not including my commuting and all my extra work and homework, as well as my chem review classes.

The homework that you pay your friend to do?

My point is that Economics and a History class are (roughly) an equivalent number of credit hours as a Physics course, but the Physics course is nearly inherently more work.  The number of hours you're in a classroom a week doesn't accurately suggest the amount of time you spend studying or working on the subject outside of the classroom.

[Chavo]

I don't know about your university, but mine tends to require more classtime (in some shape or form) for those harder classes.  In your example, nearly all History and Econ classes are 3 hours, while nearly all physics classes are 4 or 5 hours and require a studio enrollment (2 hours, twice a week).  The lower level ones anyway, I haven't looked at the curriculum for higher level classes of any branch other than my own.  I still spend more time outside of class on the classes that have more credit hours.  The only exception I have had to that are my Math classes where they try to fix the problem of foreign professors by making you attend a recitation taught by a foreign TA 

[Sidoh]

I don't know about your university, but mine tends to require more classtime (in some shape or form) for those harder classes.  In your example, nearly all History and Econ classes are 3 hours, while nearly all physics classes are 4 or 5 hours and require a studio enrollment (2 hours, twice a week).  The lower level ones anyway, I haven't looked at the curriculum for higher level classes of any branch other than my own.  I still spend more time outside of class on the classes that have more credit hours.  The only exception I have had to that are my Math classes where they try to fix the problem of foreign professors by making you attend a recitation taught by a foreign TA 

That's what I'm saying.  You spend the same amount of time in a classroom in two ordinary Economics and History classes as you do in an ordinary introductory Physics course, but the Physics course is more work, more time and more effort.

[Chavo]

right, but you were saying that the credit hours wouldn't reflect that whereas I was pointing out that in my experience they generally have

[Sidoh]

right, but you were saying that the credit hours wouldn't reflect that whereas I was pointing out that in my experience they generally have

I still don't think you see what I'm saying.

History and Econ are a total of 6 hours, but you spend much less time doing homework and studying than you do with a standard Physics course, which is 5 hours.

[Chavo]

I wouldn't say that. I spend twice as much time in the classroom for Physics as I have for any Econ or History class and I probably spend about twice as much time outside of class too to get an A.  If I was aiming for  C in both, that would definately not hold true.  It really depends more on the teacher than the difficulty of the material though.  Physics classes are just more predictable as far as workload goes

[Sidoh]

I wouldn't say that. I spend twice as much time in the classroom for Physics as I have for any Econ or History class and I probably spend about twice as much time outside of class too to get an A.  If I was aiming for  C in both, that would definately not hold true.  It really depends more on the teacher than the difficulty of the material though.  Physics classes are just more predictable as far as workload goes

No, not "Econ or History," "Econ and History."  Combined, they're 6 credit hours (actually, more here, I think) and Physics is 6.  Physics is more work than the two combined.

[Chavo]

And I'm disagreeing

[Sidoh]

And I'm disagreeing

Your physics courses suck.

By the way, I'm in 6 credit hours of CS classes, but my physics course (5 hours) is definitely more work than both of them combined.  I don't suspect this to be the case for future CS classes, but that was my point.  Credit hours are a bad measure of how much work you actually have to do.

[Chavo]

consulting ratemyproffesors.com ftw

[Sidoh]

I was joking about your physics courses sucking.  They're definitely different if history and economics are more work than physics, though.

I don't think quality of the professor should necessarily dictate the quality of the course.  I spend about 80% of the time with the work associated with my Physics course away from the lecture professor.  He doesn't even have an overruling voice when creating the curriculum.

That aside, the professors that I have for Physics have two votes... I don't see how that's much of an objective measure of course quality.

[Chavo]

yea, its a little more popular than that at my university and has actual reviews

I find the difference between an A and a B in any given class for me is whether the teacher is good or not.

[Sidoh]

Really?  It's dependent on the subject for me.  If it's interesting (even if the teacher is bad), I usually do pretty well.  I don't have a particularly extraordinary professor or TA (I don't really "like" any of them -- not that I have anything against them) for my Physics course, but I enjoy the subject.