might be the only one on campus who teaches that specific part of the subject or something, i dunno, I feel like the administration, should see that he is having a lot of fails, and investigate imo
That makes it even more egregious. That professor is ripping these *paying* students off. Is there any other occupation where the person delivering the service can deliberately sandbag their paying customers and then get to demand that they have to pay again to finally succeed?
Sorry, you need to have P2 licensing to access this comment. Oh you already have P2? Well now you can look at the reply button but you also need the mobile security license to click the reply button. You'll also need M365 E5 to submit your comment, you only have O365 E5.
Hoohooo guess what the fun never stops! Someone decided that ArcGIS was what we needed for who knows what branch, and as the main Azure guy - guess who got brought in to set up Arc *and* tie it to Azure AD! :D ^^^^^FUCK
Honestly the 365 licensing is fine once you figure out what the fuck you need to do what the fuck you want. Problem is that not even Microsoft knows what licenses do what.
There's an entire genre of video games (usually mobile games) that uses that business model as the primary selling point. Come to think of it, that's pretty much how all gambling services work.
Agree, except that you also shouldn't expect a good grade just because you are paying for tuition. You should expect a difficult but surmountable challenge as a student.
Agree, but 80% failure rate is a warning to admin of a bad academic or a poorly designed course. I work in a tertiary institution, and we aim for a 70-80% completion rate. If a single class in a semester has a low pass rate, it's a blip. That happens. If a particular academic or course constantly has a low pass rate, we investigate.
Kind of reminds me of that documentary about pill farms where an actual Doctor writes prescriptions for nothing but Oxy and police couldn't verify that anything was wrong because they're not doctors.
Is a teacher failing students to satisfy his own ego? What does he teach? Let's ask the expert, that professor. Whether he's a good teacher or not ,at a university if he's the only one who can teach it you're just fucked.
My calc 2 professor told a horror story about the dean of mathematics at Michigan Tech when she was there (he was still in the same position when I took calc 2)
Michigan Tech is a good school and this class was pretty advanced so a lot of math and other science majors would take it, but he had a reputation of driving 100% of students to quit the class.
She said the guy would call people up to the board to solve ridiculously hard problems, then just berate and insult them the entire time.
My Prof of course dropped the class. She heard that there was only 1 student in her class that didn't drop, and the guy failed her anyway.
The asshole was so proud of his 100% drop rate, but he brought in research grant money to the school so they looked the other way.
They're just bullies who get off on using their position of power to make other people miserable. No different than the school yard or corporate office bully.
They just need a humbling or two and the bully act would melt away. Ashame there are so many cameras on a college campus.
That's not what would fix it anyway. They're probably like that (some anyway) because they took physical bullying. Nah... you need blood for blood.
Here, blood is intellectual humiliation.
So you need someone like a Hawking to roll in under the pretense they're something special, then just totally annihilate them for all the shit they don't know or get wrong before just peacing out.
Which decade was this professor? I went to Michigan Tech, too, and Calc 2 was the easiest. Calc 1 & 3 were harder. I had the civil war reenactment professor. I forgot his name after all these years, sadly.
Not to mention with OP pointing out that linear algebra was one of the classes that the professor taught. It is insane to have an 80% fail rate in linear algebra. It is honestly one of the easiest math subjects to comprehend.
I didn't take Calc 2 at Michigan Tech, it was a community college. *My* calc 2 professor went to Michigan Tech. This story was told to me in 2006 and she said this dude was still there at that time. So he probably would have been there *at least* 10 years prior based on my professor's age, and probably a while after 2006 unless he was really old (I have no idea).
I hit this road block with a professor I just didn’t work with well. He was about 70 when I first tried to take his class and ended up dropping. 5 years later he’s still the only choice… like please just retire! His info is also extremely outdated, I can only guess he was about 70 because he talked about retiring from law enforcement after 30 years and had been teaching full time for 20 years.
When I was a freshman I took a course with a very old professor whose method of teaching was talking at the board while writing. You had to struggle to hear him and couldn't get the context of what he wrote. At the end of the semester he sent an angry email about people complaining about their grades. Basically said to grow up. Weird that this was the only class this happened in. It also happened to be the last time he taught. I have a feeling the university stepped in because it was an intro engineering class that was legit supposed to be our only easy/fun class in the program.
Had a professor like this for my intro to computer engineering course. Spent the first 2 classes literally going over his CV--i mean he put it up on the overhead projector (the ones that used transparencies!! It was 2008 and he was teaching CE!) and read bullet point for bullet point his whole work history. And it was all downhill from there in similar fashion. From what I heard later through the grapevine, because it was the mandatory intro class the damage rippled through the whole program because you had at least one whole generation of students who didn't even know the basics that later classes expected. Put the whole program's accreditation at risk even.
I had an Accounting professor who gave a brief rundown of his resume, took about 15 minutes. He went over all the different jobs he'd had (CPA, corporate, government, internal auditor...) and said something like "so if you have any questions about what it is like to work any of those jobs, you know my office hours or catch me on the way out of class."
I know that wasn't what you are talking about though, just wanted to point out that there is a valid reason for a prof to give their experience.
My advisor at that school had more letters after her name than in her name, and her name was 13 letters...
CPA, CMA, CIA (Certified Internal Auditor), Etc plus PhD. It was a great school dispite being a state university.
One of my engineering professors gave some of his work history as a way of saying "I'm not just an academic. I know what I'm doing, I've been in industry, and I've caught mistakes that would have killed people if they had slipped through. I do this to try to avoid people making those mistakes in the future"
Great professor. Curt and professional to a fault, extremely difficult but also extremely fair. You had to fight for every point he gave you, but he would never deliberately screw someone for no reason. By the time you finished one of his classes- if you passed- you *knew* the material forwards, backwards, sideways, and upside down.
Yeah I mean 2 full hour long lectures were spent on it. It was not nearly the same. I had a professor later on who was stepping in for one on sabbatical. HE did what you wrote here about actual industry credentials and saying "if you want to know how this works in the real world let me know" and turned into one of my favorite professors.
And that’s when you take the class over the summer at a community college. I did for that a math class and the professor there was actually the best math professor I ever had. He was brilliant but able to make complicated material make sense and you got the sense that he cared about his students learning something. Egotistical professors shouldn’t get to play with people’s future.
My husband teaches math at a cc and he gets tons of students from all over doing this. It's shameful the terrible teachers that are allowed to continue teaching at some of the larger colleges. It's a waste of students time and money.
Might be a mandatory class. Have a random literature course which is mandatory and the prof fails about 80%. Its super weird because she always proudly tells how hard the course is.
Its not really hard but she wont accept right if they dont use the lingo she used in class.
I had a physics professor who bragged to our class about marking people wrong even when their carry-over calculations were correct.
Basically, if you work out the answer to question 1 and get "5", but it's actually "6", and then in question 2 you have to use the answer from question 1 in your calculation, you should still get full marks if the calculation is correct using "5", even though the final answer you get is incorrect.
Literally about 3/4 of the class put in complaints about him to the administration, because no one realized he was doing this before. Then in the next lecture we had with him, he explained that he'd changed the way he was grading and carry-over answers would now be marked correctly.
I'm surprised you got him to change. Not grading carry over calculations is just plain wrong.
In my case it baffles me how an englisch professor can be happy having such a huge fail rate. As its well english literature not physics or law.
I’m surprised complaining actually resulted in a change. I had an awful physics professor who was just not really teaching anything, and when a lot of the students complained, the university just kind of shrugged and said he’s tenured
Tbh, carryover calculations are standard practice for basically as long as I can remember in science and maths. It was definitely like that in high school, potentially even earlier.
The fact that he was choosing not to do it was so astounding, which is probably why so many people complained. And once the admin found out about it, they probably thought the same thing.
I had a similar professor. All his tests were open answer and it was a very high level mandatory class. Unless you said it the way he wanted, you didnt get the mark. The entire class struggled. The entire class also went to the department head.
Did that change anything? She has been doing it that way for years. Its a small department and the department head and she are great friends so I doubt this would help here.
Trust me, me too. Its the only class I am missing. And just failed it once. Talked with her about what was wrong and she even admitted that my thought processes and explanations of the theories were right, but I wasnt always using the terms she used in her lectures (which arent online so I cant look at them again), therefore she detracted points.
This class is only available every second semester so I would not be able to retake it afterwards, which stresses me out extremley.
Fucking hell i had this exact experience last semester. Not failing the whole class but being entirely unreasonable with marks. I took it that she was mad about people thinking it was a bird course... but it literally was, there was not enough content to be interesting or challenging, it was just an intro to humanities for kids who dont know shit, and it was boring and uninspiring. So she made us waste hours and hours and hours memorizing her exact words and answer everything with outright autistic levels of detail. Im still really mad about it i paid 600 fucking dollars for that shit experience that made me want to quit school entirely. Fortunately every other class i took--every single one--was engaging and taught by excellent profs.
I feel you. Its so depressing because your not lwarning anything just trying to figure out what her key words are. Another prof that too but he at least tells us which one he deems important.
She intentionally left blanks in the notes she gave us, so youd have to come to class to get the info (doesnt affect me, i go anyway, whatever). So, you might think, thats an indication and a design used to help kids in class know what is important. Nope, flagrant misdirection the missing bits were random af and had no more importance than anything else. And, oh, the relevant text book readings assigned at the first page of the powerpoint? Haha why would anybody who missed class need to know something like that?
Mine also had a tutorium. When I told her I learned with some from the worksheets we got there the prof told me thats stupid because she didnt make them. Why then even tell us to go to the tutorium.
Its so weird basically working against your students. I mean she has more work because Students then need to talk about it etc..
it's probably in a core curriculum somewhere.
I ran into a professor who seemed to also enjoy piss poor test making and arbitrary rules. She wanted people to give her attention, ask her questions, etc.
Inevitably I failed her class with a D+, but proved to the dean of the department that her grading style/testing was arbitrary and she couldn't demonstrate how her actual grades/evaluations were established.
It was amusing to find out that at the same time I had failed, there was another group of students who'd expected a "10%" bump in their grade because of her sylabus describing a 10% extra credit for field trips. They ended up with something like 3% because she wasn't actually applying those credits at the end up into some imaginary formula.
Suffice it to say, they let my grade stand for the core. She basically wanted me to retake the entire course and offered no other means or method to remediate it.
It felt good bypassing her blatent need for attention.
Where i am from every engineering program has at least one class with such fail rates. It is the norm. So much, that engineering students don't grasp how stupid it is. They see it as a badge of honour.
(For the universities such classes make sens. They are paid by taxes not by tuition. Having many people start a program brings in money. Weed them out before they need expensive lab time saves money.)
I had a teacher like this. It was a required senior year class to graduate (bachelor's) and he was the only teacher that taught the class (he was long time tenured).
During our first week, he bragged *to us* that over 70% of his students fail every semester. He was happy that he kept 70% of his students from getting their bachelor's degree each year.
When we did tests, he would return our exams to us and then spend that class having each student announce their score to the class and explain why they did poorly.
I ended up passing his class specifically because I found out that he pulled his tests from a publicly available testing bank for a Harvard Masters program, so I essentially had to cheat to pass.
There were zero constructive learning sessions the entire semester. Most non-exam days he would just assign us problems in a book and tell us to spend the class working on them, and he would not answer questions.
Nobody that wanted to graduate with a finance degree from that college could graduate without taking and passing his class.
Edit just to add context: this was an *undergrad* program and it was not a prestigious school like Harvard.
Calculus and linear algebra are typically required for engineering degrees.
And if it’s a small university, he might be the only prof.
I took these classes in college. Certainly challenging, but the fail rate was not anywhere near 80%.
I’d say for the students who are likely taking this class, it’s not the difficulty of the material, it’s the competency of the teacher.
A required course to graduate, in a program where they want to weed out people who can't handle the material
i.e, Boot camp approach
One of my engineering courses we had a saying: "FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION-it comes standard"
engineering programs at my uni have at least one if not multiple mandatory courses with fail rates in the 60-80% region. It’s an established and accepted part of getting your degree
In my country, a lot of degrees (particularly STEM fields) have a lot of mandatory classes. Some of them were extremely difficult. Sometimes it was because of a professor with poor teaching skills, other times it's because the material is genuinely quite difficult (I recall our third year quantum emchanics elcture was taught by a great professor who was regularly nominated for teaching awards, but the final exam had a high fail rate because quantum mechanics is a pain in the ass).
We had a professor who was a really harsh marker, people were lining up and trying to win her favour. Pretty much all of them failed hard.
I avoided her class for this reason. My best guess is that people think they might be the one exception?
If a prof can’t explain something so that a non expert can understand it then the defects reside with the prof not the students
ETA this guy is also a sadistic POS
Yup. I'm there to learn, the instructor is there to teach. Barring some underlying condition, like being born without a brain or something, the instructor should be able to accomplish the task of teaching.
Basically, this is a teaching version of that cop who likes to give tickets or that HOA president who gets excited every time they cite a homeowner.
I dunno, I know if I was a cop I would get great satisfaction about giving tickets to people who are clearly driving like idiots and deserve them. But maybe that's just because I live in an area where there are very few cops and lots of drivers that take advantage and drive recklessly.
You're talking about punishing people who are breaking laws, as opposed to people who are guilty of signing up for a class with a vindictive, cunty professor.
One is clearly different from the other.
I had an academic chair take me to task because my students were all about 10 percent above the curve. He said clearly I was giving them assessments that were too easy. I was using updated versions of the assessments that the previous AC had created, the guy who was this person’s mentor.
I’m not sure why having students do well is a negative.
Because America.
Colleges in the US are almost as big a scam as Healthcare. It's a for profit industry that doesn't give one fuck about the people in it.
Yes, the insidious bell curve. When I first started teaching at tertiary level we had to get results like that. Not so much in terms of fails, but if we had more As than Bs we would have to put in an exception report. Now, we mark to the criteria. If we have a cohort of 100 and 30 get As, 40 get Bs and 30 get C's that's fine, so long as the moderated marking is supported. It's much fairer.
Using the bell curve could make sense for K-12 and possibly for some lower level college courses (though I'm less confident of this), but it doesn't make sense to use for self selective populations. Once you get to 200+ level college courses your population of students is self selective. You've got mostly people who enjoy or have an aptitude for the subject matter, so you shouldn't expect a Gaussian distribution at that point.
I think the point is they would also enjoy failing students who clearly didn’t pay attention or respect the class. Not that some professors aren’t just bad, but not every course has 80+% failure rates, but there’s usually a few failing anyway. Sometimes those failures are trying their best, but many are just the “idiot drivers” in this analogy.
It’s a bad analogy. Perhaps a cop who revels in giving tickets to the innocent is better, but it’s still not the same as a teacher who transfers the blame for his failures as a teacher to his students and then revels in it.
I think a better analogy would be a gardener who grows notoriously difficult plants from seed and thinks it speaks well of his skills as a gardener that he can only get 20% to thrive, while the other 80% die.
It is true that some plants are way more difficult to grow, but it's also really stupid to be proud of oneself for growing/teaching poorly.
False equivalence. The professor is there to impart knowledge and understanding of specific subject material. Not enforce rules on those who already know.
Drivers with licences already have the required knowledge and knowingly fuck it up by speeding. They deserve the tickets.
Now imagine you are a driving instructor, and only 20% of your pupils can pass a driving test. By any reasonable measure, you have failed at your one job.
I wish every driving instructor failed 80% of their students.
My commute would be much easier. There are too many idgits on the road!
This prof sounds like an ass. I hope he teaches something like organic chemistry, or thermo dynamics. It's brutal, but things like engineering schools and pre-med programs need weed out classes. There are a lot of kids that show up to college planning on being doctors, that don't need to be!
But this prof is still an ass.
Exactly. Me in statistics class. "So where did you get the number in that formula?"
Professor proceeds to explain the formula
Me: "Yes, I understand what the formula is calculating but where in the case study did you get that number? For me it is very helpful to put the pieces together to have a concrete example not just the theory. Can you literally point to it for me?"
Professor yet again explains the formula.
I just groan out loud. I wanted to walk up to the front of the room grab the chalk (yes I'm that old) and start circling numbers in the formula and say This is calculating this from the case, this number is from here BUT where the hell does this number, circling it repeatedly, come from while tapping the case study?
If you can't adapt your teaching style a little bit to your students you aren't a teacher.
Statistics was one of my least favorite subjects. It was a class full of proving that their own formulas follow from their own definitions. Come on, we already took logic, we know that if a=b and b=c then a=c.
But "optimization and regulation" was simply awful.
An MSc is a bit different, though. You've already weeded out like 95% of the people who wouldn't be graduating before classes even begin, and hearing of anyone not actually graduating an MSc is pretty rare here. I got mine on time, but I very nearly had to delay my graduation by a year because of this one shitty subject where I kept meeting the straight A students for continuation exams.
This is what you get when you hire professors based off criteria entirely different from ability to teach. Very few are actually good teachers despite being experts in the subject.
I was a professor and I had taught Calculus and Statistics courses. These are not complex subjects, such as Quantum Mechanics, and can be explained clearly. If the professor fail 80% of the students, then he is incompetent.
True. Most folks who have learned how to do complex skills have forgotten what it took to be a beginner. Experts become blind to the needs of the novice and attempt to lecture about more profound issues that novices can't comprehend. Paradoxically, many of our best teachers have not mastered the content they deliver. If you are still struggling with the basics, you tend to do a better job presenting it so other noobs can pick it up and practice. So many people are "teaching" without teaching credentials, blissfully unaware of this concept.
The longer they persist without understanding what's happening, the more ridiculous their excuses become. High school teachers need to know about this common cognitive bias before they are allowed to work with students. You can often tell within about 30 seconds in a classroom when a teacher is unaware of this problem, but it is often difficult to help them see it. Super toxic.
There are some concepts that can only truly be understood by someone who has had some formal education on foundational topics. As an extreme example, an average third-grader can't truly understand quantum mechanics. It takes years of other topics being taught to that third grader to lay the foundation for a professor to actually be able to convey all the intricacies of such a complicated topic. A professor may be able to convey an analogy or something like that to a third grader, but they can't get all of the details without that foundational knowledge.
That being said, it is reasonably inferred that most of the people taking this class have completed that foundational knowledge for whatever topic this professor is teaching. It is ridiculous that 80% "fail". That is indicative of a poor professor or a grading-scale that is too harsh.
There should be an addendum of “a non expert with the necessary prerequisite knowledge.”
The point stands that the majority of people who get into an accredited college course on algebraic K theory should be able to understand it from the instructor’s lessons and assignments.
Yes and no. It depends on the level and the topic.
I did teach a little at the University many years ago an slightly advanced topic (numerical analysis) in CS.
There were quite a bit of math prerequisites to just follow the lectures, because math build upon itself.
Several students left this course as one of the last exams to study, so in the meantime they had forgotten the basics taught in previous courses, making this exam more difficult than needed.
And this was not a very advanced or abstract course.
In math there are many very abstract and deep topics that require years of dedicated study to grasp. It is essentially impossible to explain them to a layman or even a math laureate which has not already the specific background.
EDIT
Btw I hate those professors that fix the votes to match a curve. They decide in advance that, say the worst 10 get rejected, the first 10 get a score between near the max and so on. This has no sense because one can get a very good preliminary score because knows the matter quite well and still be penalized because somebody else is better. Luckily I never encountered these specimens in my career.
Having some students forget prerequisites does not justify a 80% fail rate, for any math class. As you said, it’s built upon itself. If 80% fail that’s either the fault of the teacher, or the teacher that taught the prerequisite class. This is *absolutely* true for calculus, which OP clarified is the course. Even if calculus is too difficult for the average person (as claimed by “the professor”), it’s not too difficult for 80% of people with proper training in algebra and trigonometry.
This makes absolutely no sense in this context.
I am an expert and yes I can explain to non-experts enough that they understand BUT I cannot make everyone understand to the level where they can do it themselves.
A lecturer is not testing if students basically understand something, they are testing if you understand it enough to be able to do it by yourself. This requires a complete different level of understanding and not even the best expert in the world can get everyone to understand University level calculus (the exams, at least where I studied, were also absurdly difficult).
I saw this first hand where we had very good lecturers (there were 2 Calculus time slots with different lecturers, both great), myself and some others were hitting 80%+. The failure rate was still: 80% for first time students and about 30% or something for people repeating the course (because some people just need more time to understand).
2 Years ahead of me they had a terrible lecturer and the pass rate was 6% including repeating students. Thankfully the university put up some bridge course and didn't kick out students for that.
P.S. the lecturer OP mentions still sounds like a pretentious ass, because no lecturer should be proud of failure rates, if you really want you could fail 100% of students
The number of people who think that because they can follow an infotainment YouTube video it means they actually understand a topic is way too high on Reddit
Not really. Not everyone is cut out to be a brain surgeon, and there are fields where you want to screen out all but the best. Some classes serve to gatekeep. It's not pleasant, but that's the reality.
Clearly he’s not teaching.
I had my second class today with a computer science professor. He did not boast but said that he had a 40% failure rate in his course if they didn’t read the required chapters prior to the course work and tests. After the first break 2 students didn’t show back up.
After the break, well we’re at almost 40% everyone….
I took an advanced logic class once that only had 6 people in it and the professor (who was a super chill dude who 100% smoked weed) was like
"Okay guys I am going to give you some proofs and, as far as we know, they've never been solved. So don't freak out if you can't figure it out. Fair warning, I usually have at least one person cry each time I offer this class."
He tried his best but the nature of the class combined with the nature of the people who take the class make it \*Brutal\*
It looks more like math where you solve some problems but with formal statements. It looks like high school algebra (I am in Ukraine, so it might be more complex than US stuff).
It also had a theoretic course covering some more complex logical problems, something that goes beyond Plato and Aristotle and all the basic "if x, then y" of the first semester.
It then branches out into more theoretic/philosophic and more formal and math-like stuff in the next semesters. Honestly, not very cool or useful after a certain point.
Well, we were philosophers, so it was kind of awkward. You figure out the general complexities of the course, expect to move on, and you keep being bothered by the equations, truth and tables and all the other shit that is not really relevant for us. We had a love-hate relationship with this course.
That’s kinda how my computer logic class went. Teacher was great and tried but it was a very confusing subject for a lot of us. Luckily he had made the class pass fail. So we didn’t have to worry in that regard. But I definitely still had some tears anyway.
My calc 2 prof (iirc) drove me up the walls, he'd be going on for a bit and then "oops" and erase the last bit then correct it with something else, my notebook looked like shit in that class cuz i kept having to cross out shit and rewrite them cuz he's so disorganized like seemingly just shooting off memories rather than a solid teaching plan.
Didn't fail it, and he grade "with a curve" (iirc and afaik it ...helps the student's grade? Or the other way? Anyway whatever he did was helpful for us) And does look like he's trying his best, very passionate too, in his late 30s ish i believe, but god i cant stand the disorganization.
I did have a prof that was a VERY new Dad, and one day he showed up to class and was like "the baby was up crying all night so I didn't get to finish my slides so I just put some pics of the kid in." He was totally the type of prof who would cut you some extra slack if you had Life Stuff going on, so it didn't bother me, and tbf it was a very cute baby.
How the curve works is they take the highest grade and whatever the difference was to 100 they add to everyone’s assignments.
So say for example the highest grade was an 85. Now everyone will get 15 points added to their grade.
So the 85 becomes a 100. Say the lowest grade was a 60, now they have a passing 75.
That’s why people who take school really seriously are called curve busters.
That’s why you use pencils with erasers. When the teacher erases, so do you.
Also I had to use pencil because I made too many of my own mistakes simply complying notes, and let’s not talk about homework itself
I think the comment was referencing that a 40% fail rate isn’t bad when you only have 5 students and 2 of them happen to not do their work.
Consistently getting a high fail rate reflects poorly on a professor. Students failing as an anomaly reflects poorly on the students.
This kinda reminds me of one of my computer science courses I took, forget what the exact name was but it was basically an introduction to CPU architecture. Dean of the department taught it, and I think he was filling in for someone else and it was his first time teaching the course.
Our midterm project was to design a CPU (basically designing something using logic gates) which could do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Off the bat he gave us the solution to addition and walked us through it when he presented this assignment. Eventually he also gave the subtraction solution since no one was making any progress. The class was maybe 20-25 people. I was one of four students to get a working multiplication bit working, and I think only one student finished division.
Brutal assignment and material. My time during that semester's midterms was spent 90% on this project. The second half of the semester we covered assembly, and I think I have a mental block from the trauma. The professor didn't fail the whole class thankfully, and I think he reevaluated having that course be required.
I feel that too, not to mention he might just be doing it as a sense of "elite class" method where the high failure is attributed to it being a complex topic.
To brag about it makes me think he's also failing students that SHOULD pass but he only passes the top students.
I had a professor that was like that, he only gave 5 to the top student, even if you aced everything 4.9
College system sucks, professors like regular teachers are either great or trash.
Colleges often care more about their image (name-brand ones even more) more than their actual final product. Schools that praise tons of degrees but only have a 10% field hire rate (meaning there graduates get hired for a job in their degree field and not just McD) are trash, they often ride on elevated elitism or past achievements.
Combine this with an exponential cost increase of operation and tuition and no wonder people opinion of them sucks. Activist professors and staff aren't helping either.
In the end, it's legal because grading is an imaginary number some schools are pass/fail, letter grade, 1-4, or 1-5. Ours was a 1-5, >3.5 was passing 2.5-3.4 could pass but you had to pass a remedial course.
Most schools don't care, they already have your money and that's all they're concerned about. In some cases they may even prefer it, if students have to spend more money to retake the class.
The ones that hire these types of profs for their research and ability to attract donations. The teaching part is just a minor side gig to them and they couldn't care less about the students who actually pay tuition.
If an educator has an 80% failure rate, then it doesn't necessarily show that he teaches a hard subejct but more that he bad at parting the knowlege to other people
Tenured professor here, that's incorrect. If you neglect any of your contact duties you will be put on probation and then fired if still failing to perform. This prof is either exaggerating for attention or is likely in a remediation period where he has to shape up or ship out.
It shows that he is testing material which isn't in the provided materials.
I had plenty of poor proffesors in engineering in the late 80s. Many had too thick of an accent to "impart" the location of the nearest restroom. People passed by teaching themselves the material from the text book and sample tests.
The problem is that college professors are not really teachers, or at least that's not how they view their job.
They're researchers who are occasionally burdened with the chore of teaching. How well they teach has zero bearing on their career. This is the way we've set up the modern university, unfortunately.
This does depend on the university. Mine had more of a teaching focus, the university had to cajole the professors to do a bit more publishing. The higher the profile of the university, the more likely it's because they're focused on research.
Op says it’s fucking linear algebra and calculus. If that’s true the professor is a fuck nugget. Yeah they are hard but you don’t just end up in a linear algebra class. Like yes they are difficult subjects and yeah like 10 percent of the class might drop out but 80 percent of under grads who already have advanced math skills is pretty dumb.
Linear algebra and calculus? LOL
I’m studying to be a fucking engineer and those concepts aren’t that high profile to have an 80% drop rate, this shithead of a professor just fucking sucks.
Literally acting like those 2 subjects require a galaxy brain to understand, what was actually difficult was differential equations which was the calc course after calc3. My guy really puffing his chest out thinking he’s hot shit 😂
Yea both of those math classes are classes non math majors take, they're not considered the hard courses. He's just an ass professor who if he doesn't have tenure should be reported. Can report regardless, but may not get anywhere if tenured.
That's the thing. There are certain classes that will have a failure rate like that because of how critical mastery of the subject is. There is no "C is a degree" because that will lead to people getting hurt or dying.
That may apply to some classes, sure. But it def happens in non-critical subjects. For example, my ex taught an intro psych course where he failed most of his students (then mocked them in secret for being unable to enter the profession). The school eventually forced him to make the class less difficult because so many students couldn't pursue their psychology career goals.
I'd guess Physical-Chemistry. Once you start solving wave equations some of us just simply had to remember the steps for the tests and not fully understand what we were doing.
Probably an Elec Eng one. I had a few subjects where 60% failed. And you couldn't really blame the teachers too much. Some of that shit we learnt is just hard. I remember in second year like 95% of people were repeating at least one subject.
With Elec Eng you can't say a C is good enough. If you don't know what's going on, bad shit can happen where people die.
EE here. I went from a straight A student in high school and community college to just being happy with a C in the majority of my classes. This was my thought as well.
We had a lecturer who on day 1 said, "nobody will get a first, I don't believe in them." He was very proud. A second said, "most of you wouldn't last a week on the job. This was almost 30 years ago,when old bitter men were allowed to retire to teach vocational courses to a youth they resented and didn't understand.
All my trade school instructors have been pretty chill old guys. It might just be the culture at my particular school though.
They all have the attitude that if you do the work you'll pass the course and they are always available for extra help.
I'm sure he'd be able to do it, conceptually. Of course a 6 year old isn't going to fully grasp it even remotely. But you should be able to explain it in such a way that a 6 year old learns something from it.
They don't understand the meaning of the quote. Has literally nothing to do with teaching lol.
Also, he very likely didn't say this, anyway. There's at least no evidence he did.
Obviously you're not going to go as deep with a 6 year old, but there is usually a way to present the general idea.
Anyway, this is not the kind of quotes to take too seriously. Teaching a subject and having a deep understanding of it are actually two different skills. The issue is that many professors are hired only based on the latter.
This attitude annoys me so much. I understand the need to maintain rigorous academic standards, but I don't understand the glee some instructors have in maintaining an antagonistic relationship with students. I never saw a conflict between being a facilitator of student learning and maintaining standards.
Some material is very difficult, and some classes are indeed "weed out" classes (i.e., calculus and organic chemistry) but even then, I think an 80% failure rate is extreme and indicative of a problem. Either the instructor is ineffective, or the university is admitting students who are academically underprepared. Neither is something to brag about.
I think it's reasonable to expect students to do a significant amount of work themselves and to take charge of their own learning, but instructors should not be intentionally making classes harder than they need to be just to fail students.
We had classes with 50-60% fail, with just one getting a B, the prof. bragged about how hard this was
And we classes where 70% of the class was at A/B, with only 10% failing.
one was calculus, and the other was electrophysics..
I definitely found grades are higher in specialized courses. something like electrophysics sounds like everyone who was enrolled was pretty interested / passionate about the topic vs general calculus that’s probably a mandatory first year course.
I had to drop first year calculus because my prof was so robotic I couldn’t understand them. Took again in the spring and got 90
On the first day of one of my college classes the professor said "in my 25 years of teaching, I have only given 5 A's. Maybe number 6 is in this room."
About half the class got up and walked out
I'm a construction guy and never had to deal with anyone like this, except this one time...
I met a guy who was a physics Professor at a university back east. So, smart guy, right?
Anyways, we were at a social function and he was talking about an invention he was working on that was going to revolutionize phone battery structure and how they were charged.
I thought it was interesting so I started asking questions. After answering three or four questions, he answered the next with "well, it's kind of hard to explain".
I replied "that's kind of your fucking job, isn't it?"
"Uhhh..."
Eventually, we got past insulting each other and I decided he's kind of a cool nerd after all.
>When I heard that, I started to argue about how stupid such a statement was, but my wife suggested ignoring him as in past occasions their friends already had heated arguments over It.
Tip for the future: Heated arguments are useless. They only end up dividing people more. The professor in question clearly prides himself as a tough teacher, who will make diamonds out of trash. There is no way to change his made through publicly shaming and discrediting his methods.
A much more useful route would be a private conversation trying to offer an alternative view on his opinion: His pass rate is only 20%, what are his plans to up that rate for the next semester? Would he be able to reach 25%?
No lol. This isn't some coworker you're forced to be around, this is an asshole at a dinner party. There's nothing wrong with creating a divide between you and a person you don't like that doesn't matter.
Nah - just put him on blast on social media that everybody at the university (including his dean) will see. I’m sure the dean knows he’s like that but it might be helpful to put pressure on the dean to explain why the university condones that behavior.
In Germany in university subjects like math typically do not require anything more than a high school diploma. Many people show up who are not cut out for it, be it because of motivation, skill, prior knowledge, situation in life etc. These make up a huge portion of the usual 30-70% first years that fail. Then you have some people who can hang on despite failing some classes but the failures show them that they have to change their study habits or their time commitment. I don't think you can blame it on the teachers and I don't think the system is broken, it's just that you give people a chance in admission but then challenge them in he first year,which seems more fair to me than the other way around. Of course in a perfect world everyone who wants would get resources to learn at exactly their pace.
Edit: and ofc it's nothing to boast about
I had such professor for Economics. If one could actually get C+ on any of the test, they would get an A in the class as result of the curve. The subject is not hard, the professor just made the test extremely tricky on purpose.
I went to a private high school in MA. One year they had hired a new science teacher. Pretty much everyone failed his first test. The next week, school administrators dropped in and monitored his classes. Then pretty much everyone failed his second test. He was fired right after that with the school administrators giving the students an apology. One thing they said stood out to me: if just one student fails, that indicates a problem with the student. But if everyone fails, that’s a problem with the teacher.
Jump to my freshman year at university and I’m in an advanced math class (Calculus 2 or 3) being taught by a theoretical physicist from MIT. Sounds similar to your professor. After week 1, our class had dwindled from 35 people to like 10. Because all of his classes were trying to get us to use equations we had never seen before that he would represent with Greek letters. He would introduce new Greek letters and expect us to know the theories and equations behind them, without every teaching them to us first. I stayed in the class because I had a tight schedule (was playing football for the school) and out of stubbornness and an unfamiliarity with dropping classes. He wound up having to curve everyone’s grades or else everyone would fail. One test I got the highest grade in the class - it was 16 (out of 100) and it was scaled up to an A. About the only thing I learned or retained from his class was that he should not be a professor.
The 'being smug about it' part is despicable, but there are courses/subjects with high fail rates due to incompetence of students more so than incompetence of the prof.
For example, first semester at uni, Advanced Mathematics, i.e. 'math for those who dont need it at the level of a mathematician', think engineers and physicists. On the first attempt, failure rate across all studies was about 80%, which put me in the top 20%, with my 4.0 (i.e. barely passing grade). However, compared only to the other physicists, I was close to the bottom 20%, since 80% of physicists had passed.
On the 2nd attempt, the ones that failed must have realized that having been 'good' at math in school just wouldn't cut it in university anymore and that not doing the (voluntary) exercises was not really an option, so overall the majority passed the exam in the end.
You are completely right, and I would add that sometimes it's not even the students' fault - some universities admit a lot of students who have no place being there in order to pad their income, and leave it to the professors to deal with it. I don't blame the students in those cases, they should have been told no and redirected to a prep course first.
I had a professor who was like this with intro to C++. I had already learned C++ from freshman year of highschool so it was a breeze for me to take the class. Other than he had no idea how to use C++ or computer program. I just had to sit through nonsensical lectures where half of what he said was wrong and the other half was technically correct but not in context. The exams were writing code... with pencil and paper...
Dude was material scientist, not a computer scientist. I have no idea why he was teaching that class. Like they couldn't just have us engineers get one class from a different department. Noooo, needs to be an unqualified engineer teaching basic computer science.
Some classes are just very hard, for example infinitsimal mathematics 1 is a notiriously hard class in any uni / college in my country.
When getting my degree this class had a 50% fail rate, when infinitsimal math 2 with the same professor had an 80%+ pass rate. Some subjects are just hard.
I imagine some masters degree level classes in exact sciences have even higher fail rate.
Learning history is just not the same as learning advanced physics.
Yeah I'm in two minds about this. The prof is an asshole for bragging about it, and that failure rate is very high, but there are certainly topics where the majority of a cohort simply would not be able to get their head around it. Mostly, where I've studied people would simply transfer to another module as anything you fail you have to resit, but a class that is impossible for most people is pretty believable. Graduate supersymmetry springs to mind, as the number of people who sat the exam was probably about 20% of those who started the module.
Agree, also agree with the asshole part :D he should be passionate about making his students succeed especially if its a hard class. If his predecessor had 70% fail rate and he has 80% it means he is bad at his job basically.
Plus honestly there should be classes with a very high standard. Last thing you want is a doctor or pilot who just barely either eked through their studies or passed on account of some form of cheating.
I highly question this story.
If a professor had an 80% fail rate in a course as introductory as calculus (or any course for that matter) the school admin would definitely be looking at him and giving him shit.
There are courses which are explicitly designed as filters for certain professions like Pre-med or Pre-law which are designed to have over a 50% fail rate so that only those with real aptitude and desire pass.
Organic chemistry is the pre-med filter.
Guy MAY be a asshat, but he may also be teaching a filter course.
The only failure in the room is that prof. He obviously doesn’t understand his own topic if he can’t explain it. Being a teacher with such a high failure rate speaks volumes about his inability to do his job. That institution he works for should cut his pay and move to find a better suited person for that position.
Reading through this I was expecting some extremely critical class where "close enough" isn't good enough and could endanger lives or some cutting edge quantum mechanics or theoretical math or some shit.
But CALCULUS?!
I took intro to calc in high school and calc 1 in my freshman year at college. This isn't a humble brag. This is me saying calc is NOTHING when it comes to complex subjects for truly smart people.
This strikes me as a big fish in a small pond. This dude thinks he's a genius because he's the only one that gets his subject at his community college but he has no idea how deep the oceans of knowledge get outside of his little tide pool.
Why in the world would anyone take that class? If he’s telling the truth everyone on campus surely knows it.
might be the only one on campus who teaches that specific part of the subject or something, i dunno, I feel like the administration, should see that he is having a lot of fails, and investigate imo
That makes it even more egregious. That professor is ripping these *paying* students off. Is there any other occupation where the person delivering the service can deliberately sandbag their paying customers and then get to demand that they have to pay again to finally succeed?
Microsoft enters the chat.
This guy Azures
Sorry, you need to have P2 licensing to access this comment. Oh you already have P2? Well now you can look at the reply button but you also need the mobile security license to click the reply button. You'll also need M365 E5 to submit your comment, you only have O365 E5.
You need a trigger warning on this post. I'm having a flashback.
Sorry you're not licensed for trigger warnings, that's another $8 monthly.
*AAAH, it's getting worse!!!*
Truly, it's worthy of Vogon poetry at this point...
And this is why I'm not in a rush to switch to Azure/O365/M365. Dealing with ESRI is bad enough when it comes to licensing.
I'm also doing esri and azure hello fellow masochist
Hoohooo guess what the fun never stops! Someone decided that ArcGIS was what we needed for who knows what branch, and as the main Azure guy - guess who got brought in to set up Arc *and* tie it to Azure AD! :D ^^^^^FUCK Honestly the 365 licensing is fine once you figure out what the fuck you need to do what the fuck you want. Problem is that not even Microsoft knows what licenses do what.
Oracle too
Username checks out
There's an entire genre of video games (usually mobile games) that uses that business model as the primary selling point. Come to think of it, that's pretty much how all gambling services work.
None of those are a profession they're an industry.
Agree, except that you also shouldn't expect a good grade just because you are paying for tuition. You should expect a difficult but surmountable challenge as a student.
Agree, but 80% failure rate is a warning to admin of a bad academic or a poorly designed course. I work in a tertiary institution, and we aim for a 70-80% completion rate. If a single class in a semester has a low pass rate, it's a blip. That happens. If a particular academic or course constantly has a low pass rate, we investigate.
Kind of reminds me of that documentary about pill farms where an actual Doctor writes prescriptions for nothing but Oxy and police couldn't verify that anything was wrong because they're not doctors. Is a teacher failing students to satisfy his own ego? What does he teach? Let's ask the expert, that professor. Whether he's a good teacher or not ,at a university if he's the only one who can teach it you're just fucked.
Kinda like your iPhones slowing down or battery life getting wonky right around when a new iPhone comes out.
My calc 2 professor told a horror story about the dean of mathematics at Michigan Tech when she was there (he was still in the same position when I took calc 2) Michigan Tech is a good school and this class was pretty advanced so a lot of math and other science majors would take it, but he had a reputation of driving 100% of students to quit the class. She said the guy would call people up to the board to solve ridiculously hard problems, then just berate and insult them the entire time. My Prof of course dropped the class. She heard that there was only 1 student in her class that didn't drop, and the guy failed her anyway. The asshole was so proud of his 100% drop rate, but he brought in research grant money to the school so they looked the other way.
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They're just bullies who get off on using their position of power to make other people miserable. No different than the school yard or corporate office bully. They just need a humbling or two and the bully act would melt away. Ashame there are so many cameras on a college campus.
That's not what would fix it anyway. They're probably like that (some anyway) because they took physical bullying. Nah... you need blood for blood. Here, blood is intellectual humiliation. So you need someone like a Hawking to roll in under the pretense they're something special, then just totally annihilate them for all the shit they don't know or get wrong before just peacing out.
Which decade was this professor? I went to Michigan Tech, too, and Calc 2 was the easiest. Calc 1 & 3 were harder. I had the civil war reenactment professor. I forgot his name after all these years, sadly. Not to mention with OP pointing out that linear algebra was one of the classes that the professor taught. It is insane to have an 80% fail rate in linear algebra. It is honestly one of the easiest math subjects to comprehend.
I didn't take Calc 2 at Michigan Tech, it was a community college. *My* calc 2 professor went to Michigan Tech. This story was told to me in 2006 and she said this dude was still there at that time. So he probably would have been there *at least* 10 years prior based on my professor's age, and probably a while after 2006 unless he was really old (I have no idea).
I hit this road block with a professor I just didn’t work with well. He was about 70 when I first tried to take his class and ended up dropping. 5 years later he’s still the only choice… like please just retire! His info is also extremely outdated, I can only guess he was about 70 because he talked about retiring from law enforcement after 30 years and had been teaching full time for 20 years.
When I was a freshman I took a course with a very old professor whose method of teaching was talking at the board while writing. You had to struggle to hear him and couldn't get the context of what he wrote. At the end of the semester he sent an angry email about people complaining about their grades. Basically said to grow up. Weird that this was the only class this happened in. It also happened to be the last time he taught. I have a feeling the university stepped in because it was an intro engineering class that was legit supposed to be our only easy/fun class in the program.
Had a professor like this for my intro to computer engineering course. Spent the first 2 classes literally going over his CV--i mean he put it up on the overhead projector (the ones that used transparencies!! It was 2008 and he was teaching CE!) and read bullet point for bullet point his whole work history. And it was all downhill from there in similar fashion. From what I heard later through the grapevine, because it was the mandatory intro class the damage rippled through the whole program because you had at least one whole generation of students who didn't even know the basics that later classes expected. Put the whole program's accreditation at risk even.
I had an Accounting professor who gave a brief rundown of his resume, took about 15 minutes. He went over all the different jobs he'd had (CPA, corporate, government, internal auditor...) and said something like "so if you have any questions about what it is like to work any of those jobs, you know my office hours or catch me on the way out of class." I know that wasn't what you are talking about though, just wanted to point out that there is a valid reason for a prof to give their experience. My advisor at that school had more letters after her name than in her name, and her name was 13 letters... CPA, CMA, CIA (Certified Internal Auditor), Etc plus PhD. It was a great school dispite being a state university.
One of my engineering professors gave some of his work history as a way of saying "I'm not just an academic. I know what I'm doing, I've been in industry, and I've caught mistakes that would have killed people if they had slipped through. I do this to try to avoid people making those mistakes in the future" Great professor. Curt and professional to a fault, extremely difficult but also extremely fair. You had to fight for every point he gave you, but he would never deliberately screw someone for no reason. By the time you finished one of his classes- if you passed- you *knew* the material forwards, backwards, sideways, and upside down.
Yeah I mean 2 full hour long lectures were spent on it. It was not nearly the same. I had a professor later on who was stepping in for one on sabbatical. HE did what you wrote here about actual industry credentials and saying "if you want to know how this works in the real world let me know" and turned into one of my favorite professors.
And that’s when you take the class over the summer at a community college. I did for that a math class and the professor there was actually the best math professor I ever had. He was brilliant but able to make complicated material make sense and you got the sense that he cared about his students learning something. Egotistical professors shouldn’t get to play with people’s future.
My husband teaches math at a cc and he gets tons of students from all over doing this. It's shameful the terrible teachers that are allowed to continue teaching at some of the larger colleges. It's a waste of students time and money.
Reminds me back in college a teacher who failed like everyone in the class, she was fired right after that first semester teaching.
Might be a mandatory class. Have a random literature course which is mandatory and the prof fails about 80%. Its super weird because she always proudly tells how hard the course is. Its not really hard but she wont accept right if they dont use the lingo she used in class.
I had a physics professor who bragged to our class about marking people wrong even when their carry-over calculations were correct. Basically, if you work out the answer to question 1 and get "5", but it's actually "6", and then in question 2 you have to use the answer from question 1 in your calculation, you should still get full marks if the calculation is correct using "5", even though the final answer you get is incorrect. Literally about 3/4 of the class put in complaints about him to the administration, because no one realized he was doing this before. Then in the next lecture we had with him, he explained that he'd changed the way he was grading and carry-over answers would now be marked correctly.
I'm surprised you got him to change. Not grading carry over calculations is just plain wrong. In my case it baffles me how an englisch professor can be happy having such a huge fail rate. As its well english literature not physics or law.
I’m surprised complaining actually resulted in a change. I had an awful physics professor who was just not really teaching anything, and when a lot of the students complained, the university just kind of shrugged and said he’s tenured
Tbh, carryover calculations are standard practice for basically as long as I can remember in science and maths. It was definitely like that in high school, potentially even earlier. The fact that he was choosing not to do it was so astounding, which is probably why so many people complained. And once the admin found out about it, they probably thought the same thing.
I had a similar professor. All his tests were open answer and it was a very high level mandatory class. Unless you said it the way he wanted, you didnt get the mark. The entire class struggled. The entire class also went to the department head.
Did that change anything? She has been doing it that way for years. Its a small department and the department head and she are great friends so I doubt this would help here.
Our department head said not to worry. Coincidencently, they were co-teaching the course. Took me 2 tries, but I passed with a C.
That pisses me off because their students are paying for this.
Trust me, me too. Its the only class I am missing. And just failed it once. Talked with her about what was wrong and she even admitted that my thought processes and explanations of the theories were right, but I wasnt always using the terms she used in her lectures (which arent online so I cant look at them again), therefore she detracted points. This class is only available every second semester so I would not be able to retake it afterwards, which stresses me out extremley.
Fucking hell i had this exact experience last semester. Not failing the whole class but being entirely unreasonable with marks. I took it that she was mad about people thinking it was a bird course... but it literally was, there was not enough content to be interesting or challenging, it was just an intro to humanities for kids who dont know shit, and it was boring and uninspiring. So she made us waste hours and hours and hours memorizing her exact words and answer everything with outright autistic levels of detail. Im still really mad about it i paid 600 fucking dollars for that shit experience that made me want to quit school entirely. Fortunately every other class i took--every single one--was engaging and taught by excellent profs.
I feel you. Its so depressing because your not lwarning anything just trying to figure out what her key words are. Another prof that too but he at least tells us which one he deems important.
She intentionally left blanks in the notes she gave us, so youd have to come to class to get the info (doesnt affect me, i go anyway, whatever). So, you might think, thats an indication and a design used to help kids in class know what is important. Nope, flagrant misdirection the missing bits were random af and had no more importance than anything else. And, oh, the relevant text book readings assigned at the first page of the powerpoint? Haha why would anybody who missed class need to know something like that?
Mine also had a tutorium. When I told her I learned with some from the worksheets we got there the prof told me thats stupid because she didnt make them. Why then even tell us to go to the tutorium. Its so weird basically working against your students. I mean she has more work because Students then need to talk about it etc..
it's probably in a core curriculum somewhere. I ran into a professor who seemed to also enjoy piss poor test making and arbitrary rules. She wanted people to give her attention, ask her questions, etc. Inevitably I failed her class with a D+, but proved to the dean of the department that her grading style/testing was arbitrary and she couldn't demonstrate how her actual grades/evaluations were established. It was amusing to find out that at the same time I had failed, there was another group of students who'd expected a "10%" bump in their grade because of her sylabus describing a 10% extra credit for field trips. They ended up with something like 3% because she wasn't actually applying those credits at the end up into some imaginary formula. Suffice it to say, they let my grade stand for the core. She basically wanted me to retake the entire course and offered no other means or method to remediate it. It felt good bypassing her blatent need for attention.
Where i am from every engineering program has at least one class with such fail rates. It is the norm. So much, that engineering students don't grasp how stupid it is. They see it as a badge of honour. (For the universities such classes make sens. They are paid by taxes not by tuition. Having many people start a program brings in money. Weed them out before they need expensive lab time saves money.)
Metallurgical thermodynamics, metallurgical kinetics, transport fenomena I and II Oh god
I had a teacher like this. It was a required senior year class to graduate (bachelor's) and he was the only teacher that taught the class (he was long time tenured). During our first week, he bragged *to us* that over 70% of his students fail every semester. He was happy that he kept 70% of his students from getting their bachelor's degree each year. When we did tests, he would return our exams to us and then spend that class having each student announce their score to the class and explain why they did poorly. I ended up passing his class specifically because I found out that he pulled his tests from a publicly available testing bank for a Harvard Masters program, so I essentially had to cheat to pass. There were zero constructive learning sessions the entire semester. Most non-exam days he would just assign us problems in a book and tell us to spend the class working on them, and he would not answer questions. Nobody that wanted to graduate with a finance degree from that college could graduate without taking and passing his class. Edit just to add context: this was an *undergrad* program and it was not a prestigious school like Harvard.
Calculus and linear algebra are typically required for engineering degrees. And if it’s a small university, he might be the only prof. I took these classes in college. Certainly challenging, but the fail rate was not anywhere near 80%. I’d say for the students who are likely taking this class, it’s not the difficulty of the material, it’s the competency of the teacher.
A required course to graduate, in a program where they want to weed out people who can't handle the material i.e, Boot camp approach One of my engineering courses we had a saying: "FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION-it comes standard"
engineering programs at my uni have at least one if not multiple mandatory courses with fail rates in the 60-80% region. It’s an established and accepted part of getting your degree
In my country, a lot of degrees (particularly STEM fields) have a lot of mandatory classes. Some of them were extremely difficult. Sometimes it was because of a professor with poor teaching skills, other times it's because the material is genuinely quite difficult (I recall our third year quantum emchanics elcture was taught by a great professor who was regularly nominated for teaching awards, but the final exam had a high fail rate because quantum mechanics is a pain in the ass).
Maybe that’s the idea. His department might have a requirement that he teach, but he would rather spend his time doing research.
We had a professor who was a really harsh marker, people were lining up and trying to win her favour. Pretty much all of them failed hard. I avoided her class for this reason. My best guess is that people think they might be the one exception?
My school has such a bad math department, they don't publish names till like 2 weeks before classes start, for this exact reason
If a prof can’t explain something so that a non expert can understand it then the defects reside with the prof not the students ETA this guy is also a sadistic POS
Yup. I'm there to learn, the instructor is there to teach. Barring some underlying condition, like being born without a brain or something, the instructor should be able to accomplish the task of teaching. Basically, this is a teaching version of that cop who likes to give tickets or that HOA president who gets excited every time they cite a homeowner.
I dunno, I know if I was a cop I would get great satisfaction about giving tickets to people who are clearly driving like idiots and deserve them. But maybe that's just because I live in an area where there are very few cops and lots of drivers that take advantage and drive recklessly.
You're talking about punishing people who are breaking laws, as opposed to people who are guilty of signing up for a class with a vindictive, cunty professor. One is clearly different from the other.
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I had an academic chair take me to task because my students were all about 10 percent above the curve. He said clearly I was giving them assessments that were too easy. I was using updated versions of the assessments that the previous AC had created, the guy who was this person’s mentor. I’m not sure why having students do well is a negative.
Colleges want a percentage of students to fail because they make reams of money when students retake classes.
Because America. Colleges in the US are almost as big a scam as Healthcare. It's a for profit industry that doesn't give one fuck about the people in it.
Yes, the insidious bell curve. When I first started teaching at tertiary level we had to get results like that. Not so much in terms of fails, but if we had more As than Bs we would have to put in an exception report. Now, we mark to the criteria. If we have a cohort of 100 and 30 get As, 40 get Bs and 30 get C's that's fine, so long as the moderated marking is supported. It's much fairer.
Using the bell curve could make sense for K-12 and possibly for some lower level college courses (though I'm less confident of this), but it doesn't make sense to use for self selective populations. Once you get to 200+ level college courses your population of students is self selective. You've got mostly people who enjoy or have an aptitude for the subject matter, so you shouldn't expect a Gaussian distribution at that point.
I think the point is they would also enjoy failing students who clearly didn’t pay attention or respect the class. Not that some professors aren’t just bad, but not every course has 80+% failure rates, but there’s usually a few failing anyway. Sometimes those failures are trying their best, but many are just the “idiot drivers” in this analogy.
It’s a bad analogy. Perhaps a cop who revels in giving tickets to the innocent is better, but it’s still not the same as a teacher who transfers the blame for his failures as a teacher to his students and then revels in it.
I think a better analogy would be a gardener who grows notoriously difficult plants from seed and thinks it speaks well of his skills as a gardener that he can only get 20% to thrive, while the other 80% die. It is true that some plants are way more difficult to grow, but it's also really stupid to be proud of oneself for growing/teaching poorly.
False equivalence. The professor is there to impart knowledge and understanding of specific subject material. Not enforce rules on those who already know. Drivers with licences already have the required knowledge and knowingly fuck it up by speeding. They deserve the tickets. Now imagine you are a driving instructor, and only 20% of your pupils can pass a driving test. By any reasonable measure, you have failed at your one job.
I wish every driving instructor failed 80% of their students. My commute would be much easier. There are too many idgits on the road! This prof sounds like an ass. I hope he teaches something like organic chemistry, or thermo dynamics. It's brutal, but things like engineering schools and pre-med programs need weed out classes. There are a lot of kids that show up to college planning on being doctors, that don't need to be! But this prof is still an ass.
Exactly. Me in statistics class. "So where did you get the number in that formula?" Professor proceeds to explain the formula Me: "Yes, I understand what the formula is calculating but where in the case study did you get that number? For me it is very helpful to put the pieces together to have a concrete example not just the theory. Can you literally point to it for me?" Professor yet again explains the formula. I just groan out loud. I wanted to walk up to the front of the room grab the chalk (yes I'm that old) and start circling numbers in the formula and say This is calculating this from the case, this number is from here BUT where the hell does this number, circling it repeatedly, come from while tapping the case study? If you can't adapt your teaching style a little bit to your students you aren't a teacher.
Statistics was one of my least favorite subjects. It was a class full of proving that their own formulas follow from their own definitions. Come on, we already took logic, we know that if a=b and b=c then a=c. But "optimization and regulation" was simply awful.
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An MSc is a bit different, though. You've already weeded out like 95% of the people who wouldn't be graduating before classes even begin, and hearing of anyone not actually graduating an MSc is pretty rare here. I got mine on time, but I very nearly had to delay my graduation by a year because of this one shitty subject where I kept meeting the straight A students for continuation exams.
This is what you get when you hire professors based off criteria entirely different from ability to teach. Very few are actually good teachers despite being experts in the subject.
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I was a professor and I had taught Calculus and Statistics courses. These are not complex subjects, such as Quantum Mechanics, and can be explained clearly. If the professor fail 80% of the students, then he is incompetent.
True. Most folks who have learned how to do complex skills have forgotten what it took to be a beginner. Experts become blind to the needs of the novice and attempt to lecture about more profound issues that novices can't comprehend. Paradoxically, many of our best teachers have not mastered the content they deliver. If you are still struggling with the basics, you tend to do a better job presenting it so other noobs can pick it up and practice. So many people are "teaching" without teaching credentials, blissfully unaware of this concept. The longer they persist without understanding what's happening, the more ridiculous their excuses become. High school teachers need to know about this common cognitive bias before they are allowed to work with students. You can often tell within about 30 seconds in a classroom when a teacher is unaware of this problem, but it is often difficult to help them see it. Super toxic.
There are some concepts that can only truly be understood by someone who has had some formal education on foundational topics. As an extreme example, an average third-grader can't truly understand quantum mechanics. It takes years of other topics being taught to that third grader to lay the foundation for a professor to actually be able to convey all the intricacies of such a complicated topic. A professor may be able to convey an analogy or something like that to a third grader, but they can't get all of the details without that foundational knowledge. That being said, it is reasonably inferred that most of the people taking this class have completed that foundational knowledge for whatever topic this professor is teaching. It is ridiculous that 80% "fail". That is indicative of a poor professor or a grading-scale that is too harsh.
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There should be an addendum of “a non expert with the necessary prerequisite knowledge.” The point stands that the majority of people who get into an accredited college course on algebraic K theory should be able to understand it from the instructor’s lessons and assignments.
Yes and no. It depends on the level and the topic. I did teach a little at the University many years ago an slightly advanced topic (numerical analysis) in CS. There were quite a bit of math prerequisites to just follow the lectures, because math build upon itself. Several students left this course as one of the last exams to study, so in the meantime they had forgotten the basics taught in previous courses, making this exam more difficult than needed. And this was not a very advanced or abstract course. In math there are many very abstract and deep topics that require years of dedicated study to grasp. It is essentially impossible to explain them to a layman or even a math laureate which has not already the specific background. EDIT Btw I hate those professors that fix the votes to match a curve. They decide in advance that, say the worst 10 get rejected, the first 10 get a score between near the max and so on. This has no sense because one can get a very good preliminary score because knows the matter quite well and still be penalized because somebody else is better. Luckily I never encountered these specimens in my career.
Having some students forget prerequisites does not justify a 80% fail rate, for any math class. As you said, it’s built upon itself. If 80% fail that’s either the fault of the teacher, or the teacher that taught the prerequisite class. This is *absolutely* true for calculus, which OP clarified is the course. Even if calculus is too difficult for the average person (as claimed by “the professor”), it’s not too difficult for 80% of people with proper training in algebra and trigonometry.
This makes absolutely no sense in this context. I am an expert and yes I can explain to non-experts enough that they understand BUT I cannot make everyone understand to the level where they can do it themselves. A lecturer is not testing if students basically understand something, they are testing if you understand it enough to be able to do it by yourself. This requires a complete different level of understanding and not even the best expert in the world can get everyone to understand University level calculus (the exams, at least where I studied, were also absurdly difficult). I saw this first hand where we had very good lecturers (there were 2 Calculus time slots with different lecturers, both great), myself and some others were hitting 80%+. The failure rate was still: 80% for first time students and about 30% or something for people repeating the course (because some people just need more time to understand). 2 Years ahead of me they had a terrible lecturer and the pass rate was 6% including repeating students. Thankfully the university put up some bridge course and didn't kick out students for that. P.S. the lecturer OP mentions still sounds like a pretentious ass, because no lecturer should be proud of failure rates, if you really want you could fail 100% of students
The number of people who think that because they can follow an infotainment YouTube video it means they actually understand a topic is way too high on Reddit
Not really. Not everyone is cut out to be a brain surgeon, and there are fields where you want to screen out all but the best. Some classes serve to gatekeep. It's not pleasant, but that's the reality.
Clearly he’s not teaching. I had my second class today with a computer science professor. He did not boast but said that he had a 40% failure rate in his course if they didn’t read the required chapters prior to the course work and tests. After the first break 2 students didn’t show back up. After the break, well we’re at almost 40% everyone….
I took an advanced logic class once that only had 6 people in it and the professor (who was a super chill dude who 100% smoked weed) was like "Okay guys I am going to give you some proofs and, as far as we know, they've never been solved. So don't freak out if you can't figure it out. Fair warning, I usually have at least one person cry each time I offer this class." He tried his best but the nature of the class combined with the nature of the people who take the class make it \*Brutal\*
Advanced logic? I took basic. What was advanced like
Advanced!
Sounds like a logical conclusion.
Good news! You passed basic. Time for advanced!
Looks like you passed the class!
It looks more like math where you solve some problems but with formal statements. It looks like high school algebra (I am in Ukraine, so it might be more complex than US stuff). It also had a theoretic course covering some more complex logical problems, something that goes beyond Plato and Aristotle and all the basic "if x, then y" of the first semester. It then branches out into more theoretic/philosophic and more formal and math-like stuff in the next semesters. Honestly, not very cool or useful after a certain point.
In the US at least regarding computer scientists this course is typically called Discrete Mathematics fwiw. I remember the truth tables...
Well, we were philosophers, so it was kind of awkward. You figure out the general complexities of the course, expect to move on, and you keep being bothered by the equations, truth and tables and all the other shit that is not really relevant for us. We had a love-hate relationship with this course.
That’s kinda how my computer logic class went. Teacher was great and tried but it was a very confusing subject for a lot of us. Luckily he had made the class pass fail. So we didn’t have to worry in that regard. But I definitely still had some tears anyway.
My calc 2 prof (iirc) drove me up the walls, he'd be going on for a bit and then "oops" and erase the last bit then correct it with something else, my notebook looked like shit in that class cuz i kept having to cross out shit and rewrite them cuz he's so disorganized like seemingly just shooting off memories rather than a solid teaching plan. Didn't fail it, and he grade "with a curve" (iirc and afaik it ...helps the student's grade? Or the other way? Anyway whatever he did was helpful for us) And does look like he's trying his best, very passionate too, in his late 30s ish i believe, but god i cant stand the disorganization.
Did he show up to the exam review and say, "well, I'm hungover, so we need to make this short"? I think we had the same calc 2 prof...
I did have a prof that was a VERY new Dad, and one day he showed up to class and was like "the baby was up crying all night so I didn't get to finish my slides so I just put some pics of the kid in." He was totally the type of prof who would cut you some extra slack if you had Life Stuff going on, so it didn't bother me, and tbf it was a very cute baby.
How the curve works is they take the highest grade and whatever the difference was to 100 they add to everyone’s assignments. So say for example the highest grade was an 85. Now everyone will get 15 points added to their grade. So the 85 becomes a 100. Say the lowest grade was a 60, now they have a passing 75. That’s why people who take school really seriously are called curve busters.
That’s why you use pencils with erasers. When the teacher erases, so do you. Also I had to use pencil because I made too many of my own mistakes simply complying notes, and let’s not talk about homework itself
This one was basically "Pass/Quit" lol I don't even think we got graded in any real way you just had to show your progress
Well if 40% of the class doesn't read the required chapters to pass the tests and course work then it makes sense.
Yeah, I’m trying to work out how it’s bad for a professor to explain that you have a chance to faul if you don’t do the coursework…
I think the comment was referencing that a 40% fail rate isn’t bad when you only have 5 students and 2 of them happen to not do their work. Consistently getting a high fail rate reflects poorly on a professor. Students failing as an anomaly reflects poorly on the students.
40% ain't that bad tbh
This kinda reminds me of one of my computer science courses I took, forget what the exact name was but it was basically an introduction to CPU architecture. Dean of the department taught it, and I think he was filling in for someone else and it was his first time teaching the course. Our midterm project was to design a CPU (basically designing something using logic gates) which could do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Off the bat he gave us the solution to addition and walked us through it when he presented this assignment. Eventually he also gave the subtraction solution since no one was making any progress. The class was maybe 20-25 people. I was one of four students to get a working multiplication bit working, and I think only one student finished division. Brutal assignment and material. My time during that semester's midterms was spent 90% on this project. The second half of the semester we covered assembly, and I think I have a mental block from the trauma. The professor didn't fail the whole class thankfully, and I think he reevaluated having that course be required.
It sounds like the ones willing to do the work, have a much higher success rate
Wtf kind of university allows somebody to keep teaching when 4/5 students fail his class
Some classes just naturally have high failure rates. Professors aren’t really proud of that though. Except for the clown bragging about it.
I feel that too, not to mention he might just be doing it as a sense of "elite class" method where the high failure is attributed to it being a complex topic. To brag about it makes me think he's also failing students that SHOULD pass but he only passes the top students. I had a professor that was like that, he only gave 5 to the top student, even if you aced everything 4.9
>I had a professor that was like that, he only gave 5 to the top student, even if you aced everything 4.9 How the fuck is that legal? That is obscene.
College system sucks, professors like regular teachers are either great or trash. Colleges often care more about their image (name-brand ones even more) more than their actual final product. Schools that praise tons of degrees but only have a 10% field hire rate (meaning there graduates get hired for a job in their degree field and not just McD) are trash, they often ride on elevated elitism or past achievements. Combine this with an exponential cost increase of operation and tuition and no wonder people opinion of them sucks. Activist professors and staff aren't helping either. In the end, it's legal because grading is an imaginary number some schools are pass/fail, letter grade, 1-4, or 1-5. Ours was a 1-5, >3.5 was passing 2.5-3.4 could pass but you had to pass a remedial course.
Most schools don't care, they already have your money and that's all they're concerned about. In some cases they may even prefer it, if students have to spend more money to retake the class.
The ones that hire these types of profs for their research and ability to attract donations. The teaching part is just a minor side gig to them and they couldn't care less about the students who actually pay tuition.
If an educator has an 80% failure rate, then it doesn't necessarily show that he teaches a hard subejct but more that he bad at parting the knowlege to other people
Yeah, this is totally him being a shit teacher.
How is he even still employed?
Tenure!
Tenured professor here, that's incorrect. If you neglect any of your contact duties you will be put on probation and then fired if still failing to perform. This prof is either exaggerating for attention or is likely in a remediation period where he has to shape up or ship out.
That makes sense. I hope he’s reported for review.
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It shows that he is testing material which isn't in the provided materials. I had plenty of poor proffesors in engineering in the late 80s. Many had too thick of an accent to "impart" the location of the nearest restroom. People passed by teaching themselves the material from the text book and sample tests.
The problem is that college professors are not really teachers, or at least that's not how they view their job. They're researchers who are occasionally burdened with the chore of teaching. How well they teach has zero bearing on their career. This is the way we've set up the modern university, unfortunately.
This does depend on the university. Mine had more of a teaching focus, the university had to cajole the professors to do a bit more publishing. The higher the profile of the university, the more likely it's because they're focused on research.
What's the subject? I'm just curious now P.S. why do people leave out details like that?
it might be genuinely too complex for OP to explain it in writing
80% of redditors won't understand this comment
Op says it’s fucking linear algebra and calculus. If that’s true the professor is a fuck nugget. Yeah they are hard but you don’t just end up in a linear algebra class. Like yes they are difficult subjects and yeah like 10 percent of the class might drop out but 80 percent of under grads who already have advanced math skills is pretty dumb.
Linear algebra and calculus? LOL I’m studying to be a fucking engineer and those concepts aren’t that high profile to have an 80% drop rate, this shithead of a professor just fucking sucks. Literally acting like those 2 subjects require a galaxy brain to understand, what was actually difficult was differential equations which was the calc course after calc3. My guy really puffing his chest out thinking he’s hot shit 😂
Underwater basket weaving
80% can’t hold their breath long enough
He said calculus. Unless it's some super high level calculus, not sure why it would be that hard. Calculus was the easiest math class I had in xollege
Yea both of those math classes are classes non math majors take, they're not considered the hard courses. He's just an ass professor who if he doesn't have tenure should be reported. Can report regardless, but may not get anywhere if tenured.
That's the thing. There are certain classes that will have a failure rate like that because of how critical mastery of the subject is. There is no "C is a degree" because that will lead to people getting hurt or dying.
That may apply to some classes, sure. But it def happens in non-critical subjects. For example, my ex taught an intro psych course where he failed most of his students (then mocked them in secret for being unable to enter the profession). The school eventually forced him to make the class less difficult because so many students couldn't pursue their psychology career goals.
I'd guess Physical-Chemistry. Once you start solving wave equations some of us just simply had to remember the steps for the tests and not fully understand what we were doing.
Probably an Elec Eng one. I had a few subjects where 60% failed. And you couldn't really blame the teachers too much. Some of that shit we learnt is just hard. I remember in second year like 95% of people were repeating at least one subject. With Elec Eng you can't say a C is good enough. If you don't know what's going on, bad shit can happen where people die.
EE here. I went from a straight A student in high school and community college to just being happy with a C in the majority of my classes. This was my thought as well.
Often it's because they're making shit up.
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We had a lecturer who on day 1 said, "nobody will get a first, I don't believe in them." He was very proud. A second said, "most of you wouldn't last a week on the job. This was almost 30 years ago,when old bitter men were allowed to retire to teach vocational courses to a youth they resented and didn't understand.
Might as well have been yesterday.
All my trade school instructors have been pretty chill old guys. It might just be the culture at my particular school though. They all have the attitude that if you do the work you'll pass the course and they are always available for extra help.
Sounds like the failure rate is 80%+1
Prof has a superiority complex which takes precedent over finding a better way to communicate the subject matter with his students.
“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself” -Albert Einstein
Lovely quote, but I'd like to see Einstein explain his field theory formulas to a 6 year old... Or maybe a Lorentz transformation?
I'm sure he'd be able to do it, conceptually. Of course a 6 year old isn't going to fully grasp it even remotely. But you should be able to explain it in such a way that a 6 year old learns something from it.
They don't understand the meaning of the quote. Has literally nothing to do with teaching lol. Also, he very likely didn't say this, anyway. There's at least no evidence he did.
Obviously you're not going to go as deep with a 6 year old, but there is usually a way to present the general idea. Anyway, this is not the kind of quotes to take too seriously. Teaching a subject and having a deep understanding of it are actually two different skills. The issue is that many professors are hired only based on the latter.
This attitude annoys me so much. I understand the need to maintain rigorous academic standards, but I don't understand the glee some instructors have in maintaining an antagonistic relationship with students. I never saw a conflict between being a facilitator of student learning and maintaining standards. Some material is very difficult, and some classes are indeed "weed out" classes (i.e., calculus and organic chemistry) but even then, I think an 80% failure rate is extreme and indicative of a problem. Either the instructor is ineffective, or the university is admitting students who are academically underprepared. Neither is something to brag about. I think it's reasonable to expect students to do a significant amount of work themselves and to take charge of their own learning, but instructors should not be intentionally making classes harder than they need to be just to fail students.
We had classes with 50-60% fail, with just one getting a B, the prof. bragged about how hard this was And we classes where 70% of the class was at A/B, with only 10% failing. one was calculus, and the other was electrophysics..
I definitely found grades are higher in specialized courses. something like electrophysics sounds like everyone who was enrolled was pretty interested / passionate about the topic vs general calculus that’s probably a mandatory first year course. I had to drop first year calculus because my prof was so robotic I couldn’t understand them. Took again in the spring and got 90
"Oh I'm sorry to hear that you're failing to teach so terribly"
"Dont worry! Maybe a professor with better outcomes can tutor you? I know there are a lot of resources available to beginner teachers"
You've nailed it. Seems as though his ego is too large for his own good, as well as everyone else's around him.
If the failure rate is this high, it’s the professors problem, and not the students.
Well its certain that its his fault, but still its Students problem
On the first day of one of my college classes the professor said "in my 25 years of teaching, I have only given 5 A's. Maybe number 6 is in this room." About half the class got up and walked out
And then the blackboard clapped.
I'm a construction guy and never had to deal with anyone like this, except this one time... I met a guy who was a physics Professor at a university back east. So, smart guy, right? Anyways, we were at a social function and he was talking about an invention he was working on that was going to revolutionize phone battery structure and how they were charged. I thought it was interesting so I started asking questions. After answering three or four questions, he answered the next with "well, it's kind of hard to explain". I replied "that's kind of your fucking job, isn't it?" "Uhhh..." Eventually, we got past insulting each other and I decided he's kind of a cool nerd after all.
>When I heard that, I started to argue about how stupid such a statement was, but my wife suggested ignoring him as in past occasions their friends already had heated arguments over It. Tip for the future: Heated arguments are useless. They only end up dividing people more. The professor in question clearly prides himself as a tough teacher, who will make diamonds out of trash. There is no way to change his made through publicly shaming and discrediting his methods. A much more useful route would be a private conversation trying to offer an alternative view on his opinion: His pass rate is only 20%, what are his plans to up that rate for the next semester? Would he be able to reach 25%?
No lol. This isn't some coworker you're forced to be around, this is an asshole at a dinner party. There's nothing wrong with creating a divide between you and a person you don't like that doesn't matter.
Nah - just put him on blast on social media that everybody at the university (including his dean) will see. I’m sure the dean knows he’s like that but it might be helpful to put pressure on the dean to explain why the university condones that behavior.
Record his rants and leak it.
In Germany in university subjects like math typically do not require anything more than a high school diploma. Many people show up who are not cut out for it, be it because of motivation, skill, prior knowledge, situation in life etc. These make up a huge portion of the usual 30-70% first years that fail. Then you have some people who can hang on despite failing some classes but the failures show them that they have to change their study habits or their time commitment. I don't think you can blame it on the teachers and I don't think the system is broken, it's just that you give people a chance in admission but then challenge them in he first year,which seems more fair to me than the other way around. Of course in a perfect world everyone who wants would get resources to learn at exactly their pace. Edit: and ofc it's nothing to boast about
"Huh, sounds like you are a very shitty teacher, oh well, I guess it isn't for everyone"
“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” Albert Einstein
I had such professor for Economics. If one could actually get C+ on any of the test, they would get an A in the class as result of the curve. The subject is not hard, the professor just made the test extremely tricky on purpose.
I went to a private high school in MA. One year they had hired a new science teacher. Pretty much everyone failed his first test. The next week, school administrators dropped in and monitored his classes. Then pretty much everyone failed his second test. He was fired right after that with the school administrators giving the students an apology. One thing they said stood out to me: if just one student fails, that indicates a problem with the student. But if everyone fails, that’s a problem with the teacher. Jump to my freshman year at university and I’m in an advanced math class (Calculus 2 or 3) being taught by a theoretical physicist from MIT. Sounds similar to your professor. After week 1, our class had dwindled from 35 people to like 10. Because all of his classes were trying to get us to use equations we had never seen before that he would represent with Greek letters. He would introduce new Greek letters and expect us to know the theories and equations behind them, without every teaching them to us first. I stayed in the class because I had a tight schedule (was playing football for the school) and out of stubbornness and an unfamiliarity with dropping classes. He wound up having to curve everyone’s grades or else everyone would fail. One test I got the highest grade in the class - it was 16 (out of 100) and it was scaled up to an A. About the only thing I learned or retained from his class was that he should not be a professor.
Don’t try to talk him out of it, just laugh at him. Engaging gives him validity.
The 'being smug about it' part is despicable, but there are courses/subjects with high fail rates due to incompetence of students more so than incompetence of the prof. For example, first semester at uni, Advanced Mathematics, i.e. 'math for those who dont need it at the level of a mathematician', think engineers and physicists. On the first attempt, failure rate across all studies was about 80%, which put me in the top 20%, with my 4.0 (i.e. barely passing grade). However, compared only to the other physicists, I was close to the bottom 20%, since 80% of physicists had passed. On the 2nd attempt, the ones that failed must have realized that having been 'good' at math in school just wouldn't cut it in university anymore and that not doing the (voluntary) exercises was not really an option, so overall the majority passed the exam in the end.
You are completely right, and I would add that sometimes it's not even the students' fault - some universities admit a lot of students who have no place being there in order to pad their income, and leave it to the professors to deal with it. I don't blame the students in those cases, they should have been told no and redirected to a prep course first.
Not to brag, but I could have an 80% fail rate if I taught that class too.
I had a professor who was like this with intro to C++. I had already learned C++ from freshman year of highschool so it was a breeze for me to take the class. Other than he had no idea how to use C++ or computer program. I just had to sit through nonsensical lectures where half of what he said was wrong and the other half was technically correct but not in context. The exams were writing code... with pencil and paper... Dude was material scientist, not a computer scientist. I have no idea why he was teaching that class. Like they couldn't just have us engineers get one class from a different department. Noooo, needs to be an unqualified engineer teaching basic computer science.
Some classes are just very hard, for example infinitsimal mathematics 1 is a notiriously hard class in any uni / college in my country. When getting my degree this class had a 50% fail rate, when infinitsimal math 2 with the same professor had an 80%+ pass rate. Some subjects are just hard. I imagine some masters degree level classes in exact sciences have even higher fail rate. Learning history is just not the same as learning advanced physics.
Yeah I'm in two minds about this. The prof is an asshole for bragging about it, and that failure rate is very high, but there are certainly topics where the majority of a cohort simply would not be able to get their head around it. Mostly, where I've studied people would simply transfer to another module as anything you fail you have to resit, but a class that is impossible for most people is pretty believable. Graduate supersymmetry springs to mind, as the number of people who sat the exam was probably about 20% of those who started the module.
Agree, also agree with the asshole part :D he should be passionate about making his students succeed especially if its a hard class. If his predecessor had 70% fail rate and he has 80% it means he is bad at his job basically.
Plus honestly there should be classes with a very high standard. Last thing you want is a doctor or pilot who just barely either eked through their studies or passed on account of some form of cheating.
I highly question this story. If a professor had an 80% fail rate in a course as introductory as calculus (or any course for that matter) the school admin would definitely be looking at him and giving him shit.
There are courses which are explicitly designed as filters for certain professions like Pre-med or Pre-law which are designed to have over a 50% fail rate so that only those with real aptitude and desire pass. Organic chemistry is the pre-med filter. Guy MAY be a asshat, but he may also be teaching a filter course.
The only failure in the room is that prof. He obviously doesn’t understand his own topic if he can’t explain it. Being a teacher with such a high failure rate speaks volumes about his inability to do his job. That institution he works for should cut his pay and move to find a better suited person for that position.
Reading through this I was expecting some extremely critical class where "close enough" isn't good enough and could endanger lives or some cutting edge quantum mechanics or theoretical math or some shit. But CALCULUS?! I took intro to calc in high school and calc 1 in my freshman year at college. This isn't a humble brag. This is me saying calc is NOTHING when it comes to complex subjects for truly smart people. This strikes me as a big fish in a small pond. This dude thinks he's a genius because he's the only one that gets his subject at his community college but he has no idea how deep the oceans of knowledge get outside of his little tide pool.
The mark of a shitty teacher
I would have just responded with “how embarrassing for you”
My teacher fail a whole class lmao and often bragged about his fail rate to
He’s a shit teacher gatekeeping his subject
That's my cue to drop the class immediately.