Profs who cannot speak English

Parents Forum
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<p>@ucbalumunus - Yes, I agree, but not when I am paying $60K/yr to learn the fundamentals of my field. I am there to learn fundamentals not negotiate accents. College courses are not the workplace - great, I can learn accents in the workplace, AFTER I actually learned the fundamentals of my field properly. </p>

<p>I actually have no dog in this fight, but I sure get the issue the OP had. I would not like it one bit if my kid told me the same as the OP and I just wrote a check for $31,000 for the semester for four courses and one of the courses was a dud. That is $7,750 down the drain because we cannot get it back. </p>

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<p>Then go to the local community college or university where the likelihood of finding differently-accented students and instructors is lower than at well known colleges or universities which attract students and instructors from all over the US and world.</p>

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<p>I was once a chem TA (and won a couple of awards for teaching undergrad chemistry). That being said, several students complained about my accent - mostly they complained to me, but a few went to my supervisor.</p>

<p>The only accent I have/had was a Southern one. I was teaching at a Midwestern university. A student told me once that he had a hard time understanding someone who didn’t “speak just like me.”</p>

<p>I have no dog in this fight, either, but that memory makes me smile.</p>

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<p>What to make of it? That I expect my children to learn to work around an accent. In some cases, it might mean switching sections. Might mean spending a lot more time with the material before class. Might mean visiting the prof at office hours with a question or taking advantage of tutoring. My own experience with the incomprehensible prof was a sociologist who, among his other degrees, held a JD from Harvard Law. Obviously, he had lots to offer. His palate, however, like everyone’s, had hardened sometime in his mid to late teens, making some English sounds and sound combinations impossible for him to pronounce. There are situations where students have to bend and not expect everything to be delivered the way they want. Then again, I am not of belief that as the consumer, I am the purchaser of an education and should be given exactly what I want because I wrote a check. </p>

<p>Different philosophy is all. </p>

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<p>@ucbalumunus - Expecting the best from the best at the price the best charges is not an out of this world expectation. In fact, it is the proper expectation. </p>

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Due to high numbers of adjuncts and heavy workloads, community colleges are just as much of a crapshoot. Research is still required.</p>

<p>For the family that can afford 30K+ tuition, a small but mid-tier LAC might be a much better option. No prestige, but there’s a good chance you’ll have really dedicated instructors.</p>

<p>For the family that can’t, the nearest directional university might be an excellent bet, especially if they offer no doctoral degrees.</p>

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<p>DS is a Freshman and has had a couple of professors with accents that were hard to understand. One I think was mostly because he mumbled. There were no other class sections he could jump to. So he just got together with other students and studied that way.Should the kids be put in that position? No, but at the end of the day college is all about learning how to figure out solutions to problems. I do think that if no one is the class can understand the professor at all they should go to the dean at the beginning of the semester. Waiting until finals is too late. The school can’t do anything about it at that point. </p>

<p>“Yes, this is what the marketing campaigns want you to believe, but it’s no more real than the belief that drinking Coke will surround you with really cool friends.” </p>

<p>BTW. I think drinking Coke will surround you with really cool friends.:)</p>

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<p>@ordinarylives stated, “Then again, I am not of belief that as the consumer, I should be given exactly what I want because I wrote a check.”</p>

<p>Yes, I do believe that is the philosophy difference here. I do not get that but if it works for you that great. The idea of my writing a check for something and not understanding or expecting exactly what I am getting for it is completely foreign to me. At least, I understand this as a difference in philosophy, which explains your approach well. Thanks for the explanation. </p>

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<p>Classes are duds for lots of reasons. Empower your kids to navigate their college with an eye towards maximizing their education and you won’t have this problem. I love the parents who post every September that their kid is in a college class which is “so slow it’s repeating material he learned in HS.” Guess what- you can switch into a more demanding class. Or not, and then complain that you wasted 8 grand or whatever it cost you.</p>

<p>College isn’t like a tv show where you get to sit on the couch and someone who gets paid a lot of money entertains you. If a kid is insufficiently motivated to seek out great professors and optimize their learning experience, then you really can’t complain that it’s the university’s fault.</p>

<p>I’ve written before about a college class I took where you had to show up half an hour early to get a seat in the college’s biggest lecture hall or have to stand in the back for the entire lecture. Or sit on the floor. But I think of that professor almost every week- the lessons he taught (the class was on the Shakespeare tragedies but it didn’t matter- his lectures were mesmerizing on basically the meaning of life). I attended a class with one of my kids- Freshman Materials Science- and only understood about 1 % of the lecture but the professor was magnetic and totally in command of the entire lecture hall. And the kids gave him a standing ovation at the end of class. I’ve audited a class at a college near me where the professor had half of us in tears at the end of the lecture.</p>

<p>Your kids can’t sit through college like it’s another episode of “The Bachelor” where you get to drift in and out depending on your mood. And if every single professor is a stinker (which I really find hard to believe) find another college.</p>

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<p>“Should the kids be put in that position? No, but at the end of the day college is all about learning how to figure out solutions to problems.”</p>

<p>Agree 100%. </p>

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<p>@blossom stated, “Classes are duds for lots of reasons.”</p>

<p>But, we are talking about this situation; please do not conflate issues. </p>

<p>Lots of things can be worked around; somethings cannot. When frustrated with the leader of a class that presents a problem all the way down the line for the material. </p>

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<p>My friend’s son in his third year at UCLA orders podcasts of lectures and “deciphers” them later. Seems to have been an effective solution as he’s done very well there. Does anyone know if many schools offer these podcasts? </p>

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<p>Can you reasonably expect a nationally or globally renowned college or university to have only instructors and other students who speak English with the same accent that you grew up with?</p>

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<p>^^ Sorry, I am not paying tuition for my kid to decipher podcasts because the professor is unintelligible. That is not a solution; that is a cop out by the consumer. That professor needs to be able to be talked to and etc. I am not sending my kid to do podcast learning, which he does not need to be in college to do. </p>

<p>And this argument that college is about solving problems - Yeah, but it is not about solving problems that I pay not to have. I am paying for teaching; I expect that to be delivered. </p>

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<p><a href=“Four Out of Nine of this Year's U.S. Nobel Prize Winners are Immigrants”>http://immigrationimpact.com/2013/10/16/four-out-of-nine-of-this-years-u-s-nobel-prize-winners-are-immigrants/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Though I am insistent about teachers being able to communicate with me when I am in a course or any learning situation where I need to learn the materials, there are cases when there is not a thing one can do, There are some who are tops in their field, and carry enough importance that it’s just tough luck if you can’t understand one of those. I went to a lecture where someone famous from somewhere was totally not understandable. Mumbled as well as speaking broken English I did leave a sharp note that a translator should have been present as I couldn’t get much out of what was said, and neither could most anyone. </p>

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<p>How many of these classes were scheduled at 8am? :)</p>

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<p>@ucbalumunus stated, “Can you reasonably expect a nationally or globally renowned college or university to have only instructors and other students who speak English with the same accent that you grew up with?” </p>

<p>OK, you seem to have missed the point of the OP’s post or you are just creating a straw man for which no one in this thread ever advocated. I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you are addressing too singular a point.</p>

<p>Either way, the answer is the issue is not just unfamiliar accents or wanting accents like our own; it is unintelligible accents. There is a difference. </p>

<p>And in some posts, it went a little bit deeper, i.e., of proper use of the English language when explaining something. That compounds the issue when coupled with a heavy accent.</p>

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<p>We are a society that has learned to expect a value and a return on our “purchases.” We also have learned that certain services, when provided by the government, are not measured in ROI. We know we have no say in matters of public defense and public services as the cost are covered by taxation. On the other hand, despite being lulled by the fallacy of free education in the K-12, we also accept to have no voice in the BUSINESS of education. Yet, we have to pay or borrow our way through the tertiary education. Because of the apparent difficulty to “get accepted” we are prepared to accept all the conditions imposed by the administration. In so many word, with our checks come the acceptance that the schools can do (and they do) pretty much whatever they want, including blatantly misrepresenting the quality of the education they will deliver. </p>

<p>Schools do not have great problems in keeping the paying customers at bay. They are able to segregate the parents from the student by insisting that the voice be only the one of the student. Easier to deal with a naive and inexperienced teenager than with a parent! And, let’s remember that it is such a bad “manner” or “improper” for parents to get involved in the “details” of the children education. Aren’t all parents crazy after all? </p>

<p>The reality is that schools should worry a LOT more about the return they give to students. Yes, they do offer amenities such as rock climbing walls and try to become a glorified country club. However, the real test will come later when we, as a society, will have to balance the value of an education against its six figure cost. In simple terms, what could is it to spend 200 or 300,000 dollars to find that what you learned has no value in the marketplace, and that the :“skills” you learned are not that marketable? </p>

<p>Obviously, the schools that now reject more than 90 percent of the applicants will not have to worry much about raising tuition and skimp on the cost of delivering the education, but the lowest levels of service providers will feel the pinch, and the foundation will start to shake. </p>

<p>The education system is at a crossroads. The next levels of demographics will not be as bountiful, unless we look at more and more foreign influx to replace the families who can afford the cost of our own system. In the meantime, the books are balanced by skimping on the cost of providing the services by using lower pay and perhaps abused adjuncts and graduate students for the purpose of allowing the protected faculty to chase the grants and continue to live in their ivory towers. But one day, the gravy train will make fewer stops as families will want a return on their investments and the “grant” money will dry if our general economy does not generate surplusses. </p>

<p>The system works today because the “customers” are transients; they spend a couple of years and move on. Few have the desire to rock the boat or return to challenge the system later in life. But that does not mean that the system is as great as some pretend it to be. It is actually rotten to its core, and this because generation after generation has simply abdicated the right to complain. </p>

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<p>Ok- there is a professor and due to his terrible English your kid can’t understand him. Has your kid gone to the department chair and in a polite way explain that the professor is unintelligible? And then reinforced that visit with ANOTHER visit to the Dean of Students? Total time elapsed- 10 minutes.</p>

<p>Or- like most 18 year olds- every single day, someone complains on the way out of class, “boy I can’t stand that dude, I don’t understand a word he’s saying” and everyone else nods in agreement. So when you ask your kid, “did you try to do anything about it” he can honestly say, “everyone complains about him constantly but nothing gets done”.</p>

<p>I can’t think of a single Provost of any college in America that doesn’t care (deeply) that kids every day show up in a class without understanding the professor. Top dollar, bargain basement, it’s irrelevant. But the administration can’t fix a problem they don’t know about.</p>

<p>I work with colleagues from all over the world, and even though I’m a child of immigrants, there are certain accents I find difficult. But the best way to learn to understand an accent is to hear more of it- not less. So if the kids response to the foreign accent is to stop showing up at class, that means that the opportunity to acclimate to the accent is lost.</p>

<p>But every university has “channels” for dealing with issues like this. But the parents grinding their teeth over throwing out money for a waste of a class is not one of those channels.</p>