Speak up and solve your professor problems

I think that just about every student has had a bad experience with a professor. Whether they… I think that just about every student has had a bad experience with a professor. Whether they were chronically late or unprepared for lectures, bad public speakers or simply didn’t seem to care about the class, less-than-ideal lecturers and recitations are pretty common.

For example, I once had a professor who, on the very first day of class, showed up 15 minutes late with only half a syllabus, ranting about the copy machine. Another teacher cancelled class no fewer than seven times throughout the semester for completely unexplained reasons and rarely with any notice to the students.

An Associated Press article recently pointed out a link between the increased hiring of adjunct and part-time professors and supposedly decreased levels of education quality. Citing a connection between the increased number of students seeking Ph.D.s and the lack of any real growth in the job market at colleges and universities, the article states that an increasing number of universities are hiring part-time profs that simply don’t have the time or resources to teach as well as a full-time faculty member.

As a student, I don’t think that this is fair. I’m attending college to get a quality education, and if I’m missing out on it because all the “good” professors are too busy researching or teaching graduate students to come and deal with us lowly undergrads, then there’s something wrong with that system. So to fix it, I think that there need to be a few steps taken.

First, we as students need to be honest with our professors and with the university to ensure that we’re getting the education we deserve. This doesn’t just mean filling out negative course evaluation forms if you didn’t like your class or giving the professor all “ones” on RateMyProfessor.com. It means talking to your professor or the department about any problems you might be having.

This might seem like a radical and intimidating thought, and I can definitely say that it wouldn’t be easy. It doesn’t offer the comfortable anonymity of a course evaluation, but we also need to remember that our educations are at stake. So if you can’t understand your professor during lecture, talk to him about it in office hours.

And if you honestly have a problem with the professor that you wouldn’t be able to talk to him about, go to the department and talk to someone there. Remember that your professor is supposed to be imparting his expertise and knowledge to you, and if you don’t think that you’re learning anything, there’s obviously something wrong. I’m not saying you should run and complain about every minor issue, but if you feel there’s a major problem with the class or if you’ve been personally slighted, then this might be an effective method of recourse.

Of course, we students can only do so much. This is why I also believe that the universities that hire the professors should start taking some responsibilities toward the educational capabilities of those professors. Just because someone has a Ph.D., it doesn’t mean that he’s automatically an effective teacher.

Now I know that research and publishing are the big considerations when it comes to hiring people and giving them tenure and so forth, but I also think that, because the universities trust our education to these people, there should be at least some requirements for teaching effectiveness to be a university professor. Obviously this would never preclude being a great researcher or writer, as the schools would never have it any other way. But would it be so hard to test if someone can stand up in front of a group and lecture coherently for an hour?

And on the off chance that they can’t, maybe it would be a better idea not to hand them introductory General Education classes with 150 students who already don’t know much about or care about the subject. Also, if a professor has difficulty copying syllabi in time to actually make it to class to hand them out, perhaps the department should give the class to someone else and let the first professor deal with small classes or graduate students instead.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable here. I’m simply concerned about the quality of my own education and that of all my fellow students, or at least the ones who care enough to come to class. I’m not trying to be pretentious or to call out any professors I personally didn’t like.

I just think that, with thousands upon thousands of dollars invested in learning as much as possible, the least our schools can do is find someone good enough to do the job.

If you’re going to fail Richard for writing terrible things about you in print, at least e-mail him at rab53@pitt.edu and tell him first.