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The professors who are actually interested in being good teachers don't seem to have a problem with under-performing students (or at least you never hear them c

The professors who are actually interested in being good teachers don't seem to have a problem with under-performing students (or at least you never hear them complaining). Anyone who's ever taken a class with one of these professors should know what I'm talking about. Watching them teach is like watching an expert tradesman craft some product and finely adjust their inputs and technique as they go in order to get the desired result. They seem to be able to teach their selected content to the student equivalent of a brick. It's the professors who are interested in doing all the other things professors do but regard teaching as a chore that have problems with under-performing students. They put in less effort into teaching (why wouldn't they, it's less important to them) and it shows when the lower quality students fall through. That doesn't mean they're not good professors, they just aren't good teachers. I've known some really great professors that I would never want to take any class from because they didn't prioritize good teaching and likewise sucked at it. Undergrads and these professors would probably be happier if schools relaxed the teaching requirements for this group but that has other trade-offs. As the price of college has increased the amount of extra work (office hours, Q/A sessions before major tests, etc.) professors are expected to do to prevent the customer from failing and having to spend thousands to go around again has increased with it. This is independent of student quality. The author sounds like he/she is annoyed with the new normal and is blaming it on the few people who bribed their way in. In reality student performance in any given class is going to depend mostly on how much they care. If you're teaching some elective that checks a certain box for a large group of undergrads and sounds like it's easy but is really a lot of work you're gonna have a lot of students barely passing, even the smart ones because your class simply isn't a priority for them. These things aren't the fault of students, professors or any one group, it's just how the complex system that is college education in the US has evolved.

ModernMech 8y ago
> They put in less effort into teaching (why wouldn't they, it's less important to them) To be clear, it's not just less important to the professors, it's less important to the school as well. Just look at the tenure guidelines to see this: Publications and grants are by and large the biggest part of your tenure portfolio. At a good school, you can get tenure while being a mediocre lecturer, but you will never get tenure being a mediocre researcher. So can we really blame professors for reacting to the incentives they are given?
- HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
  No, not really. Can we blame the incentives?
- usrusr 8y ago
  That's because tenure is a tool for research, it exists to ensure a certain level of freedom of research. For every n researchers who use tenure for slacking off or pursuing a crackpot idea (those two are indistinguishable from the outside) there will be one who makes a valuable contribution that would have been impossible without the freedom granted by tenure. Granting tenure has many downsides, but there is also possible upside which is why tenure exist. But that upside is exclusive to research, it simply does not exist in teaching. Don't get me wrong, it's great when tenured positions are held by people who are also good teachers and many are, but it would be wasteful to base selection on teaching. If you want to improve teaching, create better teaching positions outside of tenure.
michaelt 8y ago
I'm confused by your expert tradesman analogy. Surely the first step to hand-carving a beautiful wooden chess set is to throw away parts that have knots and cracks and won't carve well?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Even if they prefer working with nice material the people who are the best in their craft can still build pretty nice stuff out of crap material if that's what's in front of them.
  - mfoy_ 8y ago
    But you can't force a piece of knobbly wood into a straight line. You work with what you've got. If the wood is twisted and knotty you have to play with that, you can't say "I make little identical figurines and I can do it with any wood" no matter how skilled you are. That's the point, you work with what is in front of you. That doesn't mean you'll have an identical outcome.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      Nobody is expected to do their best work every day in any conditions with any inputs. You're expected have a "good enough" outcome the overwhelming majority of the time which is also the goal when it comes to teaching. With a good teacher all but maybe the bottom few percent should at least be learning enough to be regarded as passing and most should be passing comfortably. A not so good teacher will go through the same basic motions using the same inputs but without that hard to quantify expert touch that comes from skill compounded with experience they will not produce the same result and they may not understand why because you don't know what you don't know. This generalizes to other skilled professions. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect every college professor to be a great teacher. But the ones that aren't and don't want to be shouldn't be complaining that teaching is a chore and that some students are harder than others. That chore is what keeps the lights on.
  - ticviking 8y ago
mfoy_ 8y ago
No matter how good or enthusiastic the teacher is, under-performing students simply require more time. Time is a precious commodity, and if the class size is large and professors have other (non-teaching) responsibilities then something has to give. Unless you're advocating that "good professors will just put in the 90 hours a week to make it happen"?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
rb808 8y ago
Universities are places of higher learning, not higher teaching. Professors are there to do smart things, teaching is not an important part of their job.
VyseofArcadia 8y ago
> These things aren't the fault of students, professors or any one group, it's just how the complex system that is college education in the US has evolved. You say that, but in the rest of your entire post, you're putting the blame squarely on the professors. I was a professor, and I put a crazy amount of time and effort into my students. Copious office hours, refining and reworking every single class I taught every time I taught it, rewriting every test and assignment, doing extracurricular homework reviews and test prep, etc, etc. All this to say, I was very interested in being a good teacher, and this > The professors who are actually interested in being good teachers don't seem to have a problem with under-performing students (or at least you never hear them complaining). is bullshit. It's not that it's wrong. It's disingenuous. The under-performing students are not the issue. They've never been the issue. Even students admitted based on academic merit have weaknesses and struggle in certain areas. That's part of being human. Good students, regardless of performance, will work to overcome these weaknesses and deserve attention and work on the part of the professor in return. The problem is the non-performing students. The ones who tell you that their daddy paid good money for them to pass your class, and they've never once turned in a homework assignment or passed a quiz. Those students leach time and effort and attention that rightfully belongs to the under-performing students. Those students will offer you money and sex before they do a lick of work, and I have been offered both, multiple times. They do not belong in universities. From the article: > Exhibit A from the recent admissions corruption scandal is “social media celebrity” Olivia Jade Gianulli, whose parents bought her a place at the University of Southern California, and who announced last August to her huge YouTube following that “I don’t know how much of school I’m going to attend. But I do want the experience of, like, game days, partying … I don’t really care about school.” I think you have greatly misunderstood the problem and fail to grasp the realities of the situation. Yes, there exist professors that don't give a crap about teaching, but your post is a slap in the face to those of us who care deeply and spend (or used to spend) 60 - 80 hours a week doing it.

ModernMech 8y ago

> They put in less effort into teaching (why wouldn't they, it's less important to them) To be clear, it's not just less important to the professors, it's less important to the school as well. Just look at the tenure guidelines to see this: Publications and grants are by and large the biggest part of your tenure portfolio. At a good school, you can get tenure while being a mediocre lecturer, but you will never get tenure being a mediocre researcher. So can we really blame professors for reacting to the incentives they are given?

HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
No, not really. Can we blame the incentives?
usrusr 8y ago
That's because tenure is a tool for research, it exists to ensure a certain level of freedom of research. For every n researchers who use tenure for slacking off or pursuing a crackpot idea (those two are indistinguishable from the outside) there will be one who makes a valuable contribution that would have been impossible without the freedom granted by tenure. Granting tenure has many downsides, but there is also possible upside which is why tenure exist. But that upside is exclusive to research, it simply does not exist in teaching. Don't get me wrong, it's great when tenured positions are held by people who are also good teachers and many are, but it would be wasteful to base selection on teaching. If you want to improve teaching, create better teaching positions outside of tenure.

michaelt 8y ago

I'm confused by your expert tradesman analogy. Surely the first step to hand-carving a beautiful wooden chess set is to throw away parts that have knots and cracks and won't carve well?

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Even if they prefer working with nice material the people who are the best in their craft can still build pretty nice stuff out of crap material if that's what's in front of them.
- mfoy_ 8y ago
  But you can't force a piece of knobbly wood into a straight line. You work with what you've got. If the wood is twisted and knotty you have to play with that, you can't say "I make little identical figurines and I can do it with any wood" no matter how skilled you are. That's the point, you work with what is in front of you. That doesn't mean you'll have an identical outcome.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Nobody is expected to do their best work every day in any conditions with any inputs. You're expected have a "good enough" outcome the overwhelming majority of the time which is also the goal when it comes to teaching. With a good teacher all but maybe the bottom few percent should at least be learning enough to be regarded as passing and most should be passing comfortably. A not so good teacher will go through the same basic motions using the same inputs but without that hard to quantify expert touch that comes from skill compounded with experience they will not produce the same result and they may not understand why because you don't know what you don't know. This generalizes to other skilled professions. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect every college professor to be a great teacher. But the ones that aren't and don't want to be shouldn't be complaining that teaching is a chore and that some students are harder than others. That chore is what keeps the lights on.
- ticviking 8y ago

mfoy_ 8y ago

No matter how good or enthusiastic the teacher is, under-performing students simply require more time. Time is a precious commodity, and if the class size is large and professors have other (non-teaching) responsibilities then something has to give. Unless you're advocating that "good professors will just put in the 90 hours a week to make it happen"?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

rb808 8y ago

Universities are places of higher learning, not higher teaching. Professors are there to do smart things, teaching is not an important part of their job.

VyseofArcadia 8y ago

> These things aren't the fault of students, professors or any one group, it's just how the complex system that is college education in the US has evolved. You say that, but in the rest of your entire post, you're putting the blame squarely on the professors. I was a professor, and I put a crazy amount of time and effort into my students. Copious office hours, refining and reworking every single class I taught every time I taught it, rewriting every test and assignment, doing extracurricular homework reviews and test prep, etc, etc. All this to say, I was very interested in being a good teacher, and this > The professors who are actually interested in being good teachers don't seem to have a problem with under-performing students (or at least you never hear them complaining). is bullshit. It's not that it's wrong. It's disingenuous. The under-performing students are not the issue. They've never been the issue. Even students admitted based on academic merit have weaknesses and struggle in certain areas. That's part of being human. Good students, regardless of performance, will work to overcome these weaknesses and deserve attention and work on the part of the professor in return. The problem is the non-performing students. The ones who tell you that their daddy paid good money for them to pass your class, and they've never once turned in a homework assignment or passed a quiz. Those students leach time and effort and attention that rightfully belongs to the under-performing students. Those students will offer you money and sex before they do a lick of work, and I have been offered both, multiple times. They do not belong in universities. From the article: > Exhibit A from the recent admissions corruption scandal is “social media celebrity” Olivia Jade Gianulli, whose parents bought her a place at the University of Southern California, and who announced last August to her huge YouTube following that “I don’t know how much of school I’m going to attend. But I do want the experience of, like, game days, partying … I don’t really care about school.” I think you have greatly misunderstood the problem and fail to grasp the realities of the situation. Yes, there exist professors that don't give a crap about teaching, but your post is a slap in the face to those of us who care deeply and spend (or used to spend) 60 - 80 hours a week doing it.