Columbia Engineering Quality of Instruction

<p>I read that the quality of instruction at Columbia Engineering is really horrible. For the engineering students there, how true is this sentiment? I read that you need to learn a lot by yourselves instead of being able to rely to great instructions from these world-class professors. Do you think your professors are good? </p>

<p>How many of your classes are taught by real profs instead of graduate students?</p>

<p>How accessible are the profs outside of class hours?</p>

<p>Columbia student studying CS in SEAS here. It really depends on the professor and class. Some of them are great teachers and great people and others don’t know how to teach. Some classes, I never need to open the textbook, while other classes, I am learning exclusively from the book.</p>

<p>Again, some professors are accessible (“come in any time!”) and others make you jump through hoops to get an appointment. I think this is true no matter where you go. </p>

<p>If you want information on what students think about their professors, check out this website: [CULPA</a> - Columbia Underground Listing of Professor Ability](<a href=“http://culpa.info%5DCULPA”>http://culpa.info)</p>

<p>All of my lectures are taught by professors, but the recitations are taught by grad students. That doesn’t really make a difference in the quality. I’ve had grad students who are better at teaching than the professors they work for, and vice versa. I think what causes some professors to be bad at teaching because they’re really specialized – they may not care about teaching general or intro-level content. Grad students tend to be closer to the content they’re teaching.</p>

<p>Where did you read that?</p>

<p>My daughter is a SEAS sophomore.I agree with thumbtack except she has never had to jump through a hoop to get to the professor…they are all accessible but many are busy…even with international conferences and presentations so they cannot be on campus every day…but she can get to them easily…has even used the internet to communicate with an overseas one this summer.
Like Pumas5, I would like to know where you read that.</p>