Professors that start their first day of class by saying something along the lines of “most of you won’t pass my class”, should not be professors.
As students, we are paying thousands of dollars a semester to attend classes and professors that teach like that make the cost an even harder pill to swallow. At almost $500 a credit hour, students deserve to learn from someone that actually wants to teach.
There are a few different types of professors that fall into this category, the one that doesn’t teach at all, the unavailable professor that is here for some other reason than teaching or the professors that feel they shouldn’t have to help their students.
The professors that don’t teach are the most chaotic for the sole reason that you rarely have any type of foundation for your learning. They typically use a third-party source like Macmillan, ALEKS, McGraw Hill or WebAssign that “teaches” you and then makes you do homework directly on it while charging you a few hundred dollars for the privilege. These professors are always incredibly disconnected from what their students are learning to the point I don’t feel most of them even know the material we’re expected to learn.
Then there is the professor that is here for another reason than teaching. Whether they are working on a research project, a book, a program or what have you, it’s typically the reason they ended up at a university in the first place. They are usually so distracted by their own track of achievements, the students they should be teaching are being left behind.
Finally, my personal least favorite, the throw you in the deep end professors. There are very few specific occasions where this is a valid argument like 400 level classes that are specifically designed to test your ability in an area, however, if I am being told by a 100-level science professor that questions are discouraged, that is a fundamental problem. One of the foundations of learning is the ability to ask questions, and without that, what’s the point?
From personal experience, the professors that do this are just don’t understand that not everyone learns the same way or that it may take one
Professors are by definition paid to teach us, not paid to just babysit a class or assign things through WebAssign and just expect us to figure it out. As students, we are intentionally seeking post-secondary education and are paying top dollar for it. The knowledge we are here to gain should not be gate kept from us by professors that seem all too happy to do just that.