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What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

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Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#51

Post by sklogic »

johnchristopher wrote: post #50
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…

> 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... )

> But HN is regularly bombarded with articles about college and university being a over-valued investment.

Would you go to a doctor who skipped a college? Do you want to drive over a bridge designed by a bunch of hipster dropouts? If not, then the higher education is still relevant, and all the hipsters must just shut up.

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

I'm quoting one of the student complaints - that a lecturer is not "entertaining enough", and this is not "what they paid their money for".

EDIT: and yes, it's not the students who changed recently, it's the creeping commercialisation of the education system in general. Students are "consumers" now, and this is a new thing indeed. They should not be blamed for such an attitude, of course.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#52

Post by jordanpg »

One vote for the point of view that says I don't really much care how well-rated as teachers research professors are.

My tax dollars should be mostly supporting their research. Teaching should be a collateral duty. It is not a valuable use of time for good researchers. If we need superb instructors to teach basic material to undergrads, let them be called something else.

Is there really a single person on this forum who didn't do the bulk of their real learning outside the classroom, anyway?

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#53

Post by sklogic »

hnnewguy wrote: post #49
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…

> 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.

These are the questions the students specifically complained about. Taken from one of their tweets. And you don't need to know the domain in order to infer that those students are cretins indeed, if they find such questions tough.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#54

Post by maxerickson »

sklogic wrote: post #51
johnchristopher wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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... )

> But HN is regularly bombarded with articles about college and university being a over-valued investment. Would you go to a doctor who skipped a college? Do you want to drive over a bridge designed by a bunch of hipster dropouts? If not, then the higher education is still relevant, and all the hipsters must just shut up. > But how can you chain that in the same sentence to a right to be entertained ? I'm quoting one…

For a doctor, I don't think I care very much if they have completed bachelors or not (in the US they are more or less required to for acceptance to medical school, but I don't see what good this does me as a patient).

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#55

Post by vacri »

How does this not violate the Eighth Amendment: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Automatic loss of job with no recourse can be seen as both an excessive fine and a cruel punishment.

In other news, a friend's wife here in Australia was an XO at a Navy training base. He told me that the base brought in a 'soccer card' system where the recruits could card the drill sergeants and make them face disciplinary action. This didn't take long to completely undermine the ability to make the recruits learn anything and waste the CO's time with meaningless disciplinary hearings, and was turfed out in short order.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#56

Post by emodendroket »

pliny wrote: post #33
bvrlt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at the college/university level I have seen students complaining about professors that were fairly good, sometimes just because the grading was a bit tough.

emodendroket: 'Too tough', as I've heard it, almost always means 'failing average' or 'failing median', but we can only trade anecdotes around that.

But grade inflation is a real and documented phenomenon that would seem to be related.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#57

Post by FruitForce »

As a student myself, in my final year of University and I do feel that there definitely needs to be more control/transparency where the tuition fees go.

The faculty that I am on is one of the lowest scoring areas of the university according to the National Student Survey. I assume this is due to the lecturers not having the knowledge or experience when compared to the students who are passionate about their field which they are currently studying for a degree in. Most have managed to get the job with little industry experience to share with students and don't have experience with a modern workflow such as using Linux, git, etc.

Personally, I would be much more happier if the lecturers have a basic salary but then allow students to give more of a percentage of their tuition fees to the departments that keep up to date with their field.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#58

Post by dagw »

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.

If the lecturer is solely responsible for the final grade then there isn't necessarily any correlation between how bad the lecturer is and if you pass or fail.

One of the worst lecturers I had at university (thought the course he was teaching was way beneath him and basically didn't give a fuck) also gave such extremely easy tests that basically everybody passed almost despite themselves.

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