It is my firm belief that the current way that college courses are set up force students to do much worse than they ordinarily would. Many majors are considered "weed out majors" because they have apathetic professors that don't care about the students understanding the material, which leads to a difficulty in the future of their academic career. If this current system were remedied, or students were supplemented with outside resources the well-being and average GPA's of students would increase.
Imagine with me, a world where youth are encouraged and are given every opportunity to succeed. What if instead of feeling beaten down by an education system, we felt empowered. I call this: Utopia.
It’s apparent to me that universities set up certain majors to best benefit professors. Many majors are organized to have the best, most experienced professors in the upper-level classes–which sounds good in theory until you realize what this means for lower level classes.
Let's look at math classes for example. It makes sense to have tenured professors teaching the most advanced classes, but putting complete newbie teachers in charge of teaching introductory classes forces people to not succeed from the beginning of a course.
So in classes that require you to understand the foundation of the material in order to go to the next level, people are being screwed over by having a shaky foundation.
Case and point: Calculus 1 teachers have little incentive to try hard to give students their best, and that explains why Calculus 2 is the most failed class at UNC.
I am not alone in this way of thinking, and it is exacerbated in STEM majors where the introductory classes are crucial to understanding the later material.
Yes, I am well aware that a Twitter poll is nowhere near a reliable source, but it helps to illustrate my point so I’m including it anyway.
People don’t feel supported by their school, and it shouldn’t be that way for students–especially with the current cost of education. I and my classmates deserve to feel appreciated and worthy of a dedicated teaching staff instead of the apathetic ones we have. I am well aware that the highly educated professors at many institutions have no desire to teach introductory classes, but by saving them for the hardest classes, you aren’t allowing for people to fully grasp the foundational material.
What if instead of feeling disregarded until you can get to a hard enough class, you felt fully supported from the beginning? What if when you walk into your first class for your major freshman year, you have an educated person who cares that delivers the material? Imagine being surrounded by people excited about the material they’re learning. In this utopia, there is a place for people to receive the help they need, and it’s not the “math help center,” which has refused to help people on the basis of “it's against the honor code."
Students need a way to learn that is accessible, and in “weed out,” majors it is necessary. I and many of my fellow classmates have had to hire private tutors in order to have someone explain it in enough detail for us to understand it. This utopia I present is in stark contrast to the sad reality of a classroom where the professor’s only concern is to get through their lesson plan.
So, my utopia is a place where we don’t “save the best for last,” or make excuses for why upper-level professors “deserve,” to teach whatever they want. Professors should teach where they’re needed, and until young professors can catch up, they should be helping at the most basic levels.
If our colleges actually wanted us to do our very best, they would ensure that professors had the incentive to actually teach well at the most rudimentary levels, and give us access to resources that we can use to better understand the material. College is hard enough without feeling like no one cares about you until you’re in a hard enough class.
