UCLA needs to make courses more difficult

  David Burke Burke is a third-year
English and political science student. E-mail him at burke@media.ucla.edu.
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It’s ninth week and we all know what that means. Students
are reaching the end of the lag between midterms and finals, and
they are finalizing their class schedules for next quarter.

In the midst of finalizing my schedule, I got to thinking about
how many classes at UCLA leave much to be desired. In fact, some
classes here are not appropriate for a university of this caliber.
And unfortunately, it seems these classes are what too many
students here actually want.

What’s wrong with classes like MCD Bio 40, Atmospheric
Sciences 3, or Folklore 15? Quite a bit.

Bio 40, Atmos-Sci 3 and a lot of other classes are just too
easy. We’re attending a university that is supposedly a Mecca
of intelligence, yet there are many classes that require much less
than intelligence to get a good grade. It seems like I have taken
an average of one extremely easy class per quarter in which I can
miss every lecture, start studying two days before my exams, and
still get an “A” or “B.” As much as these
classes have worked to my GPA’s benefit, there should not be
classes like these at a top-notch university. It’s a waste of
students’ time to sit through a lecture that repeats the
course reader and multiple choice exams with questions straight
from a study guide. I forget whatever it is that I am supposed to
have learned in these classes almost instantly, and it’s
classes like these that decrease the value of a UCLA diploma.

Other classes I’m not fond of seem to operate without a
frame of reference or a context. I’ve had to sit through
Political Science 20 and Political Science 120. I’m sure
you’ve had to sit through other classes like these where
students did not know what was going on in their class. I still
don’t know what went on in my classes except that I got an
“A-“ and a “B.” These classes are just a
disarray of facts, and although a lot of memorization occurs in
this environment, learning rarely factors into getting an
“A.”

And let’s not forget classes like Physiological Science 5
that do a great disservice to the UCLA community. This is a class
where the lectures and the readings are essentially substitutes
““ instead of complements ““ for each other. In Phy-Sci
5, Professor Roberts put the course reader up on the overhead and
went over it point by point, rarely adding anything new. Does that
sound like good teaching to you? I have spoken to Professor Roberts
outside of class and I enjoy talking with him, but I expect more
from my education than what his class offered. All I had to do for
a good grade was pull an all-nighter before the midterm and final
without any prior preparation.

So administrators, if you encounter professors whose evaluations
say that they are extremely easy, ineffective or useless, make an
effort to find out if that is true. As much as we’d all like
to think that every professor here is an asset to learning and the
UCLA community, this is simply not true. I’m sure there are
hundreds of people who can do a better job than some of the
professors we have now, and hiring new personnel is a better
alternative than subjecting students to ineffective classes with
ineffective professors.

But professors and administrators are not the only ones who need
to change their behavior to improve our university. Students must
take the responsibility of evaluating their classes and professors
seriously.

I know that people are in a rush to catch the next episode of
“Dismissed,” but suck it up and help yourself.
Don’t leave early to avoid filling out your evaluation. It
takes less than 10 minutes to fill one out. Don’t just bubble
in a “7” for everything ““ if you think a class is
comically easy, say so. If you think a professor is extremely
ineffective or is the best professor you’ve ever had, voice
your opinion and say why you think they so.

Ask yourself what you want to get out of college. If
you’re here to learn, then take classes where you will
actually learn and retain meaningful knowledge like Political
Science 10 with Professor Walker, or Management 1A and 1B with
Professor Ravetch. If you are here just to get good grades, then
take whatever classes you want. You can have a 4.0, but unless you
have the knowledge to back up your grades, they are
meaningless.

Students, professors and administrators must demand more from
each other if we want to raise the quality of education and make
grades meaningful. In the long run, getting rid of easy classes
along with ineffective professors will benefit every member of the
UCLA community.

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