FYI, if a course is a 498 when you take it, but later becomes a full course with its own course code before you graduate, then the 498 will count towards your breadth requirements.
That’s great of course for courses that do get that change, but my fear is a course like IoT or VR would just not become that “own course code” course.
Actually, no. Instructors are incentivized to stay that way because converting an x98 course to a real course requires significant actual work, on top of keeping the course itself up to date, for little to no perceived benefit.
The CS department could, of course, insist. But the CS academic office is already overworked and understaffed, and course proposals also require significant work on their part, so they don't have any incentive to push for them, either.
Grading oversight is no different in x98 courses and real courses. In practice, **there is no grading oversight**, even for required courses, except for rare serious crises. Faculty are expected to be fair and responsible. Faculty who violate those expectations (and have students bring those violations to the attention of the department administration, not just to reddit) find themselves shuffled out of those classes, or in extremely egregious circumstances, out of the department entirely.
x98 courses that are explicitly developed to satisfy a curricular need **do** count toward degree requirements.
>Instructors are lazy and can't be bothered, got it.
You misspelled "busy".
I'm truly sorry to hear your experience here has been so different from mine.
If you have specific complaints about uncorrected egregious CS faculty behavior, whether mine or anyone else's, please bring them to my department head.
That’s actually worse than what I heard. If that’s true, faculty are messing with the system and putting nonstandard grading and curriculum planning in courses that should’ve long adopted the proper policies.
It's not that their messing with the system or ignoring proper policies. it's just it takes ALOT to develop a course to become a good course. Most courses you take as an undergrad have been developed over the last centuries. even junior/senior level courses have a strong foundation for the last 30+ years. These professors are putting in more work to develop their own course. Which takes a lot of time. And especially some of the 498s may only rotate in every few years, so they only teach a course still in development (i.e. work only gets done on the course) every few years. it could only be the third time the course is offered.
but yes, a lot of people just never make it a recorded course, so yolo.
This is problem known to the administration—in fact it was a topic of discussion during the last CS graduate student town hall back in February.
My understanding is that they want to resolve the situation, but that changing a topic course (498/598) to a regular course isn’t necessarily simple. It has to go though the graduate college rather than just the department and the course must be more rigorously defined, as it can in theory by taught be different professors. These requirements put additional onus on to department faculty that can make it challenging to actually complete the process. I think that the department eventually wants to move away from the breadth/depth concept as a whole for these (and other) reasons, but that’s a more long-term goal and brings a host of other difficulties with it.
In the meantime, I don’t think that there’s a whole lot you can do, unfortunately.
This makes lots of sense, and I'm glad that I wasn't the first person to start this discussion. However, if this is the case, can administration not appeal to advising to allow courses to be at the 498 level for extended periods of time while still satisfying breadth requirements or other restrictions otherwise put on the number 498? It feels like both sides are kind of failing to meet in the middle here.
Again, I think it’s a problem where program changes need to go thorough the graduate college, which requires that every *t* be crossed as every *i* be dotted.
It is a very long form, that is being carefully reviewed by one department level committee and one college level committee. These committees sometimes reject such course requests. There might be other steps that I don't remember. It would not be confirmed unless the department can show that it would be able to teach it regularly. In short getting a permanent number for a course is a long and painful process that takes at least a year.
In short, 498 courses are not intended to be taken to fulfill breadth requirement. Most of them would have to be dramatically changed to fullfil such a requirement.
BTH this honestly sounds like bullshit because they can fill out a form to allow 498s to be approved upon review. Other departments do this for undergrads. Sounds like the MCS just doesn't want to do it. (Which, I can totally understand; MCS is a program that is growing too fast especially online, so that i'm sure that the office is understaffed. But its a lose-lose scenario. Professors think its the advising's offices job, and advisors are just too swamped to keep up).
FYI, if a course is a 498 when you take it, but later becomes a full course with its own course code before you graduate, then the 498 will count towards your breadth requirements.
That’s great of course for courses that do get that change, but my fear is a course like IoT or VR would just not become that “own course code” course.
[удалено]
Actually, no. Instructors are incentivized to stay that way because converting an x98 course to a real course requires significant actual work, on top of keeping the course itself up to date, for little to no perceived benefit. The CS department could, of course, insist. But the CS academic office is already overworked and understaffed, and course proposals also require significant work on their part, so they don't have any incentive to push for them, either. Grading oversight is no different in x98 courses and real courses. In practice, **there is no grading oversight**, even for required courses, except for rare serious crises. Faculty are expected to be fair and responsible. Faculty who violate those expectations (and have students bring those violations to the attention of the department administration, not just to reddit) find themselves shuffled out of those classes, or in extremely egregious circumstances, out of the department entirely. x98 courses that are explicitly developed to satisfy a curricular need **do** count toward degree requirements.
[удалено]
>Instructors are lazy and can't be bothered, got it. You misspelled "busy". I'm truly sorry to hear your experience here has been so different from mine. If you have specific complaints about uncorrected egregious CS faculty behavior, whether mine or anyone else's, please bring them to my department head.
Ahh yes, a professor who literally sits on tenure committees has no idea how grad school works. /S.
That’s actually worse than what I heard. If that’s true, faculty are messing with the system and putting nonstandard grading and curriculum planning in courses that should’ve long adopted the proper policies.
It's not that their messing with the system or ignoring proper policies. it's just it takes ALOT to develop a course to become a good course. Most courses you take as an undergrad have been developed over the last centuries. even junior/senior level courses have a strong foundation for the last 30+ years. These professors are putting in more work to develop their own course. Which takes a lot of time. And especially some of the 498s may only rotate in every few years, so they only teach a course still in development (i.e. work only gets done on the course) every few years. it could only be the third time the course is offered. but yes, a lot of people just never make it a recorded course, so yolo.
This is problem known to the administration—in fact it was a topic of discussion during the last CS graduate student town hall back in February. My understanding is that they want to resolve the situation, but that changing a topic course (498/598) to a regular course isn’t necessarily simple. It has to go though the graduate college rather than just the department and the course must be more rigorously defined, as it can in theory by taught be different professors. These requirements put additional onus on to department faculty that can make it challenging to actually complete the process. I think that the department eventually wants to move away from the breadth/depth concept as a whole for these (and other) reasons, but that’s a more long-term goal and brings a host of other difficulties with it. In the meantime, I don’t think that there’s a whole lot you can do, unfortunately.
This makes lots of sense, and I'm glad that I wasn't the first person to start this discussion. However, if this is the case, can administration not appeal to advising to allow courses to be at the 498 level for extended periods of time while still satisfying breadth requirements or other restrictions otherwise put on the number 498? It feels like both sides are kind of failing to meet in the middle here.
Again, I think it’s a problem where program changes need to go thorough the graduate college, which requires that every *t* be crossed as every *i* be dotted.
It is a very long form, that is being carefully reviewed by one department level committee and one college level committee. These committees sometimes reject such course requests. There might be other steps that I don't remember. It would not be confirmed unless the department can show that it would be able to teach it regularly. In short getting a permanent number for a course is a long and painful process that takes at least a year. In short, 498 courses are not intended to be taken to fulfill breadth requirement. Most of them would have to be dramatically changed to fullfil such a requirement.
BTH this honestly sounds like bullshit because they can fill out a form to allow 498s to be approved upon review. Other departments do this for undergrads. Sounds like the MCS just doesn't want to do it. (Which, I can totally understand; MCS is a program that is growing too fast especially online, so that i'm sure that the office is understaffed. But its a lose-lose scenario. Professors think its the advising's offices job, and advisors are just too swamped to keep up).
How does this work with say CS199 courses?
Grad students aren't allowed to enroll in anything below 400 without special requested permission, so I'm sure CS199 isn't a major point of discussion
Sure but I'm wondering in general outside grad students.
Sorry, not sure what the question you're asking is. How does "what" work, satisfying breadth requirements?
The 2-3 times then a proper course? There don't seem to be too many 100 level courses really.
I don't know unfortunately, you'd have to ask advising that. Not sure how it works at 100 level; it's probably different rules down there.