I run an English chatting room which is open to anyone. Occasionally teaching faculty join. One time a professor who was in his last year before retirement came. He proceeded to rant about how terrible the students are these days, in front of a dozen or so students. I couldn’t get the miserable bugger to stop.
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How was his English?
I suspect this is rarely a sound pedagagical move.
Guy
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Upper intermediate
Would’ve been funnier if his rant was in broken English, but I guess you have to take what you can get.
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That’s nothing.
A teacher of Object Oriented Programming II. He was feared by everyone. First day of the class: he goes on a rant about how most students fail this subject, of course blaming them for it. How could so many fail it, for no reason? because it can’t be that difficult, so what the fuck is going on??? More blaming on the students. The crowd remains silent and scared.
First class is over.
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Scare tactic!
Someone should have shown him that video on YouTube of a greybeard explaining why, in most cases, OOP is a load of old bollocks (and I think he was spot-on). That would surely have precipitated an epic rant.
I had some truly awful lecturers at university, and IMO several of them should have been fired. The guy covering electromagnetism, field theory and the like seemed to take great pleasure in scrawling six-foot-long equations on the board that nobody could follow. Dunno what happened in this particular case, but if a teacher can’t present the material in a comprehensible manner, that’s his problem, not the students’. I enjoyed organic chemistry, but IMO there are certain big-picture key concepts you need to grasp; if you don’t, none of the rest of it makes sense. The rest of it is mostly rote memorization, but it’s hard to remember things that you can’t make sense of.
Organic chemistry is known to be one of the toughest undergrad courses.
I can’t say without being part of the class. But I can totally see some professor who just wants to prove a point and make the course hell because that’s how it was for him.
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I will never tire of repeating this sentiment.
Assisted suicide will continue to become more and more preferred as society deliberately goes full r word.
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Meanwhile, in 2023, this is how things are going at Yale:
I suppose that is one way to deal with potential student displeasure.
Guy
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80%, that’s ridiculous, seriously undermines their ivy league status. hey the students still have a brand name on their reume.
Personally, I think it depends on the quality of the output. It’s not very useful to assign grades using bell curves because the utility of a grade is in its measuring of performance of student achievement.
Therefore, if the system of grading is used appropriately and the teaching method is robust and effective, than 80% A’s could be indicative of the quality of teaching methods as well as student achievement.
It’s not really possible to know just by looking at distribution of grades alone though. You’d have to examine the output and achievements of work by students.
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I’d be tempted to complain about how bad the professors especially the older ones have become. How lazy they seem to have gotten, plus it’s so insufferable how they always seem to blame students instead of addressing the issues with their teaching methods. I guess it just boils down to a lack of responsibility and a general air if laziness.
Uhh just speaking generally of course…
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I agree. Sadly, there are not many incentives for professors to become better at pedagogical skills, since they are judged mostly on research output (and mostly on quantity).
About the A’s at Yale: what I’ve heard is that they actually have very responsible and high-achieving students, so it is rare for a student to not turn in a paper or hand in some last-minute work. They are not judged in competition with their peers, but against the same standard rubric for all. If they fulfill the criteria required for “good work” I think it is OK to give them good grades. When there isn’t much variation, using a curve just leads to heavily penalizing minor mistakes.
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We know that neurologically speaking we are being “rewired” in real time, with shorter and shorter attention spans.
Combine this with handheld devices (aka “smart” phones) fused with algorythmic social media. Then throw in some generative AI platforms just to see what happens.
Given this melange, I can see why some of the oldsters among us would be less than delighted about the current state of affairs.
Guy
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There’s two types of educators 1. Those who blame circumstances and students and 2. Those who work to understand them and the use what they learn to adapt their methods
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Well yeah but as an example orgranic chemistry…really …is …hard.
This is not something humans evolved to get 80% As in lol.
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I agree we need to meet students where they are. Recently though that place is not always a great place to be.
Guy
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But much more likely the professors are just giving high grades, because that is easier. And then they have time to focus on research (which is more important to them, most of the time)
If 80% of grades at the organization are As, that’s the output of the university, and it is a bit high
Yup
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