by Gail Kerry

Created on: August 28, 2008

Community colleges do a far better job of teaching subject matter than universities and are therefore a much better choice for college freshmen. Professors in community colleges are hired and evaluated based on their teaching ability, unlike university professors.

Universities have long had objectives beyond teaching. At one of several universities I attended, teaching performance was only assigned a one-third component of the total evaluation score given to professors. I learned this after questioning the university staff as to how/why they would place a professor who barely spoke English and was mostly incomprehensible to the students, as an instructor of Economics. The staff objected that while Dr. X was not good at conversational English, his writings were world-renowned.

That didn't help me understand this Professor and I had no choice but to drop the course. Many students remained in class and used this course as a sort of nap time. They couldn't understand him either but the course was a requirement in their chosen curriculum. They didn't complain about him and he didn't complain about their napping during class. They had a sort of mutual understanding. I can only assume that most of the test questions were in the book.

In some universities, professors are not even hired for their teaching ability and instead are recruited because of their ability to bring attention and notoriety to the university. Their value is based on their ability to write papers and books which invariably assist in fundraising, grants and enhancement of the university's reputation. In fact, some university courses are actually taught by assistants, interns or graduate students, even though the class is technically under the direction of the university professor.

I did have some very fine, notable instructors in the universities from time to time. These classes were typically quite large (300 or more students), and the exam questions were formatted in such a manner that even if you knew the material backward and forward, you might still have trouble with the exam. The exams are designed to ensure that a certain percentage will fail and are quite tricky at first, until you master them. If you do encounter a problem, getting help or being granted a meeting with a big name professor is unlikely. Most of them are interested in the top one percent of the students only.

I had a Chemistry Professor at another university who informed us (all several hundred of us), that he was only interested

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