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What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

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Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#41

Post by atirip »

ColinWright wrote: post #2

Here's the take-away quotation for me: The better the professors were, as measured by their students' grades in later classes, the lower their ratings from students. "If you make your students do well in their academic career, you get worse evaluations from your students," Pellizzari said. Students, by and large, don't enjoy learning from a taskmaster, even if it does them some good.

This. When i look back at my school times - all those who i, let's say, hated back then are those who i now remember most fondly and who actually teached me something.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#42

Post by danieltillett »

ColinWright wrote: post #2

Here's the take-away quotation for me: The better the professors were, as measured by their students' grades in later classes, the lower their ratings from students. "If you make your students do well in their academic career, you get worse evaluations from your students," Pellizzari said. Students, by and large, don't enjoy learning from a taskmaster, even if it does them some good.

This is exactly my experience from when I was a professor. I drove my students to the maximum level I could and still keep my evaluation score just above the minimum (3.5/5). At the time they hated it, but later on they loved to tell me how much they learnt in my classes - their memory of all the work faded and they were left with the true feeling of accomplishment.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#43

Post by cantankerous »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #6
ColinWright wrote: post #2

Here's the take-away quotation for me: The better the professors were, as measured by their students' grades in later classes, the lower their ratings from students. "If you make your students do well in their academic career, you get worse evaluations from your students," Pellizzari said. Students, by and large, don't enjoy learning from a taskmaster, even if it does them some good.

The methodology is flawed. If a lecturer really is terrible, then more people will fail that course and not go on to do the advanced course, artificially raising the average for the advanced course because only the best students are able to pass the prerequisite DESPITE the terrible lecturer.

True in theory, but not true in practice. Terrible lecturers find ways to rationalize the poor grades of their students (i.e. externalize the blame) and curve grades to get kids to pass the class. Especially bad lecturers will give the bulk of students high grades to preclude complaints. For their part, poor students could care less about what they learn, instead focusing on passing or getting a good letter grade. In poor programs, subsequent more advanced courses in a sequence are subjected to downward pressure when it comes to teaching more rigorous or advanced topics because the students suck so badly (because of the lack of rigor in early courses). A cluster of poor students can be surprisingly good at stymieing course progress. Many professors have to perform research and would rather placate the students with good grades instead of wasting their research time, which is vital to maintaining their careers (Teaching is secondary at research universities no matter what administration tells you) . The can gets kicked down the road, and mediocrity matriculates.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#45

Post by jimmaswell »

sklogic wrote: post #26
Siecje wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No say at all? Not even trigger a review? Profs that consistently get poor reviews are getting them for a reason.

Back in my days in the university we (all the students) hated mostly the toughest professors. Now, many years later, the only stuff that I still remember well, to a degree that I can go and pass an exam, despite not using much of it in my work, is from the courses of those most hated professors. And now students are much worse, they're expecting a "value for money", they want to be entertained. They do not like being…

Are you saying all those students just weren't paying attention in class or something? It seems suspect if that many of them spoke out about it

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#46

Post by debacle »

fmsf wrote: post #16

This would not work, often students perceive strict professors has being bad because they give too much work load or are too strict. It also goes against excellent researchers who are contributing a lot to science but are not great teachers. Often these are "forced" to teach by their university because otherwise they don't get grants. I am not in academia, but in retrospective some of my greatest professors where ver…

I've never had a bad STEM professor who was proficient in English. I don't know if I've just been lucky or if this is a common misconception about the role of a teacher versus a professor.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#47

Post by spython »

I am studying media art at the University for Arts and Design Karlsruhe, Germany [1]. It was founded in the nineties, alongside ZKM, the Museum for new media [2]. One of the founding principles of the school was to limit professor tenure to three years, regardless of the performance. The idea behind it was to prevent the school to become a morass of old ideas and stay competitive in a new field.

It succeeded to a degree, especially with regard to the sheer number of different artistic positions that get to be represented at a small university. It is not without fault however - the quality of teaching is not constant; after a professor leaves there is oftentimes a semester of emptiness until a new one arrives.

And while the students can not fire a professor, they have a vote in the committee that decides which person to hire as the next professor.

[1] http://www.hfg-karlsruhe.de/ [2] http://zkm.de/

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#48

Post by sklogic »

jimmaswell wrote: post #45
sklogic wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in my days in the university we (all the students) hated mostly the toughest professors. Now, many years later, the only stuff that I still remember well, to a degree that I can go and pass an exam, despite not using much of it in my work, is from the courses of those most hated professors. And now students are much worse, they're expecting a "value for money", they want to be entertained. They do not like being…

Are you saying all those students just weren't paying attention in class or something? It seems suspect if that many of them spoke out about it

I'm saying they're a bunch of lazy, spoiled, stupid kids with a couple of too active leaders (probably ADHD) among them.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#49

Post by hnnewguy »

sklogic wrote: post #26
Siecje wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No say at all? Not even trigger a review? Profs that consistently get poor reviews are getting them for a reason.

Back in my days in the university we (all the students) hated mostly the toughest professors. Now, many years later, the only stuff that I still remember well, to a degree that I can go and pass an exam, despite not using much of it in my work, is from the courses of those most hated professors. And now students are much worse, they're expecting a "value for money", they want to be entertained. They do not like being…

>what kind of cretins can find such an exam "too complicated"?

There is absolutely no context in that article, and it shows a single question from the exam, yet you deduce that everyone that wrote and complained about it is a moron?

This is a two-way street: I've seen ridiculous student complaints, but I've also had terrible instructors. There are "cretins" on both sides of the table.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#50

Post by johnchristopher »

sklogic wrote: post #26
Siecje wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No say at all? Not even trigger a review? Profs that consistently get poor reviews are getting them for a reason.

Back in my days in the university we (all the students) hated mostly the toughest professors. Now, many years later, the only stuff that I still remember well, to a degree that I can go and pass an exam, despite not using much of it in my work, is from the courses of those most hated professors. And now students are much worse, they're expecting a "value for money", they want to be entertained. They do not like being…

> And now students are much worse, they're expecting a "value for money", they want to be entertained.

But HN is regularly bombarded with articles about colleges and universities being an over-valued investment.

But how can you chain that in the same sentence to a right to be entertained ?

You sound like Socrates (or better yet: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children...)

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