submission_bu6iqh

submission May 28, 2019 Score: 48 u/tweetibird

The problem with CS at QC and CUNY

The problem with CS at QC and CUNY

The problem is much broader than it seems. Let’s dissect the issue with topics.

1- The first one is money. You like money, I like money, professors want money too but not the shit pay they’re getting from CUNY. CUNY decides the pay of the adjunct professors, NOT queens college. Most of the professor you’ll ever take will be adjunct (part time, no guarantee for next semester)

They get paid 3500 per class a semester. Most of the professors you take has maybe 2-4 sections a semester. That’s at most 14,000 a semester. If they teach 2 semester + summer its at most 45,000 a year which is shit money. Only a smaller percentage of professors are allowed to teach in the summer so a majority only make 28,000 a year for Fall and Spring. To give you better context, an employee at Burger King makes 15 an hour minimum x 40 hours a week x 52 weeks = 31,200 a year pay.

These are professors with masters and phd’s making less than fast food workers. All the amount here I’m basing on numbers presented in recent rallys and protests for fair pay. https://qz.com/443857/as-a-cuny-adjunct-ill-make-less-in-my-career-than-my-coworker-paul-krugman-makes-in-a-year/

You really think QC is going to attract a the amazing professors we see on video when we cram for exams that are from MIT, RIT, Cornell, NYU and etc when they are paid shit wage?

2- The second is the enrollment of CS students in recent years has skyrocketed that the department can’t keep up. Computer Science the one of the most fastest growing majors in the world since 2010 and it shows. My peers and I couldn’t graduate sooner cause there weren’t any seats available for classes we need. Last year was the first year we had more than 4 sections for electives. All my classes were beyond capacity.

3- Third is the curriculum which relates to pay. QC teaches you 90% theory and 10% practical and learning for loops and conditional statements isn’t really practical either. Classes like 316 and 320 are useless for 98% of graduates, it’s informative and important but not practical for the real world. We need more classes with recent technologies like Node, React, Bootstrap, Ruby, Swift but professors to teach those classes that know they are talking about would rather go work for Google, Facebook, and other tech companies for 100,000+ than the 28,000 cuny is offering.

If you ever noticed when you watch the MIT videos, all the theory we learn they go over just enough to understand in the first month of the course. The rest of the videos are all practical uses and applications of the theories and related technologies. Many of the QC professors aren’t young. They’re from the java/c++ masterrace days and don’t have the time to learn the new technologies due to family and other obligations. They’re going to teach what they know and are comfortable with which is good for them since they can teach it better but bad for us cause its useless for the most parts.

The chairmen in my opinion can’t do his job. People blatantly cheating in classes shouldn’t be able to get away with it. There is absolutely is no enforcement of academic honestly and integrity. That contributes to even a bigger problem that it cheating is sort of acceptable. Every class I’ve taken there were students who were cheating. The most infuriating thing is when you’re busting your ass studying at the library all night for a final and during the exam you see the brown/asian groups sitting together with their phones/smartwatches out and swapping exams. While you sometimes get a C/D/F’s, they get A/B’s from putting in no effort.

All the cheating also doesn’t motivate the professors to teach any better. These cheaters are blatantly disrespecting the professors and while some professors have grown used to it and just do generic lessons, other professors like Mane lash out on students and don’t want to teach anymore. Students who actually try are instead punished with harsher grading while the cheaters are useless.

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