
Ask HN: What can I do about bad professors?  - caesarion
I've taken classes with some pretty rotten teachers in the past, but a couple of my profs this term were especially awful. I want to know what I can do about it. I have no interest in being unfair or revengeful, but I do want something to change.<p>It's my job to take responsibility for getting what I want out of my classes, and while I think that's generally a solid policy, I also think it's reasonable to hold professors to a certain standard. It would be ideal to just avoid the bad ones, but there's often little selection or information.<p>I'd appreciate some advice on what I can do about it. What can I do during the term? What can I do to complain now that classes are over? I was thinking about writing a letter to the dean, but I have a suspicion that won't have any effect. Has anyone worked in the university system? Is there a best way to do this?
======
codeonfire
Writing a letter to the dean will work because in academics all those
professors secretly or not so secretly don't like each other. The dean is
looking for help to deny tenure and raises. One letter won't do it, but if
there is a pattern it is strong evidence. One thing, though is you probably
want to have some strong evidence of wrongdoing. People who are struggling
with the material usually complain "the professor just doesn't know how to
teach." I wouldn't consider this as something that is report-able.

You should deal with bad professors by over-enrolling and then dropping the
bad classes after a the first week or so.

~~~
impendia
> Writing a letter to the dean will work because in academics all those
> professors secretly or not so secretly don't like each other.

-1. There are some haters out there, but I object vehemently to the use of the word "all". I don't have a single colleague whom I dislike.

------
pasbesoin
Seek out opinions and seek agreement from classmates with direct experience.

Report individually but en masse. (Don't go together as a mob, but do all file
individual reports. Less threatening, and it lets the administration
independently collect and collaborate details from different individual.)

Don't threaten. Just state the facts, and try to remain collected, clear, and
focused on a productive resolution.

Quietly put the word out for future classmates. Pay it forward by helping them
to avoid being screwed. It's an imperfect marketplace, but eventually the
school will find interest in "resolving" the situation with an
instructor/professor that students actively avoid. In this latter step, avoid
situations that can open you to personal liability, if the attendant risk to
you is significant (e.g. online reporting sites). In this modern age, "word of
mouth" can still be tremendously effective and verbal communication continues
to be used to avoid a record that can work against the communicator (in this
case, given your analysis is correct, a form of "whistleblower"?).

P.S. If there isn't widespread agreement and support among your classmates and
associates, then it may be time to revisit your own assessment.

Akin to this, it shouldn't turn into a witch hunt. Give specific reasons
if/when you advise other people to avoid an instructor; if your argument is
primarily emotional, reassess.

------
adamzerner
1) If you want to try I think the best place to start would be to sit down and
talk to the professor. I get the feeling that a personal talk is more likely
to lead to a change than an email or something. There's a notable chance he
reconsiders his ways. It might be kinda awkward, but if you really care, then
that should outweigh the awkwardness.

2) You could also talk to (or email) some dean or administrator. Like others
have said, they probably do kinda care, it's just that most of the complaints
they get are bad. If you have intelligent things to say, they'll probably
listen.

3) You could try to organize a bunch of students to complain, or to not take
his class. This may be hard to organize, but would have a bigger effect.

\- From what I understand, having tenure doesn't mean that you can't fire a
professor, just that you have to demonstrate in some sort of legal hearing
that they aren't doing their job. So it really just makes firing bad
professors more inconvenient. It's amazing how schools claim to care about
providing students with a good education, and at the same time allow
absolutely awful professors to continue to teach. At the very least accept
them as sunk costs and find someone else to do a good job. It might be a good
idea to politely mention to the dean/administrator that the inconvenience of
firing a bad professor is less important than the benefit of providing future
students with a better education.

\- Is it worth your time to do anything about it? The chances you have an
impact might not be worth the time it'd take to try. Your time is valuable and
I'm sure there's plenty of other stuff you could be doing. With that said, I'm
sure it wouldn't take too long to set up a meeting or write an email.

------
sonabinu
in my experience, there is not much you can do about it. You should try
ratemyprofessor.com before taking a class. I decided not to take a particular
class because the professor who taught did not have the approach I was looking
for and he had bad reviews on the site. In retrospect, I think it was a good
decision. I went against the advice this term and took a course where the
adjunct had terrible reviews and I regret it greatly.

~~~
caesarion
What have you tried in the past that didn't work?

------
brudgers
_"It's my job to take responsibility for getting what I want out of my
classes, and while I think that's generally a solid policy..."_

You instead are looking for excuses. If you went on to say that you had one
bad professor, and backed that up with some meaningful examples of how this
person committed unconscionable sins of pedagogy and abused puppies and
kittens, then perhaps, some venting might be understandable as an exception to
a deeply practiced value of personal responsibility for your learning.

But when the bad professors are legion and the alleged offenses petty and
trifling, the claim to virtue seems suspect.

To expect a professor to spend time twiddling their thumbs waiting for someone
to drop by and complain that their grade was unfair and their life thereby
ruined is a bit absurd. Office hours are times when appointments are
available.

Out in the world of money, the answers aren't in the back of the book. When
something is wrong a professional must figure it out, themselves. Learning how
to struggle is important. Good professors take their students where they need
to go. Some go with a smile. Others must be dragged.

------
CyberFonic
Most universities have a student representative council or some such body that
represents students. You could submit your concerns to them. As @lutusp
suggests you would need to be specific, the more specific the better in your
submission.

Unfortunately the education system is going the way of corporations. Ever
increasing prices and a constant chipping away at costs and thus reductions in
quality.,

------
shail
I would say take to offensive. Its not the revenge I am talking about. Its the
fact that its extremely important to not let those teachers ruin any more
money and life/career (in some cases).

One possible path: Go talk to your college's administration (take evidences
along like slides, etc.) and suggest your college to encourage this behavior
among students.

An incompetent teacher has absolutely no rights to teach.

------
impendia
I'm a professor in a math department. We have some pretty bad teachers. Every
department does.

That said, "bad" is subjective. Here is my RateMyProfessors page:

<http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1631570>

One complainer said of me that "He isn't able to understand and answer
questions that students ask in class or in his office." Huh? I consider myself
a good teacher and work hard to improve -- and at the same time, many students
aren't happy and I'm not really sure what I might do about this. I suspect
there is some mixture of cultural misunderstanding (I teach in the South, and
am very much not a Southerner), bitterness that I ask my students to work
hard, and probably some legitimate complaints which nevertheless students
don't share with me.

Whatever excuses I might offer, I _did_ piss this student off, and I would
like to understand how not to.

So I would advise you to do two things.

One, _talk to your professors_. E-mail them after grades are final, tell them
you have some frustrations about the class, and ask them if they'd be willing
to listen. They might surprise you. I, for one, don't get constructive
criticism as often as I could probably use it. If your professors take you
seriously, then you've accomplished your purpose.

If not, yes, by all means, write the dean, write the department chair, write
anybody. Understand on one hand that it is their job to listen and they will
probably be quite willing to listen, and on the other that even the best
professors garner complaints, especially from lazy students. If you respect
their natural skepticism, and make your points calmly, politely, and with
evidence, I think you will find them willing to listen.

And BTW, I second everything dmlorenzetti said.

~~~
caesarion
Thank you! Again, this makes sense to me.

I have emailed one of them before and said I was frustrated with him. I was
quite respectful and careful not to offend. I got back a couple lines that
conceded nothing and basically said that what I thought didn't matter.

Whatever, I'm happy to try again, I think it's a good idea. If he doesn't take
me seriously then that's something I can tell the dean. If he does, no
problems.

------
lutusp
> What can I do about bad professors?

You haven't provided a critical piece of information -- what you think
constitutes "bad". Without this information, any advice must be based on
guesswork.

Does "bad" mean ignorant of the topic they're teaching, or unskilled in
teaching, or unwilling to communicate clearly, or what?

~~~
caesarion
There were two, and they were 'bad' in different ways. Neither had any talent
for teaching, both were unwilling to lift a finger to help outside of class.
One was a typical powerpoint jockey, and consistently had incorrect statements
on his slides. Anything from popular misquotes (Bill Gates saying no one will
need more than 64 mb of memory) to downright misinformation. Brutal
grammatical errors and typos in EVERYTHING he wrote. Gee, it's almost like he
didn't care. Though it's less relevant, I found both obnoxiously holier-than-
thou; very much the condescending academics.

Anyway, I just want to know where to direct my complaint. What's the most
effective way to be heard?

~~~
impendia
> both were unwilling to lift a finger to help outside of class.

> I found both obnoxiously holier-than-thou; very much the condescending
> academics.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I would urge you to be slower to judgement.

I have developed at least a little bit of a reputation for being
unapproachable and reluctant to help students. Which I find very unfortunate,
because I am quite happy to help students and indeed wish more would seek
help.

In my case I suspect there are two factors at work.

(1) I am always annoyed for an instant when I'm interrupted from my other
work. I do my best to recover and welcome the student warmly, but people pick
up on my very first reaction, and that's not the part I can change readily.

(2) I am teaching in the South, which is culturally unfamiliar. It is
considered polite to chitchat about the weather or whatever before getting
down to business, but I can never think of anything to say about the weather
and typically ask students what's on their mind right away. Unfortunately,
this probably makes a few people uneasy.

In short, there is probably another side to this story. If you endeavor to
understand it, you will have enormously more leverage if and when you
complain.

~~~
caesarion
Gotchya

------
rafeed
Doesn't your university have an online/anonymous course evaluation system? If
it does, fill it out! If it doesn't, every university should have one. No one
will give a shit if you're just complaining to be a bitch, but if there are
serious problems to be found and you're not a single data point, they will
take action, whether it be they remove him from teaching the class or
otherwise. Sometimes action will be taken and you won't know about it. The
best you can do is make sure you back up everything you say with intellectual
comments and actual facts. No one will do anything about a bitter student who
didn't get the A he desperately wanted but didn't deserve.

------
1123581321
You might be able to change your grade, but you won't be able to move the
professor. The professor has at least one of the following:

1\. Tenure.

2\. Credentials not easily replaced.

3\. A lawsuit against the school with threat of more (this was the case with
my worst professor in college.)

You will want to talk to the department chair, and then the student dean or
ombudsman, then the provost or president. They will all have heard it before,
and they may be able to guide you through a specific dispute, but none of them
will bad-mouth the professor in front of you, a student.

------
dmlorenzetti
In undergrad, I had the worst teacher I've ever had in my life. No apparent
sense of how to convey the material, no apparent viewpoint beyond that he was
paid to administer tests and to grade them.

In addition to being a bad teacher, he was a jerk. He took great delight in
the fact that he failed 30-50% of his class every year (as he gleefully
announced first day of class, "I've seen most of you before, and I'll see most
of you again"). He assigned problem sets, but just assigned a grade, so you
couldn't figure out what you had done wrong. He was famous for turning his
office light off during supposed office hours, not answering your knock, and
then skulking out when he thought you had left. He once took points off an
exam because I switched from pen to pencil to do a side-derivation of an
integral.

And now we come to my point. There was no point in doing anything about it.
The powers that be knew he was a terrible teacher. How could they not? Other
teachers would openly joke about it, or listen with knowing smiles if you told
one on "Rusty". For whatever reason-- probably tenure-- he was allowed to
stay. Or maybe they liked the fact that somebody was doing the hard job of
winnowing out each incoming freshman class to a more manageable size by junior
year.

But since it was widely understood he was a terrible teacher, it didn't really
matter. Nobody cared if you flunked his class two or three times before making
it through. And there was a great instant camaraderie to be found with fellow-
students across all the years, just swapping stories about "Rusty".

And you know, a few years later, after I was able to let go of my anger about
it, it at least turned into some good stories. Five years on, it didn't matter
to me, anymore. And 30 years on, my only regret is that I didn't learn the
material better.

In the big picture, you might think about it this way. You go to college to
prepare for your future. An obvious part of that is mastering the class
material. But part of it is learning to encounter people who are terrible at
what they do, figuring out how to step around them, and figuring out whether
you have any power to move them out of the way for other people.

To be more specific, I would start by having an off-the-record conversation
with another professor you trust and like (if there aren't any, then either
you're in the wrong place, or you're doing it wrong). Try to get a sense
whether there's a broad understanding among the faculty that the malefactor is
a bad teacher. If there is, but it's accepted, then just give up. But if
there's some process under way, you may be given the name of a particular
person to whom you should speak-- somebody may be developing a case against
him, and ask you for specific information.

Oh yes, and a lot of universities have an ombudsperson, who is there to help
students navigate the administration. That person generally should be
isolated, organizationally, from the teachers, so that you don't have to worry
about confidences being revealed, or personal politics coming into play.

Good luck!

~~~
ProblemFactory
> For whatever reason-- probably tenure-- he was allowed to stay.

I attended a very good university (by various rankings), and even there were a
few terrible lecturers.

They are allowed to stay not because of tenure (they could stop lecturing and
do research instead) or departmental indifference (the board of studies takes
feedback seriously, and sometimes does "fire" lecturers from teaching
particular classes). The reason is instead that there is nobody else to
replace them.

The great professors teach a class in their specialty which they are most
knowledgeable and enthusiastic about. But after that, there are many small
undergraduate classes left over, which nobody wants to teach, but someone has
to. Given that the other option would be to throw the class out of the
syllabus, bad lecturers still stay as teachers.

One of the deeper reasons is that grant funding and academic careers depend
only on the number of articles published. Being a good teacher (or teaching at
all) is only a "distraction" done out of good-will or enthusiasm for the
topic.

------
elliott99
do they have tenure?

~~~
caesarion
One does, the other doesn't.

~~~
caw
The trick is to get them when they're on academic probation. My school had the
"4 horsemen of the math department" and overall their GPA averages tended to
be in the "square root club" (sqrt of the GPA is higher than the actual GPA).
However, when they were on academic probation it was all A's and B's.

Through a combination of dropped classes, complaints, and bad course surveys,
the school eventually picked up that these guys were horrible.

~~~
rafeed
haha, only at tech.

