In an attempt to look beyond your university, or another reflection on the educational process

This post is an attempt to understand the life outside the walls of my alma mater. By the will of fate and my own, I got into the faculty of applied informatics, of which there are many in the CIS. All faculties and departments at the Open Day is a focus of goodness and progress, but their real life is still somewhat different from the picture at the Open Day. That is what happened in my case. It is impossible to say that the faculty at me is completely a hole and a concentration of evil: there are interesting subjects there, there are interesting conferences, etc. I noticed some problems in the work of my faculty, but which organization has no problems in its work? I also wonder how the problems described below are presented in other universities:

• Once computer science is applied, then we will pay much less attention to fundamental things than applied ones. What does this mean? For example, in the following principle: why do we need all this fuss with console applications?
  
  We don’t have time to tinker with the programming language itself, and therefore we will immediately make graphic applications in Delphi and it doesn’t matter that most students construct for / while constructions with difficulty. I clearly observed the result in the second year in the group: there are already sections of computer science, which presuppose knowledge of basic algorithmic constructions and basic methods of using the programming language chosen by the department, and most could not read the compiler error messages normally.
  ')
  
• In connection with the requirement of accelerated application of students and in connection with the deplorable level of basic knowledge of students, our seminars and practices often are:
  In the manual described step by step instructions that need to be done + screenshots for self-control. According to this technique of writing programs, we had to drive in the finished source code and absolutely scanty modifications, if any.
  
  
• The mathematics given in the framework of mathematics and used in the framework of applied subjects are two big differences. Some sections of mathematical analysis that use “applied” subjects were not completely covered in the course of mathematical analysis. And we are talking about, for example, the ranks, the elements of the operating number, etc., that is, in general, about the standard topics of mathematical analysis, and not about his most recent achievements.
  
  
• Very strong abstractness of the mathematical block of objects. Yes, we are given a mathematical theory, we are given to solve examples that are strongly tied to this theory, but we do not analyze and apply the applied and often “inconvenient” cases for direct application of the theory until they appear in the course or diploma. The course in mathematical statistics and data analysis showed this very well. Yes, we have read certain sections of statistics and data analysis: testing hypotheses, reducing data dimensionality, clustering, etc. However, these methods were read separately and the course itself did not give any clear picture, but what to do with all of them?
  
  This is despite the fact that our application area itself allows us to take on a multitude of tasks in order to formulate a problem around them for academic research and in stages developing it in order to introduce the necessary sections of statistics. Instead, we simply loaded a powerful layer of theory, which was given as follows: for example, in factor analysis, they use eigenvalues ​​of matrices, and therefore they told us about it in a lecture for 15 minutes, which did not include any visual images to understand or explain on the fingers, but in general what is it? Formal definitions and an example of a 2x2 matrix for calculating eigenvalues ​​were given. Everything became “clear” to everyone. Yes, but it is believed that this topic is known to us!
  
  However, for some reason, textbooks of higher algebra, especially good ones, give much more attention to the problem of eigenvalues. This was a very curious picture at all: matrix-vector operations are widely used in various courses, but there is no linear algebra course, where it would be worked out thoroughly, at least not worked out, but an idea of ​​the problems of linear algebra would be given.
  
  
• Is computer science a related set of disciplines? But where did you get such nonsense ?! The problem here is complex: as is well known in computer science, there is a fundamental part: algorithms, computational complexity, etc., and there is an applied one: the design of information systems, the development of interfaces, programming, testing, etc.
  
  You will probably agree that these disciplines are interconnected and a good specialist should have a related idea about them. Moreover, the young specialist should have an idea about the specialties in it existing, etc. Of course, the student himself must read, recognize, and if he does not want anything at all, then the result will be hurt at least 0th. But on the other hand, there are students who are interested, but there is no complete picture of how to move and a first-year story about professions and disciplines in computer science as a brief overview, the task is not long and useful as I think. It’s bad that the subjects themselves do not really know the real level of training of their students and seriously believe that we know something, because formally the course, for example, was web-based, but it was not interesting for them.
  
  
• Spreading web pages with tables - the latest achievement of web design! We have web technology teaching that’s precisely at this level and, moreover, the teachers (there are three of them: two older generations and one young) think that everything is fine. The truth is that in private conversation it turned out that not everyone, but the students are weak, and therefore why should they give them some kind of MVC and so on. A similar mammoth zoo can be observed in one way or another in other disciplines, although very modern things may also be around.

I would like to finish by the fact that I got the impression that in our educational process at the faculty there is not enough project capacity: the real one, when they first develop ideas, select technologies and implement them. Yes, let them, these projects will be small or solve the already classical problem, but you have to go through them with students from the formulation of TK to the upload on GitHub :) And what is the situation in your university, dear reader?

PS There is a chance that I will have to stand on the other side of the department and take part in the pedagogical process, and therefore I would like to understand: what is going on?