BeepCollege core: you sit in the class for attendance then go home and teach yourself
spicy pancakeso 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
PickleideasThat was the most jarring thing for me transitioning from a community/junior college to a private university. Pretty much every teacher I had in CC was there because they loved to teach, but didn’t want to teach children. In University it felt like everyone was teaching because they had bills to pay and had no concept of a world outside of school.
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.
I’ve never been good at math, but it wasn’t the teachers. I wouldn’t know a good math teacher from a bad one. I didn’t know that good ones were so rare.
that was my CC too, unfortunately they taught like everyone should be ivy league level courses, too many people failed out and repeated the course, for stem, i suspect this was part of the scheme to keep students forever studenTs in the CC. AND THIER were quite a few that stayed there 5-10year+ with no direction in thier goals.