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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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What I have seen around Europe typically was that learning happens during exam crunch time and coursework is either just recommended or has relatively little effect on your end grade.

That's exactly my point. The kids will just goof off for 90% of the semester and just cram it all in before the exam. If so when what's the point of even having the rest of the semester.

using chatgpt to write personal introduction

Even if it's busy work, using chatgpt to do something that would take literally 5 minutes is just a retarded move.

Undergrads here are typically 3 years. I remember having 8 crunch periods per year for my degree. 4 quarters with one review exam in the middle and one big one at the end. Besides this, nobody stopped you from taking extra courses to graduate earlier and many did.

By no means continental European university system is great. Most countries have their own pathologies and the Bologna Process makes everything typically shittier but it’s pretty strange to claim students got to goof around because they don’t have constant deadlines to write parroting essays about queer indigenous history.

I fail to see how almost any of my education would had been disrupted by the LLMs the way the New York mag article is describing. The only courses I can imagine are currently swamped with LLM problems are the bunch of liberal arts inspired nonsense courses I had to follow for credits.

That's exactly my point. The kids will just goof off for 90% of the semester and just cram it all in before the exam. If so when what's the point of even having the rest of the semester.

You should look into Western Governor's University and their model. Basically you can finish your degree as fast as you can finish testing for each course.

I remember a well-known poster here (Tracing Woodgrains? Not 100% sure) having the same plan, then they took longer than a traditional degree to graduate because a large part of the university experience is social pressure and the WGU experience doesn't provide that part.