Things your college instructor doesn't want to hear

[WarKitty]

(1) "But I need a <<insert grade here>> to keep my scholarship / job / program / parent's funding."

(2) "Did I miss anything important?"

(3) "What time does class meet?" (or anything else easily findable)

(4) "I can't open the attachment for the assignment due in my 8am class." (Sent at 1am the same day.)

(5) "Will this be on the test?"

(6) "I didn't understand anything from the last 6 weeks of class." (especially not right before the exam)

(7) During quizzes/tests "Is this right?"

(8) "So I was sick the last 2 weeks and I know I never contacted you..." (unless there was a good reason that you couldn't use your email)

(9) "Can we get extra credit?"

(10) "I think X." "Why?" "I don't know. How about not-X, is that right?"

[Traab]

Answers the instructor might give.

1) Then you should try to get that grade or better.

2) Yes. Either get someone else's notes, or it sucks to be you

3) /deadpan stare

4) /emails an application form for a basic computer class (without an attachment)

5) Just remember it

6) Might I suggest taking the college prep level next year then?

7) You will find out when I grade it

8) Yeah, thats why I have you marked down as failed

9) Did I offer it?

10) Im not questioning the validity of your answer, im asking you to explain why you think that way.

[snoopy13a]

(10) "I think X." "Why?" "I don't know. How about not-X, is that right?"

Ah, the "subtle" probing question to try and gain evidence through the teacher's instantaneous reaction. A classic.

But if you are in an intro class (i.e., one with non-majors), a significant amount of students do not care for the actual material at all and may simply want to get by with the least amount of effort.

[Eldan]

Huh. At least on the Bachelor level, we never even got to talk to our Professors. They'd come in at the appointed time, deliver their lecture, then leave.

[Ursus the Grim]

Huh. At least on the Bachelor level, we never even got to talk to our Professors. They'd come in at the appointed time, deliver their lecture, then leave.

Interesting. I went to a public university in Virginia, USA and a community college in New Jersey, USA, and the professors were quite accessible, whether before/after the lecture or in their office.

[Mauve Shirt]

American schools you at least have the professor accessible, so you have a chance to get your money's worth.

[WarKitty]

Note that "what do I need to do to get this grade?" is acceptable.


Huh. At least on the Bachelor level, we never even got to talk to our Professors. They'd come in at the appointed time, deliver their lecture, then leave.

Around here it's probably pretty hard to get to the full professors. An undergraduate student will typically be interacting with graduate instructors and teaching assistants - in fact many classes don't have a full professor on them at all. Large professor-led classes have sections, each of which has a graduate student on them.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Ursus the Grim
I went to a public university in Virginia, USA and a community college in New Jersey, USA, and the professors were quite accessible, whether before/after the lecture or in their office.


Originally Posted by WarKitty
An undergraduate student will typically be interacting with graduate instructors and teaching assistants - in fact many classes don't have a full professor on them at all.

For Eldan--you can find both these situations in the U.S., and a wide range of variation in between. It mainly depends on the particular college or university, and also whether it's an introductory-level lecture hall with a hundred students or an upper-level course with a dozen or two.

I went to a small liberal-arts college for undergrad, and one of the best aspects of the experience was that almost every professor was available for questions, whether or not you were actually taking a class from them. Graduate instructors were unknown, and even professors teaching a large lecture hall were open to talking after class or in their offices. Sometimes I ended up having dinners at their homes.

Grad school at a massive public university was...different; the lecture-hall courses were simply too populated for professors to have much time or interest in talking with students, although this depended on their personality as well.

In my department, though, there was decent access to professors I was taking courses with, although the department was a rather tormented amalgam of different factions and subdisciplines. Personalities played a much larger role in their accessibility, as well as attitudes towards grad students. And there were quite a few graduate instructors, including random grad students who were drafted on short notice when their advisors were out for a day.

So I suppose my experience was almost the inverse of Eldan's: excellent access as an undergrad, and rather marbled as a grad student, but with university size and focus as a first-order factor.

[WarKitty]

Ah, the "subtle" probing question to try and gain evidence through the teacher's instantaneous reaction. A classic.

But if you are in an intro class (i.e., one with non-majors), a significant amount of students do not care for the actual material at all and may simply want to get by with the least amount of effort.

Overuse of "I don't know" in general will also annoy your instructor, especially if it's quite obvious you're just being lazy. I once had a student tell me they "didn't know" in response to an extremely basic counting task, of the sort that an 8 year old could complete easily. Needless to say that student lost their participation grade.

[warty goblin]

There are a lot of circumstances where 'will this be on the test' is an absolutely fair question. It's the student's ass on the line, why on Earth shouldn't they ask about what they're going to be held responsible for?

[WarKitty]

There are a lot of circumstances where 'will this be on the test' is an absolutely fair question. It's the student's ass on the line, why on Earth shouldn't they ask about what they're going to be held responsible for?

The main problem is that, 90% of the time, we don't teach things that aren't going to be on the test. If it's not on the test I'll tell you it's not on the test, otherwise assume it's on the test.

[Traab]

Instead of switching your brain on and off depending on what questions you expect on the test, try just paying attention and learning the entire course.

[TaiLiu]

Instead of switching your brain on and off depending on what questions you expect on the test, try just paying attention and learning the entire course.
I believe he is speaking in terms of studying, not learning.

[warty goblin]

The main problem is that, 90% of the time, we don't teach things that aren't going to be on the test. If it's not on the test I'll tell you it's not on the test, otherwise assume it's on the test.

They're students, not psychics. Do they know that's your policy? Do they know you're going to remember to tell them something definitely won't be on the test? Why should they bet their study time and grade on that?

I'm in grad school, in one of the best schools in my field in the world, and my cohort and I ask these questions. It isn't because we're a bunch of slackers. It's because we need to know what we are and are not accountable for during those magical four hours every semester that determine 80% or more of our grade. If we had a professor get offended by a question like that, you can bet the body part of your choice it'd show up on our teacher evaluations, and not as a positive.

I know undergrads get up to a lot of stupid crap, I've spent a lot of hours dealing with stupid undergrad crap. But this isn't trying to hand in assignments late, or cheating, or being a bunch of unengaged slackers who don't even read their lab assignments. It's a completely valid question about the course content.

[Traab]

I believe he is speaking in terms of studying, not learning.

I dont think I have ever had a course where the vast majority of the material given wasnt on a test. So rather than wasting time searching for stuff I dont need to know for my grade, I just spend that time learning the material. I suppose it might be different if your teacher has a tendency to go off on tangents and you wind up with a 30 minute long tape of rambling about something not a part of your course though.

[TaiLiu]

I dont think I have ever had a course where the vast majority of the material given wasnt on a test. So rather than wasting time searching for stuff I dont need to know for my grade, I just spend that time learning the material. I suppose it might be different if your teacher has a tendency to go off on tangents and you wind up with a 30 minute long tape of rambling about something not a part of your course though.
Ha! Oh, yes, I've had teachers like that. They would go on about their trip to Greece, or...

[Leecros]

(3) "What time does class meet?" (or anything else easily findable)


I did have to ask that question legitimately once. There was a bug in the system and every time i would go to check my schedule the time of my class and the room it was in changed. I was completely confused going around and checking the rooms, then rechecking my schedule and getting frustrated by the change. Eventually i had to go talk to someone. It got fixed after about a week, but i had to ask all of my professors where and when my classes were.


It was a horrible way to start my college career...

[thubby]

acting like those points are universal is ridiculous.

1) there are teachers willing to bump small numbers of points
2) there are such things as reviews, slow days, or days on which both a student would be absent when a teacher cancels.
5) plenty of teachers will move on to a section that won't be in the upcoming test but instead on the next one. in many math classes the long winded derivations are less important than the end results.
or do you seriously re-derive the quotient rule every time?
9) plenty of professors will give extra credit
10) it's called intuition. students don't know the material, they are using the skills they already have to form answers. they may even be using proper methods for which they are not yet trained to articulate.

[SaintRidley]

These would be my answers should one of my students ask me them (or, in one case, what I wish I could answer):


(1) "But I need a <<insert grade here>> to keep my scholarship / job / program / parent's funding."

Then put in [insert grade here]-effort. You're capable of it, and looking at my feedback on your assignments will help you do better on the next one.


(2) "Did I miss anything important?"

Define important.


(3) "What time does class meet?" (or anything else easily findable)

RTFS


(4) "I can't open the attachment for the assignment due in my 8am class." (Sent at 1am the same day.)

Please alert me to technical problems before midnight.


(5) "Will this be on the test?"

Seeing as I don't give tests, no. However, you might want to learn it because it can help you with your work for the class.


(6) "I didn't understand anything from the last 6 weeks of class." (especially not right before the exam)

You should have tried talking to me before this point.


(7) During quizzes/tests "Is this right?"

You're supposed to be making an argument. So try and convince me.


(8) "So I was sick the last 2 weeks and I know I never contacted you..." (unless there was a good reason that you couldn't use your email)

And?


(9) "Can we get extra credit?"

That would defeat the point of giving you grades in the first place. Also, asking is not going to help.


(10) "I think X." "Why?" "I don't know. How about not-X, is that right?"

You're supposed to make an argument, not seek my approval.

[WarKitty]

As far as the "will this be on the test?" question: part of why we hate this is that the point of the class isn't to get you to pass the test. The point of the class is to teach you something. The test measures if you've learned that. What we don't want to see are students who are making it obvious that they just want a grade for minimal effort. We wouldn't be in this field if we didn't think it was important, so do us the favor and don't show off that you don't care.

For that matter, asking me if something will be on the test makes me far more likely to put it on the test.

Edit: The inverse goes for extra credit. I'm trying my best to make your grade a reflection of what you've actually learned. I will only give extra credit if I think it will facilitate that goal. As a matter of fact I've almost never seen my extra credit assignments improve many grades, simply because extra credit is harder than regular work.

[Reinboom]

(1) "But I need a <<insert grade here>> to keep my scholarship / job / program / parent's funding."

(8) "So I was sick the last 2 weeks and I know I never contacted you..." (unless there was a good reason that you couldn't use your email)


I asked a combination of those two once. My professors also didn't like to hear it. :smallfrown:
I proceeded to watch my grade falter, lose my college job since I had to retain a specific GPA for them, lose my way to keep my blood sugar levels up making it so I had even less of a chance of going to college (being passed out most of the time). This is the very event that lead me to plea for help on these forums about 6 years ago.

Number 8 is a dangerous one. Please be careful before shooing off a student like that.

[warty goblin]

As far as the "will this be on the test?" question: part of why we hate this is that the point of the class isn't to get you to pass the test. The point of the class is to teach you something. The test measures if you've learned that. What we don't want to see are students who are making it obvious that they just want a grade for minimal effort. We wouldn't be in this field if we didn't think it was important, so do us the favor and don't show off that you don't care.


Well yes, we wouldn't be in the field if we didn't find it important. For a good percentage of the students taking a standard low level class though, it's something they're required to take. In my particular field, I deal with a lot of students whose majors I find boring to the extreme. I don't expect them to be fascinated by mine any more than they expect me to be interested in theirs.

I've always respected laziness in a person; it's a healthy and useful trait when not indulged to excess. So if they're in it for the grade somebody else decided they needed, fine by me. Their life, their money, their business. I'm here to make sure they get the information they need, and evaluate how well they know that.

[Haruki-kun]

I dont think I have ever had a course where the vast majority of the material given wasnt on a test. So rather than wasting time searching for stuff I dont need to know for my grade, I just spend that time learning the material. I suppose it might be different if your teacher has a tendency to go off on tangents and you wind up with a 30 minute long tape of rambling about something not a part of your course though.

I had a course once where the teacher viewed an entirely new topic on the last 20 minutes of the last class, and that topic ended up being worth 25% of the final test.

To protect myself from having this sort of thing happening, I think it's an acceptable thing to ask. Maybe not "will this be on the test?" exactly, but "how should I study for the test?" or "what should I prioritize while studying?"

I've come to learn my teachers like it when a student approaches them often on specific topics, because it shows that the student a) cares and b) is willing to go the extra mile to invest his or her study time properly.

[BWR]

*halfway through the semester*
Prof: Do you understand?
Student: I don't understand. I don't understand anything. I haven't understood anything since the first week.
Rest of the students: We don't understand anything either.

This actually happened to my favorite professor. He's a wonderful guy and more than willing to explain even banal and basic details if someone has problems. But a whole class of people sitting there with their mouths shut for 2 months then admitting they aren't getting anything...

[Eldan]

American schools you at least have the professor accessible, so you have a chance to get your money's worth.

We didn't have access to our professors for the first three years (not even office hours or anything), but we also did'nt have to pay.

After you got your Bachelor's, though... yeah, the inverse of what Palanan said. At the same university, class sizes went from 300 to 20 and the professors suddenly loved to hang around and chat after class. Though you pretty much had to chat with them, since you had to convince at least two of them to take you into their lab for your Master's thesis and semester projects.

[The Succubus]

I asked a combination of those two once. My professors also didn't like to hear it. :smallfrown:
I proceeded to watch my grade falter, lose my college job since I had to retain a specific GPA for them, lose my way to keep my blood sugar levels up making it so I had even less of a chance of going to college (being passed out most of the time). This is the very event that lead me to plea for help on these forums about 6 years ago.

Number 8 is a dangerous one. Please be careful before shooing off a student like that.

Agreed. Being dismissive of a student's issues is not cool. At least three of my friends have crippling anxiety issues when it comes to exams and university in general. Flippant remarks like some of those posted here would destroy what little confidence they have in themselves.

Don't confuse laziness with an inability to study.

[Maryring]

(3) "What time does class meet?" (or anything else easily findable)


That's easily findable? :smalleek:

No seriously. I've had classes that would move or reschedule and cancel classes randomly. And only deliver the information on the facebook page rather than on the courses own pages. Not amusing.

[Traab]

Agreed. Being dismissive of a student's issues is not cool. At least three of my friends have crippling anxiety issues when it comes to exams and university in general. Flippant remarks like some of those posted here would destroy what little confidence they have in themselves.

Don't confuse laziness with an inability to study.

Thats different though, when you just up and vanish from class for two weeks, and dont communicate in any way whats going on with the teacher or the administration, then come back and basically go, "Oh yeah, totally, I was sick." you really shouldnt expect a very positive response. This isnt grade school anymore, you are expected to show a little bit more responsibility. Drop an email, send in a doctors note,

SOMETHING to let the teacher know you do actually give a damn, you just arent capable of coming into class for x amount of time. Im not saying there are no exceptions, but doing something like that is a bad thing.


That's easily findable? :smalleek:

No seriously. I've had classes that would move or reschedule and cancel classes randomly. And only deliver the information on the facebook page rather than on the courses own pages. Not amusing.

Thats a bit different. I think the original point was, "If you cant bother to look at your class schedule, then dont expect a favorable response." Im sure if your class is constantly altering time and location the proff will be a bit more understanding over any issues you may have.

[Squark]

Yeah, I think all these questions are reasonable in extenuating circumstances (Apart from, "Did I miss anything important?" Yes. Yes you did). The thing is, a lot of the time, the circumstances aren't present. For every time a professor is asked one of these questions because a student was legitimately in trouble... there's like five students who weren't.

It's also why it's important to let your professor's know about things in advance when at all possible.

[Zherog]

I find number 8 highly amusing, since I almost failed a class for the exact opposite.

I had International Accounting on Monday nights from 6 to 9. Yes, it was in fact the wild party it sounds like... My great-grandmother passed away on a Saturday, with the funeral set for Monday. I wasn't going to be back on campus until Tuesday. So, I found the professor's phone number in the phone book and called her, to inform her I wouldn't be in class on Monday night and would appreciate being able to meet with her during the week at her convenience to pick up assignments.

I proceeded to get bitched out by the professor for having the audacity to call her, and she refused to give me the missed assignments - attendance was "mandatory" after all. I finished the class with a D; if I had even gotten a C, I would have finished with a 3.0 GPA, but instead had to settle for a 2.99. The difference was a big deal to me back then, though now I don't really give a damn since I graduated college all the way back in 92.

[Jay R]

Responses from an instructor:


(1) "But I need a <<insert grade here>> to keep my scholarship / job / program / parent's funding."

"Then you need to earn it. The university requires me to give you that grade if you earn it, according to the syllabus, and to not give you that grade if you don't earn it."


(2) "Did I miss anything important?"

a. "You missed me telling the class what was important."
b. "Two points of class participation. Is that important to you?"


(3) "What time does class meet?" (or anything else easily findable)

I have no problem at all with this question. This student is trying to make sure that he or she can attend class. Perfect. Yes, the answer is on the syllabus, but it's also in my head. If you're standing in front of me, then asking me is the easiest, most efficient way to find out.


(4) "I can't open the attachment for the assignment due in my 8am class." (Sent at 1am the same day.)

"Get it done as soon as you can. As the syllabus states, it's 5% off per day for a late paper."


(5) "Will this be on the test?"

a. "I don't know. I haven't written the test yet. It's certainly eligible to be on the test, just like all the rest of the material."
b. "It doesn't matter. This piece is necessary for you to understand the work we do next week, which will be on the test."
c. "The test's purpose is to find out how much of the material you have learned. It does this by asking a random sample of items from the material. If I tell you which parts will be covered, then it fails to measure how much you've learned overall."


(6) "I didn't understand anything from the last 6 weeks of class." (especially not right before the exam)

a. "Did you understand me in class when I said, "Is there anybody who doesn't understand this yet?"
b. "So did you get a tutor from the school, like I recommended in each class, or did you plan to flunk the test?"
c. (I'd never say this, but I'd be tempted.) "Six weeks? I think you mean ten."


(7) During quizzes/tests "Is this right?"

"Are you turning it in for grading now?"


(8) "So I was sick the last 2 weeks and I know I never contacted you..." (unless there was a good reason that you couldn't use your email)

"I hope you're feeling better. The syllabus shows the work you need to catch up on."


(9) "Can we get extra credit?"

(This answer has been accurate every time I've been asked this question.) "First, you need to get regular credit. Turn in all the homework before you can ask for more work to do."


(10) "I think X." "Why?" "I don't know. How about not-X, is that right?"

"Like I've been saying, it's not enough to have an answer, you need to show people why it's correct. Determine the right answer, and the reasons that support that conclusion."

[Knaight]

"Get it done as soon as you can. As the syllabus states, it's 5% off per day for a late paper."

That sounds amazingly lenient. Even in high school it was a 50% drop for being one day late, and after the one day assignments can't be turned in. A handful of the most major papers had a more lenient policy, but even that was 20% off per day.

[Eldan]

Is attendance actually enforced in American colleges? I mean, I don't know if it's because there isn't really any way to check or they thought we were mature enough to spend our time as we thought was meaningful, but it was pretty normal that even in a good class, some 10% of the students probably weren't there. With the worst lecturers, you had two people sitting in there taking notes for the other 200.

[Arkhosia]

Also applies to high school.

11) Why do I have to take class X? I don't need to know it for my planned career.

12) "I can't find the materials you gave us for the project *right after give the students said materials*"

13) "Why do I need to learn grammar? I have spellcheck/why do I have to learn math? I have a calculator."

14) "(for writing classes) My computer isn't working, can you give me another week?"

15) I didn't have time to study last night, can you postpone the test (bonus if he/she was "busy" partying/watching tv/playing games)"

[The Glyphstone]

Is attendance actually enforced in American colleges? I mean, I don't know if it's because there isn't really any way to check or they thought we were mature enough to spend our time as we thought was meaningful, but it was pretty normal that even in a good class, some 10% of the students probably weren't there. With the worst lecturers, you had two people sitting in there taking notes for the other 200.

It varies on a class-to-class basis, from my experience. Some professors and teachers took attendance regularly, others did 'pop attendance', some didn't bother at all.

[warty goblin]

That sounds amazingly lenient. Even in high school it was a 50% drop for being one day late, and after the one day assignments can't be turned in. A handful of the most major papers had a more lenient policy, but even that was 20% off per day.

Yeah, the policy I see most commonly anymore is simply 'no late homework, your lowest score gets dropped.' Which, from the logistical end of things makes life so much easier. There are obviously exceptions to this policy if the student has a legit reason why they were physically incapable of making class that day - basically weather, athletics or medical/family emergency - but otherwise we don't count it.


Although the computerized tests that need to be submitted by exactly some specific time can burn in hell. The campus network is not that stable folks; half the time I feel lucky if I can even get to the test, let alone manage to submit the thing.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Eldan
Is attendance actually enforced in American colleges? I mean, I don't know if it's because there isn't really any way to check or they thought we were mature enough to spend our time as we thought was meaningful....

Apart from the first day of class, when there's a nominal roll call to see who's signed up for the course, I can't recall attendance ever being taken. The students are responsible for the material in the course, and they're told so on the first day, and after that it's up to them.

Most of the classes I took in undergrad were fairly small, 15-25 students, and the professors tended to be aware of who was there and who wasn't. The upper-level undergrad classes often had only a dozen or so students, so a lack of attendance would be glaringly obvious.

Same with most graduate classes, especially if your advisor is giving the course.

:smalltongue:

[Coidzor]

I must say, I'm surprised and a little bit amused that unwanted sexual advances haven't been mentioned yet.


Don't confuse laziness with an inability to study.

I believe the general idea of academia and the institution as it exists is that such people aren't worth spit anyway, or at least aren't worthy of graduating and having any prospects beyond soul-crushing poverty. At least, that's been my understanding of the way the world is set up, but maybe that's all just an extra heaping tablespoon of observation bias. :smallconfused:

[Palanan]

Given your choice of adjectives, I'd lean towards the observation bias.

: /

[Kawaii Soldier]

"I looked but I couldn't find a copy of the required text book."

[thubby]

"I looked but I couldn't find a copy of the required text book."

"the school store was sold out" is legit, for the first week or so.

[Eldan]

It is. Also, "I didn't have another 200 dollars for the chemistry textbook after I had to by 5 biology textbooks which cost 150+ for my major" should be legit, but probably isn't.

That said, the textbooks were never really mandatory. Technically, everything was mentioned in the lectures and the scripts.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Eldan
That said, the textbooks were never really mandatory. Technically, everything was mentioned in the lectures and the scripts.

In my experience, textbooks were always mandatory. And always insanely expensive. I hate textbook publishers.


Originally Posted by thubby
"the school store was sold out" is legit, for the first week or so.

When I was in grad school I took an upper-level history course on the country where I was planning to do my fieldwork. Not required for my degree, but I wanted to have a better understanding of where I'd be living and working.

Loved the course, enjoyed the various books, all went fine until two weeks before the end of the semester. Some of the other students were gathered in a worried knot after class, all very concerned.

Turns out that none of them had bought the last of the required books. The campus bookstore had long since sent the remainders back to the publisher, and now the other students were desperately trying to find copies of a book we were just about to read for class, and which would be on the final exam.

Two weeks before the end of the semester. Upper-level undergraduate course, mind you.

[thubby]

In my experience, textbooks were always mandatory. And always insanely expensive. I hate textbook publishers.


ebay.
older versions of textbooks are almost identical content. if your professor collects work from the book, you can usually do fine just by bumming the book from someone and finding the 2 questions that got changed.

[Astral Avenger]

Is attendance actually enforced in American colleges? I mean, I don't know if it's because there isn't really any way to check or they thought we were mature enough to spend our time as we thought was meaningful, but it was pretty normal that even in a good class, some 10% of the students probably weren't there. With the worst lecturers, you had two people sitting in there taking notes for the other 200.

Well, at the University of Minnesota (I'm a sophomore there) it depends on the class. Some of the small ones do take attendance every day, others have little electronic 'clickers' that are basically a small remote that you use to submit answers to problems on the board. each clicker has an ID# that corresponds to the owner and attendance is done that way. But most of the big lectures don't bother, instead they only care if you show up for lab/discussion and know the material for the test(s).

16) Can you keep it down? I'm hungover.
(yes, I have seen that happen twice. I love idiots, they make life entertaining)

[Kurgan]

Is attendance actually enforced in American colleges? I mean, I don't know if it's because there isn't really any way to check or they thought we were mature enough to spend our time as we thought was meaningful, but it was pretty normal that even in a good class, some 10% of the students probably weren't there. With the worst lecturers, you had two people sitting in there taking notes for the other 200.

As others have said, it varies wildly. Back when I was in uni I had professors who handed around attendance sheets, or had everyone check in with the teaching assistant prior to class starting [eating about 5-10 minutes of class with the really big groups]. Honestly though, most of the time the professors didn't really care, did not bother with taking attendance at all, and just based grades on the test.

In higher level classes, like upper undergrad classes and grad classes, attendance was generally a must, and it was expected to let the professor know if you couldn't make it to class. Mind you, these were classes with 5-15 people in it, and also the most interesting due to the small group discussions that would happen.


It is. Also, "I didn't have another 200 dollars for the chemistry textbook after I had to by 5 biology textbooks which cost 150+ for my major" should be legit, but probably isn't.

That said, the textbooks were never really mandatory. Technically, everything was mentioned in the lectures and the scripts.

Yeah, I always just bought my textbooks on Amazon, except for the ones I knew I'd need for the first 2-3 weeks of class. Saved a decent amount of money that way.

Also it varied how important texts were. In undergraduate classes? Yeah, about 80% of the time they didn't matter and you "read" them. In grad classes? Dear god, if I had gone to Historiography of the American Revolution having completely skipped the book of the week, that would have been ugly.


In my experience, textbooks were always mandatory. And always insanely expensive. I hate textbook publishers.



When I was in grad school I took an upper-level history course on the country where I was planning to do my fieldwork. Not required for my degree, but I wanted to have a better understanding of where I'd be living and working.

Loved the course, enjoyed the various books, all went fine until two weeks before the end of the semester. Some of the other students were gathered in a worried knot after class, all very concerned.

Turns out that none of them had bought the last of the required books. The campus bookstore had long since sent the remainders back to the publisher, and now the other students were desperately trying to find copies of a book we were just about to read for class, and which would be on the final exam.

Two weeks before the end of the semester. Upper-level undergraduate course, mind you.

You would be surprised how much people procrastinate. A good number of people I took classes with [um, maybe including me?] waited till the last two weeks to do the big term papers. That was "fun". Though turns out I can do well enough to get B+ to As on two 25+ page research papers as well as forming several lesson/unit plans on short notice.

On a side note, while doing a paper on it, I was quite happy to learn that not only was the historiography of Loyalist re-integration after the Revolutionary War was sparce, but also that another grad student was doing his thesis on that very topic. Made it quite easy to get my hands on the entirety of what is written on the topic. Note, this was about...12-15 books, most of which only had at most 1 chapter on the topic, or were biographies of specific people.

Tangent aside, basically everyone from undergrads to grad students to sometimes even professors procrastinate at times. :smallbiggrin:

[SaintRidley]

Is attendance actually enforced in American colleges? I mean, I don't know if it's because there isn't really any way to check or they thought we were mature enough to spend our time as we thought was meaningful, but it was pretty normal that even in a good class, some 10% of the students probably weren't there. With the worst lecturers, you had two people sitting in there taking notes for the other 200.

I only have 18-20 students per class, but I take attendance, mostly as a memory aid so I can recall who was participating strongly in class discussion on a given day. So my attendance sheets get filled up with all kinds of little arcane markings that mean nothing to anyone but me.

[Tyndmyr]

I asked a combination of those two once. My professors also didn't like to hear it. :smallfrown:
I proceeded to watch my grade falter, lose my college job since I had to retain a specific GPA for them, lose my way to keep my blood sugar levels up making it so I had even less of a chance of going to college (being passed out most of the time). This is the very event that lead me to plea for help on these forums about 6 years ago.

Number 8 is a dangerous one. Please be careful before shooing off a student like that.

Yeah, I have a lot of sympathy for eight. Yes, if they've just vanished for two weeks, they should probably have SOME evidence of being out sick(doctor's notes, etc), but if they've legitimately been ill, it isn't entirely fair to assume that notifying all their professors was their #1 priority.

Hell, most of the time, when I'm ill, I'm sufficiently foggy that even the most basic tasks seem hard. Now, they should at least notify you once they return to healthy status, and provide evidence of same, but with that, I see no good reason to deny them a chance to make up the work(with some flexibility, since they're probably doing the same for ALL their classes).

Not doing this means that getting sick at the wrong time can utterly sink you. I've had this happen to me. I literally responded like two days late, and was told that the usual grade penalties(quite harsh ones) would apply all the same. I didn't like that teacher much...

Also, the "what was important" question is fairly legitimate. An appropriate answer would be "we covered primarily topic A, which you'll need to know for topic B." That'd be important. If it was a review session, and I know the subjects, then I can proceed to not care, but if you honestly think every session in every class is equally important, you're deluding yourself.

As for textbooks, I tended to wait a week to buy them, till I knew which books were actually required, then buy only those that were essential. I got a bit jaded after dropping vast amounts of money on textbooks my first semester, only to not use half of them.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
I got a bit jaded after dropping vast amounts of money on textbooks my first semester, only to not use half of them.

Odd...I always read all of mine, and then some. My professors always assumed we read the books, and tested accordingly. (Sometimes in truly devious ways....)


Originally Posted by SaintRidley
So my attendance sheets get filled up with all kinds of little arcane markings that mean nothing to anyone but me.

If you study your attendance sheets for an hour before class, what spells do you memorize?

:smalltongue:

[Temotei]

"I hope you're feeling better. The syllabus shows the work you need to catch up on."

Easily my favorite answer to this question.

[Kindablue]

It varies on a class-to-class basis, from my experience. Some professors and teachers took attendance regularly, others did 'pop attendance', some didn't bother at all.

At my school most of the teachers would ask random students questions, then mark them absent if they didn't answer and assume everyone else was present. I never missed a class, but if I remember right, you got four unexcused absences before they flunked you out. I also never had an Einstein classmate who never showed up and still had a better grasp of the material than the teacher, so it always seemed to me if you didn't show up regularly you were going to fail with or without that rule.

[Crow]

As far as the "will this be on the test?" question: part of why we hate this is that the point of the class isn't to get you to pass the test. The point of the class is to teach you something. The test measures if you've learned that. What we don't want to see are students who are making it obvious that they just want a grade for minimal effort. We wouldn't be in this field if we didn't think it was important, so do us the favor and don't show off that you don't care.

For that matter, asking me if something will be on the test makes me far more likely to put it on the test.

Edit: The inverse goes for extra credit. I'm trying my best to make your grade a reflection of what you've actually learned. I will only give extra credit if I think it will facilitate that goal. As a matter of fact I've almost never seen my extra credit assignments improve many grades, simply because extra credit is harder than regular work.

Amen. These days there are far too many kids going to college for the degree, and not the education.

[danzibr]

Ugh. I teach at a university (I'm a grad student) and a community college. I'm pretty easy-going (I think), but some things bother me. Over the years I've learned to go over the entire syllabus in detail the first day, and if anybody adds the class late I tell them to read it. In particular, stuff involving absences. Late = absent. Then people show up 10 minutes late, ask me after class if they're counted present, I say no, they complain and go on about how they had to finish eating or whatever.

[Maryring]

Also applies to high school.

11) Why do I have to take class X? I don't need to know it for my planned career.

13) "Why do I need to learn grammar? I have spellcheck/why do I have to learn math? I have a calculator."


If you can't answer these questions, you honestly shouldn't be teaching the subject matter.

[Tyndmyr]

At my school most of the teachers would ask random students questions, then mark them absent if they didn't answer and assume everyone else was present. I never missed a class, but if I remember right, you got four unexcused absences before they flunked you out. I also never had an Einstein classmate who never showed up and still had a better grasp of the material than the teacher, so it always seemed to me if you didn't show up regularly you were going to fail with or without that rule.

Honestly, even if you DO have an Einstein student, I still see absolutely no problem with giving him the grade on the test. The purpose of the class is to end up with you knowing the material. Not to have butts in chairs for a given time.

I've actually been to six different colleges for various reasons, and it varies wildly. The one online college was big on attendance, with basically every class attaching significant points to demonstrating participation on at least a weekly basis. Mil was also big on attendance. All the traditional schools, it varied depending on teachers. IMO, most of the best teachers did not worry about attendance at all. They were those best at providing a useful class session, and people showed up anyway. Some of the other teachers though...I've had classes where the guy just read the powerpoint slides for his lecture every class. Slides that were online. I played video games throughout the class, because why not? If attendance wasn't taken for those classes, I wouldn't have been there. I can read perfectly fine at home.

[Qwertystop]

Some of the other teachers though...I've had classes where the guy just read the powerpoint slides for his lecture every class. Slides that were online. I played video games throughout the class, because why not? If attendance wasn't taken for those classes, I wouldn't have been there. I can read perfectly fine at home.

While your perspective is understandable, this strikes me as inefficient. Since you're there anyway, why not read/take notes off the slides while you're there and not have to do it all over again at home after?

[warty goblin]

While your perspective is understandable, this strikes me as inefficient. Since you're there anyway, why not read/take notes off the slides while you're there and not have to do it all over again at home after?

Nothing on earth is more boring than people reading exactly what's on a Powerpoint slide. If boredom were electricity, your average fifty minute presentation could power Manhattan. Which means not paying attention isn't so much a matter of efficiency as survival, because actually paying attention would cause a brain implosion.

Boredom aside, Powerpoint and its ilk are actually one of my chief annoyances with the way a lot of classes are run now. Back the late Jurassic when I started taking college courses, anything that needed written down went up on the chalkboard. This was a good system, it allowed for things to be clearly written with decent formatting, gave the students time to write it down (and writing stuff down helps a lot of us learn), and just generally worked. Now everybody annotates PDFs, which means the comments and proofs get crammed around the body of the slide in a hopeless mess. And because the professor isn't writing a lot of the statements, it's impossible to take notes the old fashioned way, so it's either write everything on printouts of the slides and have my notes be a nightmare, or write some stuff on them and other stuff in a separate notebook. Because nothing makes for effective learning like cross-referencing my own class notes with themselves.

I've got one class this year that's all on the chalkboard, and it's lovely. I take seven pages of notes in an hour and twenty minutes, but everything's down, everything's readable, and everything's in one place.

[Qwertystop]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but it sounds like that's what you'd be doing anyway whenever you ended up reading the slides and taking notes on them yourself, before or after class.

[Coidzor]

Ugh. I teach at a university (I'm a grad student) and a community college. I'm pretty easy-going (I think), but some things bother me. Over the years I've learned to go over the entire syllabus in detail the first day, and if anybody adds the class late I tell them to read it. In particular, stuff involving absences. Late = absent. Then people show up 10 minutes late, ask me after class if they're counted present, I say no, they complain and go on about how they had to finish eating or whatever.

Why don't you just lock the classroom so no one can get in if that's the case?

[Kindablue]

Honestly, even if you DO have an Einstein student, I still see absolutely no problem with giving him the grade on the test. The purpose of the class is to end up with you knowing the material. Not to have butts in chairs for a given time.

Not that I even disagree with you, but making sure that students are there in almost every class is the best way to ensure that they actually learned the material instead of just cramming the day before the test and forgetting it all the day after. To hold a good reputation (and get more students) the college has to do all it can to make sure it's producing students who can go on to real life with the full knowledge and abilities and blah blah blah.

[Seerow]

I dont think I have ever had a course where the vast majority of the material given wasnt on a test. So rather than wasting time searching for stuff I dont need to know for my grade, I just spend that time learning the material. I suppose it might be different if your teacher has a tendency to go off on tangents and you wind up with a 30 minute long tape of rambling about something not a part of your course though.

I had a professor who in a lecture about networking wound up talking about the following:

-His wife's digital camera
-Laptop security/BIOS password protection
-DNA as a storage medium
-Russian spies


I want to say there was at least two more things in that lecture that stood out, but this was 8 months ago now and the details are fuzzy.

I hated that class because 90% of what the guy said in class was completely irrelevant, and what he actually expected us to know was completely vague. On the bright side I am fairly certain that an abundance of negative reviews got him removed from his role (judging by some of the angry passive aggressive comments he started making towards the end of the semester).

[The_Snark]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but it sounds like that's what you'd be doing anyway whenever you ended up reading the slides and taking notes on them yourself, before or after class.

Like Warty Goblin says, a teacher reading exactly what's written on the slides - no more and no less - is really, really boring. It's like reading to a prepared speech, and then being forced to sit through the exact same speech right afterwards. You know what they're going to say, so your mind wanders, especially if it wasn't a very good speech to begin with. (Which is usually the case here, because teachers who do this sort of thing are not very good lecturers most of the time.)

I find that it's much easier to just have one or the other: either the teacher lectures without being hampered by redundant visual aids*, or you read the slides on your own time, at your own pace, without the teacher distracting you by reading aloud. The two actually detract from one another.

*To clarify: I think Powerpoint and other visual aids can be useful lecturing tools, but it's easy to mess them up. "Don't put everything you intend to say on the slides" is basically tip #1 for how not to do a Powerpoint presentation.


Why don't you just lock the classroom so no one can get in if that's the case?

... because then late students wouldn't be able to get in at all? He won't give them credit for attending, but that doesn't mean he wants to deny them the right to attend whatever's left of the class. Coming late is better than skipping entirely.

[Coidzor]

... because then late students wouldn't be able to get in at all? He won't give them credit for attending, but that doesn't mean he wants to deny them the right to attend whatever's left of the class. Coming late is better than skipping entirely.

I don't know if we can really take that as a given to the kind of mindset that would give birth to that kind of draconian attendance policy.

[warty goblin]

I had a professor who in a lecture about networking wound up talking about the following:

-His wife's digital camera
-Laptop security/BIOS password protection
-DNA as a storage medium
-Russian spies


I want to say there was at least two more things in that lecture that stood out, but this was 8 months ago now and the details are fuzzy.

I hated that class because 90% of what the guy said in class was completely irrelevant, and what he actually expected us to know was completely vague. On the bright side I am fairly certain that an abundance of negative reviews got him removed from his role (judging by some of the angry passive aggressive comments he started making towards the end of the semester).
The first place I went to grad school, we had a professor who could tangent like nobody's business. First time we went to his office hours for help, instead of answering the question, he spent fifteen minutes lecturing us about how we needed to forgo any sort of social life during grad school, twenty minutes complaining about modern book bindings, and another ten giving us a guilt trip about not knowing all the material we were supposed to know upon entering the program. This being a statistics program mind you. Virtually nobody in a statistics Ph.D. program knows anything about statistics when they arrive, let alone the first three chapters of a graduate level math stat text.

There wasn't a second visit to his office hours. By the end of the semester one of my classmates could hardly tolerate the man's presence. He actually had to get up and leave during a particularly condescending description of our myriad failures on an exam.

But he had tenure, so unless we could actually prove he was smuggling immense quantities of heroin into the country, or trading grades for sexual favors, there was exactly squat that we could do about it.

[Starwulf]

But he had tenure, so unless we could actually prove he was smuggling immense quantities of heroin into the country, or trading grades for sexual favors, there was exactly squat that we could do about it.

I hate the idea of tenure. It's one of the biggest failings in any educational system. Granted there are going to be those "good" professors that have legitimately earned it, but there are also plenty that manage to slip by JUST long enough to earn it, and then can completely stop giving a crap about teaching, and the students are the ones that suffer. Hell, It's not even the money wasted by those students that ticks me off, it's the loss of a chance at learning, both in the traditional way, and in the knowledge that only someone who has been teaching for many years can impart(I'm a big fan of learning, always, and not being able to do so because some idiot slipped through the cracks long enough, makes me very angry).

[thubby]

tenure is only really a problem because the administration drags its feet. in truth, the actual limits of tenure aren't terribly different from the basic job security you would expect to have in an office setting.

[The_Snark]

I don't know if we can really take that as a given to the kind of mindset that would give birth to that kind of draconian attendance policy.

It doesn't seem all that horrible to me, although I guess that depends on the penalty for being absent/late. If missing more than 1 class without notification is grounds for a failing grade or something, then yeah, it's pretty draconian. But if it just means a minor dip in your participation grade, which is itself a minor part of your overall grade? I don't know that it matters all that much.

[Tyndmyr]

While your perspective is understandable, this strikes me as inefficient. Since you're there anyway, why not read/take notes off the slides while you're there and not have to do it all over again at home after?

Because if I read them there, I only see one slide at a time, and thus spend the entire hour in doing so. I can read vastly faster than someone can read powerpoint slides to me(I suspect the same is true of most people). So, if I do it at home, I spend maybe ten minutes.

Lots more video game playing time.

And yes, warty goblin is correct....it's also frigging soul crushing. I've endured a *lot* of it, and minimizing the amount of it I have to do factors significantly into my happiness.


Not that I even disagree with you, but making sure that students are there in almost every class is the best way to ensure that they actually learned the material instead of just cramming the day before the test and forgetting it all the day after. To hold a good reputation (and get more students) the college has to do all it can to make sure it's producing students who can go on to real life with the full knowledge and abilities and blah blah blah.

Cramming doesn't work for crap in classes with any difficulty. If you've been not showing up to calc for the entire semester, you are not going to jam enough in the night before finals to pass unless you know most if it already. Hell, midterms, same thing.

It DOES work in stupid entry level survey courses. Often, colleges now require an intro class which is basically fluff designed to make them more money. The reason it works there is that these are topics which do not build on themselves actually teaching a topic, but are of the "just spit information back" variety.

Cramming is not an effective substitute for learning, even with regards to tests. You won't get a degree that way.

[warty goblin]

I hate the idea of tenure. It's one of the biggest failings in any educational system. Granted there are going to be those "good" professors that have legitimately earned it, but there are also plenty that manage to slip by JUST long enough to earn it, and then can completely stop giving a crap about teaching, and the students are the ones that suffer. Hell, It's not even the money wasted by those students that ticks me off, it's the loss of a chance at learning, both in the traditional way, and in the knowledge that only someone who has been teaching for many years can impart(I'm a big fan of learning, always, and not being able to do so because some idiot slipped through the cracks long enough, makes me very angry).

I appreciate the idea of tenure - protecting researchers ability to do research without political pressure or the threat of losing their jobs because said research is not popular with people who give lots of money to the university - but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Mostly because no matter how hard we pretend otherwise, research and teaching are different things. For the vast majority of my undergrad classes, the subject of my professor's research was completely irrelevant to the actual content of the class. Protecting their research ability didn't do the class any favors, and, because the system does a poor job of differentiating, protected them from any negative effects of doing a horrible job of teaching.

I've had plenty of good tenured professors. But every professor I've ever had who I thought was fundamentally a poor teacher had tenure. Some of the younger faculty may have had some rough edges it is true, but I always felt they were making a sincere effort to teach and to improve their teaching. For sheer checked out not giving a crap badness, it takes tenure.

[Traab]

I had a professor who in a lecture about networking wound up talking about the following:

-His wife's digital camera
-Laptop security/BIOS password protection
-DNA as a storage medium
-Russian spies


I want to say there was at least two more things in that lecture that stood out, but this was 8 months ago now and the details are fuzzy.

I hated that class because 90% of what the guy said in class was completely irrelevant, and what he actually expected us to know was completely vague. On the bright side I am fairly certain that an abundance of negative reviews got him removed from his role (judging by some of the angry passive aggressive comments he started making towards the end of the semester).

I had a teacher that rambled and we learned such fun tangents as

What it meant to be a town selectman
How awesome the hubble telescope is and how he has friends who helped build it
The value of trig in daily life
How annoying it is to be a landlord

This was a course to learn to be an electrician. I think it was basic ohms law practice. You know, look at the various schematics and figure out the missing number. The guy lived an interesting life, I have to admit, but damn was he easy to side track.

[Jay R]

The problem is that students think the primary job of a professor is to teach. It isn't.

At a research school, the primary job of a professor is to complete grant-worthy research. Tenure is far more focused on papers published, and on grants awarded, than on teaching.

So for many professors, classes are a distraction from their real work.

[warty goblin]

The problem is that students think the primary job of a professor is to teach. It isn't.

At a research school, the primary job of a professor is to complete grant-worthy research. Tenure is far more focused on papers published, and on grants awarded, than on teaching.

So for many professors, classes are a distraction from their real work.

I'm going to sound a bit entitled at this, but as a student I don't actually give a rat's ass. Colleges charge absurd amounts of money for their services, often shackling students to lifetimes worth of debt. The least they can do is to hire people competent to do the job students are paying them for. Instituting policies that actually reduce the institution's ability to employ good teachers? Yeah, that's not cool. Just like it wouldn't be cool if my plumber couldn't unclog the toilet because his real job is in theoretical pipe fittings.

And I did my undergrad at little liberal arts colleges anyway. Almost nobody was doing research worth a damn in the first place. Tenure was still very much a thing, and landed me with a reasonable number of incompetent, complacent teachers.

[Karoht]

I'm going to sound a bit entitled at this, but as a student I don't actually give a rat's ass. Colleges charge absurd amounts of money for their services, often shackling students to lifetimes worth of debt. The least they can do is to hire people competent to do the job students are paying them for. Instituting policies that actually reduce the institution's ability to employ good teachers? Yeah, that's not cool. Just like it wouldn't be cool if my plumber couldn't unclog the toilet because his real job is in theoretical pipe fittings.
I am 100% with you on this. Educational institutions have focused much more institution and much less education. But the reasoning is money. They know that students will pay, they will come, they will complain but pay out few to zero refunds so the complaints are meaningless.
If you want to talk about the education bubble, we could probably go a few rounds on that easily. On many college campus, the most highly paid person is the football coach. These places are in it to make money, imparting an education is really a secondary benefit rather than a primary concern. Sooner or later the bubble will burst. Google 'education bubble' if you want to see how far the rabbit hole goes. Interesting reading. Food for thought and such.

[Tyndmyr]

It's not always the football coach. Sometimes it's the basketball coach.

Seriously, it's one of those two in 40 states. Oh, not just highest paid in the college...highest paid by the state. If you're just looking at the college, a coach is almost always on top. Occasionally the president is. It's never someone like an English professor, though.

Our teaching system is a little messed up at this point.

[snoopy13a]

On many college campus, the most highly paid person is the football coach. These places are in it to make money, imparting an education is really a secondary benefit rather than a primary concern.

There are two reasons to have a good football team

(1) Increase alumni donations
(2) Attract more applicants, which increases a college's academic selectivity, which increases prestige.

At the biggest state schools, the football program usually pays for itself and provides money for other athletic programs. Generally, the athletic department will break even at the top schools. However, the belief is that athletics also bring in indirect revenue through alumni donations to general funds (the assumption is that these alums wouldn't denote to the general fund if it weren't for a successful football team).

The second factor, attracting more applicants, does occur. Universities get bumps in applications when their sports teams do well. Perhaps the most extreme example is Notre Dame. If it weren't for football, they'd probably be some regional Catholic college instead of being on US News' top 25 list.

The problems is at colleges with unsuccessful football teams. Quite often, the football program gets subsidized by student activity fees.

[Castaras]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but it sounds like that's what you'd be doing anyway whenever you ended up reading the slides and taking notes on them yourself, before or after class.

Because when they just read the slides, you end up making notes before they finish reading them out, because you reading them is quicker than listening to them reading aloud. Which means you have time to go catch the zs, and end up doing so.

I was lucky in those lectures to bring my laptop and get the slides up on my laptop. Then I'd ignore the monotone ramblings and do the notes quicker than the lecturer drones through the slides.

Ironically, those notes were my best ones, because I only had one thing to concentrate on, instead of having to focus on the guy talking, asking questions at the right times, writing notes, reading the slide... etc. etc.

[Karoht]

Seriously, with tuition being as difficult to afford, and tuition costs only ever going up with hardly any of the money making it to actual education, combined with the lack of education focus, eventually people are going to be fed up and stop.

The accountability isn't there. Sooner or later those with the money will either demand the accountability be there, or not fork over the cash. This goes for donations and grants just as much as it does tuition and related student fees.

The schools, in all their wisdom, can't be that blind to not realize this at some point.

[warty goblin]

Seriously, with tuition being as difficult to afford, and tuition costs only ever going up with hardly any of the money making it to actual education, combined with the lack of education focus, eventually people are going to be fed up and stop.

The accountability isn't there. Sooner or later those with the money will either demand the accountability be there, or not fork over the cash. This goes for donations and grants just as much as it does tuition and related student fees.

The schools, in all their wisdom, can't be that blind to not realize this at some point.

Unfortunately, due to the way education is paid for in the US, I don't see that happening in a hurry. So much of the money comes from loans, which are now federally issued, and the better part of humanly impossible to default on, that the money is basically guaranteed. The people who pay it have very little clout to change that, since they're mostly young and/or in poor economic condition already. Plus the institution that would change it, the government, makes crazy bank on student loans. And since non knowledge based work has been going the way of the dodo for years, it's not like there's good alternatives to college for most people. The system's got students by the short hairs on this one.

Also, a lot of the money's going into things like administration, not education.There are few things in heaven or earth harder to remove than an established bureaucracy, so I certainly don't see costs going down. The money certainly isn't going into teachers; universities seem to have discovered that you can pay grad students and adjuncts next to nothing to do the same work as a faculty member, particularly since they've been churning out so many Ph.D.s in many fields that the job market is super-saturated. There's now something like thirty thousand Ph.D.s in America on food stamps, to give a particularly depressing example of how badly borked the system has become.

The other major money pit is buildings. Speaking from my personal experience, these are completely pointless buildings. A year or two after I left, my small liberal arts college, home of a football team only good for the occasional and depressingly banal scandal, built a new multi-million dollar athletic facility. They then tore down another old but perfectly functional athletic facility, and built another new one. This allowed them to demolish another old one. It probably would have been cheaper just to stick a treadmill in everybody's room. I know for a fact it would have been cheaper had they waived everybody's tuition for a couple of years, because I did the arithmetic.

And twice a year they try to convince me to give them more money. These conversations don't go well for them.


So no, I don't see the situation improving anytime soon. Not while people can get rich now siphoning money out of other people for the rest of their lives.

[Tyndmyr]

...
The second factor, attracting more applicants, does occur. Universities get bumps in applications when their sports teams do well. Perhaps the most extreme example is Notre Dame. If it weren't for football, they'd probably be some regional Catholic college instead of being on US News' top 25 list.

The problems is at colleges with unsuccessful football teams. Quite often, the football program gets subsidized by student activity fees.

*shrug* top schools tend to have no shortage of applicants to start with, but still, it really boggles the mind that so many people are making decisions w/regard to education primarily on the basis of football.

And even if we assume that football performance really is that critical, I can't help but feel that the coach alone isn't responsible for that. The actual athletes who play surely deserve some of the credit, yet they do not appear to share in the wealth.

I also know that when I get the usual alumni contact, money is not given. Instead, there's mostly a lot of laughing. I've got a long memory. I remember exactly how they treated me like a piggy bank when I was there(not all THAT long ago), and pretty much ignored anything serious. I remember being told that they really didn't need all those sci-fi books in the library, and nobody read 'em anyway(At that time, I was reading at least three a day, every day). Yet, they bussed in students from Chicago(school was in Minnesota) for their terrible, terrible sports teams in a never ending money pit.

Nope, no interest in helping that out. I played your stupid game, got my degree, got the hell out.

[THAC0]

I appreciate the idea of tenure - protecting researchers ability to do research without political pressure or the threat of losing their jobs because said research is not popular with people who give lots of money to the university - but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Mostly because no matter how hard we pretend otherwise, research and teaching are different things. For the vast majority of my undergrad classes, the subject of my professor's research was completely irrelevant to the actual content of the class. Protecting their research ability didn't do the class any favors, and, because the system does a poor job of differentiating, protected them from any negative effects of doing a horrible job of teaching.

I've had plenty of good tenured professors. But every professor I've ever had who I thought was fundamentally a poor teacher had tenure. Some of the younger faculty may have had some rough edges it is true, but I always felt they were making a sincere effort to teach and to improve their teaching. For sheer checked out not giving a crap badness, it takes tenure.

It also protects those with minority viewpoints in the soft sciences. Like the one conservative professor in my husband's poli-sci program who was constantly under attack from the others.

What really grinds my gears is kindergarten teachers having tenure. No. Just no.

[TuggyNE]

It also protects those with minority viewpoints in the soft sciences. Like the one conservative professor in my husband's poli-sci program who was constantly under attack from the others.

Of course, the trick then is for them to get tenure in the first place, which is not always easy if their minority viewpoints are known.

Yeah, education is pretty messed up.

[TheBajaBojo]

This, for the first time, makes me really appreciate that I live in europe, where most universities are government-funded anyway. In some places students pay near to nothing, or can afford to pay tuition fees with just a part-time job.
Although colleges are still ruled by the administrative staff, who, with all due respect, don't know **** about how or what students need to be taught. Reducing the number of lecturers? Go right ahead! Never mind the increasing class sizes.
They do their shenanigans, so that they don't come out in red numbers during a recession, but they just fail to realise, that the economy is much better helped by well educated professionals. They're fighting the symptoms, not the disease.

[Karoht]

This, for the first time, makes me really appreciate that I live in europe, where most universities are government-funded anyway. In some places students pay near to nothing, or can afford to pay tuition fees with just a part-time job.
Although colleges are still ruled by the administrative staff, who, with all due respect, don't know **** about how or what students need to be taught. Reducing the number of lecturers? Go right ahead! Never mind the increasing class sizes.
They do their shenanigans, so that they don't come out in red numbers during a recession, but they just fail to realise, that the economy is much better helped by well educated professionals. They're fighting the symptoms, not the disease.
I have dual citizenship (canada and england), and my half brother pointed me to a university in england. I swear it was probably on every page that dealt with tuition costs, but they were practically spamming the fact that if I worked in the country for 3 years and was a citizen, I got 4 years free or something like that. Mind you this was nearly a decade ago. Still, I was very tempted to move in with my relatives, work a job for 3 years, then go to school for a while. Seemed a bit too good to be true, like I was greatly misinterpreting what I saw, and I didn't really want to uproot.

[Coidzor]

I have dual citizenship (canada and england), and my half brother pointed me to a university in england. I swear it was probably on every page that dealt with tuition costs, but they were practically spamming the fact that if I worked in the country for 3 years and was a citizen, I got 4 years free or something like that. Mind you this was nearly a decade ago. Still, I was very tempted to move in with my relatives, work a job for 3 years, then go to school for a while. Seemed a bit too good to be true, like I was greatly misinterpreting what I saw, and I didn't really want to uproot.

My uncle did something similar in order to fairly economically go to school in Sweden and end up a doctor in about 6 or 7 years after working for a year as a janitor. Granted, this was back in the dark ages of the 70s or 80s.

[Heliomance]

As far as the "will this be on the test?" question: part of why we hate this is that the point of the class isn't to get you to pass the test. The point of the class is to teach you something. The test measures if you've learned that. What we don't want to see are students who are making it obvious that they just want a grade for minimal effort. We wouldn't be in this field if we didn't think it was important, so do us the favor and don't show off that you don't care.
In maths, we prove every theory that we ever use, unless the proofs are ludicrously complex. The proofs are often long and complicated, and going through them helps to understand the theorems. However, the proofs aren't required in order to use the theorems. Because they're long and complicated, they rarely come up in tests - especially as all regurgitating a proof shows is that you rote learned a page of mathematical notation. Thus that's a perfectly sensible question in maths. We need to know how to use the theorems to solve problems, in most cases we don't need to memorise the proofs.


That sounds amazingly lenient. Even in high school it was a 50% drop for being one day late, and after the one day assignments can't be turned in. A handful of the most major papers had a more lenient policy, but even that was 20% off per day.

My university's policy was 10% per working day, ineligible after 5 working days.

[Hyena]

"I was sick."

[Coidzor]

"I was sick."

"I was hospitalized for 3 days, what do you mean you never got my emails? I handed you a copy of my discharge papers! Do you think I got my arm cut off for fun!? What is wrong with you!?"

[Mystic Muse]

Okay, here's a question I have for the instructors.

Sometimes, I do get seriously sick and can't make it to class, or the snow and ice are so bad I can't even get out of my neighborhood safely.

How much forewarning should I give, and what should I say?

Naturally, this should only matter for in-person classes, not online ones.

[Traab]

Okay, here's a question I have for the instructors.

Sometimes, I do get seriously sick and can't make it to class, or the snow and ice are so bad I can't even get out of my neighborhood safely.

How much forewarning should I give, and what should I say?

Naturally, this should only matter for in-person classes, not online ones.

Well the snow and ice one is a scenario that he will be aware of, what with living in the same state as you, but dropping him an email, or calling up someone who CAN make it to pass on a message would at least show you give a damn if the proff made it in. As for forewarning when sick. Call as soon as you realize you are too sick to go to class.

[snoopy13a]

Okay, here's a question I have for the instructors.

Sometimes, I do get seriously sick and can't make it to class, or the snow and ice are so bad I can't even get out of my neighborhood safely.

How much forewarning should I give, and what should I say?

Naturally, this should only matter for in-person classes, not online ones.

Follow any instructions in the syllabus. For example, if it is a class where you are given a number of absences with no questions asked or if it is a lecture class then don't do anything.

If there are no instructions, then e-mail your professor with a brief description (e.g., Dear Professor so-and-so, I'm sorry I won't be able to make class because of X.) If it is a small class, you might want to add something like, "It is possible for me to come into your office hours later this week to discuss the lecture?".

[Zherog]

As for forewarning when sick. Call as soon as you realize you are too sick to go to class.

Unless you have the prof I mentioned earlier, who tried to fail me for going to a funeral of a family member. She just wouldn't give a damn if you were sick, and will get pissed off if you call her at home to tell her - even though her phone number was listed.

If you have her, go to class sick and spread your germs to everybody else.