Professor Traits?

Now, some professors are great at their jobs, but why are some professors tough graders, hard to understand, unclear with their class content, and opinionated? Add on understanding & caring as well?

Professors are supposed to teach the content the right way, not matter what, but grading all depends on what they teach and how they want you to answer their questions. I also understand that all professors are different, but they’re supposed to help students succeed in their classes, while the students work as well.

It should be 50/50: The teacher helps the student & the student does their part as well.

Is there a question here?

@skieurope Yes: Now, some professors are great at their jobs, but why are some professors tough graders, hard to understand, unclear with their class content, and opinionated? Add on understanding & caring as well?

Professors are people and different people have different personalities. Many are not formally taught anything about teaching since a PhD is a research degree, which means that the individual’s personality may have more bearing on their style. There are also lots of professors who are required to teach in order to do their research and their heart isn’t really in the teaching aspect of their jobs. Conversely there are professors whose first goal is to teach and they may not do any independent research at all.

Just like there are good doctors and bad doctors, and good lawyers and bad lawyers, and good engineers and bad engineers…there are good professors and bad professors.

Being a tough grader doesn’t necessarily mean a professor is bad, but different professors have different philosophies on grading. Some of them believe that an A is a marker of “hooray, you’re adequate” and they give out As if you do everything they expected. Others believe an A is a mark of true excellence and they give few of them out. Neither is necessarily wrong; they’re just different approaches.

And like GoatGirl19 said…academia is a weird profession, one which most people enter because they really want to be researchers; they are trained primarily as researchers throughout the process of getting their PhD and the years of postdocs they typically need to do; and then they are unceremoniously plopped in front of a class of 100 undergrads and told they need to teach them in order to do the research they love so much. Most get very little actual teacher training in grad school (they may be required to serve as a teaching assistant, but that is not the same thing as training. Few are ever trained in actual pedagogy or how to put together and manage a class. They’re expected to learn by osmosis or something). And honestly, even a lot of professors who really like teaching might not be very good at it, either.

@sta3535 I think you misunderstand higher education. You write that learning is 50/50. HS might be a 50/50 proposition. College is not. For every hour Of class, the students should be doing 3 hours of homework, maybe more. In college the students do more independent learning. Not all professors push students so hard, but some of the best ones do.

If you are having trouble in a course, form a study group, go to the tutoring center, and see the professor during office hours. Ultimately it is your responsibility.