I am still shaking my head over the idiots out there!
That type of schooling sounds like a nightmare!
When I started reading this, it was mainly because I
am in the Chicago area and was interested to hear
about programs other than the one I'm currently in...
I've been at DePaul University over a year now and
have never experienced most of what is described
below. I have, however, heard her story over and over
again.
I guess we should all dream that NO ONE ever has to
experience this!!
FWIW-I'm not entirely sure of the reputation of
DePaul's school of CTI (I chose it for convenience and
coursework offered) but I have not experienced
gender-bias as of yet. If a professor is going to be
a prick, he's a prick regardless... And the other
students are a mixed bag-fortunately, there is a broad
enough range that you can avoid the idiots, so to
speak. In fact, I've really only gotten to know one
female student-the rest of my contacts are with men,
who never seem (at least to me-but maybe I'm clueless
for not seeing something that could be there) to care
about gender-they just want to figure out the course
material just as I do.
In fact, before I started participating in this and
other newsgroups, I still wasn't aware of how few
women are actually in computing....hopefully the
schools will wise up and give students, regardless of
gender, what they pay for-an education!
My (probably more than) two cents...
Janet
--- "Jenny Brown (was Gable)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Apr 2000, Nicole Zimmerman wrote:
>
> >
>
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/04/11/girls.computer/index.html
> >
> > Apparently an AAUW (American Association of
> University Women) report
> > indicates that the way
> programming/computer-oriented courses are taught
> > is creating a major roadblock for women interested
> in computing to
> > actually go through the coursework. They also
> believe that violent video
> > games and programming classes that "focus too
> narrowly on hardware and
> > mechanics of information technology" are big
> bummers and push women
> > away.
>
>
> My experience with this... I started in the
> University of Illinois
> at Champaign-Urbana (UIUC), in Computer Engineering,
> switching to Computer
> Science; then transferred to Bradley University for
> a semester, before
> dropping out of college. I've programmed since I
> was 4 years old
> and always considered it my career, but discovered
> the the universities
> weren't meeting my needs.
>
> At UIUC, engineering courses were mathematically set
> up to fail over
> half of the class. (Flat C class average, always
> curved; and you had
> to have a B or B+ GPA to register for classes
> required for graduation.)
> No matter how well you did, you could still fail if
> others in the class
> did equally well. When I confronted the advisors and
> teachers about
> it, I got the stated response, "Yes we know we're
> failing 80% of
> the students. We do it on purpose to control how
> many we graduate, so
> pay rates for engineering fields stay high." (Not
> kidding.)
>
> On top of that, all the programming tasks were
> -boring-. Cars and
> traffic models, sports, meaningless data. No
> graphics. No gender-neutral
> assignments, really.
>
> There was a distinct lack of encouragement to do
> well. In fact, most
> teachers had the attitude of, "Well, if you're not
> good enough to do
> it by yourself, we're not going to bother to teach
> you, so you may as
> well drop out now instead of later." This really
> just floored me.
>
> The guys, for the most part, ignored the emotional
> atmosphere of the
> classroom. It didn't matter to them what the teacher
> -felt-; only the
> flat grade and assignments. The women got a
> self-esteem hit upon learning
> how the teachers felt, and had a tendency to believe
> the teachers ("I
> must not be any good, I'll quit now") and give up
> without working through
> the tough parts. Most of my engineering classes
> started the semester with
> 300-350 guys, 5-8 girls. They ended the semester
> with 2 girls (in the
> cases I remember, it was me, and one from Russia).
> We both had the
> attitude, "I can do it myself, I trust myself, I
> know I'm good enough
> to figure it out." Now, there may have been more
> women enrolled, who
> simply never attended lecture, and had other
> discussion sections. This
> was all I saw though.
>
> On top of all that... there was a nearly fanatical
> focus on algorithm
> development and backend systems, completely
> excluding project management,
> web programming, user interfaces, graphics, database
> front-ends... The
> actual practical stuff. Instead, they taught OS and
> compiler design...
> how to write a database... Essentially, how to
> rewrite all the commercial
> tools that are already out there for use... but not
> how to use them to
> do anything useful.
>
> So, after serious struggle, and realizing that the
> school wasn't educating
> me for the career I intended, I transferred. (Heck,
> I was paying them
> to fail me regardless of doing well... seems like a
> horrible money waste.)
>
> Bradley was better- they actually reviewed material.
> And taught. And
> supported their students. And it showed. The
> programming classes there
> were closer to 30-40% women, as opposed to the 1-5%
> I saw at UIUC.
> Bradley is much, much smaller, and has a relatively
> small engineering
> department. They are, however, quite out of date
> with regards to
> technology. They're teaching cobol, fortran...
> ancient database and
> filesystem stuff... Again, no perl, no java, no web
> programming, no
> cgi's, nothing modern and directly useful. No
> serious project
> management or anything. So, while their approach was
> much better, they
> still needed to get with the times.
>
> I eventually quit there when I learned that I could
> get trained on the job,
> and be paid to do it; and make a lot of money. And
> not dump money into
> a school that gave me a piece of paper that meant
> nothing to me. Now,
> granted, I had significant professional programming
> experience by that
> point, with part-time jobs; and a robust background
> (mostly self-taught)
> in computer science areas.
>
> Now I write online auction software that will get
> used internationally.
> It's a far cry from the "model this sports game"
> programming problems
> I was forced into in class. This stuff is actually
> interesting.
>
>
> > Personally, give me quake3 anyday over an RPG...
> and why shouldn't
> > programming courses focus on mecahnics of
> information technology? *how*
> > information moves and how to make it move is what
> computer science is,
> > is it not? Programming is just the eloquent moving
> of information from
> > one form to another... from something semi-useful
> to something useful.
>
> I think the issue for a lot of women isn't the
> mechanics of it... it's
> the encouragement to learn the details and really
> understand them...
> the atmosphere around them... The difference
> between, "Oh, those are
> just boy toys, ignore that fancy shmancy messy
> machine stuff" and
> "Look how fascinating this is, let's take it apart
> and look at how it
> works, and then figure out ways to make it do stuff
> we want." It's
> the difference between "This isn't impossible, and
> it's really neat
> to learn" vs "Oh, you're not that good, don't get
> proud, don't get
> a big head."
>
> I'm not sure if it's what the article meant, but...
> I hated the focus on
> backend systems and reinventing the wheel (and the
> database. and sorting
> methods. and operating systems. and compilers.)... I
> wanted to just
> take the tools available and -do- something with
> them. Not keep
> recreating them. I wanted to feel like I was
> accomplishing something,
> making something new, doing something special. Not
> just doing a shabby
> job of copying someone else's work.
>
>
> > information... if you didn't know about the
> hardware of your machine, I
> > doubt you could complete a CS degree.
>
> Yeah, well, UIUC was graduating CS seniors who
> couldn't send an attachment
> to their email, let alone explain to someone how a
> microprocessor works
>
=== message truncated ===
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