College core: you sit in the class for attendance then go home and teach yourself
College core: you sit in the class for attendance then go home and teach yourself
so many of my 100 and 200 level STEM classes were like this in no small part due to the instructors not wanting to teach. they were being forced to teach as part of their employment contract but their main work was research
i resented them for turning their lack of ability to get a position that didn’t require teaching into my problem because they refused to give the slightest effort towards actually explaining the material
doing problems from the textbook on the overhead projector with near-zero explanation is dogshit teaching
Even for the classes with excellent profs, sometimes I’d have to do the thing above.
If I had midterms or an important project in one class, I might have to skip the prereading / review for another class. After that, I’d get to class and not understand much of it. Then I’d catch up the best I could during weekends, reading breaks, or just during finals season.
At least yours were taught by actual faculty?
A lot of my 100 and 200 level classes were taught by grad students who were interning as teachers in exchange for free/discounted tuition.
At least yours were taught by actual people.
My girlfriend showed me recently that one of her profs made an AI clone of himself (voice and visual) and distributed prerecorded lessons that way. Who knows if he’s even writing the script for it. Probably not.
I went to a very small public university campus that a few years before was associated with a massive state university. They were still mostly independent but we’re getting all sorts of pressure to conform to the larger universities policies on research etc. At my school the professors all taught and did little to no research.
As part of their ongoing arguments they had all juniors/seniors in both schools take a standardize tests at the end of their core degree courses for a year. My tiny university averaged 90th percentile. The large university averaged 30th percentile. The difference having highly qualified dedicated teachers.
I went to fairly small private college for Music, and all my music professors were really great, every one. Even the couple that were considered the worst were decent teachers, it’s just that some were amazing, and made everyone else look mediocre.
Once you got out of the Conservatory, and started experiencing other subjects, the quality was variable. I had some excellent profs, but also some fairly bad ones. The worst were the adjunct teachers who were only doing it for a side hustle, they generally weren’t too invested.
I’ve had similar experiences. I went to a university and not a conservatory, but my music teachers were consistently excellent; from my very first elementary school band teacher all the way through college.
By contrast, I’ve never had a good math teacher. Ever.