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Question: Updated: What's Your Educational Background? :: Total Votes:192
Poll choices Votes Statistics
PhD Science 59  [30.73%]
PhD Humanities 7  [3.65%]
BS/BA/Ma Science 80  [41.67%]
BS/BA/Ma Humanities 27  [14.06%]
High School 13  [6.77%]
Lots of Scientific American 2  [1.04%]
I Done Readed a Lot on the Internets 4  [2.08%]
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  Topic: Updated: What's Your Educational Background?, Take Two< Next Oldest | Next Newest >  
guthrie



Posts: 696
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: April 08 2008,09:02   

Quote (Louis @ April 08 2008,03:29)
I'd agree to an extent. I find the drive to seperate teaching and research in academia to be a bloody stupid one. You don't understand an idea until you've had to explain it to an 18 year old undergrad who is not interested in the subject and highly interested in the girl/boy two feet away from him/her.

Some random thoughts, bearing in mind it is a few years since I left uni and I didn't know anything then.*

In theory, splitting teaching and research might be good, if you therefore had good, trained teachers effectively teaching students more of the basic stuff they need to know.  In reality, what it would mean is minimum wage knowledge regurgitation, because that is all the gvt is willing to pay for.  Then for research, in my opinion, too much university research these days is oriented towards commercial gain.  I say let the companies do their own damned research, that will give the graduates jobs to do after they finish uni.  



* This is another rant of mine- some bodies, especially regulatory ones, think it is perfectly sensible to recruit new graduates.  No, it isn't.  New graduates are innocent and know nothing, so will completely miss the stuff they are supposed to pick up on, eg the fact that a company is putting lots of phenol down the drain.

  
Louis



Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: April 08 2008,09:17   

Phenol? Down the drain?

The chemist in me applauds. The person minimally acquainted with health and safety in me has gone a pale shade and hidden under the desk.

Louis

--------------
Bye.

  
guthrie



Posts: 696
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: April 08 2008,10:55   

Its alright, it was about 2.9 tonnes diluted in 20,000 tonnes of water per year.
Somehow nobody worked out that a moulding process involving the use of phenol-formaldehyde resin in water would lead to significant amounts of phenol going down the drain.
Or, more likely, they were short staffed and we were low on their list, because we weren't killing off the sewage works.  Every drain on our site leads to the sewage works, fortunately, otherwise we would have been prosecuted for something by now.

  
Louis



Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: April 08 2008,10:59   

Quote (guthrie @ April 08 2008,16:55)
Its alright, it was about 2.9 tonnes diluted in 20,000 tonnes of water per year.
Somehow nobody worked out that a moulding process involving the use of phenol-formaldehyde resin in water would lead to significant amounts of phenol going down the drain.
Or, more likely, they were short staffed and we were low on their list, because we weren't killing off the sewage works.  Every drain on our site leads to the sewage works, fortunately, otherwise we would have been prosecuted for something by now.

LOL Killing off the on site sewage works (or rather the bacteria in them for chomping the waste) was something of a game at one instiitution that shall remain nameless.

It's not big and it's not clever.

{frowns disapprovingly whilst trying not to laugh}

Louis

--------------
Bye.

  
guthrie



Posts: 696
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: April 08 2008,12:33   

The SCottish water sewage works serves probably a few hundred thousand people.  We are not about to kill it off, fortunately, otherwise they'd have fined us.  At the new site we have a water treatment plant to get rid of most of the Phenol.

  
Erasmus, FCD



Posts: 6349
Joined: June 2007

(Permalink) Posted: April 08 2008,23:39   

smartest sombitch i know never finished fifth grade.

that ain't no shit.

--------------
You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK

Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG

the odds of getting some loathsome taint are low-- Gordon E Mullings Manjack Heights Montserrat

I work on molecular systems with pathway charts and such.-Giggles

  
Lou FCD



Posts: 5455
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: April 11 2008,15:02   

Massive cleanup on aisle five.



Quote
Caca?, by ch1mp


--------------
“Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?

Linky“. ~ Steve Story, Legend

   
Lou FCD



Posts: 5455
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: April 11 2008,21:05   

Before it becomes a huge pain again...



Quote
Umlauted No, by a shadow of my future


--------------
“Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?

Linky“. ~ Steve Story, Legend

   
skeptic



Posts: 1163
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: April 12 2008,08:20   

dang, slapped on the wrist again! lol.

Anybody got anything to say about educational backgrounds and limitations in getting grant funding?  Maybe that will put us back on topic.

  
  128 replies since April 17 2007,15:37 < Next Oldest | Next Newest >  

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