Everything you learnt at university

So is this “everything you learnt at university is wrong” an urban myth? Or is it something that really has been said, perhaps by someone who was jealous because he didn’t make the grade to go to university?

As Dave Higton says this belongs here rather than in the normal forums.

Interestingly when I was at uni the comment was “everything you learnt at school was innacurate”. Not wrong just far too little detail.
As with later college based courses the main thing I got out of the courses was how to find the information and how to understand it.
Back in my school days they called it “library skills” these days (so the wife says) they call it google-fu

i.e. the knack of looking things up in the right place first and recogmising the good stuff from well phrased tat.
(Many moons ago I came across an ex-RAF guy retraining as part of his exit to become a technical author – he had an absolute gift for phrasing things so that people would remember and understood what he’d said, sadly almost without exception everything he said was a misunderstanding of what he had been taught. This gave me a clearer understanding of why technical manuals are frequently at odds with the reality, for which I thank him each time.)

Learning how and where to look things up is necessary, but for many subjects not sufficient. In mathematics there has always been a very wide gap between what is taught in school and what is taught at university; one of the reasons why maths is a tough subject for most undergraduates. In particular “analysis”, the underpinnings of “calculus”, involve definitions of a logical complexity (by which I mean alternation of quantifiers) which is not encountered in the school curriculum. For that reason, when I started teaching, first-year material was never examined until the end of the second year, to provide a reasonable “sinking-in” time. This wise policy was later overruled by people ignorant of mathematics and its special pedagogic issues, for the sake of a specious principle of “modularity” and homogeneity across the university.

Learning how and where to look things up is necessary, but for many subjects not sufficient.

Indeed – as I said how to find and how to understand. Remembering is actually less important than knowing how to work things out, but stuff you thought you’d forgotten usually just springs up while you are doing things using the technique.
Our lecturers complained about people being taught to remember instead of how to think and work out. Some rather acidic comments about parrots as I recall.

This wise policy was later overruled by people ignorant of mathematics and its special pedagogic issues, for the sake of a specious principle of “modularity” and homogeneity across the university.

Modularity has an upside – small packages more easily understood in their isolated form.

It has a rather big downside though – many subjects build on earlier premises and so cannot stand alone. The modular approach seems to isolate and therefore allow the student to learn enough to pass and then forget.

As we’re in Aldershot (yay for us, or not?):

This wise policy was later overruled by people ignorant

Just….. stop with those words.

This is a part of what I was saying to François earlier. Learning how to program is something very different to learning how to write programs in <insert favourite language>.
Same with so many aspects of education, you need to be able to think, not just remember stuff.

Same with so many aspects of education, you need to be able to think, not just remember stuff.

Which appears to be the problem with quite a few members of staff at work. Paper qualifications, conversation shows they aren’t thick, but do they think?
Mind you they don’t seem to remember simple diagnostic tests for longer than a few minutes either.

The odd one rebels and thinks so we snatch them for the third line support/development.