University Problems

[Shock and Awe]

You know what everyone loves? A good old gripe thread. Somewhere to go and complain about whatever is pertinent to the topic at hand, and today that topic is Universities/Colleges/Higher Education in general. Now, why do I bring up this oft repeated thread? Simple; I have a gripe that must be griped here!

I've attended two different colleges in my two semesters of higher education; a military and civilian institution(I am still in ROTC in the latter if anyone finds that relevant) and have taken two history courses in those two semesters(valve life). The first was quite standard and exactly what I expected. The second; not so much. Its a course that covers American History past 1865 and from the way my professor teaches it I could swear I was in an African American studies class. Literally half or more of nearly every class dealt specifically with African American issues and history.

Now I am not gonna sit here and say they aren't important; they are immensely so. However, its a real negative when it is focused on so much that it leaves out a lot of other important parts of history. Westward expansion? Touched on. Asian and European immigration? Only when it was directly related to African Americans. The only non-African American history subject that were covered at any length were Populism and Women's Rights movement, and the latter only for about 40 minutes in one class. I am not even going to mention the immense bias in the lectures.

So two things, is this kind of thing normal? What are some of your gripes about higher education?

 

[MysticSlayer]

So two things, is this kind of thing normal?

Sort of...Though you seem to be in an extreme case. If you're taking a very general survey course, it is possible that they got someone who specializes in a particular focus, and they are simply bringing it to that class. If the professor specializes in African American history, then it seems reasonable that you'll get more of it than someone else taking the class with a professor who specializes in politics. My history professor spent his career talking about the rise and fall of empires and studying the development of politics. Needless to say, we spent much more time on those subjects than, say, philosophy or major battles. Still, getting almost nothing but African American history makes it seem like the professor is doing a really bad job, at least for a general survey course.

 

[Shock and Awe]

So two things, is this kind of thing normal?

Sort of...Though you seem to be in an extreme case. If you're taking a very general survey course, it is possible that they got someone who specializes in a particular focus, and they are simply bringing it to that class. If the professor specializes in African American history, then it seems reasonable that you'll get more of it than someone else taking the class with a professor who specializes in politics. My history professor spent his career talking about the rise and fall of empires and studying the development of politics. Needless to say, we spent much more time on those subjects than, say, philosophy or major battles. Still, getting almost nothing but African American history makes it seem like the professor is doing a really bad job, at least for a general survey course.

Well to be fair, we're at the turn of the century now, so he may deviate soon; hopefully anyway. And yes, he is actually an African American Studies professor, so its not surprising he talks about it more; but the sheer volume is a bit ridiculous. My last history teacher specialized in Latin American History, yet she did an excellent job of covering the different civilizations(it was World History) fairly evenly. The only difference I noticed was her pronunciation got exponentially better when we got to her specialty area.

 

[Elfgore]

I have two horror stories about two professors from my university.

Professors really need to give a small summary about what their class focuses on when you sign up. A friend at work told me he signed up for a basic english 1400 class. He goes in the first day and it was all girls in the class. Turns out the professor was a very radical feminist and her class was a very radical feminist english class, focusing on how evil men are. One of the readings for the class was called, as he remembers it, "The dirty fascist swine men". He failed the class of course. But nowhere on the registration did it say women's english to warn him away.

Another professor is famous for having one of the most difficult courses to pass. He teaches higher up math courses and requires you to always use perfect english when writing. You forget a period, comma, or capital letter? That's half your points gone instantly. A kid got a 6/100 on an exam because he didn't answer the questions the exact way he wanted, even though a good majority of the kid's answers were right.

I luckily have yet to have a professor like this.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

Overall, my university isn't too bad about stupid bullshit, but there are a couple of things that have pissed me off.

My university has a basic speech class that everyone is required to take. That's fine, public speaking is a skill that just about everybody needs to use at some point. And how the class used to be set up was that you went to classes of about 20 students for three hours a week, where you could get direct feedback on your speaking without a too intimidating environment. That's just fine and dandy.

Unfortunately, the communications department doesn't have nearly enough instructors to teach all of those classes. So last semester, they decided to change the format to accommodate this. It was probably necessary, but the format they changed to was perhaps the worst format for a course I've ever seen, or at least that I've actually taken. The course is now split up into three sections, small group, mass lecture, and online. The small group section is similar to what was there before, but since it's only one hour a week instead of three, there's fewer chances to practice speaking and way less time for feedback. Then there's one hour of a mass lecture a week, that has to have been the biggest waste of time of anything I've done at university. None of the information in the lectures was related at all to what we were actually doing in the course, and wasn't really useful information to begin with. There's a reason maybe 20% of the people at the first day of class were there at the end. Then, the last hour a week was supposed to be done with online content, but it really just amounted to short quizzes that I could just skim through the book for and get all of the answers I needed.

And let me emphasize, this is a class that everyone needs to take.

More recently, this semester I'm taking an introductory statistics course. The course has online assignments, which is normal. But these assignments, instead of being done through the standard university online stuff, it's done through the website of the textbook manufacturer. The only way to get access to this is to buy a new version of the textbook for the code to access this website. The cheapest I was able to find the textbook for was a hundred and thirty fucking dollars. For a textbook that I'm only using for one semester and that I can't resell because it's worthless without the one time use code.

I hate whoever realized that they can sell textbooks for basically whatever they want because students have no choice but to buy them. And the worst part is, I'm sure somebody else is going to come in here and have an even worse story of textbook bullshit.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

My drunk flat mates wasted all my fucking clingfilm and now that 10 pounds worth of cheese i bought has gone all hard and disgusting over night because I found i had nothing to wrap it with.

I have to produce a second draft of my report on the diagnosis and treatment of Leukaemia which is due thursday and my tutor only gave me back a copy yesterday. I was meant to recieve it 2 weeks prior. I now have to speed write my second draft and pour over ALL the journals i used AGAIN to cross check my references. My tutor is really nice and awesome but hes a little... forgetful. It really puts the pressure on at times.

Physiology professor just didnt prepare his lectures at all. Just... eugh. Painful sitting through 1 hour of stilted powerpoint about brain anatomy. Considering its the part of anatomy I find the hardest as well it really put me behind. We had a substitute from higher up come back to teach again for a little bit while the previous guy was away and he stood in front of us and said "I think i remember this". I expected half remembered crap. What i got was the most amazing detailed recollection FROM MEMORY of cardiovascular anatomy ive ever heard or will hear again. He just went for it, no awkward pauses or "umms", just solid information powering at you. I wrote 5 double sided pages of notes and drawings from that single lecture. Was glorious. Now we have the stuttery powerpoint dude again. Hes nice, friendly and approachable but he cant publicly speak very well. No hate against him but im learning things that are, by most accounts, rather challenging. I need all the help i can get :S

 

[BeeGeenie]

Yeah, college professors are like a box of chocolates.

One prof of mine provided lots of information, but it was all "shotgun blasts" of random facts and unrelated tangents, and you never knew what random bit of trivia was going to show up on the tests. So even though I learned a lot from her classes, I still didn't do well on the tests.

I saw that she was teaching the required courses for my major... so I changed my major.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I've had two English professors in my university experience so far and both were horribly biased. It really reflected in the materials both made me buy. However, this current one is at least fun and interesting so I can disagree with him without getting furious about it. The other one was so condescending that I disengaged entirely and just did the bare minimum of participation.

I think my biggest gripe about my school would have to be the cafeteria. The food is atrocious. Maybe its a social experiment to teach us how to make our own lunches? In anycase, I am saving money on my lunches by doing it myself and it tastes better to.

 

[skywolfblue]

My first freshmen year of college every student was required to take two semesters of some totally BS course. (you had a choice between "Sex and it's impact on society", "Globalization and it's impact on society", "Time and it's impact on society"... and stuff like that.) Totally unrelated to pretty much any degree.

I picked Time hoping for a little bit of physics and science and the passing of time, but it was instead a weird course on the "evils" of our male (sun) centric view of time (this feminism-based course was taught by a man, which struck me as odd). That class was awful, just awful.

I adored most of my Math and Electrical Engineering Professors, my French and Public Speaking teachers as well. I love Professors that are always willing to help you out with problems and explain things, and nearly all of them were very open and friendly every time I came to visit them with a question.

 

[Shock and Awe]

My first freshmen year of college every student was required to take two semesters of some totally BS course. (you had a choice between "Sex and it's impact on society", "Globalization and it's impact on society", "Time and it's impact on society"... and stuff like that.) Totally unrelated to pretty much any degree.

My university has something similar, its called "Perspectives" courses, basically supposed to broaden horizons and such. Im currently in Geopolitical and Ethnic conflicts, and so far it seems decent, but we've recently started talking about Israel and Palestine and its looking to be a "Fuck Israel" course. (Note that I believe both sides suck in their own special way)

 

[Phantom Kat]

I had an economics class where a lot of people from my class (and in the class in the following year) dropped one to two entire grades from their average of pre-exam tests to their overall grade. Averaging a A+ before the exam? End up with a B+ (or, it you're lucky, an A-) on your overall grade.

I ended up failing that course (the particular topic wasn't my strong suit to begin with) and, to put this in perspective, I was asked to do honours in Economics this year. Trying to find out where you went wrong in the exam was impossible as he was impossible to get a hold of and the marks were not on the exam papers. I calculated that, in order for me to actually fail the course, I would have had to have scored under something like 15% on the exam. In every test in that course before then I was scoring around 70%.

 

[dyre]

Now I am not gonna sit here and say they aren't important; they are immensely so. However, its a real negative when it is focused on so much that it leaves out a lot of other important parts of history. Westward expansion? Touched on. Asian and European immigration? Only when it was directly related to African Americans. The only non-African American history subject that were covered at any length were Populism and Women's Rights movement, and the latter only for about 40 minutes in one class. I am not even going to mention the immense bias in the lectures.

From my experience as a senior with a major in history, my university is split about half and half between idiotic politically correct professors and highly knowledgeable and enjoyable professors. Once I took a course about radical movements in America (which I assumed would be an objective analysis of the major people, events, and consequences associated with those movements) which ended up being a card-carrying socialist attempting to convince the class of the merits of Marxism. But I've also had great experience with true experts in their fields (enough that they wrote numerous books on US foreign policy, Middle-East conflict, 20th century European politics, etc).

Before enrolling in these courses, you should really read the course syllabus (hopefully it's available online) and check the professor's RateMyProfessor rating. American History past 1865 should've been a small warning bell, but a syllabus is the best way to see what the course is about.

 

[Hero of Lime]

Just a general gripe with higher education on general. I feel like the system we have (at least in US, not sure about elsewhere) is that the curriculum focuses on making the student a jack of all trades. I just wish we all could focus on what we major and minor in rather than having us take lots of classes that distract us from our main goals and education. I know this kind of gripe is a bit broad and general for this thread, but I hope I'm not the only one who feels like this.

Also, text book prices are ridiculous, but that is a given at this point.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I had a history prof who refused to use the gigantic digital projector in the lecture hall. He lugged an ancient paper projector around with him, and his only visual aids were a bunch of keywords which he never drew attention to. Now, not having visual aids isn't the end of the world, if you can't listen to your prof, you're not learning, and you don't need visuals to listen.

If only this guy knew how to public speak. He just droned on and on in complete monotone every class, and never emphasized anything to get your attention. He also refused to use common citation formats, and insisted that we use the most obscure ones he could find. So no visual aids, horrible presentation skills, and he would rip marks from you like no tomorrow if you failed to use his archaic citation methods.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

SNIP

Unfortunately, you're occasionally gonna get the Professors (especially in Liberal Arts courses) who are more deadset on converting you to their political or social beliefs than they are actually teaching you anything. It's just the way of the world sometimes, and especially when they are tenured and can essentially say whatever the heck they want, they really don't have to concern themselves with being criticized or potentially losing their job over the fact that they aren't really doing what they are paid to do.

Interestingly, I actually went to a Military College, and the Professors were (for the most part) extremely apolitical.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

My gripes are a little different to you guys as I don't go to University, I work for one. To be more specific I'm part of the Audio Visual team of ITS Client Services, the team that deals with the lecture theatre equipment including but not limited to:

Projectors and associated inputs.
Videoconferencing equipment.
Panopto video/audio capture.

Now the uni I work for likes to be cutting edge (who doesn't?) so that means quite a bit of tech gets shoved into a lecture theatre including most if not all the aft fore mentioned equipment. You would think with all this wonderful technology available the uni would tech the lecturers how to use it? NOPE. There is a voluntary course available for them, which hardly anyone goes to and often sign up and not go anyway, there are lecturers using frigging OHT's instead of the new document cameras (which I might add they like to draw on with permanent markers) and no matter how 'idiot proof' we try to make the room controls there is always, always, someone who can cause a $10000 control unit to lock up and require a callout.

 

[Colour Scientist]

I have two horror stories about two professors from my university.

Professors really need to give a small summary about what their class focuses on when you sign up. A friend at work told me he signed up for a basic english 1400 class. He goes in the first day and it was all girls in the class. Turns out the professor was a very radical feminist and her class was a very radical feminist english class, focusing on how evil men are. One of the readings for the class was called, as he remembers it, "The dirty fascist swine men". He failed the class of course. But nowhere on the registration did it say women's english to warn him away.

Another professor is famous for having one of the most difficult courses to pass. He teaches higher up math courses and requires you to always use perfect english when writing. You forget a period, comma, or capital letter? That's half your points gone instantly. A kid got a 6/100 on an exam because he didn't answer the questions the exact way he wanted, even though a good majority of the kid's answers were right.

I luckily have yet to have a professor like this.

Those stories smell like total bullshit to me.

I'm guessing either it's hearsay, people were seriously exaggerating or they were just lying to you.

That or you go to a really dodgy university.

 

[Raine_sage]

I had an Art History Professor who was a harsh grader and that's putting it mildly. You had to take pretty obsessive notes if you wanted even a sliver of a chance of passing that class with more than a C. Missing a class wasn't an option, he absolutely refused to meet students halfway. One month a girl broke her leg pretty badly in a skiing accident and had to miss a weeks worth of notes. Instead of just giving her the slides for that week, he told her she should drop the class.

That was pretty much his answer to anyone having trouble for whatever reason. Don't like it? Drop the class. This, when half of the people in his class needed to take it as a requirement, some of them in their senior year. Basically every year I had this guy it went like this: Start out with a full house. Two months in all the freshmen and sophmores drop the class figuring they can try for a sane professor next year. Juniors and seniors attempt to tough it out in hopes of graduating on time. Much weeping come final exams.

Once he declared that students who missed turning in three homework assignments or more would just recieve a Zero for their cumulative homework grade. So many people dropped I actually got a letter telling me that due to lack of participation the class had been canceled. On the upside they refunded the money for that class.

 

[Nickolai77]

One thing to bear in mind about modules/classes in university OP is that the way they're taught is largely down to the whims and interests of the professor. I signed up for this module on the exploration of the Americas and the Pacific at my university,and found out that it was really more about historiography than actual history. So signing up for a module claiming it's one thing and turns out to be another is far from abnormal.