<p>All I know is my DS wanted to learn, say, Chemistry, but the department was so busy using it to weed out the pre-meds they forgot that not everyone is on that track. They ended up curving the heck out of the class because the vast majority of students were set to fail the course. They actually designed the course to flunk students. How is that teaching the material? The point of college is to go there to learn, not to become a statistic. </p>
<p>He had one prof (in another area) who refused to follow the departmental line and use the recommended departmental book, and he wrote his own exams. My DS learned so much in that class. His friends who were stuck with the “departmental” profs hated the course and were not as proficient in the subject as my DS and the other students in his class.</p>
<p>There is no benefit to teaching to the test - if the prof even knows what’s going to be on the exam. His math prof (a new prof at the college) followed the departmental syllabus, and his students ended up with terrible grades because the prof that wrote the exam stepped outside the syllabus. Needless to say, the exam prof’s students did great since he taught to his test while the other students of other profs following the syllabus ended up with lower grades.</p>