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Comment by alisonkisk | Hacker News Reader

The best college teachers are he really grad students / postdocs with social skills / the personality for teaching. They are still fresh on the material, energetic, and know some of the applications.

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Exactly, my best "professors" were not, technically "professors".. a few were basically grad students, but the best were paid instructors who came from industry to teach. I'm sure perversely they were also the worst paid & treated.

Agreed. I went to a four year University in the U.S. However, I decided to take an accounting course at the the local community college. The “professor” was a tax accountant by day. He taught at night because he wanted some extra money.

I learned more from that “professor” than most of the rest.

Exactly my experience. Often the professors held us undergraduates in open contempt.

One in particular said straight up on the first day, “I do not like teaching. I am required to do this in order to do the research I want to do.”

I guess I at least appreciated his candor, it gave me insight to what many of the other professors felt but never said out loud.

…and actually he was in the better half of instructors (there was an admittedly low bar with a few excellent standouts).

Exactly. The joke was our department also paired us with a faculty advisor. When I met with him and mentioned my intended career track, his immediate response was to go talk to the career center. That was it, he was done with me.

Categorically the field I work in industry have no idea how to teach. They are good at what they do for work but not at engendering any kind of critical thinking of self learning in students.

And haven’t had their hope and will ground down by the academic system yet.

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