CS 161 – Computer Security – Syllabus and important notes [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

CS 161 – Computer Security – Syllabus and important notes [pdf]

people.ischool.berkeley.edu

61 pointsjoshAg121 comments

I thought this was a joke, but apparently it isn't.

Summary: Late to a class? You get an F and need to leave.

Late to section? You get an F and leave. By the way, four sections have been dropped. If you have a schedule conflict, report it by September 2nd, or get an F and need to leave.

Unanticipated absence due to family emergency or medical reasons? Full documentation must be submitted on the same day, or get an F.

Religious absence? Submit it by September 2nd, or get an F.

Cell phone beeps? Get an F and need to leave.

Use any non-medical electronic device at all? Get an F and need to leave.

Don't have a book yet? Pay $50 and also pay out the nose extra to get it overnighted; there's an exam on Monday. Oh, and the second textbook hasn't been published yet. Too poor? Too bad.

Requesting a re-grade? All of your exams will be re-graded.

Need to use the bathroom during a quiz? No.

Need to use the bathroom during an exam? Your test will be taken from you and photographed, and you will be escorted to the restroom.

Suspect someone is looking at your exam sheet? Stand up and report it immediately during the exam or get an F.

Open articleView on HN

Required attendance for college courses is bullshit.

I believed that as an undergraduate. I believed that when I became a TA during my last semester as an undergraduate. I believed that throughout graduate school (where I TAed and taught several classes on my own). I believed that in my years as an Assistant Professor (before leaving for industry...long-ish story). And I most certainly believe it now.

Oh, sure, attendance is important. I always encouraged students to attend my courses. But college students are adults, and we should treat them as such. You know what? If you're hungover, or sick, or just walked away from a car crash, or exhausted, or in any other state where attending class isn't the best use of your time, then by all means, don't. You're an adult now. You can make choices and take the consequences of those choices.

And yes, I'll admit that I've had one or two students who skipped most of the lectures and did an excellent job on the quizzes, exams, and final (however, in my experience, students who could get away with that generally don't).

These issues aside, though, I didn't go to college for nine years to be a glorified hall monitor.

Could you tell us why you left academia for industry?

Agreed, monitoring for required attendance is BS. The stern wording re:grading is probably sufficient to weed out grade chasers. Providing valuable information beyond the textbook in lectures will (in effect) cause mandatory attendance or enforce subject mastery on exams.

I did maths in Imperial College several years ago. They had a simple way of assuring attendance: no text books. Everything was recorded by hand in the lecture (before the age of digital cameras). Not one course I took had a textbook. As a largely self taught book based nerd that didn't like authoritarian structure, I took myself to a university that was somewhat more sane.

Haha maybe my previous comment is off-topic, but it's because I want to read stories more like http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvar...

Sigh. Because 90s-boom-startup mentality is a really great pedagogical tool on motivated, previously tightly selected students. Or human beings in general. NOT.

Also, this bit: "Grading will be _highly competitive_." Meaning: "I could have used powerful team collaboration tools in this classroom, but instead I've pitted these students against each other." Meaning: "I don't actually understand evaluation of performance, I just like bludgeoning people over whom I have power." Meaning: "I was hazed with this kind of crap as a student, I think it put a few hairs on my chest, and so I return the abuse unto you."

Listen up, instructor: Berkeley probably has some excellent instructor training resources. You've missed the past half-century, esp. the past fifteen-or-so years, of vast improvements in educational methods. Maybe your security chops are great, but your syllabus says something radically different about your teaching skills.

lol. I highly doubt that that he was thinking that. You're spouting a lot of nonsense in that post.

The consensus here at Berkeley is that this is simply a ploy to get students to drop the class because there isn't enough space for everybody.

Sure, but how is degrading people to disgust them out of taking your class any less reprehensible? It's pretty clear the rules are nigh-unenforcable, but the misery it threatens students with is awful and treats students like children and criminals.

How is this degrading? Its merely strict.

I don't know about merely strict.

"If you are disabled and require special arrangements for exams, you must contact the instructor with full documentation by 5PM, August 30. The alternate exam will be an oral exam, closed-book, closed-note, cumulative over all class material and will be scheduled at 9AM on Sunday, December 15."

I think its clear the Prof is being slightly 'Darwinian' in his approach to teaching the class. But its a bit of a streatch to call this "degrading".

closed-book, closed-note, cumulative over all class material and will be scheduled at 9AM

Sounds like a real-world job interview, no?

I think the bar for "degrading" behaviour in academia should be set higher than something that would be everyday normal in "the real world".

Except it's only for disabled students. Regular students get the normal exams, so it's literally "slightly Darwinian"

I think you are missing the context. In the US (Berkeley) this is an almost certainlyadministrative accomodation (ie, a favour) required by law to make the test "more accessible". Which is code for easier.

Providing exams for disabled students is not degrading, if such accomodations are helpful. Other forms of accomodataion (eg, relaxing of standards or deadlines) may reasonably be subject to abuse, in the absence of direct oversight. Etc.

If there were some actual evidence this was an act of intimidation or "humiliation" it would be interesting to see such supported. In all likelihood, it would probably lead to a situation of legal jeapordy for the University.

> The consensus here at Berkeley is that this is simply a ploy to get students to drop the class because there isn't enough space for everybody.

Rinky-dink (non-Berzerkely) universities do this by setting configuration options in the registration software such that only a certain number of people can register each semester. If you get in a bit late and have a transcendentally good reason to need that course that semester, the professor is allowed to sign a small form which overrides the software and lets you in anyway.

In short, unless UC-Berkeley's software is stuck in 1968 just like its politics, the reason you gave is highly unlikely.

The issue is that they weren't expecting there to be so few TAs, and as such the system allowed many more students to enroll than they ended up being able to support. (Granted, the registration system here is pretty old, but it's not as horrible as you describe.)

It's literally emulating phone lines that dial in. Telebears is a massive piece of shit.

Source: Current Berkeley student.

Telebears is certainly shit, but it's not to blame for this particular fuckup.

Nah, there's software. You're right it's a political issue. The administration is happy to create classes and then not properly staff them with TAs, graders, etc. They say it's due to budget issues but it's really because they want to transition the university to have more large (profitable) classes.

Well The software that we use is rather bad, but that's not the problem here.

What happened in CS161's case was that the department had originally planned to have a certain number of students in the class, and was looking for TAs.

They weren't able to find these TAs, and that led to the cancellation of three out of seven sections.

They have to kick people out of--essentially--number theory classes in Berkeley because they are too popular?

I also truly despise the phrasing "highly competitive". These kinds of classes, when you take a few in one semester, can eat your soul. They drown you in just enough material to kill that initial spark of interest. Gone is the pleasure of finding things out. And when these 'competitive' students succeed and graduate, they feel lost/void because their life is not dictated by the next exam anymore. (Yes, I learned a lot but I'm still resentful. Syllabi like these are not right.)

Most of my hardest classes like Differential Equations were monsters and I struggled mightily. I thought about giving up several times, but stuck with it for some reason. After the class, two of my engineering buds and I went for a beer. They asked me if I thought I would be a better person for struggling and succeeding, or giving up and waiting to take it again? The answer was simple.

Just because they're "competitive" isn't always a bad thing. Struggling to learn is normal. Just because the prof makes it competitive might make you work harder, put in more hours and in the end, learn more through your struggles.

There is no

Apparently this instructor was actually quite good in the past, I think this is just a really misguided attempt to make the class smaller because they don't have enough instructional staff. I feel like the only possible outcome is that the instructor is forced to rescind this syllabus and has his reputation completely ruined, which is sad. It appears that he's playing chicken with the university, and I don't think the outcome can possibly be good.

Seems like the sentiments have been echoed throughout this thread that there's been games around class size politics going on. That's amazingly unfortunate, and hardly restricted to Berkeley. I'm sorry to hear an otherwise good instructor felt forced into this position.

Hi, this is Doug Tygar here -- I'm in the instructor of the course in question. I appreciate all the comments -- but for various reasons, this course had a breakdown in finding TAs: so we have 170 students and only space for about 60-90 students. I'm sorry to say that the same problem is occurring in a number of other upper division (e.g., junior-senior) level classes this semester in computer science at Berkeley -- although for various reasons, CS 161 is taking it on the nose.

I really wish we had sufficient resources to teach the class properly.

It seems like, for various reasons, you want to make a very public statement.

John, that syllabus was only intended for internal Berkeley use only -- I posted it on the class blog without any thought that it would be picked up by Ycombinator. (Although, once it appeared, I did link to the topic from the class blog and encouraged the class to chime in: http://cs161.blogspot.com/2013/08/trending-on-ycombinator.ht... )

In case it is not 100% obvious, I'm quite unhappy with the situation (having a TA shortage, and having to run the class this way).

Having said all of this, happy to see a healthy discussion in Ycombinator. I'm a big supporter of free speech, and I think there are a lot of interesting comments here. So more power to you.

why are TA's so hard to come by this semester? is it due to the size of the 61 series?

Josh, thanks for your input.

I'm afraid that it's a bit hard to answer your question in a public forum. If any Ycombinator readers are on the Berkeley campus and want to chat with me, I'm at 739 Soda Hall.

This is quite a disingenuous explanation for the syllabus. Several of the aspects contained in the syllabus have nothing to do with a GSI shortage -- in fact, one of them (the daily quizzes adds work for the GSIs to deal with.

There's no reason to punish the undergraduate students for the failings of the department. Things like denying bathroom breaks don't do anything to help out your resource shortage, unless you're basically saying that the only way to have enough resources is to make the class so unpleasant that no one wants to take it. Still, this is completely unfair to those students that actually end up taking the class. If that is the case, I can at least understand it -- however, you should explicitly say so

If you've taken a particularly extreme approach to "wake the department up," you should just come out and say so, rather than claiming that this policy is the only way to deal with it.

A somewhat related thought:

I'm not sure what the reason for the lack of TAs is, but I do know that some of the security professors are spending their time on things other than Berkeley activities (i.e. startups, etc.). I have no idea if you're involved with this yourself, but perhaps you guys need to figure out how to get your faculty to be able to support more graduate students rather than spending your time coming up with an abusive policy.

Hi anonucbstudent -- actually my plan is to personally grade all the quizzes, so that is a burden on me -- not on them.

I completely agree with you that the undergrad students are not at all at fault here. You pay a lot of tuition and deserve better.

What prevents TA's from teaching more than 1 or 2 discussion sections? If each of them taught 2~3 discussions, wouldn't everyone be happier? As students, it would be nice to know how the TA hours are managed. TA's earn a lot of money for teaching. Does a 20-hr TA do 2 hours of discussion, 1 hour of office hour, 1 hour of discussion prep, 1 hour of making homework, etc? How does it add up to 20 hours? Do they have to redesign the entire class and grade homework problems? If necessary, can they take one more hour of discussion from one of the other responsibilities? It would be great if the teaching staff is clearer and more open about this.

Another_anon -- that's a great question, but I cannot answer personnel questions in a public forum -- if you want to drop by 739 Soda, I'll be happy to try to answer your question.

Our course has what Berkeley EECS calls "30 hours of TAs." I can assure you that they'll end up doing a lot more than 30 hours worth of work each week.

I'll also remind you that our teaching assistants are unionized, and we are bound by contract rules.

But even if I had the power to change that (and I do not), you can see that it would have to change for every single EECS class -- why would a TA want to teach 4 discussion sections for CS 161 when s/he could get the same pay credit teaching 2 discussions sections for another CS class?

I don't know how much I can say, but 1 section of any class is 10 hours of TA paid time. Period. Doesn't matter if you work less or more.

Though, often times, most TA's I know put in far more than their required time.

Can you explain how being completely intolerant of the fact that students have lives helps with your resource constraints? People will be a couple minutes late. Things happen. I don't think it's reasonable to threaten kicking someone out of the class and failing them for being late once.

Again, if you want to say that you need to make the class as terrible as possible so that people drop, then just say so.

anon, sorry I was not completely clear:

I hate to make this request, but I need half to 2/3rds of the students to drop the course. I'm hoping that you will still be able to learn a lot from the class -- but I need to find a mechanism to make the class smaller. Being strict on attendance seemed like the "least bad" of several rather unattractive alternatives.

I'm hoping that someone has a better idea, and I'm completely open. Please come and see me in 739 Soda.

Far far better idea: cancel all existing registrations and reopen it at 10am next Wednesday. If the system doesn't support that, then say you will be "reregistering" people by hand and the first x to be at your office at 10am Wednesday are in. Doesn't fuck over an entire semester for people. Was really easy to come up with. If you really wanted good ideas you could have asked the class in the first session or on your blog and surely someone would have had a better idea than your horrific plan to make everyone hate you and the class.

Jacalata -- I did look into dis-enrolling students, and was told it was a non-starter.

And I have to say that it is already a huge problem at Berkeley to simply get enrolled into a CS class. There are simply not enough resources to go around. That's why this class has a huge waitlist.

By the way, this problem is also occurring in other classes, but they are scheduled as Monday-Wednesday classes. My class is Tuesday-Thursday -- the first day of classes at Berkeley was 8/29. Monday is Labor Day holiday at Berkeley, so those other classes will have to deal with their situations on 9/4. (However, their TA deficits are not quite as large as those that we have in CS 161).

At my university (Caltech), professors are not allowed to give proctored exams. Most quizzes, midterms, and finals are take-home. I'm curious why you think such strict oversight is needed when it's possible for things to work with no oversight at all? Wouldn't that be easier for you and the few TAs you have available?

Hi xvedejas -- I so wish we had adequate resources so we could consider better formats for the course. I completely agree with you that this is not the optimal format.

Why not just arrange to pay the missing TAs out of your own pocket or a research grant? I'm sure you make enough money. If the issue is not financial but an inability to find other qualified TAs, then double the hours of the ones you already have and it will work out. Offer them 1.5x or 2x pay if they say they are too busy.

Asking students to drop the class just ends up making those who choose to stay in the class feel guilty. And employing draconian measures to encourage people to drop out in order to meet administrative needs is passive aggression, plain and simple. Your beef is with admin, not with students, so don't take it out on them, don't involve them in it, and don't use them as pawns.

Worst case, sacrifice research and do all the TA work yourself. You can use this as a bargaining chip with admin next semester.

Foobar -- thanks for your suggestions. I've been trying to hire TAs for this course for two months. It is not a money issue.

Well if you have a lot of money available, maybe it's a money issue in that you aren't paying enough. As a thought experiment, what would happen if the TAs were paid $100,000 each? Would you attract more qualified candidates?

Good plumbers make a lot of money because it's a dirty and disgusting job that nobody wants to do.

Foobar -- that's a great question.

It turns out that the university has a lot of rules about how TAs (and how much) TAs are paid, and further TAs are unionized (they are members of the United Auto Workers -- believe it or not!) and that we are bound by contract restrictions.

Sounds like you are in a jam. As far as I understand it, given the current syllabus, either you have to lower your hiring standards or do the work yourself. I've done both of those things in the past, and it was always a pain. Ultimately I settled for reducing the amount of TA work that had to be done. A lot of grading is probably optional, you might not be required to have a midterm and final, stuff like that. Rather than let yourself be victimized here, try to be creative with the resources that you do have, you'll figure something out.

Foobar -- that's a great plan, and let me assure you there is a lot of activity going on in the background.

If you want to talk about this, and you're on the Berkeley campus, I sit in Soda Hall 739. Alternatively, I hike most evenings in Tilden Park for exercise -- if you'd like to join me sometime and talk about your ideas, I'd certainly welcome hearing them.

Oh, I'm not in your class or even at Berkeley. I'm just discussing things on an internet forum. Good luck though, because from the comments here it sounds like your students are pretty angry, and admin is being unhelpful.

Thanks for the kind wishes!

Doug, don't you feel that you could have told us about this before the first day of classes? Nobody blames you for the budget problems, or for the shortage of TAs. But you're just another person in the long chain of people who have made horrible administrative decisions, culminating in this terrible situation. And on top of that, you certainly came off as extremely cold and unconcerned, both in class and when I spoke to you in person regarding the matter. Trying to look understanding when you are on a public forum doesn't change a thing, and I highly doubt that you can do much to save face at this point -- you've really gone out of your way here to make yourself a villain to the undergraduate community. And there is simply no excuse for waiting until the first day of class to inform us of these circumstances.

Hi Angry -- Sorry that I came off as cold. At this point, though, I really do need half or two-thirds of the students to drop this course.

You raise an excellent question about why no notification went out before. Indeed, for the last two months I've been asking the department to change its policies so we can get some more TAs in class. These efforts were still going on Wednesday evening -- the night before the first class (and indeed, they are still going on this morning!)

I also tried to stop the process of allowing so many students to register for the course when we didn't have TA support.

If you'd like to talk about this more, please come see me.

> You may not use any electronic device during class, including computers, tablet computers, cell phones, cameras, recording devices, calculator, or any device that emits noise (such as a beeping watch). Anyone who breaks this rule will fail the course and be asked to leave.

I think that at a certain point a professor's strictness just becomes an embarrassment to the department. This professor should be censured for this policy.

It's also a legal liability. He's just banned devices relied on by disabled students. His "alternative exam" will also not meet the requirements of many disabilities.

> Personal medical devices (particularly hearing aids) are allowed, however.

That's the next paragraph in that section of the syllabus. So I guess he's covered.

Aside: Odd that hearing aids are emphasized here.

The necessary accommodations for my disability (explicitly recognized in paperwork from the college I started to go to, in case I ran into an instructor who decided they were a priest of the Church of the Luddite) do not include anything that meets any common definition, legal or otherwise, of "medical device".

One might, under a broad definition, call them "assistive devices", but somehow I doubt this professor is going to recognize a common laptop or a tape recorder, among other things, as such, and he's going to embarrass, humiliate, and just generally make life difficult for any disabled student who attempts to argue with him.

No, probably not. Most likely there's an uncomfortable process disabled students have to go through to get their disability documented, and then the student brings documentation to the instructor or professor who makes the accommodations stated in the plan given to the student by the ADA coordinator of the school. Trumps the syllabus always.

I was a disabled student. Now I teach. It's how I've seen it work everywhere.

Disabled student in his class. Can confirm we are exempt.

Disallowing a calculator in any upper-division math (or math-heavy) course is an embarrassment to the department in particular. If you can get a meaningful advantage by using a calculator, the course is bullshit and a waste of upper-division credits.

Yes, I include graphing calculators like the TI-84 or, my personal favorite, the HP-48GX. They can be used to store a tiny amount of note material, but, again, if you're testing for rote memory at that level, your course is bullshit and a waste of upper-division credits.

Is there any oversight at universities to how much extra-curricular time is to be expected? When I was in school I didn't know of any oversight, but perhaps it was behind-the-scenes...

> [...] you can expect to spend 20-25 hours each week on the class.

IMO you should be getting 20-25 credits then. Why even bother with assigning credits to classes, if it's not at all a realistic reflection of the actual effort required? It makes the credits seem 100% arbitrary.

Credits are based on time in class. I remember many grad classes that expected 2-3 hours per credit hour of weekly independent work. For example, problem sets and course projects were intentionally designed to push your limits. The best classes just assumed: if you're drowning, then you're probably taking in at least some of the water.

I just see such a strict requirement, as well as the daily quizzes and attendance grades in the OP's link, as evidence of someone abusing their power in a very destructive way.

These are young adults, treat them like such. If they are smart enough to pass the departmental practicums without coming to class once or doing a bit of your silly homework, then who cares?

Is a diploma meant to declare mastery in a subject(s), or is it to signify your willingness to jump through figurative arbitrary hoops while wearing a tutu? If it's the former, then attendance and busy-work like daily quizzes, homework, etc. really aren't going to further that objective.

Quick reply... I agree re:daily quizzes and attendance (per a comment elsewhere in the thread). Departmental practicums are meant as a minimum baseline. Diplomas demonstrate a combination of both subject mastery and the ability to slog through things you might not enjoy -- both important skills in any industry job.

So I was always told that (as beambot points out) the number of credits was based on lecture time, and moreover that you should expect to spend 2-3 times as much time outside of lectures as you did inside. So your generic 3-credit course (nominally three hours of lecture, actually more like 2 1/2) would require something like 9-12 hours total: 3 in lecture, 6-9 at home.

Now in my experience, this was much more accurate for humanities than for math/science classes, where the amount of time the class took depended strongly on one's ability and preparation. I remember in particular one math professor whose problems were tricky: if you had the right insight, the proof was usually very simple, but if you didn't have that insight, you'd struggle and struggle. (And then there were the classes for which I was way under-prepared, and on which I spent way more than 25 hours.)

Add on to that the fact the time spent in lecture (on which the number of credits depends) doesn't necessarily track the difficulty of the material, and you have a recipe for wide variation in the amount of time one spends for a certain amount of credits. (Labs are notorious for taking way more time than the number of credits.)

And then you get into how some classes are more efficient than others in terms of how much learning you get for the amount of time you spend, and this doesn't match up with the number of credits either...

Yes, I know how they're derived...I had both 4h lectures + 0h labs and 3h lectures + 1h labs, and that's a good example of how arbitrary it really is. Even for subjects as closely aligned as biology, chemistry, and physics, there's a disconnect.

My point is that the hour/credit system is disingenuous to the point of being counter-productive, and is one of the areas of the educational system that I think we need to revisit if we're ever to progress passed the same old system that our parents (and for some, grandparents) used. It was a good start on objectifying quality and quantity of education, but it hasn't evolved really and we've learned a lot about learning in that time span.

I understand that classes are challenging, but they should be so on their own merits -- not because of laborious exercises. I'm not saying "no homework" or anything, but just don't require it. A lazy student will always find a way to fail, the gifted will pass, and the driven will do what's required (homework, attendance, etc.) to pass. At least that's my take on it.

I don't see the point of most of these policies other than to make people very, very anxious. Being late to section once or twice would seem to have no reasonable relationship to a student's understanding of the material, yet here it results in an instant F. I wonder if the instructor suffers from a personality disorder.

He actually has a pretty darn good rating on ratemyprof (yes I hate that site too). Anyways I suspect its his method of weeding out the students that are less passionate about the topic. As it says in the syllabus the class is overly full, and there aren't enough TAs to support it. I'm not defending his methodology, but I understand his motivation (preference to motivated students first).

I graduated from UC Berkeley a year ago, and I remember CS161 being known as one of the easier technical upper divs at Berkeley. Although I never took the course myself, these rules seem like quite a departure from the norm.

I wonder if perhaps the professor is trying to scare people into dropping the class?

Looks like budget problems mean they can't support everyone:

"There are currently about 170 students. However, given the current TA staffing, we can only support 75-90 students in the class. Because this class is so challenging, I expect that about 2/3rds of currently enrolled students will drop the course. Those who remain will need to commit to being on-time for every class and discussion section, and willing to devote substantial effort to reading and understanding highly technical material (and being examined on it during every single class section)."

Not a budget issue; they just couldn't staff enough TA's (not enough students expressed interest in becoming a TA).

Well, with this kind of attitude from the prof, I can see why.

This attitude likely resulted from the lack of TAs rather than the other way around...

> I wonder if perhaps the professor is trying to scare people into dropping the class?

This seems likely.

It also appears that the professor is making somewhat of a political statement about the University, the (lack of) teaching assistants, and the shortage of funds available to him. I attended a University of California school several years ago, and there were a plethora of similar issues regarding class sizes, funding, etc.

It's sad, because actions like canceling four of seven planned sections¹ only hurt the students' education.

1: This originally stated that lectures were canceled, but I was mistaken. Thanks to codergirl for correcting me.

They're cancelling four of seven sections, not lectures, due to lack of demand.

All the lectures are still there.

My alma mater has begun doing this with their intro CS courses. It's a small school of only 2400 students and only 8 CS professors but demand is so high for CS right now that they simply can't staff up and maintain the university's cap of 30 students per course (21 in this case given the size of the CS labs).

They're teaching as many intro sections as they can without depriving majors of electives.

Fortunately they haven't gotten dickish about it but it's a tough spot to be in.

It sounds like a good time to be a CS professor looking for work, then?

This is after hiring two last year.

Problem is, the university was burned by that after the dotcom bubble crashed. They'd hired a bunch during the boom and then had far more than needed up until ~2010.

My freshman CS class in 2008 only had 3 students. The university doesn't want to repeat that.

Escorting people to the john during an exam? This is a plain old college course, not the California bar exam.

Based on this I wouldn't be surprised if the TA who is assigned "bathroom escort duty" also would be instructed to check the toilet paper roll for crib notes prior to allowing the student to relieve themselves.

For those unfamiliar with our curriculum: CS161 is given as a "choose-two of these required courses" choice in order to complete the CS major. Many students are enrolled out of necessity.

Really? Wow that's rough! L&S CS, EECS, or both?

When I graduated the only requirement was enough units and at least one lab class.

btw, what's the other class?

As far as I know, it's just L&S CS. I graduated with a degree in EECS in May 2012 and we didn't really have any required upper division courses beyond "take X number of units".

This is false; you are confusing 161 with 162.

You may be the confused one: "Breadth courses choose two from the following" http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/csugrad/

I didn't say it was required, but it's in the "choose-two" allotment of breadths.

I had a friend who went to Berkeley 20 years ago. He told me his professor was teaching 300 students via a video monitor. Any, real instruction was taught through TA's. Plus, he said the professors didn't care about teaching; it was all about their research. Yea, I know they need to publish, but it just didn't seem fair to the students? There's a lot of students who drop out of that university, and never set foot in a college again.

One of the top reasons I gave up on "college" -- I'm paying for an education, so it'd be nice to be taught by, y'know, an educator. Someone who wants to teach, who enjoys their craft so much that they're excited just to talk about it... I had a few professors like that, and even though that was decades ago, I can still recall their names and mannerisms, if that tells you what kind of impact they had. They even made me enjoy classes that I loathed taking, simply because they were excited to teach it. However, as I progressed, I had fewer professors and more TA's "teaching" classes.

Is there any resource which ranks colleges on their staff's passion+teaching ability, rather than some combination of fancy equipment and recruiting students who will do well no matter what?

I am an undergrad at a university where the common sentiment is similar; professors care much more about research than teaching. However, it works out since it seems most undergrads at this school are more interested in doing research than attending classes. Maybe undergraduate education should be more research-focused at research institutes?

It looks like it has quite a few more students than it should, and he's using every excuse he can to drop people. This isn't very nice, but I can at least understand his position. Then I saw this bit:

"If you miss a class or are late to a class or section (without prior approval from the instructor) you will be considered to have dropped the class and will receive a failing grade."

It's practically a lottery for bad GPAs.

"you will be considered to have dropped the class and will receive a failing grade."

You can't have both. Can you?

It probably depends on the school, but where I am it sounds most like a WF - withdraw while failing. For almost all purposes it counts as an F.

This is what through me off most - I assume he means that you'll be dropped from the class and is just trying to ramp up the fear factor even farther.

Reads like every syllabus I've ever seen:

<ridiculous amount> of hours is required. If you don't put in these hours, don't expect to pass!

It's just a cop-out so the professor can assert it's your fault for not studying enough if you fail.

In reality, most of the kids who pass will probably study 5 ish hours per week for that class, if they are lucky and have time.

You get to pay out the nose for that treatment too. College is hardly worth it nowadays, and certainly won't be worth it in another decade when it has again doubled in cost in today's dollars.

I had an Applied Math Professor like this, "You should be spending 20 hours a week per credit". We had 6 credits per term so that left 7 hours per day for eating, sleeping, getting to class and what have you.

Having gone through something similar (3-4 hours of sleep daily, irregular eating), it's not worth it no matter what. Within half a year, I was a bodily wreck, coming down with regular colds/flus, several eye infections and a debilitating 2 month diarrhea that left me with a 14.something BMI. Oh, and the ensuing pandemonium got me expelled from the school, to add insult to injury.

It's a damn diploma, which doesn't even guarantee you are getting a job, especially since those 7 hours left mean you don't get to network during that time. It's totally ridiculous anyone would expect you to sacrifice your health for that, and I did buy that con for far too long.

Ahh, well, such are things.

I must admit these bad things never happened to me because I didn't actually work the 20 hours per credit :-)

"If you feel someone is looking at your exam sheet, you should immediately stand up and report the incident – during the exam" Sounds pretty fun actually

"He's cheating off me!" "No, HE'S cheating off ME!" /slapfight ensues.

We never had anything this ridiculous when I went to University (EE at one of the better Uni's in Australia), but reading it sure didn't make me miss the ridiculous hoops you were expected to jump through in the name of 'education'.

Competitive grading is especially ridiculous and not a valid reflection of how industry actually works. Sounds like some of these professors need to be turfed out into the real world for a while.

Okay, something seems a bit weird.... When I saw that the instructor had a gmail account listed on the third page of the syllabus, I suspected that maybe he's an adjunct and wasn't given an @berkeley.edu email address. However, he's full professor at Berkeley (http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/)....

I see this with academics more and more, they don't want to deal with the university IT department and policies, so they just use gmail, google docs, etc.

Yup.

G+ is a much better community for online and hybrid class than anything the Blackboard monopoly can muster up.

This almost sounds like an oblique commentary about the diligence necessary to implement secure systems. One buffer overflow and you fail.

Hi Prof. Doug Tygar, Good evening, I am a Berkeley student in your cs161 class. I fully understand the situation. I have to say that the current syllabus is not too bad. Although the quiz part is kinda 'crazy', those quizzes will certainly force students to read the required reading before lectures, which is a good thing!!! I am not against this syllabus. However, if the student is 5 min late and he is unable to take the quiz, that would be really sad. So, if we can have a policy like having quizzes in the middle of the lecture and dropping the lowest 2 quizzes, that would solve all the problems. Again, I do believe that quiz will help students study more and read the required reading ahead. I am looking forward to a great 161 this semester. Thanks a lot for all the efforts that you have been taking in to make this course better.

lsjaaa -

thanks! You'll hear some very good news on Tuesday morning.

As someone actually attending this class, the primary reason for this syllabus is to get 2/3 of the class to drop. They couldn't find enough TAs for the class, and were forced to rework the curriculum, as well as get enough people to drop to try to alleviate the overcrowding.

I spent a summer at Berkley coming from as liberal an institution as there is. The biggest difference that really affected me was the professor stood up during exams and shouted out every five minutes that five minutes had gone by. Where I went to school, professors weren't allowed in the room during exams. Even timed exams. I don't know, but the whole shouting out the time and stuff really sucked and did not help me learn calculus. It just distracted me and made me play games with time rather than with equations. Different environments suit different students.

As someone who graduated from Berkeley EECS, this is highly atypical. Something fishy is going on here.

Might be, but I swear to my story. Pretty sure the professor was a grad or phd student and all he ever liked to do was put hard ass equations on the board and toot his own horn when he solved it. I had a really hard time relating to the guy thats for sure.

Anyone remember that course on game theory? What this course needs is for every student to turn up ten minutes late to the second class. (First class would be too hard to organise, I think).

Hi everyone -- Doug Tygar (the instructor) here again. I just wanted to mention that between a number of drops from the class and what looks like some more resources, I think I will be able to run the course without the draconian conditions in the original syllabus. So, we'll have an updated syllabus on Tuesday. Best wishes everyone!

In the Chemistry department, some of the classes taught large discussions. Perhaps a way of solving the problem while keeping 170 students, you could just have the TA's teach 2 discussions, maybe in the evening and just have it be in a large room. It might be impersonal but it keeps everyone without having to be anal about it.

I'm pretty sure this was intended to be intense specifically to push students from taking it. The professor is ensuring that he has enough TAs for students. By encouraging students to not take the class he's making the class better for those who decide to stick it out.

Wouldn't if be easier to lean on two or three grad students to step up? I genuinely don't know how these things work, but maybe that's why this looks a little nuclear to me.

I am currently applying to college, and reading this is making me think twice about applying to Berkeley. Is the UC budget crisis really that bad? Are situations like this common?

This isn't about the budget; this is about not having enough TA's to assist with the class as well as the class possibly being "too easy" the last iteration. Berkeley holds each CS course to within a range of average GPAs: If a class deviates from this range, it's deemed abnormal and the administration takes account to correct it. Speculation has it that this class was previously on the high end of the GPA range, and thus was made more "difficult".

I have heard (second hand, but from people who work directly with Berkeley staff) that least in physics their issues are this severe. Required courses are being made biannual and filling completely so that students with bad luck lose even the option of a four year degree.

I was at berkeley for physics and computer science, and while some physics classes had problems with the number of students enrolling, they were nowhere near as bad as the CS classes. It's well known at Cal that there's way too many incoming CS major. They recently started capping the major to people above a certain GPA, but apparently that isn't enough.

That new policy won't take effect until 2 years from now, unfortunately. Hopefully it will serve its purpose.

Current UC Berkeley EECS senior: I would apply to Berkeley but suggest you go to a better funded smaller school so long as its top ~15 if possible. Me, I had the choice between Berkeley, Illinois, and Carnegie Mellon. I do wish I had gone to Carnegie Mellon. The only two things that Berkeley really has going for it at this point is: it's close to tech companies (so tons of recruiters) and the degree still has a prestigious ring to it. Classes are packed even in upper division CS courses; I'm still waitlisted for 3 classes and have no idea which ones I'll get into. And it's only going to get worse as more people flock to CS and as the budget tightens.

I'm a CS sophomore at Berkeley, and I actually had the same choice. Sure, it would have been better to go to CMU based solely on the school, but the difference in tuition and fees between the two was too great to not go to Berkeley. (I'm in-state and received little financial aid.)

Ooh yeah I forgot about this point. If I were in state I wouldn't mind as much.

this is highly atypical.

here are the syllabi for two other similar classes at Cal: http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs188/sp12/information.html http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee122/fa12/grading.html

here are syllabi for the the first two intro cs classes: http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/fa13/about.html (this class has 1000 people in it) http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61b/fa13/handout0.pdf

Obviously a joke of some sort [or a mental breakdown], but lets all jump on board and take it seriously shall we.

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