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Comment by eltonlin | Hacker News Reader

Hey sorry to hear your experience. First to clarify - it varies - the classes (usually required CS classes), usually had overcrowded Office Hours, but there were many classes in math & physics where OH was very available (and I did very well in as a direct consequence, though I was a CS major).

If students complain about availability, but never show up despite everything you did, then that's their problem. What people say and do is, unfortunately, not the same.

And I'm sorry to hear about the strange incentives for not being able to report to the department about cheating.

Initially when I started the app, I was very anti-teacher. But as I learnt more and talked to more teachers, I realized, man teachers also have their fair share of indignations from the system.

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> realized, man teachers also have their fair share of indignations from the system.

Oh for sure. I think many would be surprised how political (not in like government terms) a department can be. It can vary dramatically within a school too. My partner's department is very functional while mine seems to be continually shooting themselves in the foot trying to dislodge the previous bullet hole. But when I started, it was very functional. I can certainly say that very few professors are happy with the system and I think it is failing everyone involved. This is why in my main comment I suggested that there is real opportunities to disrupt education in a very traditional sense. Because the truth of the matter is that we started treating academia like a business and the results were probably what anyone could have predicted: metric hacking galore. It's a big part of why students themselves cheat in the first place. Then try being a grad student where you are doing half of your advisor's job, leading other students and writing grants, while trying to also do course work (first few years), TA, publish, and research. It's a lot. Everyone is overworked.

There are plenty of great advisors and departments. But unfortunately these tend to be the exception instead of the norm and appear to becoming rarer. Or maybe I've just gotten more experience. Personally, my PhD has left me with a very bad taste for academia, and I know a lot of others at other schools who have the same feelings. What's also surprising to many outside of academia is that my dream is to spend my days researching. But they cannot understand how academia nor industry provides me a environment to actually do this (fwiw, academics usually to understand).

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