<p>The concept of a weed out class is arguable. Some would argue that the poor quality of teaching/difficulty of such classes are a product of the huge class size, not a product of some sort of malevolence.</p>
<p>Weed out classes are more likely a product of the following:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>They are usually classes that are early on in the sequence of classes. Most of the students have never seen a university-level engineering or technical class, and so don’t really have their mind trained for them yet. The complete shock that many of them experience leads to the classes being much harder than they otherwise would be.</p></li>
<li><p>The classes, being earlier, are often (not always) fairly basic concepts, and as such, get pushed off on newer faculty who aren’t very good at teaching yet. That could easily affect the quality of the class. I have experienced this first hand when I took thermodynamics. I then dropped it and took it the next semester and had a wonderful experience just by getting a better professor.</p></li>
<li><p>When older professors get stuck with those early classes, they often are unmotivated to give a rat’s behind because they know that half the kids in the room are going to drop out of engineering anyway. More often than not, those same professors are more than willing to help out in person, because the students who reach out are the ones who care and who are more likely to succeed in the long run.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I never implied it was a conspiracy. The facts are the OP is a undergraduate student at a large, public research university where the main order of business is, well, research. Undergraduate education is secondary. You know this. </p>
<p>Like you said, faculty will happily help those who help themselves. It seems to me the OP’s professor is simply culling the herd.</p>
<p>These two statements contradict one another. The second clearly states that you think that the professors are intentionally teaching the classes poorly in order to weed people out.</p>
<p>Sure, research is king at research schools, but they don’t completely neglect education. If they did, they would have no reputation in industry and the state legislatures who govern the schools would be pretty angry.</p>
<p>Baylor has less resources than UoT, yet Baylor academic faculty seems to care more about its undergraduates than UoT academic faculty. Of course, these are two isolated cases and they are not representative. Food for thought though.</p>
<p>I never implied universities “completely” neglect education. You know? For a graduate student you are quite dense, Boneh3ad. [Tangent] How many hrs/day did you invest in the university library?</p>
<p>Honestly, I only went to the libraries when I absolutely needed to, as in for research projects. I don’t believe I ever went there for any other reason than to look up sources for projects.</p>
<p>We can certainly do that, but I still think it more likely that the OP is overreacting to his own shock at the difficulty of college classes and that said incident is more likely to be a mental lapse on the part of the professor than an intentional misdirection.</p>
<p>I think the OP is overreacting to the tests that include material not covered. I think he is right if what he claims about his/her biomedical-conference loving professor is true. It would not surprise me since I waste/invest/spend well over 12hrs/day in an academic environment (work and study) and have witnessed first-hand several d-bags who are insulted, INSULTED, at the notion of teaching undergrads (ironically, undergrads actually get the good deal; some graduate advisors treat their graduate students like indentured servants).</p>
<p>Well it is true. How can a professor just walk in a lecture 25 minutes late and say “Opps I left that biomedical conference a little too late”
I’m not complaining about a curve. I would like a curve in this class actually… I’m just one of those kids who likes to actually get a decent grade without a curve in case their isn’t one</p>
<p>Unless they were holding a major biomedical conference in Austin at the time, I doubt he was late because of a biomedical conference. Most conferences like that are held in large hotel and conference centers around the country. Still, it is absolutely reasonable if he were to pick the conference over a class. Those conferences are far less frequent and are one of professors’ lifelines when it comes to keeping up to date with other research and networking.</p>
<p>Would you skip a class for a career fair or information session? Probably 90% of the rest of the student body would consider doing that. That isn’t any different.</p>
<p>The only way you could possibly find fault with that is if the professor didn’t tell people he would be late or absent and didn’t get a grad student to cover for him.</p>
<p>How would you know boneh3ad? I was in the class when she walked in late and clearly told us “Sorry I’m late I was at a BME conference in downtown”.</p>
<p>Then said conference happened to be in town. That isn’t a regular occurrence. Those conferences are usually yearly and often change locations. They are also very much a priority for professors. There is absolutely no way anyone would expect a professor to skip a conference in favor of teaching a class.</p>
<p>The only thing this prof should have done is called a grad student to cover for her or just cancel the class for the day.</p>