Reply #90: As a professor teaching this generation....

[Nazgul35]

I can tell you that today's students are more concerned with how easy/hard professors are. At my university, there is a website that students can rate teachers for other students who are considering what profs to take...

As far as the liberal/conservative stuff, I tell my students up front that I am a liberal...and emphasis that it is important that they know where they get their information from...it also helps that I am pretty fair when it comes to the expression of views...I only step in if the info being espoused is nonsense...I take time to stress the scientific method...get them to think critically, which considering how the public schools only train our students to be test takers is getting harder and harder each year...

And in a research university, the college doesn't really give a damn what the students think about profs....most low level courses are taught by grads, and the university only cares about how much research money/publications you get each year...what the students think about profs really doesnt factor much into the university's formula for selecting faculty....so these students havent really done much of anything.....

We should be more concerned with the crappy HS education that these students get....it really is abysmal...and it's all down to this nonsense about testing our students.....i've only seen one method of testing if individuals are cognizant human beings and that was Socrates method....how do you quantify that?!