Tests

[first_seventhe]

Comments

[aesriella]

I know what you mean by loads of teachers too; I have 8 teachers for GS (rotates every week, 1 lesson/week), 1 for Geography, 2 for Lit (4/week), 2 for History (5/week) but worst f all is three teachers for only four lessons of French a week. It's a nightmare.

The business thing? Here's my example:

My sister is a third year vet student and she worked her ASS off to get in; she gave up every summer from the age of 12 to accumulate work experience and did tremendous amounts of work to get an A in Maths A Level (she hates maths) just to get in. It's horribly exclusive; she got one ffer (thankfully the one she wanted) from 5 unis she applied to. The start of her second year, the uni shipped in 35 Americans to her group who hadn't done any work experience, hadn't been interviewed, hadn't sat entrance exams, hadn't done any vet work (most were biolgists of one description or another) but still got precedence on trips, units and professor time. Her class size tripled, they had to leave the Vet buildings and use the Geography buildings (other side f the city from both the farm and her flat) and spent 3/4 of the first year redoing everything they'd done last year for the import students, just because they pay a fee to the university. Thing is, everybdy suffered; my sister and many people failed some of their exams that year and had to do resits (she was studying while taking care of elephants in Thailand, not fun or easy) and it didn't do the US students any favours; 8 of them made it into third year. The uni stopped caring about teaching them and instead got obsessed with using them for their research projects.

Anyway, you don't want to read all that crap so GO INDULGE YERSELF IN PIRATES XD.

Hope ya feel better soon.

[first_seventhe]

First of all, this was hilarious to read mostly because of your "o" key. XD

Second, yeah, I'm glad it's not just me that feels this way. I get so angry, though, because the students are the ones PAYING for this experience, and -- well, what's the ratio of "profs you actually like" to "profs that pretty much dicked you over"? Not very good, in my personal experience. Not 0, but not very good.

[lassarina]

I...maybe Northwestern is weird! But I really only remember one prof (and it wasn't even a prof, she was a TA) who dicked me over. I was varying degrees of neutral to a lot of my profesosrs, and just flat out loved some of them. Then again, part of the reason I went into history was because the history department was so much awesome.

[first_seventhe]

I also think there is a huge, huge difference between liberal-arts departments and the more "technical" science/engineering departments. As far as I know, although liberal arts depts do still do research, it isn't as HIGH of a priority, mostly because it isn't bringing in so much money to the university that the libarts people feel responsible for anything. (I mean, no matter whether or not you agree with it, "New depths to translations of Russian poetry from 1651" doesn't rank up on the "high-profile" scale with "OMG THIS POLYMER MIGHT CURE SURGERY" or whatever.)* Anyway, they're just happy to teach and read and go on their way.

Whereas in "scientific" departments a professor is usually JUDGED on his research - his ability to do that research and bring in those grants pretty much determines his worth as a prof. Teaching is a far and distant 3rd, or maybe 4th.

The couple libarts classes I got to take usually featured teachers who actually CARED about teaching.

*Usually I insult someone when I make this distinction! I'm just sayin'. Whether or not it's "right" - this is what I've seen.

[lassarina]

Yeah, that makes sense. Although I wonder if comp sci profs tend more toward the liberal arts side of that spectrum, just because they could be making orders of magnitude more money in the "real world" versus academia.

[first_seventhe]

I'm not sure how much research ties into comp-sci, but you could definitely be right.

Basically, it bothers me how much of a HUGE chasm there is between "research" and "making sure students learn", and which is more important to professors versus which SHOULD be. >

[lassarina]

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. Srsly.

[first_seventhe]

I KNOW. MY EDUCATION IS A BUSINESS. No wonder it makes me so wrothful!