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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thank god for Rate my Professor.

My nephew was starting freshman year this year and a bunch of recent graduates had 1 piece of advice for him at his going away party ... do not take a class from a professor like OP.

1. Check Rate my Professor before registering
2. The 1st class, feel the professor out, if he is like OP DROP.THE.CLASS. You can't out IQ a bad professor, you can't teach yourself the class, drop.the.class. There is no getting around a bad arrogant professor, just drop the class and take an elective that is open. It gets better when you are in your last 2 years, ask friends who can teach, who is good.. take their classes.

Hey Professor care to share your name so we can look you up in Rate My Professor?[/quote]

RatemyProfessor often ends up favoring easy profs--and often adjuncts who are young.  What a waste of resources for your kids to take classes from the people who are not the top in their field and who may be nice and understanding but have lower demands.  I guess if your aim is to get through school with the least amount of work possible.[/quote]

+ 1.[/quote]

+2[/quote]

Hmm, not my experience with Rate My Professor. From what I can tell by the occasional glance, at my kid's LAC the difficult profs often have very high overall ratings (overall and difficulty scored separately.) Academic rigor and nice profs are not mutually exclusive, as least there. As for taking classes from someone who is tops in their field, that can be an interesting experience (I went to a big research university), but I think the academic priorities for undergraduate study are to master the fundamentals of a field, learn to learn, and develop a passion to learn more. I think these objectives are more compatible with a prof who prioritizes undergrad teaching first and research second. In my experience, the profs who make it clear they don't want to be in the lecture hall with undergrads don't instill the same desire to go beyond what's needed to get an A, and usually aren't the ones grading exams or papers or answering questions in office hours anyway, so are a step removed from the actual learning to begin with. I also found certain researchers in some of the less black and white fields were less likely to adequately cover theories that conflicted with their own.

My apologies if I misunderstood PP. Also, none of this is a criticism of OP.[/quote]

It's a difference at LACs though where there are typically no adjuncts and relatively few professors who are all focused on teaching.  There you might get a handle on quality --but even then, I think take it with a grain of salt.    I think though at a research universities, there are a lot of adjuncts who make a class fun, depend entirely on their ratings, but won't have a lab you can work in, write meaningful letters of recommendations, have as good of insight into where the field is going etc.  The reality is that the low pay of adjuncts mean they are less likely to update the course, less likely to be as meaningfully involved in the field, and with each passing year if they are not finding a full-time position they are getting further away from their knowledge base rather than building it.[/quote]

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