In the last week, I have been focusing on settling a number of matters before I go east for a few days for the Horatio Alger ceremony. I’ ve been working on my speech, which will contain lessons learned during my lifetime and which are important for ...

Calculus wasn't too bad

Calc 1 didn't give me any problems, I took it as an AP course in high school. Calc 2 I just couldn't grasp, because like James I learn better when the math has a physical manifestation, and either what they were teaching in Calc 2 didn't have that, or nobody could show me what it was. In the end I was memorizing equations, and memorizing which ones should be used when, without ever understanding why.

And let's try to keep it at 4 rather than 5 or 6 if we can.

With everybody and their dog having a 4 year degree now, I'd recommend she get a masters if she can, it will make her more competitive in the job market, especially for aerospace engineering. Taking some elective business courses couldn't hurt either.

But then again, I've only got a 2 year degree from my local CC, so what do I know.

Knowledge, advice and treatment are the respective products. The products are dispensed by teachers, lawyers and doctors.

Trust me, if she's not learning, she won't be there for 4 years. In fact, she'll have to do well to stay there past the first year. And let's try to keep it at 4 rather than 5 or 6 if we can.

What, exactly is a student paying for if not the aggregate credit hours taught by a qualified faculty which results in a degree upon satisfactory performance?

You're paying to acquire the knowledge. The teachers are there to convey the product to you, and the degree is a certification that you attained it, but the thing of value that you are gaining from the transaction is the knowledge.

When an associate (employed) attorney at a law firm renders advice to one of the firm's clients, the client is both the "customer" of the firm and of the associate attorney.

Yes, but they are not paying to consume the attorney, the firm, or even their time, but rather the information that they possess. In fact, the consumer would probably rather occupy as little of their time as possible to get the desired amount of information.

Similarly, a patient in a hospital expects a certain level of performance from the physicians which are authorized by the hospital to practice there.

Same here, the consumer is not there for the doctors, they are there for the treatment. A good doctor is someone who provides good treatment, not someone who provides a good experience.

I am paying $100K+ for her to be in front of those professors and to use the facilities available there.

Yeah, but I'm guessing that if she sat in front of those teachers for 4-6 years, used the facilities available, and then left with absolutely no knowledge of aerospace engineering, you'd be kind of unhappy, no matter how personable her teachers were. In the end, you're paying $100k for her to learn how to be an aerospace engineer, not for her to hang out with nice teachers.

what am I buying when I attend a lecture by someone "famous", take a golf lesson, or seek advice from my attorney or accountant?

You are either paying for the information, or for the experience. In the end, though, a bad experience may detract from it, but a lack of information undermines the whole point. It's better to have an accountant with good information and a bad personality, than vice versa.

Oh, and I don't think her degree will be a fashion statement. I'll ask her tonight about that and see how she reacts.

Aerospace engineering certainly isn't a fashion statement, I certainly wasn't trying to say that it was. In fact, I was pointing out that the a college education should be the opposite of a fashion statement. For what it's worth, I hope she gets a good education _and_ enjoys it, but Calc 2 is a bitch, just a warning.

What, exactly is a student paying for if not the aggregate credit hours taught by a qualified faculty which results in a degree upon satisfactory performance? Part of that product is a certain basic level of instruction from the school's faculty.

When an associate (employed) attorney at a law firm renders advice to one of the firm's clients, the client is both the "customer" of the firm and of the associate attorney. If the attorney screws up, the client can go after both the attorney and the firm which employs him/her.

Similarly, a patient in a hospital expects a certain level of performance from the physicians which are authorized by the hospital to practice there. The patient has the same expectations for the hospital's employed staff. I suspect most people consider the hospital's patients to be analogous to the hospital's customers.

That being said, I have for the past 2 years dealt with one of the math teachers who is just a piece of work. I mean the guy shows up for class late, takes class time off to pursuit personal interests (like fishing in canada, or softball tournaments in Vegas) and our class time suffers because we aren't being taught lessons, and are expected to self teach the lessons to ourselves.

I say "WTF!"

I am not paying tuition for a teacher and a required class where I have to teach myself. My only recourse besides talking to the Dean of Students and the Dean of Gen Ed is to fill out those student surveys and truly make my voice heard. If teachers can't handle the criticism (Even when it wasn't warranted and the students are clearly retaliating) then get out of the kitchen!

These student surveys help when it comes to informing whoever is reading these things that "Maybe we have a problem here".

Coincidentally, my math teacher cancelled a class 2 weeks ago because (as he told us) he was being interviewed at another college for a math job and was eventually given that job so won't be here next year.

Hooray for my college, but I am set to move on to my 4 yr.

That was 2 crappy years that students were given a shoddy math education and that should never happen.

For the record, my daughter is going to study Aerospace Engineering, so yes she, or more correctly, I am paying $100K+ for her to be in front of those professors and to use the facilities available there. Her 12 years, actually 12.5 years if you count kindergarten, of public education have hopefully helped prepare her to begin a rigourous engineering curriculum. Believe it or not, I think she may be well equipped to judge how well a professor has accomplished the goal of teaching her.

My daughter will be consuming one of a finite number of spots available for incoming freshman. The limited number of these spots induces competition for them which to a (un)certain extent drives the price. Admittedly, though, if the school were not offering some nice, ahem, discounts, it would cost a good deal more than it is.

As for my daughter (and indirectly her mother and I) not being consumers of this tuition, what am I buying when I attend a lecture by someone "famous", take a golf lesson, or seek advice from my attorney or accountant? Am I not a consumer then as well when the service I am buying is essentially of the same nature as her education?

Oh, and I don't think her degree will be a fashion statement. I'll ask her tonight about that and see how she reacts. I know she does expect it to lead to graduate study and a career working on space applications, which is what I believe I am really paying for. And yeah, I think it's worth it.

You can also weight it by the grade they received in the prior class, so if a student passed with a C, gets an "average" rating from their current teacher, that means that the previous teacher's ability matched the current teacher's expectations. If the student received an A in the prior class, but only showed average knowledge of the material, then you would know that the prior teacher was performing below expectations.

I agree with you. The critiques should be serious and fair. Will the professors be serious about the critiques or will they discount them before they are written?

There's plenty of boorish behavior on both sides of the lecture hall. Students may end up with a 'F' for such but what happens to the prof? Usually nothing.

Don't flatter them too much, it's a job like any other and students have a right to critique them.

True, but they should be critiqued on what the are supposed to do, which is put knowledge into your head. Teachers are not Customer Service Representatives and the BigBox Education outlet. They're not there to entertain you, or keep you happy, or even get you to buy more of their wonderful product.

Sure a teacher's interactions with their student can make the process more or less enjoyable. But think of them like doctors, bedside manner is a plus, but not what you pay them for, and it shouldn't be what they get promoted for.

Actually it's not quite like any other job. After getting tenure some of them couldn't give crap about teaching and can't get fired for their shortcomings. The system needs reform.

Yes, there are things that students (and their parents) are entitled to because they pay tuition, but the notion that when the student is in the chair in the classroom, the notion that they are "customers" is simply flawed. "Apprentice" may not be a perfect term, but it is closer to what the professor-student relationship is than is the service provider-customer model.

And my favorite story from James' experience with student evals was when several students complained on his evals that he didn't get their grades back fast enough in a general studies American Government class--yet the exams where scantrons, and he had them graded and posted to the web in less than an hour after they had taken the course. Experience like that (and it happened, it seemed, every semester) does jade one to the efficacy of the process.

And the students are paying the professor directly, but that would be like saying shoddy work by the bookstore clerk could be excused because the customer pays the bookstore and not the clerk.

To bring this back to teacher evaluations, it's like evaluating the quality of a book on the work of the store clerk.