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What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

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Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#161

Post by sklogic »

kefka wrote: post #132
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…

Who's paying? Simple question. Really convoluted answer. But the end payers are the students. And they want their money's worth. Of course, the worth is derived from their uneducated selves, and "higher educated" peoples know what's best for them. A percent of income for X years seems much fairer way of paying for education. But even that has its flaws. We have yet to see the full blowback from our current way of fin…

Of course the current system is awful and it will backfire dramatically. But it's not an excuse for being lazy and stupid.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#162

Post by kazinator »

Fomite wrote: post #138
klibertp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 intim…

Basically, the idea is to discourage essentially spamming regrade requests as a zero cost effort on the part of the student that occasionally pays off. That the teacher has made one mistake implies the teacher may have made more than one mistake, and there's some probability that those errors are in your favor. And if its really correctness you're worried about, rather than just going for a better grade, then you sho…

There is a deeper lesson and that is that correctness is what you should be worried about. If you think that the paper was not graded correctly, then let it be graded again. You don't get to cherry pick instances of the truth that benefit you.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#163

Post by itsybitsycoder »

calibraxis wrote: post #10

What if students could fire the ADMINISTRATORS? What if students could run the university?

Honestly, at the school I went to, I would've preferred to have the power to fire the administration versus the faculty. Most of the faculty are just fine. Some were great, most had their little quirks and a couple really sucked at their jobs, but that's true in most fields. The administration seemed to spend most of their time giving themselves raises and flushing money down toilets.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#164

Post by sklogic »

kefka wrote: post #134
chasing wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students and professors are not peers.

The professors should be servants, in the same light a server is to a meal. I pay for it, I get it the way I want.

Just buy a fake diploma then and do not spoil it for everyone else.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#165

Post by chasing »

kefka wrote: post #140
chasing wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually much more complicated than that, and as someone who has been a student and is currently an adjunct professor, I find that attitude to be horrible. The student-teacher relationship is a collaboration. Also, please don't go through life thinking that every single person you might give money to for something is your "servant." Not even the person on the other side of the McDonald's counter.

I might buy that argument if the student and the professor shared the profits. They don't. Instead, the student is bound to pay every last cent of the education. Nowhere, other than court punishments and child support are debts protected against bankruptcy. So yes, if I pay for it, I own it or I control it. Edit: You misunderstand. I said servant, and I mean servant; not slave. Webster: "a person who is hired to do h…

Your professors are not your servants. Nor should they be.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#166

Post by vacri »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #159
noobermin wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me about it. I TA for a physics class for premeds, and while they may find some passing interest in the course, they certainly don't care to learn it...and actually, I agree. May be a general knowledge of physics for someone going into medicine might be somewhat beneficial, but do I really expect my doctor to care about calculating the net force on a spaceship between the earth and the moon? Really? I'm still at…

"calculating the net force on a spaceship between the earth and the moon" Well, that's your problem. There's a ton of physics that premeds should learn, but gravity is not one of them. Calculating electric potentials, forces etc. as applied to biological membranes would be infinitely better. Teach them the doppler effect, so they'll understand that ultrasound flow meter from the get go. Don't even get me started on N…

Well said. Biology, like chemistry, is actually a very complicated branch of physics. There's plenty of utility in understanding basic physics in biology. The doppler effect is a great example. Similarly radiation for imaging studies. Tension and compression. Optics. Fluid dynamics. Partial pressures. Electricity. Wave motion. So on and so forth.

There is so much physics involved in medicine, that it's bizarre to hear that premeds are taught about spaceships. Perhaps it's due to this strange perception some people have that physics is only about subatomics and astronomy.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#167

Post by noobermin »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #159
noobermin wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me about it. I TA for a physics class for premeds, and while they may find some passing interest in the course, they certainly don't care to learn it...and actually, I agree. May be a general knowledge of physics for someone going into medicine might be somewhat beneficial, but do I really expect my doctor to care about calculating the net force on a spaceship between the earth and the moon? Really? I'm still at…

"calculating the net force on a spaceship between the earth and the moon" Well, that's your problem. There's a ton of physics that premeds should learn, but gravity is not one of them. Calculating electric potentials, forces etc. as applied to biological membranes would be infinitely better. Teach them the doppler effect, so they'll understand that ultrasound flow meter from the get go. Don't even get me started on N…

Look, I'm a proud physicist, and it prides me to know that discoveries in my field have essentially defined generations, from the unification of EM with light to the transistor, physics has at a fundamental role in advancement of both technology and understanding of the world since forever. Still, a general description of how these technologies work should be enough for people who are not going into technical roles (like being the physician specifically uses the PET, etc), it probably not even need be quantitative. I feel like we focus far too much on the details instead of relevant results in our classes. For example, calculating the net force on an object to determine it's acceleration (Newton's second law) is vital for any physicist to understand. For a biologist? Not so much. Especially when the treatment of physics gets technically complicated (like you need to consider drag forces or something), the content becomes more tedium than learning especially for students who do not plan to go into that field.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#168

Post by mreiland »

I hate history. HATE HISTORY.

In Uni I had to take my final history course and only 1 professor was available. Little did I know at the time...

The man was a hardass. a quiz every single class over the previous classes lecture, you can only make up 3 quizzes, after that it's too bad so sad.

And yet I LOVED the course. People talk about good orators and I had never known one until I met this guy. I was absolutely enthralled every lecture. He was just amazing to listen to, somehow he made what he was talking about seem exciting, it was crazy.

I passed the class with an A and I've never regretted taking that class. I remember it fondly. And I'm the guy that would completely stop going to classes, showing up only for the tests, so that's saying something.

I think it's a terrible idea to start grading professors on by their students evaluation. I think student evaluations are good, but personally I think too many professors already cater to their students, the problem would only get worse. And the ones who are there to learn will get left behind.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#169

Post by CocaKoala »

kefka wrote: post #140
chasing wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually much more complicated than that, and as someone who has been a student and is currently an adjunct professor, I find that attitude to be horrible. The student-teacher relationship is a collaboration. Also, please don't go through life thinking that every single person you might give money to for something is your "servant." Not even the person on the other side of the McDonald's counter.

I might buy that argument if the student and the professor shared the profits. They don't. Instead, the student is bound to pay every last cent of the education. Nowhere, other than court punishments and child support are debts protected against bankruptcy. So yes, if I pay for it, I own it or I control it. Edit: You misunderstand. I said servant, and I mean servant; not slave. Webster: "a person who is hired to do h…

What "household or personal duties" is your professor obligated to perform?

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#170

Post by jordanpg »

chrisbennet wrote: post #126
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.

That's fine and even important, but there are huge swathes of the American population that don't understand the distinction between research professors and folks like teachers, instructors, and lecturers. They get painted with one brush and, in this instance, are used to score political points with grossly ill-informed voters who have somehow decided that they don't like universities.
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