Free Tuition for Math, Science, and Engineering? 766
Gibbs-Duhem writes "Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus wants free college tuition for US math, science, and engineering majors conditional upon working or teaching in the field for at least four years. From the article: 'The goal, he said in an interview last week, is to better prepare children for school and get more of them into college to make the United States more globally competitive, particularly with countries like China and India. "I think the challenge is fierce, and I think we have a real obligation to go the extra mile and redo things a bit differently, so we leave this place in better shape than we found it," Baucus said.' Do you think this would help with the US's lackluster performance in these fields?"
Of course it will help (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great Idea (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Great Idea (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Montana? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, we've (ab)used parts of it, anyway. [wikipedia.org] I think that "using" the rest more would sort of limit the charm, unfortunately.
-b.
Re:Teaching requires a second degree (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Great Idea (Score:3, Informative)
link [ed.gov] see page 3.
Re:Yes, it would work. (Score:5, Informative)
Since I like helping bigots, here's my link for you: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,276508,00.htm
yes and no (Score:3, Informative)
But, instead of another "let's give certain groups something special" program, how about raising the general level of education in such fields as math?
Many scams and doubtful business methods (including, btw. many insurances) only work because the general public is frighteningly uneducated in math, for example, and can't do even simple statistics.
One of the reasons this is so is that there is no education science of mathematics. There are special branches of education science for almost every other field, be it art, languages or health. But no one seems to care about how to teach math. So it's taught by people who know general pedagogics and try to apply that to math as best as they can - but we all know that math skills and people skills do not very often go together, so you are really lucky if your math teacher is good at both math and teaching.
And that's not his fault, but a failure of the system, which instead of thinking about why so many people fail in math in school, and improve the teaching techniques, dumbs down the curriculum or makes math optional instead of mandatory.
Re:I think it's good (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I think it's good (Score:1, Informative)
So yes, PhDs teaching advanced high school students is a good idea, but only if they want to be there (not many of them)