STEM Degree Workload

I'm inclined to actually believing a lot of this.When I got into university I found every course very easy, didn't attend any lectures, got all my workshops to run on the same day to reduce my face time and maxed out my free time to do whatever I wanted (work/friends/extra/etc). I'm a STEM major at a top 30 world ranked engineering school with good grades.I've often asked if I could max out my classes and finish a degree within a year and a half - but I've never been allowed to skip more t

Forgetting the fact that most schools aren't on quarters, the 12 courses all have prerequisites for a reason. You can't just take them all at the same time.Even if you could take them all at the same time, maybe 2 or 3% of students would have been capable of completing those courses in that time frame at my University.You're also cutting out 5 classes because they are called electives. In most programs electives are structured so that you're going to get exposure to cer

That probably because you were in a degree program. Discipline is definitely an issue if you just decide to complete a couple dozen courses making up a curriculum from OCW or whatever. Even if you take out elective stuff, especially that not connected to the major, you're almost certainly talking many hundreds of hours to plow through a college major.

In 4 semesters (I was a transfer student), there were approximately 50% classes I was required to take (humanities, foreign language, gym, math), 25% classes related to CS I was required to take (all throughout my college education, I took 'intro to java' equivalent classes 4 times), and 25% classes I actually chose. This basically came down to 1 class a semseter, and it had to be available at a time that didn't overlap my other classes.Since someone decided that all the CS classes should ta

Almost everyone registers for atleast 4 courses a term. You need to work on all of them because every course counts. However, when you're going to take the Junior Lab (if you're in Physics) or the digital death lab/ software labs (if you're in EECS), you take classes that are relatively easy. For example, you might take extra humanities classes to work on the HASS requirement and then in a later semester not take the humanities class and replace them with courses in your own major.I don't kno

Both the CS and maths undergrad courses at my uni were structured with voluntary lectures coupled with compulsory group study with 10-15 students led by a post-grad TA for many of the larger courses. I skipped most of the lectures, and focused on the group study, and it was far more rewarding.

There are tons of schools that have weak gen-ed requirements, which can often be tested out of either with high school AP's or as a college student with CLEPs. My undergrad was about 3.5 years of rigorous engineering education with roughly a semester of gen-eds spread over it. You should try to research the school and program before attending.

My CS degree cost me about an hour a day in homework on bad days. I skipped many classes, only took relevant coursework, and graduated in 3 years.

I also went back as an adult. I felt like the semesters were too short if anything. The types in-depth projects we did in upper division classes needed 15 week semesters.Even without the long projects, the vast majority of students in my CS and math classes couldn't have handled 2x the information. The shorter summer versions of hard classes always had a much higher fail rate.At my university you could also take up to 21 hours if you had a good GPA, and you could go during the summer.

The higher-education system is in trouble the way I see it. I was a business major (Management) and spent ~5 hours each week on average (5 courses/semester) and graduated with decent grades.I've since enrolled in graduate CS program. Taking 1-2 classes, I spend 10-20 hours each week outside of class. The contrast between CS and Business courses is ridiculous. I feel that my time as an undergrad was almost worthless.I'm unsure of why the Business degree was so "easy", but my inclination is