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I'm working on a masters degree at the moment for context. The fact that a professor has the ability to deny me the piece of paper I've been told all my life is

I'm working on a masters degree at the moment for context. The fact that a professor has the ability to deny me the piece of paper I've been told all my life is my ticket to a better life based on arbitrary grading rules is horrifying. In my program there is a different professor for every class and how they grade and what they want has always been different, some demand title pages for every paper, some demand some specific source count, and others grade you down for submitting too close to the official due date. The professors who I have liked the most are the ones that act like the students, just scraping by barely managing to do their work, and not having the time or energy to be too critical of the students work. I'm sure professors are nice people and I'm even good friends with some at other universities, but there is a massive power imbalance and it is horrifying to students.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago
Exactly. Professors have no, I repeat, NO accountability. Inside their classroom, they are the petty dictators they are empowered by the university to be. Some do a good and just job at education... But that's not their real goal. Their goal is to get the university more money and more students - teaching is the secondary objective. If it happens, it's good. I've seen a large handful of people whom should have never been offered a teaching position. When English is obviously a 2nd or 3rd language, and you're teaching a complicated topic, and we can't understand you - you shouldn't be teaching it. I'm not making insults on intelligence, because they were intelligent... But when every student struggles to understand every word (example word: theta , pronounced:fee-ter ) they shouldn't be teaching. I've also had "professors" who taught light and sound physics, discussing electricity, who didn't know what a capacitor was. And it was in the middle of the partial differential plate field equations for... capacitors. He was also known at putting questions on the test that did not pertain to the class proper. He would also create his own (wrong) answer key, and then refuse to accept corrections. Good scores for the class were around 18-22 out of 100. I have no clue how one would accomplish this, but the university ALSO needs to be accountable to the students who throw it money.
- anon946 8y ago
  I assume that you are mainly discussing undergrad education. In that case, the way to pressure universities to be accountable is by not going to such universities, as you imply in your first paragraph: "Their goal is to get the university more money and more students". So don't go to such universities. They will lose students. Losing undergrad students won't directly impact research funding, but it will have an impact at any public university.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    I take it you haven't read "Meditations on Moloch". https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ All universities do this to a varying extent, for undergraduate -and- graduate. And it doesn't make sense for a university to take such a significant risk on non-payment for failing a student. And there would be questionable ethics for a university to pass a student to get paid. From a "God's Eye View", we can do better to properly fund schools while preserving that students learn without getting cheated. But from individual students' point of view, and the universities' point of view, there are no good answers.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago

Exactly. Professors have no, I repeat, NO accountability. Inside their classroom, they are the petty dictators they are empowered by the university to be. Some do a good and just job at education... But that's not their real goal. Their goal is to get the university more money and more students - teaching is the secondary objective. If it happens, it's good. I've seen a large handful of people whom should have never been offered a teaching position. When English is obviously a 2nd or 3rd language, and you're teaching a complicated topic, and we can't understand you - you shouldn't be teaching it. I'm not making insults on intelligence, because they were intelligent... But when every student struggles to understand every word (example word: theta , pronounced:fee-ter ) they shouldn't be teaching. I've also had "professors" who taught light and sound physics, discussing electricity, who didn't know what a capacitor was. And it was in the middle of the partial differential plate field equations for... capacitors. He was also known at putting questions on the test that did not pertain to the class proper. He would also create his own (wrong) answer key, and then refuse to accept corrections. Good scores for the class were around 18-22 out of 100. I have no clue how one would accomplish this, but the university ALSO needs to be accountable to the students who throw it money.

anon946 8y ago
I assume that you are mainly discussing undergrad education. In that case, the way to pressure universities to be accountable is by not going to such universities, as you imply in your first paragraph: "Their goal is to get the university more money and more students". So don't go to such universities. They will lose students. Losing undergrad students won't directly impact research funding, but it will have an impact at any public university.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  I take it you haven't read "Meditations on Moloch". https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ All universities do this to a varying extent, for undergraduate -and- graduate. And it doesn't make sense for a university to take such a significant risk on non-payment for failing a student. And there would be questionable ethics for a university to pass a student to get paid. From a "God's Eye View", we can do better to properly fund schools while preserving that students learn without getting cheated. But from individual students' point of view, and the universities' point of view, there are no good answers.