I wonder what kind of retention there is. Is one day of class studying quantum computation going to be particularly useful to people when they study it 6 months or 2 years later?
I've lately studied a bit of program design when it comes to working out. A lot of effort goes into designing workout programs, making the programs efficient, trying to get the maximum results from the least amount of effort. There's a clear progression and a clear way of measuring progress. Every exercise, stretch, and movement is supposed to a particular function that best moves you toward your goal. Particular muscle sets are targeted at particular intensities for particular intervals on particular days. There's a reason for every specific decision that gets made.
You can contrast this with the aimless way a lot of people workout. They go to the gym, they do whatever exercises or work on whatever machines seem like a good idea to them at the moment, and hope it increases their fitness in some non-specific way. Lacking good metrics for measuring effectiveness, they often judge a workout by how sore it makes them the next day (an extremely poor way to measure effectiveness). It's not that this approach can't improve your health, it's just that it's extremely inefficient compared to the more goal orientated and progression based system.
In my experience most universities follow the aimless second approach - throwing what they can at the students, hoping some of it sticks, and judging the courses based on difficulty (this usually becomes even more obvious when professors explain their courses). I don't think I've come across any study measuring the effectiveness and metrics of different programs and progression paths.
I've lately studied a bit of program design when it comes to working out. A lot of effort goes into designing workout programs, making the programs efficient, trying to get the maximum results from the least amount of effort. There's a clear progression and a clear way of measuring progress. Every exercise, stretch, and movement is supposed to a particular function that best moves you toward your goal. Particular muscle sets are targeted at particular intensities for particular intervals on particular days. There's a reason for every specific decision that gets made.
You can contrast this with the aimless way a lot of people workout. They go to the gym, they do whatever exercises or work on whatever machines seem like a good idea to them at the moment, and hope it increases their fitness in some non-specific way. Lacking good metrics for measuring effectiveness, they often judge a workout by how sore it makes them the next day (an extremely poor way to measure effectiveness). It's not that this approach can't improve your health, it's just that it's extremely inefficient compared to the more goal orientated and progression based system.
In my experience most universities follow the aimless second approach - throwing what they can at the students, hoping some of it sticks, and judging the courses based on difficulty (this usually becomes even more obvious when professors explain their courses). I don't think I've come across any study measuring the effectiveness and metrics of different programs and progression paths.