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Comment by beojan | Hacker News Reader

And that's why just going to the cheapest university is a bad idea.

My mid tier university has a fundamental problem where the lecturers aren't even hired to teach, they're hired for research. And since the university can't get enough American grad students to stay and be research slaves they bring in grad students from the third world. Then these grad students are required by law to teach a certain number of credit hours to conduct research and there you go. The result is every general class is poorly taught by people who can barely speak English and don't care about teaching so you end up teaching yourself or failing.

CS courses generally don't have this issue but they do have a large amount of mediocre professors. Reason being anyone talented in CS can make 2-3x the salary out in the real world and so CS grads rarely stick around to teach.

The saying "those who can't do, teach." is as relevant as ever.

This was exactly my experience 20 years ago. Shame things haven’t changed.

This hasn't been my experience in CS, the research professors teaching courses were interested in teaching, the only thing the grad students do is grade assignments/exam papers.

> Reason being anyone talented in CS can make 2-3x the salary out in the real world and so CS grads rarely stick around to teach.

I would call bullshit on that, money is not the only thing that motivates people to do things.

I can speak from my own experience; even though English is my first language, I entered as a grad student and TA in a public US university as a foreigner, since my undergrad degree was done outside the US. After they determined that I was capable of speaking understandable English, they actually made me an instructor of record for a 300-level course that none of the active faculty was available to teach.

It was quite an experience.

I think the problem is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the "mid tier university". The university is a research institution and not a vocational training institution. Students who wish to learn a trade (plumbing, computer programming, etc) can attend one of many fine (and possibly less expensive) public and private vocational training institutions that have relationships with local businesses that hire graduates.

Students who wish to explore topics and solve problems at the limits of current human knowledge generally enroll at the University. At these institutions, undergraduates have an opportunity to work in research laboratories and graduate students, postdocs and faculty have the responsibility to obtain grant funding to keep their labs operating. As a courtesy, occasional classes are taught (to get students up to speed on basic theory) but there is an expectation that students are self-driven and can figure things out on their own (hence its ok if the TA is not a native English speaker, etc).

TLDR: If you want to learn a trade, go to vocational school. If you want an education, go to University.

The professors or graduate students hired to do research aren't the ones who end up teaching wildly incorrect material. That happens when you hire people specifically to teach, and don't pay them very much at all.

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