Why Your Professors Suck
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Why Your Professors Suck
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Re: Why Your Professors Suck
#2I'm definitely a "cynical bad student". Fit the description perfectly. I only respect teachers who also work part-time as a programmer, sysadmin, ... anything interesting.
Re: Why Your Professors Suck
#3The truly good student is the one who signs up for the class with the goal of mastering the material being taught as well as possible. The 'good' student in this example cares more about gaming the signaling mechanism than actually learning the material - this is why he'll spend his time arguing with the TA over a handful of points on his problem set than spending that time going over the material again. The 'cynical bad' student is already convinced that he's not going to get anything out of the class, in which case he either 1). is taking the class because he has to or 2). is a fool who should be taking a class better serving his needs and not wasting his time.
Also, I don't know much about philosophy (and I suspect this is far less applicable for philosophy), but in science and engineering often mastery and innovation in a field requires an extremely narrow focus that, in turn, requires a significant investment in time and resources. This includes transmission of specialist knowledge to graduate students and postdocs, grant writing, paper publishing, acquisition of equipment or access to equipment. So I don't really think it's entirely fair to chalk up lack of interdisciplinary interest and/or innovative methodology predominantly to a system that weeds out people not willing to think the way it wants them to. (Not saying that tenure doesn't have its own problems...)
Re: Why Your Professors Suck
#4Definitely not an engineering prof. Top university professors (ie. R1 schools) are primarily judged on their research, not their teaching. If your professors "suck" it's because they're spending all of their time on the things that matter to their careers: grant writing and publications.
And students (good or bad) care about exam times because of... procrastination. The "bad" students (of the goof-off variety) don't stick around in engineering. At most of the top schools, a few C's and you're out. The cynical bad students often achieve mediocre grades but compensate by doing cool non-coursework stuff.
Re: Why Your Professors Suck
#5I'm definitely a "cynical bad student". Fit the description perfectly. I only respect teachers who also work part-time as a programmer, sysadmin, ... anything interesting.
Me too, although it was less about the individual lecturers than about questioning the value of the whole system. I got mediocre grades overall but excellent grades in a few subjects considered very hard, simply due to finding them interesting and thus being motivated to go to the lectures and putting effort into the assignments. If I could go back, I would not have chosen a five year track.
Re: Why Your Professors Suck
#6As a physics postdoc who is thinking of switching careers, I definitely sympathise with this article. And I agree with almost everything about it, except this line:
Success as a faculty member requires one thing above all else: a good reputation in your field.
So I agree with the conclusion that the overall standard of faculty is not impressive to students, but it's not because the faculty are not risk takers or innovative - it's because for the most part, the faculty are political animals, not technical ones. They may also be very good technically, but this is an accident and not a feature of the system and untrue more often as not. The cynical students mentioned in the article will likely sniff that out quite quickly whereas, in my experience, the good students are simply more naive. Both types tend to be just as intelligent and hard working, but the cynical students will work on what they want, rather than what the professor wants.
Re: Why Your Professors Suck
#7Definitely not an engineering prof. Top university professors (ie. R1 schools) are primarily judged on their research , not their teaching . If your professors "suck" it's because they're spending all of their time on the things that matter to their careers: grant writing and publications. And students (good or bad) care about exam times because of... procrastination. The "bad" students (of the goof-off variety) don'…
The top professors tend not be judged on their research, in my experience. They're judged on their publications. I, personally, know many 'top' professors that have enormous publication lists that come from being the guy who supplied the money via a grant application. From their publication list - which is what 'proves' their research excellence, you would be forgiven for thinking that they were savants. But they're generally just administrators with an eye for the main chance who view the publication list as yet another thing to be gamed.
Re: Why Your Professors Suck
#8This reminds me of course of the Bipolar Lisp programmer :)
http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm
Re: Why Your Professors Suck
#9Definitely not an engineering prof. Top university professors (ie. R1 schools) are primarily judged on their research , not their teaching . If your professors "suck" it's because they're spending all of their time on the things that matter to their careers: grant writing and publications. And students (good or bad) care about exam times because of... procrastination. The "bad" students (of the goof-off variety) don'…
This is even more the case at public schools where large class sizes make it even more difficult for research-dedicated professors to engage with students. However, I think it's interesting that the article doesn't really mention cynical "good" students when I think I know more cynical "good" students than cynical bad students or plain "good" students. In particular, several of my friends are international students who pay essentially 4x the tuition I pay. That gives them an extreme incentive to go through college as efficiently as possible. This usually means attending a minimal amount of lectures, self-studying, and only showing up to turn in homework and take exams.
At a public school, especially in an engineering department, there often isn't much a difference between professor and a talking head reading off information from a student's perspective. In fact, one of the things that motivated cynical students quickly realize is that not only is self-study often more efficient than than the traditional go to lecture and take notes approach--it's often a far superior way to learn and you can easily find yourself outperforming students who diligently go to class. Cynical students quickly see through the facade of going to class for the sake of going to class.
The resources at a public school aren't about teaching.
Instead of
+Attend lecture
+Engage with professor who teaches your class
+Complete Assignments
+Take Exams
The flow becomes
+Study out of the textbook
+Complete Assignments
+Take Exams
+Engage with a professor on a research level and try to get out a publication
+Or forgo the research somewhat and try to graduate as soon as possible
Re: Why Your Professors Suck
#10I'm definitely a "cynical bad student". Fit the description perfectly. I only respect teachers who also work part-time as a programmer, sysadmin, ... anything interesting.
Me too, although it was less about the individual lecturers than about questioning the value of the whole system. I got mediocre grades overall but excellent grades in a few subjects considered very hard, simply due to finding them interesting and thus being motivated to go to the lectures and putting effort into the assignments. If I could go back, I would not have chosen a five year track.
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