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Comment by greenlblue | Hacker News Reader

There must be something else at stake here. This kind of thing happens all the time and now all of a sudden some professor decides to stand up. This is definitely not the full story.

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The professor was a member of the Graduate Studies Committee, who as I understand it came to a consensus that the student should not be awarded the PhD. The committee was overruled by the university administration, which is what triggered the professor to take action.

"This kind of thing happens all the time" Perhaps this is why he is standing up against this?, perhaps he thinks that someone's got a put an end to all this and that he must take matters into his own hands?

My point is that math professors as a bunch put up with this kind of stuff all the time because more than half of the incoming class is just going to be horribly unprepared for any kind of graduate work. Are the students to blame for being unprepared? Yes, I think so but there is also the fact that universities take on way too many graduate students simply because somebody has to be a TA for all the lower division classes the math department offers. This is just bureaucratic bloat and a byproduct of this bureaucratic bloat is that people who shouldn't get a PhD get pushed through the system because it keeps the attrition rate down, at least on paper. So it's great that this guy is standing up for what he believes in but the problem is more systemic and I doubt his one man stand against one student is going to make much difference to how the universities currently operate.

> Are the students to blame for being unprepared?

Not really. For many, it's just that it's not "their thing". More that 50% of the incoming students failed the first semester at the college I attended. Many tried a couple times and then went away to pursue other careers. I would never favor dumbing down the curriculum to accommodate people who want to be professional engineers but can't do math...

One day, I could be flying the planes they designed.

I'm not favoring dumbing down curricula. I'm favoring honest practices on the part of the administration to not overcrowd their graduate departments simply because they have too many lower division class offerings and somebody has to be a TA for those classes. It's unfair to everyone involved and the university is the only one that benefits because they pocket the tuition fees.

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