[manasecret]

Yeah I'll help out. With Germy's research that is.

Angrist:

I agree at the academic level you shouldn't be treated as kids, so I can understand homework being optional. But homework should at least be offered and the answers eventually passed out if requested.

Now let me be clear, I'm speaking from an engineering course point of view here. As my best professor liked to say, you have to "play the piano" if you really want to learn engineering concepts. Which is to say, you have to practice. Which means homework, or 'problem sets' since 'home'work may not be quite the right term, is required.

You can sit in a math or science class and watch the lecturer work out problems forever, and it may make complete sense and follow a logical path in your mind as you watch him work it out. But until you do it for yourself and work out the problems in your own mind -- until you play the piano, -- it simply won't stick. Even the smartest people I know have to do this for the complicated engineering concepts (i.e. anything past V=IR or other relatively simply concepts) -- I have never met anyone who learns without playing the piano.

I'm not knocking the non-science classes. They are much more conceptual than problem-solving, so working out problems isn't really necessary. If all you had to do was know the concepts of engineering, which there are 'intro' classes like that, then playing the piano is much less important.