This is probably just coincidence so don't take me too seriously but here's what I've noticed:
The professors of my biology/chem courses: "Hey buddy, don't be afraid to ask questions we've made sure to try and make things easy to understand. Here are some extra resourses for you if you're having trouble. We've structured the marking so that you have lots of opportunities to catch up if you have a bad week etc. Good luck! So proud of you all! 🥰"
The professors of anything to do with math or tech:
"LISTEN HERE YOU LAZY PEICES OF SHIT. IF YOU DON'T ALREADY KNOW EVERYTHING I'M SUPPOSED TO BE TEACHING IN CLASS THEN FUCK YOU. WE HAVE ONE TEST AND IF YOU FAIL THAT THEN YOU'RE FUCKED AND IT'S YOUR FAULT FOR NOT READING THE EXTRA RESOURSES I HID WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE THEY WERE THERE. WHAT? YOU HAVE A QUESTION? THAT'S A YOU PROBLEM, IDIOT! 
"
Our university's researchers had some teaching requirements. You could easily tell which people resented it.
It's an awful idea. Teaching is a whole ass skill that needs to be trained and developed, and these just throw lab nerds in to a classroom and expect them to be good at it. The best professor I ever had was a guy who started out teaching grade school, taught middle school, taught high school, and eventually ended up teaching at uni. Didn't have a PhD, knew everything about his subject backwards and forwards, and was genuinely good at conveying it to the class in ways we understood. It made an enormous difference compared to professors who resented being there, or who were trying but didn't have the necessary experience and technqiue.
I wonder if it would be more productive to pair the non-teacher researchers with someone who does have a teaching background for these sorts of cases.
I feel like there might be some value in having your professors actually have to do some teaching/work with the students, can't just be isolated away in a lab 24/7, but you definitely can't expect people who are primarily researchers to all suddenly be great teachers as well, so for the students sake they should have some help.
Additionally, the knowledge to teach a lot of this stuff is only known by research profs, so working with someone to do the teaching part would be quite good.
This is true, I had a lot of professional former chemists as professors and like half of them didn’t really get the teaching part haha.
I had an inorganic chem teacher that spent every class reading from the textbook's included powerpoint presentation and then the last 10 minutes talking about how cool his laboratory's lasers were.
The class was graded entirely on homework snd tests that were clearly indicated on the syllabus. After the first week, 90% of the class no longer showed up outside of test days / turning in homework.
The man has gamed the system. He found a way to be a teacher while literally teaching nothing to anybody. I can only
My school was a massive pre-med feeder so bio/chem was the total opposite there
Same here. My orgo 2 professor was quite possibly the cruelest person I’ve ever met, and separately is absolutely terrible at teaching chemistry.
Rip, that sounds misserable. Orgo2 is hard enough without a teacher that hates you.
I had the same experience students literally had Stockholm syndrome by the end of the second semester. We started the year with 40 students and ended the year with 7 of us who stuck through because I wasn't willing to drop the course. There was no curving and the exam averages were in the 20-40% range. My friends who dropped the course and transferred said the O chem at the R1 we went to was significantly easier.
Same. I needed chem credits for an engineering degree so I just took a piss-easy community college course over the summer and transferred the credits from there.
Sometimes I pretend that I don't count as STEM being in the S part, it's mostly
thoMe too: "I'm training to be an ecologist, I'm a glorified groundskeeper! I'm not stem, I'm not stem!" I say as I transform into a corncob
I don't have to worry about it. I have a BA in a soft science. We may not have any funding or respect, and no one listens to us when we explain in very clear terms what is wrong with the world and how to fix it, but at least it's harder to be an out and out fascist in anthropology these days.
Haven't met many anthropologists but I do work with some archaeologists and it seems like a really cool field. Intersection of a lot of different disciplines, and the work is obviously very compelling. I might've gone in that direction if I had realized there were jobs - apparently they need more!
There are good and bad teachers of everything, but maybe maths especially. If you find the kind of math prof absolutely in love with it who wants to share its beauty with everyone they can, learn as much as you can from them.
It's true. I've noticed that if the teacher is passionate and loves to teach their subject that I do a loooot better in their class.
Sorry to all the good math teachers out there, btw. I'm sure I've just had bad luck so far with them.
Word. It's criminal that universities are so slammed full of perverse incentives that actually being a good teacher isn't even really a consideration for professor.
My organic Chem teacher was exactly the second person you described. One of the only people I’ve known personally who I would be happy to hear he died, he was an absolute piece of shit who delights in making students miserable
Some of my CS professors provided us with an intense amount of notes that they made. I love how I rarely had to get a textbook or something
One networking professor in particular didn't give a single fuck about teaching, but most of the main professors were pretty good.
I thought I failed a class in my final quarter and I emailed the professor about it. He basically said " It took me 7 years to graduate and I ended up fine, git gud kid". But I still passed it somehow?!? So I guess he was messing with me? Or I just didn't understand how the grading worked
idk, i was in engineering for 4 years and had about 30 professors total. maybe 2 of them were like your 2nd type whereas all the rest were adorable and so so helpful and approachable. BUT i did hear similar fucking awful things about all the computer science professors so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, I have a math PhD and I only had a few guys like this during my undergrad (first year physics, second year classical mechanics, and statistical thermodynamics). Of those only the last one felt genuinely unfair. Hell, in the second one the guy talked shit about "getting rid of dead wood", but it was generally an easier course than the applied math courses at that level (none of which tried to intentionally trip you up).
Quite a few younger tech professors are just programmers or computer science grads who couldn't land their dream get rich quick programming or business data/intelligence job. So they're stuck teaching it to earn a living and hate their lives.
the Chem instruction at my R1 school was very "fuck you" as well. my advisor recommended everyone to fill out some forms and take in summer session at a local community college the uni has an agreement with for specific courses.
the pattern I noticed was, as others have said here, instructors at research institutions who do not want to be instructors.
it's fucked up because instructor labor brings in a shitload of revenue to the institution, but it's a dead end at big unis because research dollars are so mega. so it's a "burden" of researchers and lecturers/instructors are sidelined/lack institutional power.
My extremely math and computers heavy degree was 50% professors trying their best to get you to understand their stuff, and 50% professors who just said all the material and left without comment.
In my experience the physics and math professors were somewhere between delightfully quirky and unreachably aloof, the life science professors were the most approachable, and the engineering professors were largely "git gud, scrub".
I'm kinda looking to go back for bioinformatics. Looks like I'll be ping-ponging through both
those who cant do, teach (math, tech) or because they cant find a job in thier field (bio, chem)
I do not like this saying. Most of my best professors were people who were doing a few years of teaching before going back in to the field. The "those who can't do teach" attitude is rooted in the idea that something is only worth doing if you're making money on it. "Oh, you don't pull down seven figures building paperclip maximizers and instead choose to impart knowledge on the next generation? Loser!"
Yeah I don't disagree with this at all. I'm just trying to roast on OPs shitlord professors.
I'm a professor because in my field it's either that or national security complex. Most of my cohort ended up at national labs or defense contractors.
My salary is like 1/3 theirs.
Yeah professor is good, just making light of OPs shithead profs. Are national labs bad? I'm completely ignorant to what that entails.
I mean they're all DOE, either NNSA (so nuclear weapons adjacent) or Office of Sciences (catch-all for everything else). Obviously the former is more problematic, but in the end, the funding allocation and priorities are set in Washington to further the federal governments interests.
Haha, you think that based on the title, but their primary responsibility is not energy, it's nuclear weapons. Energy is something of a euphemism.
Division Funding (Billions)
Nuclear Security $11.5
Energy and Environment $9.5
Science $4.9
Management $0.25
Other $0.85
Total $28
I mean I work for a state government, so my objections aren't working for the government as opposed what jobs in the government I'm qualified for, which are largely NatSec. I could work for NOAA I suppose as a modeler, which I wouldn't find morally objectionable, it's just not directly in my previous fields.
I was a CS undergrad. Most of the professors were fine, but there was one who was a notorious asshole who taught hard classes. Compounding the issue, he also taught the Comp Sci 1 class. He didn't give you any materials besides notes on the whiteboard and labs. For programming assignments, he required students to print out their code on paper to hand it in.
Here are some reviews from rate my professor:
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He was an old anglo with an Australian/New Zealand accent.
This true, professors make engineering/physics based classes horrible af and then bring up random questions of material never been spoken of before during the finals, and THEN pat themselves on the back when half of the class fails miserably, because their subject is hard or whatever.
then bring up random questions of material never been spoken of before during the finals
I get accused of doing this when my finals are literally the midterm questions and assignment problems again lol.
I post a practice exam online a week before every math exam I give and I still get these complaints, so I'm definitely inclined to be sympathetic to the instructor without more information. It's like a student will memorize how to solve a problem from the practice exam involving sine and is now shocked to see the same problem with cosine appearing instead. We have never covered anything like this.
I had a much better experience when I was a student than most people seem to. I had a few professors who I had trouble learning from, failed classes with, but I really only had one professor who I thought was flat-out bad, a philosophy professor I took an elective with. Guy was a militant atheist and made it his identity, every lecture tied back to how religion is for simpletons. I've never really believed in anything but it felt very performative, like the focus was inciting someone to argue with him rather than to teach. Exams were multiple choice and all themed similarly, which made them easy 'A's by just choosing whichever option seemed most disrespectful. Attendance was a huge part of the grade and was a lot more difficult than the exams.
philosophy professor
Exams were multiple choice
Yeah that's a big red flag right there
Sure that happens a lot, especially when students are missing classes and then complaining about not understanding the material haha. But there are some professors who like create exams that contain nothing and I repeat NOTHING that was taught all years long. This happened to me recently btw.
Fuck those teachers, I delivered a blank exam for my differential equations final because he barely covered laplace transforms a week before the final, and then he expected us to somehow be skilled enough to solve applied problems. I couldn't even parse the questions. Honestly I should've complained with the director, because this was just shit tier teaching.
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The education system is... not good.
Please I'm a hydrologist
Compelling, stem bro. Now face the wall
