College Rants

[AdminAssistant]

175? Damn. Biggest class I've ever had was 140. Next two biggest classes were 70. Then 40, then all the way down to 11.

Yeah, it's tough. But we break them into discussion sections for Fridays, and those are more manageable (max enrollment - 30. I have 8.) Worse for students in terms of their educations, but better in some ways because it's cheaper to cram as many students under one professor as possible. And that, in theory, makes tuition cheaper.

[Greenday]

175? Damn. Biggest class I've ever had was 140. Next two biggest classes were 70. Then 40, then all the way down to 11.

[AdminAssistant]

Then why are we tested on such things?

Because that's the only way to manage a multiple choice test, and if you're giving a test to 500 or so Freshies in Intro To (Anything)....multiple choice is pretty much the only way to go.

And that sucks. And I hate it. I don't think they should have classes that big, ever. But it happens all the time at big universities. Some of the gen eds here have class enrollments of 1,000 students.

However, in our Intro to Theatre class we're taking a different tactic and giving a blue book exam. Hell of a lot more work for us TA's, but the students might actually, y'know, learn something. (Our enrollment is at 175, which makes that kind of test somewhat feasible.)

[Greenday]

Then why are we tested on such things?

Touche. But a lot of classes require explanations of stuff so if you don't understand it, you won't be able to explain it.

[DrFaroohk]

Then why are we tested on such things?

[Greenday]

The grades are supposed to be the deciding factor. If he passes, he succeeded whether you say he did or not. If he fails, those are the consequences he faces.

To rephrase what I learned from Plato, knowledge is understanding. You don't understand anything if you just memorize dates, definitions, and terms.

[DrFaroohk]

this is an apples and oranges comparison. the mechanic you pay after the fact for services rendered. the college you pay in advance not for a service, but for the privilege of attempting to improve your education with no guarantee that that's actually going to happen.

Semantics. For college you pay for a service as well. You pay to have a room with which to have a class in, you pay for a professor to able to lecture you, you pay for the room to have electricity and a chalkboard and an internet connection and for the right to have a seat in said class. There's no guarantee you'll get the education, however, if someone passes all the tests and gets a good grade, they clearly got the education, regardless of where they were when they learned the material. If someone has completed the necessary work for a class and clearly learned the material being taught how can you in good conscience fail them?

not being bothered to show up to class shows a disrespect for the class, for the professor, for the institution, and for your fellow students. at best you are depriving your fellow classmates of your own insights into the course material, and at worst you are taking a seat from another student who may have actually had a desire to enroll in and show up for class.

If you refuse to show up for a class and your intent is to be rude and disrespectful, then yes, it is rude and disrespectful. If you refuse to show up for a class because you're just really really busy, well, then its just because you're busy. You can't just add on whatever intention you feel like. It's up to the person who is actually skipping the class, and unfortunately, until we develop psychic technology or master the art of the vulcan mind meld, we only make ourselves sound more idiotic by claiming to know otherwise.

Now, if you're not showing up for a class that requires classroom participation in a TEAM, then you're being rude, because your team is depending on you for their grade too.

[linguist]

I thought the point of college is people are supposed to be responsible for themselves and make their own decisions for the first time and therefore it is their decision whether or not to go to class.

the point of college is to expand your education and prepare you for the real world, where things like jobs actually expect you to be present and on time on a daily basis. it is of course your choice not to do so, but in life as in college there are consequences.

As a teacher for a college you provide a service someone has paid for. Isn't it his choice to utilize it how he pleases? It'd be like if you paid a mechanic to work on your car, but he said that since he didn't feel you appreciated your car enough he's going to purposely destroy it for you.

this is an apples and oranges comparison. the mechanic you pay after the fact for services rendered. the college you pay in advance not for a service, but for the privilege of attempting to improve your education with no guarantee that that's actually going to happen.

not being bothered to show up to class shows a disrespect for the class, for the professor, for the institution, and for your fellow students. at best you are depriving your fellow classmates of your own insights into the course material, and at worst you are taking a seat from another student who may have actually had a desire to enroll in and show up for class.

as for all the community college negativity, it makes me feel blessed to attend the one that i do. i live in a city with 7 universities in the immediate area. our local community college has higher enrollment than any of them save one. the professional programs the college offers are among the most sought after in the region, and in some cases are not even offered by any of the universities. and as for the professors, none of them i've ever had, or have ever known, have anything less than masters degrees.

[DrFaroohk]

As a teacher for a college you provide a service someone has paid for. Isn't it his choice to utilize it how he pleases? It'd be like if you paid a mechanic to work on your car, but he said that since he didn't feel you appreciated your car enough he's going to purposely destroy it for you.

The grades are supposed to be the deciding factor. If he passes, he succeeded whether you say he did or not. If he fails, those are the consequences he faces.

[gremcint]

Yeah and when you test on the material you taught and the no shows fail the test then they learn the consequences of their actions.

[AdminAssistant]

I thought the point of college is people are supposed to be responsible for themselves and make their own decisions for the first time and therefore it is their decision whether or not to go to class.

Sure it is. I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that it's also my decision to fail your ass for not showing up. If you could learn everything out of books without guidance for a teacher, there would be no reason for class in the first place. My job is to help explain and expand upon the material in the textbooks. The textbook is not the limit to the material that can be covered, nor should it be.

[gremcint]

I just want to add my two cents about lateness and attendance. I have zero tolerance for people who are late consistently. There is really no excuse for it. All you have to do is get up earlier. Like with my job, I now have to get up earlier than I had to before due to the bus schedule and stop changing. Because I allow so much time for getting to work the bus could break down along the way, or the Max, and I *still* won't be late.

Yeah because no one has a job that doesn't cooperate with a school schedule.


I guess things are different for colleges here, at both colleges I attended it was very structured course wise. http://www.flemingc.on.ca/index.cfm/...TN/style/d.cfm

here is a course at the college I just finished, if you look you'll see that each semester your courses are already chosen with a couple of choices. What's annoying is when I have to take a course that is pretty much what you did in highschool (math course that the hardest thing they taught was trig).

Only one of my teachers ever marked for participation or attandance. I've even had teachers post their lectures online, and my class was never more than 20.

I had a course I could have got exempt from but decided to take the easy A. I never went to one single lecture and I got 97 in the class.

I thought the point of college is people are supposed to be responsible for themselves and make their own decisions for the first time and therefore it is their decision whether or not to go to class.

[telecom_goddess]

I just want to add my two cents about lateness and attendance. I have zero tolerance for people who are late consistently. There is really no excuse for it. All you have to do is get up earlier. Like with my job, I now have to get up earlier than I had to before due to the bus schedule and stop changing. Because I allow so much time for getting to work the bus could break down along the way, or the Max, and I *still* won't be late.

I end up being early for everything, and I have a co worker who is always late. He just annoys the crap out of me when he does that.....he throws off everyone else and screws up the day.

[MaggieTheCat]

Didn't matter that he already took it or got the necessary grade - since he wasn't in their program they said it didn't count, so he has to take (and pay for!) the same exact class again. One measly old class.

Something like this happened to me, which just reinforces AA's viewpoint that community or tech colleges just aren't as good as universities. I took psychology at a community college. When I transferred to another college -- another COMMUNITY COLLEGE -- that course did not transfer with me, and I had to take it again.

Something similar happened to a friend of mine, but he had the added bonus of having a moron for an academic adviser thrown in the mix. My friend had taken several classes at a local tech school in the town he grew up in, a tech school that encouraged all of the locals to go there first before university because all of their classes would transfer and were much less expensive than the university's. My friend was supposed to graduate this spring, but at the last minute, he got a call from his adviser telling him that he was short 18 credits from classes he had taken at the tech school that didn't transfer, even though the adviser had told him, multiple times over the course of 2 or 3 years while he was at university, that they would.

[DrFaroohk]

Not to go too far off topic, but this all reminded me of a problem a friend of mine is currently going through: Last semester he finished up his masters program. Yay for masters! Time to go out into the world now.....

But he couldn't graduate! Why not? Because a course he took was considered "invalid" because he wasn't actually enrolled in the masters program at the time. Didn't matter that he already took it or got the necessary grade - since he wasn't in their program they said it didn't count, so he has to take (and pay for!) the same exact class again. One measly old class.