Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 190 posts

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#121

Post by ohfunkyeah »

kazinator wrote: post #115
ohfunkyeah wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, wel…

All university credits are relevant to that job, even those humanities courses and whatever. Credits directly relevant to the job skills are more like vocational training; whereas university is supposed to be about education. Also, one reason some jobs prefer applicants with degrees is because university completion shows that you have some ambition and willingness to work hard toward a goal that is several years away…

One can say that all university credits are relevant to any job but only in the most general sense. Certainly you wouldn't advocate 8 years of general education before getting into degree specific education so the amount is at the very least arbitrary.

Yeah you are probably right about ambition as a general filter too. But the point remains that universities take advantage of this. They know full-well that plenty of students are there to get a job and they can and do milk this.

Issuing degrees is not part of Universities being "about education". Degrees are an arbitrary milestone, that can be received after completing a nearly arbitrary set of classes, that in-turn have taught an arbitrary set of lessons. The fact that Universities have coalesced around issuing degrees of the same type without ensuring their curriculums match further makes the degrees aribitrary.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#122

Post by ohfunkyeah »

chrisbennet wrote: post #102
ohfunkyeah wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why wouldn't they want to be pushed and challenged? The only thing universities offer is the chance to learn more and be pushed or challenged. AFAIK they could not possibly be there for any other reason than to learn deeply. I think it would be interesting to know if professors who push and challenge within a non-dgree open online course would face the similar wrath? I'd bet not.

"The only thing universities offer is the chance to learn more and be pushed or challenged." Um, have you been to a university? ;-) When you think about it, the professors aren't (necessarily) there to teach either. They are there primarily for the opportunity to do research though that may be changing as many professors are part time minimum wage contractors.

Yeah, exactly my point. That statement is laughable to anyone who as been to a University. I'm not even sure if being pushed and/or challenged to become better educated is even a primary focus of Universities.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#123

Post by debacle »

maw wrote: post #112
debacle wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you were lucky. I definitely had some miserable professors and TAs who were native English speakers. And some professors and TAs with comically bad English but who were good at what they did anyway.

Yeah I had plenty of good ESL professors but I also had a few that, try as I might, I could not learn from.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#124

Post by ColinWright »

xijuan wrote: post #119

I just wanted to say few things about my experiences on reading students' ratings on ratemyprofressor.com. First, professors who consistently get good ratings are usually very good lecturers. They are not necessarily easy profs. But they do give great lectures and explain things more thoroughly. On the other hand, professors who get consistently low ratings are usually not good. For example, last term, I took a cours…

But everything you say is what everyone believes is "common sense." If all you want are clear lectures well delivered, great, follow the advice on some random rating website.

The research, however, says that the student evaluations are negatively correlated with subsequent ability in the subject. In other words, you are repeating the common sense view that is flatly contradicted by careful research.

What should I trust: your anecdata, or published research?

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#125

Post by klibertp »

kazinator wrote: post #96
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…

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 confide…

> Do you wish to wager?

WTF does that even mean?

Look, I'm a student. I'm supposed to make mistakes. It's natural for me to be wrong. I should be wrong many times now so that I can learn and not make those mistakes in the future.

But you're a teacher. You are supposed to correct mistakes. You are supposed not to make mistakes, or at the very least to be honest about those mistakes. You're not supposed to try to intimidate me so that I stop questioning you; you're supposed to encourage critical thinking and healthy scepticism.

In short: if a teacher hears that he made a mistake when grading it's his duty to check it again, carefully; and if it happens to be true he should be honest about it and admit it instead of threatening that he'll lower the grade even further. What your teacher said could be read as: "Ok, so I may have fucked up, but that doesn't matter, because I'm so much smarter than you and I can fuck you up in any way I'd like; do you want me to show you?" Your teacher probably didn't mean it that way, but I met a fair share of teachers who did; it would be best to stay away from such ambiguous phrasings altogether.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#126

Post by chrisbennet »

jordanpg wrote: post #52

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…

It's not as prestigious, but a college without a graduate program will have teachers that are there just to teach. You get taught by professors not not teaching assistants.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#127

Post by codefisher »

s_baby wrote: post #110
kazinator wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 confide…

What's so great about this strategy? When a teacher does this to me I assume he/she is more interested in doing his research instead of leading a class.

This was what we taught to say when I was a tutor for a university. The point was the student could not come and just point out that something was wrong with the marking and they deserve more points. If they thought the grade was not fair it could be remarked, but the whole thing would be remarked and a totally new grade assigned. You might come out better or worse for it.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#128

Post by teddyh »

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…

What’s his name, Dr. Umlaut? ☺

http://www.absurdnotions.org/page23.html

http://www.absurdnotions.org/page34.html

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#129

Post by codefisher »

I would like more accountability from professors somehow. Maybe not from student reviews, but at least someone unknown to the professor randomly attend a few classes to check the quality of them. Right now I have a professor that says things during class that are obviously incorrect, and can be verified as incorrect. Her attitude towards students is also disrespectful. But there is nothing we can do about it, no way to communicate to the university that they should be embarrassed and ashamed to have such a professor.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#130

Post by rebootthesystem »

codefisher wrote: post #129

I would like more accountability from professors somehow. Maybe not from student reviews, but at least someone unknown to the professor randomly attend a few classes to check the quality of them. Right now I have a professor that says things during class that are obviously incorrect, and can be verified as incorrect. Her attitude towards students is also disrespectful. But there is nothing we can do about it, no way…

Cameras in every classroom. You can then annonymosly report problems with time and date for review.

I had a Calculus prof who was worthless. She would literally read from the book and copy it verbatim on the blackboard. No questions. If you had a question you had to write it down on a piece of paper and leave it on her desk. If she could get around to it the question might be answered in a day or two. Students had no way to fire this prof or get her reviewed and replaced. We had to endure the torture and learn on our on.

Post reply on HN