Tenure Sucks

Or “Why there should be a mandatory retirement age for college professors, especially when they have a blatant disdain for teaching and/or students”

I got my grades for Spring 2011 today and I would put my overall satisfaction level at an 8/10, with 0 being murderous rage and 10 being this:

In summary, I figured I had a solid A in my C Programming course, but I got an A-.  Precalc was a solid A, as expected.  For digital design, I expected anything between a B and C and somehow pulled an A-.  I can say with complete confidence that the digital design course was taught by the worst professor I have ever had the displeasure of being subjected to.  He has an incredible knack for doing things that are technically permissible by the academic policies of PSU, yet are total dick moves.

Here, in no particular order are some reasons to support that claim:

• “No partial credit”: In his words “You don’t get partial credit in the real world, so you don’t get it in this class, either.”  First of all: No. That’s simply wrong.  You totally get partial credit in the real world.  If your company misses a deadline, you fly someone out to meet with the client, buy them a steak dinner, and tell them you need more time.  At that point, I really doubt that many clients go out and establish a relationship with a new company and lose all the work that has gone into their project.  Furthermore, the entire idea of a grade itself revolves around the idea of partial credit— otherwise only students who got every point possible could pass the course.  Second, all homework assignments were 2 to 5 questions long.  If that didn’t immediately piss you off, then consider this:  missing one question, for any reason, results in a grade of a C or lower.  In the case of the two-question homework, if you miss anything, you fail. Now, call me crazy, but I don’t think that a simple arithmetic error (and doing everything else perfectly) holds the same value as not turning in an assignment at all.  But under that superbly well thought-out policy, they do!
• Asinine scheduling: First, who schedules a class at 6:30-8:30 on Thursday/Friday?  Someone who despises the young, that’s who.  Second, he schedules his office hours during the lab for his class (which is mandatory to attend).  So you can only visit the office hours if you want to take a permanent hit to your grade by missing a lab, or you finish superbly early.  But never fear, because…
• He’s never in his office, even during his office hours! Pretty self-explanatory; the only time I found him during his office hours, he was in a completely different part of the building than he was supposed to be and acted all upset like I was interrupting him.
• Completely random homework:  Nowhere on the syllabus does it say how many assignments there are, what they are worth, or when they are due.  Sometimes they are posted on the course webpage; sometimes they are emailed out at the last second, less than a day before they are due.  So you can’t plan anything.  Did I mention that if you cross one wire or make a simple arithmetic error, you will likely fail the entire assignment?
• Hates talking to students:  Nothing bothers this man more than conversing with students.  When people ask questions during lecture, rarely did he respond with more than a terse “yes” or “no”.  After class, it was a different story… usually there were a few students with miscellaneous questions.  He would frequently get so defensive and irate at even the most trivial questions that he would storm out of the room without even speaking with the rest of the students.  Not that he actually provided any tangible assistance if you could actually speak to him without sending him into a furious retreat… his responses were all variations on “What are you, stupid? This is easy”

Of course, I said all of this and more on my review.  It was pretty scathing, and I wrapped it all up saying that this class was an embarrassment to the department and college alike.  But nothing will change, because he has tenure.  Does that really seem fair?  If only there was a “no partial credit” policy for professor quality…

But all things considered I can live with a 3.8