Switch versus if/then/else ( was: Main menu puzzle, Klaus)

[Judy Perry]

Yep.  The politics of higher ed (at least at my own campus) are
mind-boggling.

One of the arguments clusters around the notion that all bachelor's
degrees should require roughly the same number of units/credit hours in
the subject, regardless of how complex or  not the subject is.  Anything
else wouldn't be "fair" to the students in higher unit-loaded majors.

Not surprisingly, Computer Science is one of those higher unit-loaded
degree programs.  And so we feel the pressure to cut courses.

And then there's the issue of FTE turf:  the History department has
managed to engineer that all graduating students, regardless of major,
must take a minimum of FOUR courses in history.

And, finally, there's apparently some legal argument that we can't call it
a bachelor's degree program if it takes demonstrably longer than 4 years
to complete (current average is 6 years).

Judy


On Mon, 20 Feb 2006, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Frightening.  So the students learn to type in C++ but not understand
> what they're typing?
>
> I'll bet the same administrators go to conferences with furrowed brows
> and much hand-wringing trying to determine the cause of America's
> intellectual decline, never understanding their own role in the process....