What's college like these days?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Oh, my school changes books every year, and even every prof (the prof teaching in the fall might like one book, while the prof teaching the same course in the winter may prefer another).

The point is,* it doesn’t matter whatsoever*, unless of course you were subject to mandatory bookcase inspections and/or had a gun to your head.

Edition 18 (150$) of a book won’t be different from Edition 17 (100), not by any extent that will affect your education, and I'd wager that for most undergrad courses, Edition 1 (2.99 on Amazon marketplace) would suffice. Anything missing can be found via Google, because so many schools have on-line material anyways, and every undergrad school on the continent teaches the same damn stuff. Heck, a completely different book by a different author on the same topic will do. Your prof wants Adams for Calculus, and you own Stewart? Doesn’t matter. Riemann sums haven’t changed in hundreds of years, derivatives and integrals still follow the same damn rules, and both books cover hypervolumes. I used Hibbler for statics when my prof taught out of Beer - didn’t matter. Half my biochem classes used Stryer, the others used Lehninger…I think you can guess; it didn’t matter. In fact, you might have the advantage, because a lot of profs copy certain things word-for-word out of textbooks, and having a different book allows you to read the same thing in different words, and therefore understand it better.

Have the confidence in your own ability to learn, in your ability to navigate a Table of Contents and/or Index, and “stick it to the man” by saving hundreds of dollars a year that are much better served in paying for rent/food/clothes/beer/messageboad subscriptions/whatever.

I think some of this could apply to non-science/engineering also. You might have to be careful in the case of translations, but Shakespeare, Dickens, Wells…a whole bunch of stories and books are available for free via things like Project Gutenberg. There’s no point buying a book for even 10$ when you can get it for free.

22

There is commercial software available that the professor can use to scan a student’s submission, and the software then compares the word groups used by the student with word groups used in published material. Significant matches are reported to the Prof…

23

One thing that computers have changed is that some of us can go to college without ever actually showing up. I am a full-time college student that attends on-line classes only.

24

I graduated with my Bachelors in 1990 (in the UK), my JD in 2005 (in the US). As an undergrad, I typed nothing. All my exams were handwritten - those who had to submit extended papers or theses did type them, or pay others to type them (though that was becoming much rarer by then). My college had around 320 undergrads, and I don’t remember anyone having a computer in their room, though we had a computer room with I think 12 workstations in it. Certainly no one had a computer in the lecture hall (though I cannot say I was there often).

Fast forward to 2002, and I was one of 6 people in my 1-L class to write exams by hand (out of 220). Everyone took notes on lap tops (except me, and even I cracked by the middle of the second year). The biggest difference was the internet and email and things of that ilk. No more communication by notes on message boards.

25

My school only had one bookstore, so when you got to Sophomore year, you realized that buying used is fine, but buying online is flippin’ awesome. I’d get books (yay for English majors) for pennies on the dollar of what the bookstore was charging.

26

It’s very prevalent, and also very easy to catch, since plagiarists, as a rule, are both dumb and lazy. In nine years, I’ve had exactly ONE case where I was sure a student had plagiarized but couldn’t find the original source. Every other case I’ve seen has been a cinch to prove using Google.

One of my favorites involved a student who swore up and down that she had a file-sharing program installed on her computer and that it had somehow uploaded her essay to half a dozen papers-for-purchase sites without her knowledge. Too bad the oldest version in the Google cache dated back to before the class had started :rolleyes:

Another one submitted an electronic copy of “her” paper with the hyperlinks still in it.

Almost the only type of Internet-facilitated plagiarism that isn’t easy to spot is the custom-written essay, and I’m sure there were people willing to write papers for cash thirty years ago, too – it was just a little more difficult to find them.

27

I find between six and ten plagiarized essays every semester. It’s pretty obvious, since, as you pointed out, the culprits are dumb and lazy. They copy and paste entire chunks of test from various sites even after I spend a lot of time telling them not to do it. Or they try to change every 3rd or 4th word, but the substitutions they come up with make no sense, and I can still catch the rest of it online. I should mention that this is done almost entirely by Asian international students, many of whom are trying to get through a composition class that they’re not yet ready for.
I make copies of everything and send a report to the appropriate office; the office sends a letter to the student and says he/she must come in to discuss the incident. In the interim, a hold is placed on their records and they cannot transact any business, like adding or dropping. They end up in a workshop (like traffic school) for the first offense. If they ever do it again, they get booted out of the college for year. This has actually happened to two of my former students.

RE Laptops: only a few people bring them, and only at the end of the semester when they are working on research papers.

I have noticed a definite increase (over the past 19 years) in obnoxious, juvenile, rude behavior that I’d expect if I were teaching third-grade brats. If they get too disruptive, they are warned. If they continue, they can get booted out for two meetings and reported. Various consequences can ensue. I haven’t actually had to resort to this yet, but I have made threats.

I’ve also seen a real decline in reading comprehension and writing skills in general. I also work in assessment and have been placing more students in remedial classes than ever before; I started assessing five years ago.

28

Both my kids – one in high school, the other in college – are required to submit papers to turnitin.com, an online service set up to catch plagiarism.

29

:smack:
I don’t know why I didn’t even think of that, but this probably best demonstrates how much things have changed.

I got a good chunk of my first two years done over the internet (from a local JC) while working full time. Not that I recommend it, but it helps poor working stiffs like me. I still average about one class online per semester. When it is all said and done, I’ll probably have around 1/3 of my total college credits obtained from not even walking into a classroom!

30

The internet made some pretty big changes. I got my undergraduate in 2008 and I’ll be going to graduate school starting this fall.

#1. Access to many newspapers and peer reviewed journals.

#2. WorldCat & Iliad (inter-library loan) meant that I could get almost any book I needed for my research. In some cases rare books from across the country.

#3. Professors used WebCT to put pdfs of required reading. No need to go to the library to look at them.

I majored in history and minored in anthropology so I typically didn’t use graphs in my papers. I did make a history presentation in power point and created multiple graphs to demonstrate my point. In one of my anthropology classes I added some pictures I took to the paper. However, this was an informal paper.

The Chicago Manual Style is what we used in history and there are ways to cite websites, emails, television, movies, etc.

In my experience most of them knew how to use email but for a few of them that was about the extent. How extensive professors make use of things like WebCT or other online resources varies. In one of my classes I was required to write a review of a website that had something to do with history. I can’t remember which site I picked.

Odesio

31

If it makes a difference:
Undergrad degree in '99, law degree in '04.

In undergrad, you could tell a B-school student because of the laptop – no one else carried them.

In law school, laptops were just about everywhere, and not having one in class was the anomaly.

A question I haven’t seen yet (with apologies if I overlooked it): what are computer labs like? They used to be huge rooms packed with students. With the growth in computer reach and drop in price, I’d assume that they are much less frequented. Not wholly abandoned, but the demand must be smaller. Have they shrunk in size? What are they like?

32

There are still plenty of computer labs, at least at my school, and I get the feeling the particular rooms I’m familiar with have always been computer labs, so they haven’t changed that much, I think. Many are set up with one computer with a projector link, so that a prof or TA can show on-screen how to do something during tutorials that may be in the lab (the Design Graphics/CAD course I took had tutorials like this) but for the most part, the computer labs are first-come, first-served. The ones I’ve been to are reserved for Engineering students, and are open during regular hours, but the building and labs are also accessible on weekends and at night by using our student ID cards, which double as proximity pass-cards.

The computers are all fairly recent models with wide-screen monitors and up-to-date software (WinXP, Office 2007, AutoCAD 2008, etc…). I like them because of the wide-screens…certain Excel files I’ve had to work with were just unweildy on a 10" EeePC screen, and it’s better for CAD stuff. We all have a certain amount of harddrive/server space so we can save files each semester - in my 2 years on-campus, nothing’s been deleted by the school, so as long as I’m a student, I guess that harddrive space is mine.

Individual faculties seem to have their computer pools, rather than having school-run computer rooms. I know the Science faculty students get 1000 pages of free printing, but their semester computer fee is a bit higher than ours (I think ours is 90$ a year or something like that). The Science computer people have made a dozen or so computers available “to anyone” in some hallways, though with restricted access, so that people can at least check their email while at school. These are 20-minute max use, or something.

Generally, the computer rooms are packed, since they are sometimes more useful computers than laptops, or people just prefer them for whatever reason. There are a lot of students who stilll don’t own laptops, and even the odd student without a home computer (one classmate last year didn’t have internet at home). Some students just seem to love hanging out in there and watching YouTube videos, generally annoying everyone else (there is one particular group in one lab… I’m not sure what language they are speaking, but it’s a harsh sounding one, and they are always talking in loud, animated voices about whatever. They get offended and call you racist if you ask them to keep it down).

The Computer Engineering computer pool is used in the evenings/weekend for LAN/WOW parties. I have no interest in knowing more about that.

33

What about classes that assigned problems from the books? I know in math, chemistry, and physics classes we were assigned problems from the back of the chapters for homework to be turned in, and there can be issues with your homework if they changed the problems from year to year. I ran into something like this once - I bought the solution manuals for some of my classes so I could see the problems worked out. It helped a lot to see them worked out when I was struggling, and no it wasn’t cheating. The profs were well aware of these manuals, and most solution manuals only had solutions for the even-numbered problems, so the profs would then only assign odd-numbered problems. I bought one solution manual used and the problem numbers weren’t matching up (my problem 13 is different!) then I realized it was from a different edition.

(My school allowed us to rent textbooks for $60/semester, so I didn’t have to buy, thankfully).

34

It’s happened only once that I had problems to turn in directly from the back of the book, and I had a different edition, so I just photocopied the dozen or so question pages in the library. I figured 2$ or less and a half hour of photocopying still justifies the massive savings on the book itself.

As for homework questions for learning and not to hand in, well, once agan, I figure it doesn’t matter if I have to take the integral of 3x-6/x or of 4x-8/x. Most of the time, the questions are nearly identical, with just different numbers tossed in, so as long as you can do the work on that type of question, it really doesn’t matter if it’s slightly different.

I never used student solution manuals, though I agree that for a lot of students, they are useful. In that case, just make sure they match up to the book you actually own, and do the questions in your ediition on the topic and forget about the question numbers. Either you understand the material, or you don’t, and matching question numbers won’t really change that.

35

I did some freelance writing about 25-30 years ago. I’d end up doing a lot of it in my career, but at the time, I was pretty much fresh out of school. Anyway, back then, I was offered a job by a custom essay-writing place. I went so far as to talk to the people, but I didn’t take the job. I balked because of the ethical issues, and also because of the pay. A custom-written essay cost the student buying it dearly, but the writer didn’t see much of that money. I could make more on other jobs that didn’t offend my ethics, so I took those instead.

36

Meh. I managed to not show up to plenty of classes and I never had a laptop.:smiley:

37

You’ll soon see more computers in class regardless. The batteries are getting much better; a nine cell Li-ion battery can run the computer for four or five hours.

I wasn’t a science or engineering major, but I remember seeing them trudging around campus weighted down by their copies of the massive CRC*. I’m now an online student at CSUF and see that the library makes CRC available online–so, which is better, the laptop that can do anything and everything and includes access to the CRC, or just the CRC?

*A massive hardbound book of engineering and physics equations, constants, integral/log tables, etc. CRC is Chemical Rubber Company which publishes it.

38

Just for a comparison point:

I graduated from HS in 78 and law school in 86.

In HS, I recall there was one room called “The Computer Lab”, but I never set foot in it.

As an undergrad I took a computer science class in which I wrote programs in Fortran using punch cards.

I touched my first PC outside of school computer labs sometime in 85-86, when my buddy let me write a couple of law school papers at his apartment.
When I left law school, they were just installing a computer room in the basement - I believe mainly for students to use in job searches.
The law school library had 2 dedicated terminals paid for by the local bar, on which you could perform Lexis and Westlaw searches.
Library holdings were recorded in card catalogs.

It really astounds me how quickly this technology has become so prevalent.
And, at least on good days, I don’t feel like a complete fossil! :stuck_out_tongue:

39

One difference that I’ve noticed among my (former) students is how many study abroad for a semester–it’s gone from something exotic to something almost expected in some circles. This has happened in the last ten years or so.