<p>I'd say I'm more steaming, actually. D is in a professional masters program at a very highly regarded university. We pay full tuition. One of her classes meets just once a week. The prof has missed two classes already, and announced today that she would be MIA until after Thanksgiving! There is no substitute of any kind. </p>
<p>I feel like we're overpaying pretty drastically for this class, though D says so long as she's getting the credits, she's getting what we paid for. She doesn't like the class, thinks the prof's lectures are a waste of time, and is happy to just learn from the reading, so from her point of view, the fewer sessions the better. I'm focused on the principle. How can a university allow a professor to skip classes with abandon? What is the value of the masters degree when some of the necessary credits are earned this half-assedly? If you knew what school this was, I think your jaw would drop. The most irritating thing is that it's not my place to complain to anyone at the school--so that's why I'm venting here. I'd also like to know if this is as unusual as it seems to me, or if disappearing professors are more common than I would imagine.</p>
<p>My jaw would not drop. This happens quite often at all kinds of schools. Unfortunately, I 've seen it a lot and students most often take the attitude your DD does. They actually love not having to show up as long as they get through the course with a good grade. So the profs can get away with this. You just happen to have found out about it. Most college kids don’t share this info so readily with their parents. I have no idea how many classes were skipped by my college kid’s profs, for instance. </p>
<p>My one son who is taking one course has had class cancelled twice, and it’s a once a weeker too.</p>
<p>It seems odd. If your daughter is concerned about this, she should see the department chairperson. It is possible this prof has a medical or personal issue to attend to. I don’t think they get “subs” for college courses. </p>
<p>It sounds like this is not an issue for your daughter. </p>
<p>I’d let this one go! No point in being annoyed…or steaming when your daughter isn’t concerned at all.</p>
<p>I suppose if I were paying the bill and this professor wasn’t critical to my D’s research or a mentor of hers, I might complain after grades are in for the semester. The college should at least know that professors are not spending the hours teaching that the college is paying them for.</p>
<p>My daughter has had subs for her college classes. Last semester, one of her teachers missed several classes (teacher had a concussion) and they did have a sub cover some of the classes. This year she had a sub early on in a math class (called me to tell me how incompetent the teacher was.)</p>
<p>Weren’t you equally outraged about your daughter’s professor who was late in getting her letter of recommendation written? Life is too short to be outraged or steaming about these issues. Most professors don’t go awol for no reason. Agree that its probably a medical, personal or family issue. Might be helpful to put yourself in the professors shoes and have a little compassion. The school has a system in place to handle these situations. And your daughter is fine with it. I’d let it go.</p>
<p>My UC professor H was talking about this today. There are many profs in his dept. who go AWOL for conferences and other professional development opportunities (though a month sounds like it could be a personal issue). They show films or get guest lecturers (some great, some not so much) to cover. It’s pretty common. Undergrads don’t seem to care much. </p>
<p>Masters students are motivated and smart enough to learn the material without the professor, so what is your tuition really going for? Is it the 60 minutes of air time three times a week with X prof, or is it a structured way to learn the material and personal access to X prof when it matters.</p>
<p>As to the value of a Masters: It depends on the masters. Lots of them are just credentials, and what you’re really paying for is either the prestige of the program or the personal pull of the professors–both of which you are still getting.</p>
<p>Not necessarily. I had a few subs during my undergrad years and subbed myself for a friend’s social science courses at a community college. With one exception, they all continued with lessons with varying degrees of success. When I subbed, my friend had me draw up a lesson plan to cover the chapters needed for those sessions. </p>
<p>Granted, it’s much harder to get subs for advanced undergrad/grad level courses as the material is much more specialized.</p>
<p>I had a college math course where the instructor was out one day, but a different math faculty member showed up to teach that session (arranged by the one who was out).</p>
<p>@qialah, I really am trying to look at it as you expressed so well. But you know, in structuring the program, it seems the school felt that actual classes taught by a professor were an integral element, so I just don’t get why dispensing with almost half of a course’s classtime is not an issue. The fact that the prof may have a compelling reason to go AWOL may excuse her from attendance, but I don’t think it excuses the school from providing some alternative instruction–guest lecturer, sitting in on a related class, whatever. @jym626, you say the school has a system in place to handle these situations, but D has been told only to keep reading and come back in a month–that’s not a “system”. </p>
<p>And yes, I’m the one who was upset at another prof who played games with a recommendation for months. I’m sorry, but I’m one of those folks who has held a job where I had serious responsibilities that had to be fulfilled, or adequate coverage had to be found, and where failing to do either would have landed me in the unemployment line. So I have no patience for the special snowflakes of academia, regardless of how well protected they are by their fellow academics who have risen to the role of department head or dean.</p>
<p>If she doesn’t feel this course is that important to her program or career development, let it go. </p>
<p>One of our classes missed the prof for the first month and a half (we actually just got her back last week) because she was very, very sick. The department chair filled in but half of the classes were cancelled (also once a week). As it’s a useless class that is just used to check a box so-to-speak, I don’t care. Seems like your D doesn’t either. </p>
<p>You’re free to not pay for the credits if you don’t feel it’s worth your money.</p>
<p>Yeah, well, it’s easy for my D not to care when she doesn’t pay the tuition bill! The credits have long been paid for. </p>
<p>Actually, so far the whole experience has been something of a disappointment academically given the reputation of the school. D was strongly warned by her adviser to take only three classes, as more would be too demanding. Well, she has had very little to do in any of them and could have easily handled two more, much less one–and she’s no genius. Only one of the three had a midterm, and it was a one and a half page paper that required no research. H and I attended law school; it was a demanding three years, with no absentee professors. So D’s post-undergrad experience has taken us by surprise.</p>
<p>do you know what the schools policy is to handle emergency absences? Self study if a suitable faculty member to cover can be reasonable if need be. I dont recall what my department’s policy was in grad school (it was a long time ago) but i certainly know that my mother wasn’t involved in it in any way.</p>
<p>Law school is very different from other grad schools. For one thing, the ABA regulates the parameters of law school education, including minimum number of terms, minimum days of attendance for credit to be granted per courses, etc. </p>
<p>Other graduate programs don’t necessarily have the same requirements. </p>
<p>Moreover, even Masters programs vary greatly depending on program/course requirements. For instance, many terminal MA degree programs in Columbia’s GSAS have a 30 credit requirement with an MA thesis. Others like SIPA’s MIA degree have a 54 credit requirement with some core/distribution requirements depending on one’s specialization, but don’t have a thesis requirement. </p>
<p>Moreover, students in those Masters programs don’t usually have a minimum attendance requirement. With the exception of some “skills classes” like foreign languages & Macro/Microeconomics, most work, whether assigned readings and research/write up for research papers is expected to be self-driven and done off class time.</p>
<p>Many of the grad-level classes also tend to meet for longer sessions, but only around once or twice a week. (i.e. 2+ hours once a week)</p>
<p>Grad school in most fields (excluding MBA and Law) is about research. In my experience, the course work is secondary - filling in gaps in a student’s background.</p>
<p>This is a professional master’s program. Not research based at all. D is supposed to be acquiring a skill set. Again, if a course of study is structured to include a certain number of classes, each taught for a certain number of hours, I don’t see how it can be irrelevant when those hours don’t happen. Was it all just window dressing? I was stunned enough to hear that this prof had already missed two 3-hour sessions out of seven, but to blithely say at the end of class, “I won’t be here for a few weeks, so see you after Thanksgiving”–just boggles my mind.</p>
<p>I would complain to the Department chairman. There is no excuse for this.</p>
<p>“I feel like we’re overpaying pretty drastically for this class, though D says so long as she’s getting the credits, she’s getting what we paid for.”</p>
<p>No, you are paying for an education. And that involves a professional guiding the learning experience. If the university is not holding up its end of the bargain you need to call them out on this. </p>
<p>Another alternative would be to ask for a discount. If they aren’t providing the full class, you shouldn’t have to pay for it. Such a request will get their attention quickly, I suspect.</p>
<p>Mindfully,
It would be the responsibility of the grad student to talk to her Department Chair, or talk to the Registrar’s office or the Bursars office regarding classes or to request tuition reimbursement. It would not be the parents role, even if they had been the source of the funding for the grad classes, to contact these people or departments.</p>
<p>Have to wonder how big of a class this is, and how the other students feel about the situation.</p>
<p>I think you have a right to be annoyed. I don’t know what I’d necessarily do about it, but I understand - you’re paying for a “product” and while the professor may absolutely have a compelling personal reason to take a leave of absence (life happens), I do think the school should have some sort of back-up plan / substitute / switch the students to a related class / etc. </p>
<p>Think about it. Is there any class that you all would take where you’d be just hunky-dory if the teacher didn’t show? If you signed up for 10 weeks of swimming or tennis or piano lessons for yourself, and the instructor showed for 5 and then didn’t show for the remaining 5, wouldn’t you want some kind of refund or credit?</p>