I like characterizing it as a bottleneck, although I think another core problem is that we let people talk about it as if the purpose of the class is to show people that they CANNOT succeed in the major, when much more often what it's showing people is that they MUST WORK HARDER to succeed in the major. And some people respond to that by pushing through the bottleneck, and some people respond to that by moving to a degree program that doesn't include the bottleneck.
But telling someone "it's OK if you don't want to work that hard, you can pick a major that is better suited to you" comes across a lot better than "I don't think you're cut out for this."
(And I should point out that you did a great job of avoiding that language in this article! I appreciate that, I just wish people would call it out more often when it happens.)
One way to look at these, if you can get the data, might simply be DFW rates. At my university the only two "weed-out" courses in History are the two halves of the survey -- beyond that, we have distribution requirements for geography/time period, but we do not have an especially structured major beyond that. My experience is that relatively few students get actual Fs in my surveys, and only a few more get D's. But I have a number of students who simply stop showing up or never show up or only show up form one or two classes and then don't drop properly. I used to give those people a W, because I did not want to give them an F that wasn't really an F. That option is foreclosed in our latest grading input system. Whether that weeds them out because they never end up finishing (the two surveys are also a gen ed requirement for all students) is another x factor, and one that probably does not happen as much at an elite SLAC than at a state master's comprehensive.
Coming from aerospace engineering, our big weedout course is statics. Which, on the face of it, is very simple. It's just F = ma, and a = 0, usually in 2 dimensions. To be fair, there's also moment, with rotational acceleration = 0, usually in 1 dimension. Students come into it having already taken Newtonian physics (with calculus), so it's not anything that should be beyond them, mathematically. But it is the first "real" class in the engineering college, with the workload calibrated to what you'll be doing in future classes, and expectations for thorough documentation of solutions, and maybe requiring a bit more ability to visualize and idealize than previous classes. And people often just hit a wall with it. I remember the first day of class, my prof announced, "I think you'll like this class. Some of you will like it so much, you'll take it five times!" So in a sense, yes, it's a weedout class because everyone in the major takes it, but it's also a weedout class because it's deliberately designed to be challenging and weed people out that aren't going to be able to hack it in the ever more demanding engineering curriculum.
I would tend to steer away from the "not able to hack it" phrasing, and cast it more as a matter of a matter of preferences: it's a class that makes people realize that they do not, in fact, enjoy doing what's required to progress beyond that point enough for it to be worth the effort. Which is also the case for organic chemistry (as I said to someone on ex-Twitter just a bit ago, I know just enough about orgo to know that I would hate it), and also any class introducing (some kinds of) critical theory in art or literature.
That's probably the case for some students, although from what I remember of my experience, there were a fair number of students who wanted it, and just could not figure out what it took to get through it, before they could even begin to consider whether that would be worth the effort (the ones who liked it so much, they took it five times). I've never taught, though, so my viewpoint on it is limited. In any case, I don't mean it as a negative judgement, although I can see that it may come across that way.
As you say - one factor is, does the teacher/do the teachers enjoy a bit too much being a bottleneck? If they delight in their bottleneck function, it will automatically start feeling like a weed-out class...
French maths/sciences classes are often run by people who delight in crushing students, with the mentality that "well, if you're not strong enough to survive this, who needs you here?"
Yeah, there are people who relish the weedout aspect a little too much. But the set of bottleneck courses in STEM majors is pretty consistent across types of institutions, regardless of who teaches them and how, so I don't think it's JUST that.
Oh, it serves a purpose, sure. And obviously it depends on how elite you want your student body to be.
But I kinda think that it’s a bit nuts to want/expect your 18-20 yo engineering students to have the mental resilience and inner resource of a 30 yo Navy SEAL.
It’s overkill on the meanness for no reason I can imagine.
So weed away as needed but don’t try to test/break/temper in the forge of Orgo the steel of the students’ souls.
I think some of the proud bottleneck/weedout folks are oftentimes new faculty -- I think we all were/saw the people coming in from grad school thinking that THEY would be the last bastion of quality and high expectations, and then realizing that no, in fact, our job is not to be a hard-ass failing lots of people, and in fact, failing lots of people is not necessarily just the students' failure.
I like characterizing it as a bottleneck, although I think another core problem is that we let people talk about it as if the purpose of the class is to show people that they CANNOT succeed in the major, when much more often what it's showing people is that they MUST WORK HARDER to succeed in the major. And some people respond to that by pushing through the bottleneck, and some people respond to that by moving to a degree program that doesn't include the bottleneck.
But telling someone "it's OK if you don't want to work that hard, you can pick a major that is better suited to you" comes across a lot better than "I don't think you're cut out for this."
(And I should point out that you did a great job of avoiding that language in this article! I appreciate that, I just wish people would call it out more often when it happens.)
One way to look at these, if you can get the data, might simply be DFW rates. At my university the only two "weed-out" courses in History are the two halves of the survey -- beyond that, we have distribution requirements for geography/time period, but we do not have an especially structured major beyond that. My experience is that relatively few students get actual Fs in my surveys, and only a few more get D's. But I have a number of students who simply stop showing up or never show up or only show up form one or two classes and then don't drop properly. I used to give those people a W, because I did not want to give them an F that wasn't really an F. That option is foreclosed in our latest grading input system. Whether that weeds them out because they never end up finishing (the two surveys are also a gen ed requirement for all students) is another x factor, and one that probably does not happen as much at an elite SLAC than at a state master's comprehensive.
Coming from aerospace engineering, our big weedout course is statics. Which, on the face of it, is very simple. It's just F = ma, and a = 0, usually in 2 dimensions. To be fair, there's also moment, with rotational acceleration = 0, usually in 1 dimension. Students come into it having already taken Newtonian physics (with calculus), so it's not anything that should be beyond them, mathematically. But it is the first "real" class in the engineering college, with the workload calibrated to what you'll be doing in future classes, and expectations for thorough documentation of solutions, and maybe requiring a bit more ability to visualize and idealize than previous classes. And people often just hit a wall with it. I remember the first day of class, my prof announced, "I think you'll like this class. Some of you will like it so much, you'll take it five times!" So in a sense, yes, it's a weedout class because everyone in the major takes it, but it's also a weedout class because it's deliberately designed to be challenging and weed people out that aren't going to be able to hack it in the ever more demanding engineering curriculum.
I would tend to steer away from the "not able to hack it" phrasing, and cast it more as a matter of a matter of preferences: it's a class that makes people realize that they do not, in fact, enjoy doing what's required to progress beyond that point enough for it to be worth the effort. Which is also the case for organic chemistry (as I said to someone on ex-Twitter just a bit ago, I know just enough about orgo to know that I would hate it), and also any class introducing (some kinds of) critical theory in art or literature.
That's probably the case for some students, although from what I remember of my experience, there were a fair number of students who wanted it, and just could not figure out what it took to get through it, before they could even begin to consider whether that would be worth the effort (the ones who liked it so much, they took it five times). I've never taught, though, so my viewpoint on it is limited. In any case, I don't mean it as a negative judgement, although I can see that it may come across that way.
As you say - one factor is, does the teacher/do the teachers enjoy a bit too much being a bottleneck? If they delight in their bottleneck function, it will automatically start feeling like a weed-out class...
French maths/sciences classes are often run by people who delight in crushing students, with the mentality that "well, if you're not strong enough to survive this, who needs you here?"
Yeah, there are people who relish the weedout aspect a little too much. But the set of bottleneck courses in STEM majors is pretty consistent across types of institutions, regardless of who teaches them and how, so I don't think it's JUST that.
Oh, it serves a purpose, sure. And obviously it depends on how elite you want your student body to be.
But I kinda think that it’s a bit nuts to want/expect your 18-20 yo engineering students to have the mental resilience and inner resource of a 30 yo Navy SEAL.
It’s overkill on the meanness for no reason I can imagine.
So weed away as needed but don’t try to test/break/temper in the forge of Orgo the steel of the students’ souls.
I think some of the proud bottleneck/weedout folks are oftentimes new faculty -- I think we all were/saw the people coming in from grad school thinking that THEY would be the last bastion of quality and high expectations, and then realizing that no, in fact, our job is not to be a hard-ass failing lots of people, and in fact, failing lots of people is not necessarily just the students' failure.