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From: usenet@ucbvax.ARPA (USENET News Administration)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: Under rewarded projects (grades)
Message-ID: <10489@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 29-Sep-85 02:50:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10489
Posted: Sun Sep 29 02:50:11 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 30-Sep-85 01:28:35 EDT
References: <133@mck-csc.UUCP>
Reply-To: tedrick@ucbernie.UUCP (Tom Tedrick)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 19

> [ ... much deleted ... ] The implementation of the final project
>tended to take ~100+ hours per person over 3 weeks. This was the
>most rewarding part of the course - working in a team to get
>something accomplished, and yet it just wasn't worth it because of
>the disasterous effects if had on all the other courses you were
>taking.  Isn't this a little wrong.  A 3 hour exam should not count
>more than 100 hours of difficult work.  [ ... more deleted ... ]

Things like that happen here also. I think that one of the reasons
it happens is that so many students are so desperate to get into
CS that they will put up with this kind of thing. It could 
be looked at as part of the "push 'em to the limit" philosophy
that appears in various places ( i.e. some graduate schools,
basic training in the army, exploitive economic systems ...)
I think the underlying principle is that if there is some
"carrot" or "stick" the powers that be have to offer, a
system can be set up whereby the underlings compete with each
other to get the carrot or avoid the stick, and by competing
push their limits more than they would do normally ...


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