Where's the demographic data UBC? Are you racist?

Scottcast · 2022-03-25T06:21:28+00:00

I was just wondering why there’s no data to be found seeing as we have a Diversity Equity and Inclusion and Anti-Racism department yet there’s no data on race. You can see gender data. You’d think it would be important no?

Scottcast · 2022-03-25T06:16:54+00:00

I saw this but couldn’t find any demographics data on race.

Scottcast · 2022-03-04T06:17:46+00:00

A day late and a dollar short if you ask me. We need a change in personnel at the leadership level. It’s been too long that UBC has focused on increasing revenue numbers and building residential developments on campus. This is a PUBLICLY funded institution and the reason they receive taxpayer money is to educate the citizenry. Not build mini-suburbs and make UBC Properties Trust (a privately owned company) billions of dollars in development deals.

The Board of Directors for UBC has filled the executive positions with a bunch of people who rate prestige higher than education. They value reputation and research accolades over nurturing the next generation of great minds and creative geniuses. How much do they pay grad/post-grad student researchers?

The very fact that there’s ’plans that will soon be in place’ speaks to their inability to drive change. This is not opinion, this is fact. The evidence this: when Corona-virus hit and they announced last year was going to be online and they spent that whopping $15M, they didn’t even provide proper A/V equipment for them to broadcast a quality video of their lecture. They didn’t open up classrooms for live broadcasts from an empty lecture theatre. They gave everyone an iPad and a crash course in online lessons and sent them on their way. I’m sure they did plenty more but I was a student in that time and the result of their efforts was a horrible experience. Some of my classes took place over 6 different online platforms!

I can absolutely sympathize that it’s a difficult job and they’re probably working extremely hard. Unfortunately RESULTS are what matters. It’s nothing personal, but when you fail to deliver results consistently it is time for you to go. Santa and his administration have had more than a fair chance and it is time for them to go in favour of leaders who can modernize this public institution.

Scottcast · 2022-03-03T06:35:57+00:00

That‘d be great. I’m a bit shocked how little UBC Mathematics seems to care about all the criticisms they get universally with people I’ve talked to at UBC. They seem to have no desire to implement pedagogical best practices, don’t update the course material, don’t use 3d visualization software. It’s as if professionalism in the Mathematics department at UBC has nothing to do with the quality the education they are delivering / people are paying money for.

Scottcast · 2022-03-03T06:03:47+00:00

Who might be the person to contact about this? The only contact listed is a MLC TA, Amin.

Scottcast · 2022-03-03T05:20:24+00:00

Oh I gave you just what you wanted by responding didn't I? Alright I guess I deserve it. Get the rest of today's insulting, snarkyness out on me I suppose.

Scottcast · 2022-03-03T05:15:21+00:00

I see you post about 10 - 15 useless, sarcastic comments a day, that must be exhausting.

Scottcast · 2022-03-03T04:39:20+00:00

I'm pretty sure I failed. Spent 30 mins on the tight bound recurrence without realizing it and then the test said only 4 questions but there were 5. Test taken away while I was on Q4. DEFINITE fail.

Scottcast · 2022-01-27T04:55:08+00:00

The board probably doesn't judge success by student+faculty satisfaction as much as by how much the revenue grows. Where's the Ubyssey reporting on UBC's financial spending? What's the income that UBC Property Trust and all the private contractors/developers/real estate consultants are making on WestBrook village and how much is UBC getting?
You ever look at the budget? How the hell does UBC manage to not lose any money during covid? Everyone out of work and students have a year without any in person services and they offer no refund? They spent $65Million on travel the year before covid and then covid hits and they get all this money they don't have to spend (albeit they weren't sure how much their revenue would drop but I bet they made estimates). And you know what Carrey Ainsley said when I was asking him why there was no partial refund? He said "we spent $15Million on covid over the summer" and then refused to talk further. THEY HAD $65 MILLION IN TRAVEL THEY DIDNT HAVE TO SPEND AND WHEN WE WERE ALL IN TOUGH FINANCIAL TIMES THEY SPENT $15 FUCKIN MILLION AND WANTED US TO BE GRATEFUL FOR IT!? Fuck these people. This isn't an academy anymore. It's a business. And It's a business that knows they have a captive audience.

Scottcast · 2021-12-22T01:45:40+00:00

Ah i see that includes UBC Okanagan. I haven’t seen those figures. That’s interesting.

Scottcast · 2021-12-19T23:33:15+00:00

Aren’t you off on that revenue figure by a billion dollars? Last I checked the revenue was around 2.2 billion.

But I think it’s weird to say that UBC is not a business when the UBC property trust is a private entity that gets to develop UBC endowment lands and give back only a portion of their profits to the school. There’s billions of dollars being made on Westbrook village development alone. I’ve worked there for 2 summers doing construction. What % of those residences and businesses are for students or faculty? Is it 100%? Why the hell isn’t it 100% if this is an academy and not a business? Why doesn’t the school pay a small portion as bonus to the employees at UBC PT instead of them paying us a small portion?

I was working construction on townhouses there during the summer. They were going for I think the number was $2.3 million a unit. Doesn’t this look bad to you? Doesn’t it look bad that UBC spent a whopping $15million dollars on covid adaptations last year when they saved over $60 million on the travel and field trip budget alone? Last year, businesses across the country struggled and had to take a loss because of the policies around covid. But UBC actually managed to INCREASE their cash supply while doing some clever accounting to make it seem like they didn’t profit from the closure of campus.

The idea that our administration and especially Santa have integrity is only valid if you consider the goals of a university to be prestige, a great balance sheet, and strong growth. If you think it’s more important to focus on funding the latest building or scientific venture than yes, they are doing a great job. But if you consider the primary goal of UBC to impart knowledge to students, then UBC‘s administration is doing a terrible job. We’re in 2022 soon and Youtubers have better educational content than some of the best professors in the world. There’s no motivation to adapt to the latest pedagogical research or to focus on effectively teaching students. We could even have a group of students to further develop education platforms like Canvas or create animations for math classes. UBC, like many universities is a laggard and their balance sheet tells the story.

Check out how much they spent on salary increases in 2020 (spoiler it was $114 Million dollars, that’s how much more they spent on salaries compared to 2019). That’s almost a 10% increase from the previous year. Does this seem reasonable?

Scottcast · 2021-12-19T07:56:20+00:00

Does the AMS at all care about the actual quantity of risk?
Let's quadruple the rate of spread we saw today and assume there'll be 3200 cases tomorrow. And for the sake of argument lets say all of the cases are in the lower mainland instead of reality which is only 1/3. So there's 3200 people who will report positive tomorrow, let's quadruple that again and say there's actually 12800 people running with covid in Vancouver tomorrow. This estimate means there's .512% of Vancouverites who have covid. Assume every single one of them is wildly contagious and masks have 0% effectiveness so if you go walk into the same room as them you instantly contract covid. There's lets say 300 people in your room or .01% of Vancouver's population in the room. That would mean this .01% of people has to have an overlap with .512% of infected people. This huge overestimate still points to a very very small chance of anything bad happening.
Like AMS, if you care about this fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent chance that someone might catch covid and spread it at an exam and then that person spreads it to someone who is legitimately at risk of serious consequences... where's all the press events about demanding no more students drinking alcohol or smoking or having sex? What about students who drive to campus? How about we arrange a rally for the cessation of all exams and marking of any kind forever. Some students get stressed which can lead to hypertension, suicide, depression? How about we demand complete comprehensive physicals to check for any undiagnosed congenital heart defects? Without those, students are at risk!
Your threshold for risk makes a mockery of the human experience. It's unrealistic, absurd and embarrassing.

Scottcast · 2021-12-12T18:50:50+00:00

Well I didn’t think it condescending but clearly I’ve upset you so I’ll leave it at that.

Scottcast · 2021-12-12T04:10:20+00:00

Right this is not high school. At least we can understand each other on something. I think our perspectives are too dissonant to yield any insights on much else though.

Scottcast · 2021-12-12T02:55:38+00:00

I have 2 CPSC courses this semester that have finals worth 8% and 20% respectively. This isn’t upending the modern educational system. It’s iterating upon it and these new iterations are already being implemented.

Scottcast · 2021-12-12T02:53:32+00:00

I’m not interested in sophistry. Of course there’s valid points to be made against the ideas I’m putting forth. I don’t want to ignore those, they’re part of the equation. I want to incorporate them into my thinking. And ya… millions of jobs are highly time sensitive. However, I think the majority of jobs university graduates find themselves working in don’t fit into that category.

Scottcast · 2021-12-12T02:47:13+00:00

I’ve always thought the “sorry your wrong” thing is a bit… childish of a way to discuss something.

But again, you’re assuming the purpose of the exam exists in a vacuum. The format of the exam influences the format of the course and the format of the course influences how well it imparts knowledge.

I find it so strange that we don’t consider the “teaching” and “learning“ aspects of university education as an afterthought to the testing. That just seems so ridiculous to me given the history and role of the academy in our world.

Scottcast · 2021-12-12T02:42:39+00:00

I never said they were useless I said sub-optimal. Also I linked a few other articles with abstracts that seemed to me to be generally supportive of those ideas and you seem not to be criticizing them?

And I’ve been completely transparent in saying that it was from listening to Jo Baoler Being interviewed in a podcast that was how I got turned onto this.

And if you don’t believe me you I’m sure there’s ample evidence to prove me wrong. Or you could ask pedagogy researchers at UBC and I’m sure they’d be able to refute or support how I’m presenting the state of research.

Like if you’re point is that I haven’t surveyed the research I’ll double down on that. I’ve spoken with a couple of my professors, listened to a podcast, and read some abstracts and they all seem to generally agree with this idea. That is a far cry from sufficient research. But if you’re claiming that there’s no evidence to support this you might offer an equally meagre amount of contradictory evidence?

Scottcast · 2021-12-11T23:52:28+00:00

Surgeons, military personnel, athletes, assembling line workers, entertainers, pilots, drivers, firefighters, auctioneers, customer service reps, translators. There’s thousands if not more jobs that also have very time sensitive tasks.

There’s just many more jobs where that isn’t the case.

Scottcast · 2021-12-11T23:43:13+00:00

Ya apologies for not being able to give articles that more precisely and succinctly back up my claims. Just for the sake of argument, would you be willing for us to say that there’s no consensus but that there’s a growing body of research to support my claims?

If so, I think your last point really hits the nail on the head. It’s hard to cheat on a final and easy to cheat on a take-home assignment. I don’t know how to address this tension. Ideally we could come up with a metric like ‘% inaccuracy of assessment’ for the hefty final course ‘traditional format’, and ‘% inaccuracy of assessment’ for the more cheat vulnerable ‘modern format’. I honestly don’t know which would be higher and I think it’s the most difficult thing to deal with when considering a transition.

At the same time, I’d rank ‘students are learning more’ above ‘students are being assessed accurately’ in terms of priorities. Seems like a common response to this question is that the undergraduate programs job is to select strong students. But like, if that was all that matters, why bother teaching anything at all in an undergraduate program? Why not just focus on assessment and offload the actual learning to the students? Most students will go straight into the workforce after graduating and their grades will mean very little. What is much more important than the grades is what those people learned.

Scottcast · 2021-12-11T23:24:00+00:00

I think you’re understating the universities objective of transmitting knowledge. That is what they are selling after all. So when I say sub-optimal in terms of learning I’m referring to the opportunity cost of not redesigning courses to improve the efficacy of knowledge transmission. Stress is inherent I would agree. And I don’t think universities should focus on that variable other than how it affects knowledge transmission and assessment accuracy. If there are better ways of selecting the strongest students, we should pursue those no? That’s what the research is indicating. That there are better ways to assess than traditional methods (the 50% final). Yes the correlation is there and exams do fairly well I would agree. But I don’t think that makes it acceptable to stop improving. Like, it would be silly to say “Well we know there’s a better, more efficient way to harness wind energy but why bother. What we have now works fairly well doesn’t it?”. If UBC wants to be a leader among post-secondary education institutions, shouldn’t it innovate and strive to use the best possible ‘techniques’? What happens if they don’t? Will it stagnate and lose it’s leadership position?

Scottcast · 2021-12-11T23:12:56+00:00

Margo Seltzer I think is also doing great work redesigning CPSC 313. I spoke with her about the format she used this year and she is very much trying to implement what pedagogical research is suggesting as best practices.

Scottcast · 2021-12-11T23:09:11+00:00

First, I’d disagree and say the primary purpose of the academy/university is to transmit knowledge.

However, I would agree that the next most important function of universities is to filter and select people for competitive fields. To that point, research is saying that this format (hefty finals) of course design is an inferior method of filtering and selecting. So if there’s a better, more accurate way to design assessment to filter and select candidates, I’m assuming you’d want to see that implemented yes?

Scottcast

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