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My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

theguardian.com

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Re: My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

#21

Post by daxfohl »

relkor wrote: post #10

I am not paying for a "chance to learn". I am paying for a self-professed expert in pedagogy, whose has spend devoted their proffesional life to the art of shoving information into arbitrary people's heads. I go to the doctor because I want a professional with knowledge of diseases to fix my cold, not the crystal homeopathic healer that lurks on the street outside my apartment. Teachers are supposed to be experts at…

You're describing a tutor, not a teacher. It's the equivalent of blaming the customer service rep when something their company made broke.

Re: My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

#22

Post by distances »

relkor wrote: post #11
sklogic wrote: post #3

The idiots do not realise they're paying for a chance to learn, not for a product to be delivered to them no matter what.

I would be happy to sell you a chance to eat, or a chance for medial care, or a chance for housing. Education is as necessary as a public utility. To charge any price for a chance to learn while billing as a product (actually knowing things about the world) is a pure example of fraud.

Food can be guaranteed. Functionality of medical care doesn't often depend on the actions of the patient.

Learning can only happen with active studying. Nobody can push the knowledge into your brain. All you are offered is the chance to learn, and no guarantees of graduating if you turn out to be incompetent at it.

Re: My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

#23

Post by AndrewKemendo »

relkor wrote: post #10

I am not paying for a "chance to learn". I am paying for a self-professed expert in pedagogy, whose has spend devoted their proffesional life to the art of shoving information into arbitrary people's heads. I go to the doctor because I want a professional with knowledge of diseases to fix my cold, not the crystal homeopathic healer that lurks on the street outside my apartment. Teachers are supposed to be experts at…

This is a really interesting point of view, even if I disagree. What you basically have proposed is that the person who has responsibility for the end result of learning is the teacher not the student.

I certainly never thought about it that way in either undergrad or grad school, but I am struggling to actually come up with a good role based counter. The best I can come up with is that learning, generally, is the result of an individual's capabilities and motivations not the teacher or material. So the implications of your approach are a generation of people who feel as though the effort that they put in for learning must be less than that of the teacher and that seems to me to be a disaster waiting to happen.

Re: My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

#24

Post by UYChuH »

I'm doing my PhD in a Russell group British university. In one of our big group meetings someone asked about what was being done to encourage students to take theoretical CS courses, because after first year (when they're forced to take one) almost no students took them.

When someone suggested we "go ask the students" the Profs and Lecturers shot it down saying "they'd only lie". I did go ask some of the undergrads and the reasons almost universally that the prof who taught it in first year was a harsh marker, bad lecturer, and that it wasn't worth losing the credit points in years two onward when they could get a better grade elsewhere and come out with a better degree at the end of it.

The staff don't trust the students and the students want to make sure they get their money's worth; even if it means missing on some important stuff.

Re: My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

#25

Post by pmontra »

valdiorn wrote: post #9
sklogic wrote: post #3

The idiots do not realise they're paying for a chance to learn, not for a product to be delivered to them no matter what.

They are not idiots. If you pay half your annual income, you SHOULD expect to get some damn good service for your money. Schools should be free, but seeing how they're not, I see nothing wrong with students demanding their money's worth, and some slack if they fall behind on classwork. People should read Freakonomics.

Maybe they misunderstand the service they're buying. It could be seen as this: the admission to exams that eventually may give them a degree and the assistance of a professional, within some limits, with some rights and some duties.

On the other side the career of many professors depends more on the papers they produce than the students they help. The interests of professors and students are in conflict so a clash of this kind is inevitable.

Re: My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

#27

Post by [deleted] »

relkor wrote: post #11
sklogic wrote: post #3

The idiots do not realise they're paying for a chance to learn, not for a product to be delivered to them no matter what.

I would be happy to sell you a chance to eat, or a chance for medial care, or a chance for housing. Education is as necessary as a public utility. To charge any price for a chance to learn while billing as a product (actually knowing things about the world) is a pure example of fraud.

[deleted]

Re: My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

#28

Post by relkor »

davidjgraph wrote: post #19
relkor wrote: post #10

I am not paying for a "chance to learn". I am paying for a self-professed expert in pedagogy, whose has spend devoted their proffesional life to the art of shoving information into arbitrary people's heads. I go to the doctor because I want a professional with knowledge of diseases to fix my cold, not the crystal homeopathic healer that lurks on the street outside my apartment. Teachers are supposed to be experts at…

From the article "teaching still only equates to 33% of my workload". Teaching at universities is virtually never their sole function, and rarely the majority of their function. At UK universities most such staff take the job for research and have to teach as a condition of that job. It's true that university staff vary in their commitment to teaching and I can remember many who felt that teaching was beneath them an…

Valid point for university, but I have seen this same attitude all the way down the chain to primary school and secondary school. Maybe teachers in primary school are apeing the attitudes of college professors in an attempt to capture the greater social prestige associtated with being a researcher, however this motivation buys no forgiveness in the hearts of all the students that then pay directly for this ego trip.

Re: My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

#29

Post by daxfohl »

relkor wrote: post #11
sklogic wrote: post #3

The idiots do not realise they're paying for a chance to learn, not for a product to be delivered to them no matter what.

I would be happy to sell you a chance to eat, or a chance for medial care, or a chance for housing. Education is as necessary as a public utility. To charge any price for a chance to learn while billing as a product (actually knowing things about the world) is a pure example of fraud.

So teachers should work for free?

Re: My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

#30

Post by sklogic »

Thriptic wrote: post #18
sklogic wrote: post #3

The idiots do not realise they're paying for a chance to learn, not for a product to be delivered to them no matter what.

A lot of (and I would actually argue most) people are solely there to get a piece of paper which lets them have access to a decent job, and they're paying enormous amounts of money (and many times taking on dangerous levels of debt) to get that piece of paper. For all intents and purposes, they ARE paying for a product, and that's how they view it. College has become a barrier to entry to the job market, and when a s…

> are solely there to get a piece of paper

And why should anybody care at all about this disgusting and lowly category? They wanted to game the system, they got what they deserved.

> and many times taking on dangerous levels of debt

Student loans are quite a peculiar form of a debt. They can be largely ignored quite for a while (or ignored at all).

> College has become a barrier to entry to the job market,

In most of the areas this is not true. In the other areas this is great, let's keep it this way as long as possible. I do not want to be butchered by a doctor who bypassed an assessment on their "performance on (sometimes quite arbitrary) classes" by simply paying more.

If anything, this performance assessment must become more and more rigorous and tough. We need a grade deflation, not a grade inflation.

EDIT: since the article is UK-specific, I am talking about the UK only. Student loans here would not cripple anyone financially.

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