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From: jeff@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: British system (was Student and Course Integrity)
Message-ID: <424@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 24 Dec 88 21:27:46 GMT
References: <1131@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> <1887@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <1057@l.cc.purdue.edu> <12483@bellcore.bellcore.com> <18107@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: jeff@uk.ac.ed.aipna.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: Dept. of AI, Edinburgh, UK
Lines: 29

In article <18107@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> c60a-2di@e260-4b.berkeley.edu (The Cybermat Rider) writes:
>In Singapore, [...]  (It has been said that engineering students had better
>aim for AT LEAST A MASTER'S DEGREE in order to be assured of a good job

I wonder if this is true in the UK.  I seem to know a lot of people
who don't think there's much point in getting a master's or PhD except
to satisfy some personal interest in the subject.

>But it's not true in the British system.  Demonstrated proofs are used as
>EXAMPLES of general problem-solving techniques, and a student can be at
>least 95% sure that the problems presented will NOT appear in the exams in
>any immediately recognizable form.

In my experience, that is not quite true.  In the US (where I was
educated), I could be pretty sure that demonstrated proofs would
not appear as exam questions; and here I have seen exam questions
that were based very strongly on assigned exercises.  I have also
seen UK students asking what things would be on the exam, etc.

>We do it on a larger scale - students are provided at the outset with a
>DETAILED SYLLABUS (common to all institutions within the British
>Commonwealth), so we are able to do a LOT of self-study, the better ones
>even MOVING BEYOND the guidelines provided.

Is this true at University level?  I have not seen anything like it.

I'm not trying to attack the "British system", which does have advantages
over what happens in the US, just to question some generalizations that
seem, to me, somewhat inaccurate.