101 101

[sw2borshch]

I know I've been bandying the old 101s around like I have a clue what I'm talking about, but, and I'm saying this to shock you, I don't.
I have a vague idea it's connected to USAmerican education, but I don't know whether or not if you take, say, Biology 101 it means it's a comprehensive course about all biology, some kind of primer that may or may not lead to Biology 102, 103 et seq. or something entirely different. Just at school, college or is this style used for other, perhaps vocational courses? Why 101? Why not 100? Or 1? Or A?

Please help.

[ursus arctos]

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It's the standard US code for an introductory survey of a particular subject for first year university students (called "college freshmen" in US parlance).

As a general rule, in order to take higher level courses in a particular department, one either has to pass the "101" survey or "place out" of it by demonstrating that you already know the material (i.e., by having done work at a similar level before entering university (most commonly "Advanced Placement" courses taken in high school) or doing well on a placement test.

As to why 101, I have no idea, and can tell you that it isn't universal. At my alma mater, the "101" course in history was "3", that in economics "10" and that in mathematics "21".

That said, it has become widely accepted shorthand for "introductory" courses of any sort, at any level (even outside the traditional educational system).

[sw2borshch]

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That's great, ursus, I think I'd like to believe the first use was in a course about airships.

[Amor de Cosmos]

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As to why 101, I have no idea, and can tell you that it isn't universal. At my alma mater, the "101" course in history was "3", that in economics "10" and that in mathematics "21".

The two courses I teach were changed, for reasons no one seems to understand, from 250 and 450 to 1250 and 2450 last year. Go figure

At the two universities in this town 100, 200, 300 and 400 are undergraduate courses, the first numeral of each broadly defining the year of the program that's most applicable. 800 course numerals are for masters programs and 900 doctoral ones. I don't know how universal this system is though.

[sw2borshch]

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Now I've got the bit between my teeth, how does that "majoring" thing work at US polyversities?

If you go to do, say, history, do you do a year of "general" history, then choose to major in Brazilian history and spend two thirds of your time on various modules of that with the other third on your minor, which could be the history of the Gambia?

[ursus arctos]

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No, it doesn't work like that.

Undergraduate programs at US universities value breadth of knowledge (as well as depth), and will require a student to take a prescribed number of courses outside of his or her "major". In most cases, they will also require that one take at least a few courses in significantly different areas (e.g., maths or science for humanities "majors"; fine arts or music for pre-med students; certain "core subjects" for everyone).

Add to that the fact that most universities won't allow one to "major" in anything before your second year (and won't require you to do so until your third, while allowing you to switch as late as your fourth), and the usual result is that something like a quarter to a half of one's "class hours" are in one's "major" subject (it's been ages (and all of this varies from university to university), but I think the maximum possible degree of concentration in my program was something short of two-thirds).

It also isn't at all unusual for individual departments to have similar "distribution" requirements, or even "majors" and "minors" (say Latin American history and African history, to use your example).

[pebblethefish]

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And what proportion of the time is spent going to toga parties?

[G-Man]

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Heh.

We do the 101 thing at SA universities too.

[Cavalry Trouser Tips]

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pebblethefish wrote:

And what proportion of the time is spent going to toga parties?

TO-GA! TO-GA!

[sw2borshch]

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hey, watch out or the crusty old dean will find the bra bomb i've got stashed behind the keg in the frat house.

[evilC]

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Ah, rats! When I saw this thread title I hoped it was about "LOL!!!!1111" etc.

...Kind of.

[Cavalry Trouser Tips]

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I thought it was some coded message about Britvic...

[Reed John]

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At the two universities in this town 100, 200, 300 and 400 are undergraduate courses, the first numeral of each broadly defining the year of the program that's most applicable. 800 course numerals are for masters programs and 900 doctoral ones. I don't know how universal this system is though.

That was pretty much how it was at William & Mary and Boston U for me, but with some variations. 400 classes were seminars. When my mom was teaching at Penn State, a lot of classes had two digit courses. English 15 was the writing class everyone took or tested out of. Some classes are cross-registered. For example, some advanced classes are available to seniors and grad students.

I noticed during AG's appearance on BNN last week ( he sent me the weblink) that he seemed to distinguish college from university. How is college different from university in Canada or Britain?

Here, "going to college" refers to getting an bachelors degree of some kind. Nobody here, except Canadians, says they are "going to university" or did such and such "at university." In the vernacular, it's all just called college. The institution may be really called a college or a university or an institute or, like my alma mater, be called a college but really be a university insofar as it has some graduate programs and more than one constituent college or
school. Boston College is the same sort of deal. The names are just about tradition and "brand identity."

[Amor de Cosmos]

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Colleges in Canada are community colleges or other diploma/certificate granting institutions, tech colleges or art colleges for instance. It's confusing because many of them do now grant degrees and, most recently, some have been given "university college" status. Essentially they're universities with no research role or facilities.

[Reed John]

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Here we have a lot of "liberal arts colleges" which only bestow bachelors degrees. The faculty do research, but their focus is more on teaching than it would be at a big university. Examples include Swarthmore, Reed, Williams, Gettysburg, etc.

Is that unique to the USA?

As I said, at my school, some departments did graduate degrees, but most didn't. That's fairly unusual. Most schools are either trying to be a full-on university with a law school, a business school, lots of PhD programs and maybe a football team or the school stays small and entirely focused on teaching (and, in some cases, religious stuff.) There are public and private versions of both, although I suppose there are more big public universities and more private small liberal arts colleges than vice versa.

[Anton Gramscescu]

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Reed of the Valley People wrote:

Here we have a lot of "liberal arts colleges" which only bestow bachelors degrees. The faculty do research, but their focus is more on teaching than it would be at a big university. Examples include Swarthmore, Reed, Williams, Gettysburg, etc.

Is that unique to the USA?

More or less, yes. The term "college" was a universal term for institutes of higher learning until after the civil war. Then a lot of Americans started spending time in Germany, where universities were letting their professors ignore undergraduates in order to teach grad students and research whatever they felt like researching. They brought this idea back to the US, along with the doctoral degree - Johns Hopkins was the first "university" started with this model in mind but within a decade, almost everyone was doing it.

The idea of "liberal" education as Americans understand generally has few adherents outside the Americas. Canada has a few institutions like this. I think Latin America has a number as well, but I don't know much about this area. I do know that in recent years, colleges of this sort have been founded in Russia and parts of Asia in an attempt to educate people in a more "creative" and "innovative" style. But they have nothing like the enrolments or history that US liberal arts colleges do.

[Reed John]

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I don't know where it all comes from. Maybe it's just one of those things that evolved differently because it was seperate.

My understanding is that college in America in the colonial through the late 1800s was a series of what we would think of as small seminars and one-on-ones with the faculty. The idea was to learn the stock subjects that clergy and foppish dandies were supposed to know - Latin, rhetoric, basic science and math and so forth. It was based on a simplistic idea of what it meant to be educated. The idea of choosing or designing one's own course of study only got started about 100 years ago.

[Amor de Cosmos]

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The idea of "liberal" education as Americans understand generally has few adherents outside the Americas. Canada has a few institutions like this. I think Latin America has a number as well, but I don't know much about this area.

The trend towards interdisciplinary learning is a contemporary manifestation of that I think. My own MA is in Liberal Studies and was grounded in a similar curriculum of general education and an encouragement of plurality and civic involvement to the original liberal arts colleges. Though, possibly for different reasons.

[Reed John]

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What do you read and write about in Liberal Studies?

[Sean of the Shed]

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Anything you like.

[Amor de Cosmos]

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That's pretty much true, at least in the later stages. The early semesters are highly structured however. Most contemporary GLS programs spend those with intensive readings and seminars built around a fairly orthodox Western canon. At SFU the curriculum for the first two semesters is constructed around questions concerning passion and reason. I know other GLS programs begin with similar overarching dualisms. There were around fifty texts discussed in my cohort that ran from Sappho to Dawkins. After that the program offers three courses a semester. While I was there they included: issues surrounding truth and reconciliation, non-Western epistemologies, mathematics as truth and beauty, Wagner and the Ring cycle, Jane Austen in modern media, engineering and the betterment of humanity and others. You can also enroll in any graduate course offered by SFU or UBC. Graduation is via a thesis, a capstone project or on courses.

[pebblethefish]

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Whenever I read this thread title I get an earword of the Ski sunday theme tune. Apart from the times that I get one from Dogtanian and the three Muskehounds.

[sw2borshch]

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It's not swearing in binary is it?

College in the UK usually means an institution separate to a school that 16-18 year olds attend to do their A-Levels, before they go to a university to do a degree. Some schools provide a 6th form (after years 1 through 5 at a secondary school – even though that numbering system isn’t really used anymore…) where pupils/students study for their A-Levels. Although that’s changed now, hasn’t it? Someone else should do this. And that’s before we start on Camford & Oxbridge and those other universities that operate a collegiate system. I mean, what’s that all about?

[Reed John]

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We'd call that a prep school or a high school.

[pebblethefish]

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Ah, but a prep school over here is a private school that runs to the age of 13.

For two countries that share the same language, we're not very good at it, are we?