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Students and professors are not peers. A professor has to be able to force a student to do something they don't want to. "You don't understand this." "You're n
by chasing 11y ago
Students and professors are not peers.
A professor has to be able to force a student to do something they don't want to. "You don't understand this." "You're not doing this right." "You're not working hard enough to learn what you need to learn in the limited amount of time we have, here." Etc. A student might find this unpleasant, embarrassing, or whatever. But that doesn't mean the professor is wrong. Or bad at their job.
Student evaluations are valuable, of course, but the idea of using them alone to decide a professor's fate seems incredibly unfair.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoWhy 'unfair'? Because they're being rated by a person that knows them from only a few hours exposure a week, in a stilted environment and based on a narrow context of arcane skills? Sounds like a student's life. Cry me a river, professor.
- chasing 11y agoStudents and professors are not peers.
- kefka 11y agoThe professors should be servants, in the same light a server is to a meal. I pay for it, I get it the way I want.
- chasing 11y agoIt's actually much more complicated than that, and as someone who has been a student and is currently an adjunct professor, I find that attitude to be horrible. The student-teacher relationship is a collaboration. Also, please don't go through life thinking that every single person you might give money to for something is your "servant." Not even the person on the other side of the McDonald's counter.
- kefka 11y agoI might buy that argument if the student and the professor shared the profits. They don't. Instead, the student is bound to pay every last cent of the education. Nowhere, other than court punishments and child support are debts protected against bankruptcy. So yes, if I pay for it, I own it or I control it. Edit: You misunderstand. I said servant, and I mean servant; not slave. Webster: "a person who is hired to do household or personal duties such as cleaning and cooking". Even the McDonalds cashier is that, when taking my order.
- chasing 11y agoYour professors are not your servants. Nor should they be.
- CocaKoala 11y agoWhat "household or personal duties" is your professor obligated to perform?
- dragonwriter 11y agoUnless your "professor" is actually a personal tutor you've hired individually rather than one many people -- that the institution can swap out without you having recourse -- working for an institution with which you are contracting for an array of educational services, you might have a point with your whole servant argument.
- xamuel 11y agoThat's not a very realistic view of things. First of all, a professor's job consists of many things, of which teaching is just one. Depending on the institution, your tuition may be a very miniscule portion of the professor's paycheck. Finally, even if they're solely a lecturer and payed entirely from tuition, what you want isn't necessarily what other students want, so unless you've hired the prof as a private tutor...
- kefka 11y agoI know it's not "realistic". But it is a viewpoint as from a student. I just distilled it down to the absolute minimum I could. I work in a staff role at an university. I see things from the students and the faculty role. I see many students who skate by, doing little and collecting the degree. I also see professors who I'm surprised still figure out how to breathe. I also see that the university props up a great deal of failing architectures (both buildings and power structures) that would fail readily except for the 'wonderfulness' of student loans. What money they bring in now will be paid in 10 fold twenty or so years from now. I also know that my own job is artificially propped up because of students' debt. I also reduce cost for the university, knowing that the huge monument or statue or building was funded, because the uni has easy money.
- rpcope1 11y agoYou strike on a significant point that most HN types have no idea about: the majority of most big schools that do any research (state schools, big private schools like Ivies) get the majority of their budget from taking a cut of research grants, and secondarily from state funding and tuitions. At the various schools I have been involved in different forms with, tuition covers on;y like 20-40% of operating costs; the people who were really keeping the university afloat were researchers _not instructors_. It is partially because of these huge monetary incentives that STEM professors are usually expected to be researchers (and administrators of grad students) first, and teachers second: they have to pay the bills.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoIowa gets 5% of its funding from the state, reduced in budget cuts every year for decades. I honestly don't know why they don't cut their ties - 5% isn't worth all the Board of Regents interference.
- Fomite 11y agoIf you go to a state university, odds are your professor is largely paid by the taxpayers, either of the state or the U.S. via the NSF/NIH/DoE etc. Professors are not your employees, and the notion that you should get your class "the way you want" - especially considering a likely double digit number of students all wanting it their way - is absurd.
- yarrel 11y agoI want higher marks than you. The professor should clearly give me them. Well, bring them to me. I can't be bothered actually going to class.
- sklogic 11y agoJust buy a fake diploma then and do not spoil it for everyone else.