I recently decided to return to school to pursue something more interesting, and really more useful for now and the hyper-technical future. I was successful enough in business that I could minimize my consulting practice and go back as an adult to really pursue my interests. My first time around I got a degree in political science. Flipping through the catalog I looked at the ones that really interested me (computer science, engineering, etc.) and they all required math. Dreadful math. Polysci didn’t require any math. I enjoyed politics (at the time) and so I said why not. Thus began 4 years of university. I met a lot of professors. Some good, a very few great, but most relatively useless.
Now that I’m back as an adult at one of the top universities in the nation, a relatively young one at that, I can take a better perspective on what makes a good professor. I differentiate professor from teacher here in that people who come to college come because they’re either strongly encouraged to by their parents or they have some inkling at a better life. If someone doesn’t want to be here then they don’t have to be. Kids in the K-12 system have to be there and often, I’ve found, the teachers don’t want to be their any more than the students. I contend that public education, that is K-12, is just as much the students willingness and ability to learn than the teachers ability to teach. A great teacher can’t teach a kid who doesn’t want to learn any more than a bad teacher can teach a kid who really wants to learn. In college it’s different. There’s a level of mutual engagement, but it also means that the otis is on the professor more to convey the complex information to keep a wavering population engaged.
Recently a great professor and friend of mine passed away. He was relatively new to the professor job, having spent 20 years in the Navy before getting his MA and PhD. He was a great professor. Another professor asked me shortly after what makes a great professor, what are the skills and attributes that these great professors combine and provide? I told her that in my opinion it requires a professor who engages the students, bridges the gap between student and lecturer, and makes it all relevant to the now. The professor has to personalize things and convey it in an engaging way, else why have the professor at all – wouldn’t a tape recording work just as well?
I’ve had a programing professor who didn’t use a computer, hand wrote everything on the board, and stated quite frankly that nothing was guaranteed to work. He was abysmal and the dramatic drop in attendance in his classes showed it. The professor I mentioned who passed away, he connected the learning to his own experiences in life, provided tangible materials such as lecture notes that we could grasp on to and bridge the learning. He used humor and a level of direct engagement that showed he was interested in how we were learning, what we were learning, and what aspects of our lives we brought to the class.
I think a lot of the problem with the professorial system is tenture. That abysmal professor had been teaching for 30 years. He was obviously bored and interested in doing other things than teach. Ironically it’s the non-tenured professors in my life who have been the best. The ones who knew they had to teach, and teach well, or they wouldn’t make tenure and such wouldn’t have a job. The bad professors have mostly been tenured. That raises many other questions about what makes a good professor - classroom experience or real world experience; consequences to inadequate performance, etc.
What makes a good professor, in my opinion, is someone who has not only a well of practical, real world knowledge they can convey and relate to the students, but also a vested interest in being in that classroom and giving the extra effort to help people understand. The tenure system promotes laziness and it gives zero incentive for a professor to improve themselves in the classroom. Some will always be good professors and will always do their best in the classroom, but most I believe will get lazy over time and lose the drive and motivation that put them there in the first place. If you ask professors what they think most will side with the tenure system, under that mythical idea that without tenure it’s impossible to retain good professors. This is like asking a drug user if we should increase the punishment for marijuana use. No one wants to kill their own golden egg or prohibit the possibility of their own rewards in the future.
Yet we’re pumping kids out of college left and right who are only marginally better than when they came in. We’re forcing them to take courses that they don’t need from professors who have no other job potential in life but to teach an arcane or, at best, a hobby skill. This fosters the system of a professor every subject, then tenured, and before you know it you have a university filled with professors who get paid whether their students learn or not, who get to reap the benefits of a good job with good benefits, without a vested interest in the system of learning.
Posted by thedailydrinker 
