My professors in undergrad were all like this and they'd use the breaks to chat to you about dark souls or home gardening or whatever and then they'd make an exam that'd have an 80% failure rate
It's not just high school -> college. I remember in elementary school they were always like "oh you think this is hard wait till you're in middle school"
and then in middle school "oh you think this is hard wait till you're in high school"
And then in high school "oh you think this is hard wait till you're in college"
But each step it felt like some things got easier and others got harder but in general it felt like a pretty smooth progression with no major change in difficulty
Thats actually how school is supposed to work when done right.
Progressive steps that challenge but don't overwhelm and discourage young learners. What they learn is not as important as how they learn. Every education system should strive to teach learner skills to help in their learning. Not just stuff them to the brim with facts and figures for them to regurgitate later.
Meanwhile my college professor was the author of the textbook and workbook that were required materials for the class conveniently sold at ridiculous prices in the college book store and could only be used once due to needing to tear out pages to turn in.
Most of the time those professors make next to nothing from you buying the book. Unless it's their direct commercial product, they're getting screwed just like you are.
I went to college twice. First graduated in 1994 then again in 2011. Both times I definitely had some professors who were insufferable hardasses.
I did sense a shift toward the more easy going professor the second time around, but I also sense it was because I was much closer in age if not older than some of them.
I also did see a lot of crazy drunken behavior both times. One chemistry professor in particular was making gin in his lab and one of his grad students was making ecstasy.
Because your high school teachers had entirely boomers as their professors(or worse if you had super old high school teachers), but most people here probably had Gen x or millennial professors. The university/college environment has changed.
I disagree. I'm pursuing an engineering degree, most of my professors are boomers (In fact, no millennials apart from few Humanities classes) and they are very simple down to Earth people without any strictness my school teachers warned me about.
Even if they are the same generation of teachers, those teachers have been teaching for a long while and have evolved their teachings just as society has evolved.
Weird. I graduated for engineering in 2017 and the majority of my teachers were completely detached from the real world applications, unreasonably strict, uncaring, and ridiculously stringent. It was supposed to be a "good" school. It was just super difficult.
I don't doubt you at all, just that the absolute youngest boomers are 59. It's been a long while since I was in college, but are the professors that old these days?
Not sure why Americans use the word "professor" for any university teacher, but the people with an actual professor degree (two levels above ph.d.) actually were scary. Super self absorbed, too busy to properly teach, hard exams, on one instance you had to buy the latest edition of prof's book to pass.
Regular doctors and doctorants were mostly great though.
You're right, some are absolutely dreadful —I think overall, they're hit and miss. My main tutor in uni was the epitome of the scattery professor archetype, and he was brilliant. He genuinely cared about the teaching side of things, which is probably why his scientific career was only moderately successful. The actual professors I met were either like my tutor, or like what you describe, no midpoints
Did this plus with Apple Pencil I could take detailed notes/highlights on the PDF texts, plus take notes of the lecture slides PDFs directly on the iPad.
A professor at my school was known to sell his own books as mandatory material to pass his class, with exams aimed more at the content of the book than the actual content seen in class.
Two years ago, his last book released with a digital version only. He put it on a platform full of DRMs and is now renting it to students. Like, you pay it for one semester through an online shop, and then you lose access to it. He was apparently also checking during the exams that everybody had a legal version on their computers.
I honestly can't understand why it's legal and authorized.
The professors I had that taught out of their own book said that we could buy it from the bookstore, buy a printed copy directly from them at cost for ~$30 (printed on regular copy paper in a three ring binder), print it yourself or just use the digital copy for free.
It's ludicrous to me that there are professors out there just bilking students for as much as possible. That being said I paid a $300 studio fee for the same class and I still had to buy everything myself.