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What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

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Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#91

Post by kazinator »

Degrees granted from any university that regards students as customers are automatically worthless junk, because they are essentially purchased goods.

When a professor is rated low, at least some of that rating has to do with the professor having a high standard in the awarding of grades and passing of students.

If students get good grades then no matter how much the lectures suck, or how unavailable that professor is for help and so on, large numbers of those students will not rate that professor low. Poor grades are the exacerbating factor in a revolt against a professor.

If you're a C student, the moment you see a B+ next to your student ID on the course results table, all memories of the prof either vaporize or become rose-colored.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#92

Post by ohfunkyeah »

maxerickson wrote: post #54
sklogic wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

It doesn't do shit for you as a patient. A certainly not any more than trading that 4 yr lib arts degree for 4 more years of medical training. Universities as gatekeepers to actual jobs without is something that definitely needs to be addressed but you'll probably never see them bring this up. Imagine how bad for business it would be if all Universities offered was a chance to learn.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#93

Post by kazinator »

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.

Of course, a lot of the low ratings would also have come from some students who didn't have any grades at all from those later courses, because they didn't make it.

Nothing provokes a low rating like failing.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#95

Post by [deleted] »

kelukelugames wrote: post #72
amyjess wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had terrible professors who were ridiculously easy, though. Like one guy I didn't learn a thing from, because he constantly mumbled and wrote in really tiny print on the whiteboard... yet the class before each test, he'd discuss every single test question in detail and tell us the answers. A friend of mine had him for something else, and at one point after delivering a graded test, he said "if you didn't like yo…

This is called bribing the students. Many terrible professors do it and it works extremely well.

[deleted]

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#96

Post by kazinator »

amyjess wrote: post #61
Sir_Substance wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've had terrible professors who were ridiculously easy, though. Like one guy I didn't learn a thing from, because he constantly mumbled and wrote in really tiny print on the whiteboard... yet the class before each test, he'd discuss every single test question in detail and tell us the answers. A friend of mine had him for something else, and at one point after delivering a graded test, he said "if you didn't like yo…

That's awful.

The right way to do it is "if you don't agree with your grade, give me your paper and I will look at it more carefully. Of course I'm not just going to look at the question you're contending, but all of them. Your grade may go up, but it also may go down. Do you wish to wager?"

A very good high school math teacher of mine did this.

I think he did not get very many takers; the students were never confident that they would not lose more undeserved marks in the other question to more than offset any gain.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#97

Post by balabaster »

cafard wrote: post #90

'Ted Hilles, the chairman, was a remarkably kind man who was embarrassed by having to do so, but he read the student comments aloud to each of us. "This is the kind of teacher that I came to Yale to study with,", the student you had given a B+ or an A would say. Then there would follow the report of students like Smithers, to whom you cad given a C or a D: "This man is the worst teacher I have ever studied with, he i…

The problem with this approach is that it's hard to evaluate the performance of your teacher until many years later, at a time when you only just came to realize that not only had you learned a lesson, but also the magnitude and how profound that lesson was. I didn't come to appreciate everything my grade school teachers instilled in me until many years into my professional career. If you'd asked me as I was getting ready for my exams how I'd rated them as teachers, those I liked the most would have gotten the highest grades regardless of how much I'd really learned from them. Those I liked the least would have gotten the lowest grades. It wasn't until many years later that those I liked the least during my academic career (if you can call it that) were the ones who actually taught me the most. It would have been a shame for them to be fired on something so subjective as how much I liked them or how dissatisfied I was that they'd just issued me the 4th 'D' grade in a row.

It's only now that I genuinely appreciate everything they taught me that I feel honestly worthy of sitting in their classroom again to learn what is they're willing to impart.

So I say thanks to those teachers that pushed me, those that held me accountable, those that I disliked during school. It was you that would likely have been fired by these performance evaluations that gave me the most. I just never would have had the foresight to give you the grade you deserved.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#99

Post by jackmaney »

amyjess wrote: post #61
Sir_Substance wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've had terrible professors who were ridiculously easy, though. Like one guy I didn't learn a thing from, because he constantly mumbled and wrote in really tiny print on the whiteboard... yet the class before each test, he'd discuss every single test question in detail and tell us the answers. A friend of mine had him for something else, and at one point after delivering a graded test, he said "if you didn't like yo…

The vast majority of the worst teachers I've known--as a student, as a TA, and as an Assistant Professor--are also some of the easiest.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#100

Post by ohfunkyeah »

kazinator wrote: post #91

Degrees granted from any university that regards students as customers are automatically worthless junk, because they are essentially purchased goods. When a professor is rated low, at least some of that rating has to do with the professor having a high standard in the awarding of grades and passing of students. If students get good grades then no matter how much the lectures suck, or how unavailable that professor i…

Degrees and grades are a big part of the problem because they are treated as currency to get a job. Degrees are like the Microsoft points system. I want a job in field XYZ. Well to get that you have to buy 256 credits. But, but, it looks like the job really only requires 120 credits. Too bad you have to buy 256. Ok, fine... WTF, part of the 120 credits have absolutely no relevance to the thing I want to do. Yeah, well you still need to take them.
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