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If you go to your doctor and say "I have a cold, fix it" then you are going to be disappointed no matter how good your doctor is. ("With proper treatment, a cold will clear up in a week. Without, it may take as much as seven days.")

If you go to your teacher (at whatever level) and say "I want to become expert in your field without either working very hard or having a great deal of natural talent" then you are again going to be disappointed no matter how good the teacher is. ("There is no royal road to mathematics.")

If you go to your doctor and she says "I know what's wrong, and you can fix it by taking these drugs and doing these exercises", and you don't take the drugs or do the exercises, it's hardly the doctor's fault if your condition doesn't improve the way you want it to.

If you go to your teacher (at whatever level) and say "I want good grades without actually mastering the ideas and facts" then yet again you will be disappointed.

In your little list of facts, you may notice that step 3 says "The teacher fails to significantly improve the student's understanding". But improving a student's understanding is a two-person job. A student who does nothing beyond turning up to most of the lectures is not likely to do well in their examinations (exception: in some fields, some outstandingly able students may be able to do this, but by definition most students are not outstandingly able). And if that's what the student does, it's not reasonable to say that the teacher is failing at their job.

> A student who does nothing beyond turning up to most of the lectures

Then adjust the cost of the course to reflect that reality. If the teacher is admittely doing zero work to help this student, then why does it cost so much. Teachers in this case are QQing all the way to the bank. This is just a smoke screen thrown up to distract from the fact that these students that don't work hard are being defrauded left and right.

Lecturing 30 students for 18 weeks at $9,000 per student would make me fanatically motivated to give them the knowledge that they requested. Give half to overhead, and that is almost half a million per year. That buys a lot of work from a single human.

9,000GBP, this article related specifically to English and Welsh universities. A lecture earns around 40k GBP annually, a senior lecturer might get up to about 60k GBP.

So, to be fair, that £9,000 per student is clearly not going to the faculty. Do you think a lecturer teaching a 300-person class is making some £2.7M/year?

> “Hey student – all I’m asking for is a little respect, seeing as how much you pay makes no difference to my wages, yet the level of support I am forced to offer you takes up 80% of my time despite the fact that teaching still only equates to 33% of my workload. But I’ll be in the office until 9pm anyway because if I don’t publish two papers by the end of the year, I’ll be fired”.

There are people getting rich off of the university scam, but it isn't the faculty. And the people who are getting rich are clever enough to stay hidden and let the students think they're overpaying the faculty.

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-31715020

You're radically overestimating how much teachers are paid. I lectured at a Canadian university and was paid $7k per semester long course with about 100 students. I could maybe handle 2 courses per semester (after some time to get my lectures dialed in), which works out to $42k/year for an engineer with a graduate degree.

If anyone is QQing to the bank it's not your lecturer.

> Then adjust the cost of the course to reflect that reality.

It's already built into the cost. If the teacher could get you to learn, without any further effort on your part, a class would cost way more than $9,000—probably closer to $90,000.

>Teachers are supposed to be experts at matching students with explainations of concepts.

I thought teachers were supposed to be experts in their field of study that have a desire to pass that knowledge on to those that are interested. Not everyone will have the capacity for learning those things. As an example, I love art but despite years of trying both books and classes, I just cannot bring the images in my mind into the physical world. I'm a responsible enough adult to accept that this is my shortcoming and not the fault of my teachers. I simply don't have the hand-eye coordination necessary to produce the things that I can imagine.

>[edit] The attitude of teachers astounds me

The overly-privileged, entitled attitude of the younger generation astounds me. You have to work for what you get. The world does not owe you a living. You have to understand that you are not a special little flower that is more important that everyone else. That said, neither are you just another cog in the machine unless you choose to be so. It is perfectly possible to be an individual without being a disrespectful, self-important boor. Why is it okay for you to inconvenience your professor, who likely has a life outside of work, but it is unthinkable for them to schedule anything that inconveniences you. What makes you more important than the other 500 students they are teaching this semester?

The thing to understand is that these students clearly don't inherently care for the class. The graduation requirements list it, and either they care about the subject matter and can learn it in better quality and better time on their own, or they don't and they're not paying to learn.

Somehow in between the "younger generation" and the previous one, it became impossible to get a middle-class job without a college degree. Doesn't really matter what you learned, but it's a basic expectation that you made it through those four years.

And the world does owe people a fair chance at a living. To the extent that that involves a useless college degree because people want the credential, yes, the world owes them that.

Frankly the academics should just admit that their own incentives don't include teaching, give students easy exams, and get on with research. There's no reason for them to do otherwise, and if they try to be better at teaching than they need to and run into conflict, they're the ones who are acting entitled.

> it became impossible to get a middle-class job without a college degree

Not true, I did fairly well as a software engineer after dropping out of school, and having finished my degree it hasn't made any difference in my day to day (except people think I'm a decade younger than I actually am based on the date on my resume).

> And the world does owe people a fair chance at a living. To the extent that that involves a useless college degree because people want the credential, yes, the world owes them that.

The world owes you exactly nothing.

Since you are nitpicking my meaning of "impossible," let me rephrase. It is generally far more difficult, for most people, to get a middle-class job without a college degree than with one, and it generally does not matter if they learned job-relevant subject matter in that degree.

The fact that you, personally, did so is simply an anecdote.

I have no degree. I attended exactly two of the three semesters of college for which I paid. I make a very nice living running servers and writing code at my company. Before this, I have worked in construction and as the guy under your car in one of those quick oil change places. I've been an outboard mechanic. The world owed me nothing. I have made my own way and earned everything that I've gotten. I respect hard work and I understand that I will sometimes fail. I learn something from every experience.

I'm sorry but your attitude here that the world owes you _anything_ just goes to further prove my point. Life is not fair. It never has been and never will be. You can sit there feeling sorry for yourself because the world treated you unfairly...for which will get you absolutely nothing...or you can go out there and do whatever you need to do in order to make it through this day so you can try for a better day tomorrow. The onus is on you and not the world. You want something better then show the world that you will work for it.

Two things come to mind for me in this:

1. The "younger generation" is going to have to learn to take responsibility for their failures as well as successes. There seems to be a real problem with the former.

2. To use the words my father repeated to me almost daily during my teenage years when we worked together: "If you aren't going to give it 120% in whatever you do, don't even bother getting out of bed."

I'm similar to you - only went to University for 1 year when I was 20 just to get on a placement, where I showed enough aptitude in programming to get taken on permanently. That year was awful, being taught by professors who knew less than me, and would only teach COBOL as "that's what you'll be using for your entire career"

My partner is the most intelligent woman i've met, and she's very senior at a decent Uni in England - she teaches staff and PHDs how to teach, and gives keynote speeches around the world in this.

Even SHE knows the University system is fucked. For her, it won't be replaced by MOOCs, though they will be part of the mix.

Her Uni have got a (semi-secret) plan to amalgamate professional quals like a Cisco CCNA for example into the credit path for a 'normal' degree. The idea, long term, is to have learning as a lifelong thing, as opposed to something you do when you're young and can't be arsed. Eventually the government would give credits to people in work who've paid their dues so they can do courses relevant to them and universities would be open all hours.

I don't think it'll work out, but we can only dream...

It's funny how much has changed. Today, we are learning python and Java because python and Java are all you will ever need.

> I am paying for a self-professed expert in pedagogy, whose has spend devoted their proffesional [sic] life to the art of shoving information into arbitrary people's heads

That's not what you're paying for. They're not experts in pedagogy, they're experts in their field of research.

If you don't understand the course materials it's your job as a student to rectify that, either through self-study or seeking help. Clearly the student in question didn't understand the course materials well enough compared to his peers to receive a top-class grade (in the UK 70%+ is a first, the highest grade you can get).

I am not only talking about university here. This attitude pervades the entire structure of education all the way down to primary school.

What I am advocating here for is different system that actually allows students to purchase the level of education that they want. Ideally the cost would be based on how much work the teacher has to do to shove the knowledge into your head. If a student is struggling, then they can either choose to pay more to learn it, or drop out. The current system is not a market for knowledge at all. There is no continous supply curve for students to change pricing. There is a huge economic inefficiency here, and I am sure that the surplus is not being captured by the students.

You can always hire a tutor if your having trouble self-driving your own education.

In fact, this already happens for most primary and secondary education in the United States. Given the level of segregation in our cities and suburbs, massive inequalities in school funding, teacher training, and facilities essentially amount to an apartheid system of education. Families who can afford to move to better school districts or send their children to private schools often do.

From the article "teaching still only equates to 33% of my workload".

Teaching at universities is virtually never their sole function, and rarely the majority of their function. At UK universities most such staff take the job for research and have to teach as a condition of that job.

It's true that university staff vary in their commitment to teaching and I can remember many who felt that teaching was beneath them and a distraction from what they actually want to do. Unfortunately, this is the nature of academics, unless you have distinct research and teaching roles, this won't change (and that's another endless discussion).

Valid point for university, but I have seen this same attitude all the way down the chain to primary school and secondary school. Maybe teachers in primary school are apeing the attitudes of college professors in an attempt to capture the greater social prestige associtated with being a researcher, however this motivation buys no forgiveness in the hearts of all the students that then pay directly for this ego trip.

Paying directly for primarily or secondary schools is very rare in UK, the vast majority of teachers are paid indirectly via taxation. With my own children I've found the quality of primary school teaching to be excellent given they start on around 20k GBP here and work very long hours.

You seem to be confusing grade school and university.

The lecturers and professors you will find at university are not experts in pedagogy, and the vast majority will never have claimed they were. They are experts and leading active researchers in their chosen field. They have devoted their professional life to studying and extending the state of the art of knowledge in their chosen field.

If you want to study a subject at university level, it's likely that some of the material that you would learn at university is not yet in published books, because the only people who currently know the material are the researchers at your university who just discovered it, and are trying hard to find the time to write a book on it, around furthering their research, writing papers for journals (which they need to do, and which books do not count towards) and giving however many classes of lectures a week that they've been told to get on with, without a vast amount of training.

In grade school, the material you will learn are basics of subjects that have been understood for a while, and written and refined in books some time ago. The material can be understood by people competent (but not necessarily expert) in the field, and can therefore be passed on, or spoon-fed, by people who are expert professional teachers. This is required in grade school, because students in grade school are not yet adults, and generally don't yet have enough self-discipline and self-awareness to put in the work now for later benefit without being shepherded the whole way.

When you get to university, it is presumed that you are mature enough to have the self-discipline and self-awareness to figure out partly for yourself how to learn from the people who are the most advanced in the world in your chosen field, rather than the best teachers.

That presumption seems to have worked out pretty well for modern universities for the last 500 years.

Maybe university is not actually the place you want to be.

I seem to have missed the part of university where we were learning things not yet in published books. If you think that undergraduates are reaching the cutting edge of research as part of their reguarly scheduled syllabus, I don't know what to say to correct this impression.

You seem to forget that not every university is Stanford, where there are true leading experts that students can engage with beyond the context of class. There is no global university level. The trope of students conducting cutting edge research as undergrads is based on a few outliers who are widely publisied. The experience for the vast majority of us down in the trenches however is limited to the simplified model of physics that is safe for undergrads. Basing your expectations for a university education on the behavior of the top %0.001 of students is like expeciting your minivan to handle as well as a Grand-Prix racecar.

My question to you is then "Why the hell did society decide to co-opt researches into passing on the information, rather than create a new class of specialists like society has done for every other field of human endevor?"

> I seem to have missed the part of university where we were learning things not yet in published books.

You had an access to the teachers, who are all supposed to be active, well-connected, bleeding-edge researchers. You had a fair amount of their time allocated for you solely and more of that time for your class.

Now, it was 100% your responsibility to extort all the bleeding edge knowledge from them, to loiter around their laboratories, to get a summer job as a lab assistant, and all that. This is what universities are for.

> like society has done for every other field of human endevor?

What? When did it happen, exactly? The master-apprentice model is still alive and kicking in most of the professions. There are no alternatives to it. Dedicated pedagogues can teach you to read, write and count your fingers (on one hand). The rest must be passed on by the real professionals.

> You had a fair amount of their time allocated for you solely and more of that time for your class.

Talking (and not teaching) to 200 ppl over 2 hours is not time allocation to "me". That is something I could watch without the presence of the teacher. There is no added value in this case compared to any MOOC class.

University courses should follow the possibilities what technology has to offer and focus on really teaching. The rest can be watched at home.

> Now, it was 100% your responsibility to extort all the bleeding edge knowledge from them.

Yes, 18 yrs old kids have the power and character to chase and force teachers without a backfire. You might be such character, but not everyone is such persuasive as you, yet they can be a great scientist.

> Talking (and not teaching) to 200 ppl over 2 hours is not time allocation to "me".

I'm not talking about the lectures (they're useless unless most of the time is spent on Q&A). There is always a certain amount of time teachers must spend with their students individually, upon request. Smart students use that time, the others may not even know they've got a right to harass their teachers occasionally.

> There is always a certain amount of time teachers must spend with their students

Not at my university, or at any university my friends attended. In many cases, you could just simply piss off the teachers asking tough questions or pointing to errors in their thinking.

> If you want to study a subject at university level, it's likely that some of the material that you would learn at university is not yet in published books, because the only people who currently know the material are the researchers at your university who just discovered it, and are trying hard to find the time to write a book on it, around furthering their research, writing papers for journals (which they need to do, and which books do not count towards) and giving however many classes of lectures a week that they've been told to get on with, without a vast amount of training.

I'm curious what universities work this way. MIT's CS program very much does not, at the undergraduate level.

I can think of one graduate-level class by Adam Chlipala (the semester he was hired) where there was a bunch of material that was not yet in a published book, but was in an unpublished book freely available on his website. I didn't have time to learn it properly then, but I'll probably go back to the online book now, because it is one of the best places to learn this.

I can't think of any other classes, and certainly not any undergraduate classes, that were like that. All of them taught from well-worn textbooks, or from a curated set of published research papers. Maybe I just went to a poor-quality university?

> I am paying for a self-professed expert in pedagogy

Just in case you did not notice, this thread was about the universities, not the nurseries.

A university teacher can be a stuttering weirdo and a jerk, and still be very valuable. Actually, many of the best teachers I know were weirdos and jerks, and it took a lot of effort to extort the knowledge from them.

> If I just wanted a chance to learn, then I could go to the public library.

In many cases that's the best option anyway.

But you'd also need facilities, laboratory equipment, and, most importantly, an access to likely minded people who can share their learning experience with you and bully you into learning more.

> then I will take my money elsewhere

Please do. Stop bothering the university lecturers with your nursery expectations.

> Teacher blames student for failing to grasp their perfect explaination that works perfectly well for themselves.

This is where your argument falls apart. It might be something wrong with the teaching if all of the class is failing, but usually the most vocal complainers are exactly the slackers who are behind the rest of the class, who do not really deserve to be there at all, no matter how much they're paying for it.

There's a gaping hole in your argument where you don't acknowledge that a student has any responsibility.

Example situations where the low grade is absolutely the student's fault:

- The student doesn't go to class - The student falls asleep in class or otherwise doesn't pay attention - The student doesn't understand a part of the course and doesn't do anything to clear up their understanding (you can't honestly expect a single explanation to give all (often) 150+ students 100% clarity) by emailing or speaking to staff - The student disrupts the rest of the class and is removed from it - The student doesn't turn in papers for avoidable reasons

It's similar to a doctor. If you go to a doctor and don't follow instructions or give them correct information, they can't do their job and fix you. It's not their fault if you don't take the drugs they prescribe you.

You are absolutely right, but much like having a personal trainer, or a doctor who tells you to eat/exercise right, you have some responsibility in the matter.

Moreover, if it were the case that less hand-holding helped produce a more market-valuable graduate, then you would rightly expect this.

A lot of incentives in education are woefully misaligned, in my opinion. And I can't really see any simple obvious fixes, but entitlement to knowledge in the form of understanding on the part of students is not one of them.

As Euclid is to have said, "there is no royal road to geometry".

There is only so much you can be "taught". In fact the classical approach to lecturing is not the most effective way: the passive student & active teacher roles are ill-suited to achieve a good learning outcome. Research shows that active and self-driven students learn the most but also that they benefit from the mentoring qualities of being able to ask for help and guidance. There's even a word for this: "the inverted classroom".

As other commenters have mentioned, you aren't acknowledging the student's responsibility. This is especially true in a university setting. You aren't going to leave university with everything you need to know to jump right into a professional job. The entire point of university is to give you the foundation for teaching yourself what you need to know to do your job in your chosen field.

I think I agree with your general sentiment even if I might disagree with how you're presenting it. I think too often professors view class as simply something standing between them and getting back to their research, much in the same vein as staff meetings or similar.

That being said, from the article, a student expecting a professor to meet with her at 8 PM is ludicrous. Office hours are office hours. If they are "inconvenient" (which, best case means she had class those two hours, or more likely she didn't want to wake up early enough to be there at 9), make an appointment and ask the professor when another reasonable time to meet would be.

And calculating that the professor "owes you" $160 in education is a great way to be told to either show up to office hours or figure it out on your own.

This is a really interesting point of view, even if I disagree. What you basically have proposed is that the person who has responsibility for the end result of learning is the teacher not the student.

I certainly never thought about it that way in either undergrad or grad school, but I am struggling to actually come up with a good role based counter. The best I can come up with is that learning, generally, is the result of an individual's capabilities and motivations not the teacher or material. So the implications of your approach are a generation of people who feel as though the effort that they put in for learning must be less than that of the teacher and that seems to me to be a disaster waiting to happen.

What I have seen is that there are many different good explainations of material. However some of these will result in faster uptake by me. The only way the economic transaction of education makes sense to me is to acknowledge the potential of passive learning (books, internet), but to recognize the desire to speed the process. While I can pick up a book on abstract algebra and work through the problems myself to gain understanding, I know that I can pay someone who already is an expert in abstract algebra to package up the mental abstractions for me. Its like using compression for webpages. You could transmit everything uncompressed and the web would work just fine. However we want to save time and money so we compress, delivering content faster and using less bandwidth. The only justification I can see for teachers to exist in a free market is that they speed the process of knowledge aquisition.

Now I support fee schedules based on how much work the teacher has to do the shove the knowledge into the head. If it will cost $X for a fast student, I don't have any problem with the market pricing that same knowledge to a slow student at $X,XXX. Teachers should be compensated for their expertise. However setting the market price is up to the participant, and a contract to deliver the good should be binding. If teachers were bound to deliver the information, then I see average prices being higher becuase of the lemon effect, but that is an entirely different problem than what we have now.

You're describing a tutor, not a teacher. It's the equivalent of blaming the customer service rep when something their company made broke.

You're describing a tutor, not a teacher.

I had the same thought, but what practically is the distinction? The only thing I can come up with is scope, but even then, there are plenty of tutors that teach a fairly wide range of a topic like a teacher would. I have seen plenty of Calculus II tutors but never a integration by parts tutor.

Well, yes, if the CSRs treat the product as their own and tell people that their job is creating the product, sure we'll blame them!

The faster that university professors admit that degrees are not a product of the professors, they're a product of the administrators and accreditors and the social system that expects people to have degrees, the faster they'll get out of the way of blame.