<story><title>Dijkstra: “You will be treated as grown-ups”</title><url>http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD12xx/EWD1256.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nugget</author><text>Why do we celebrate this theme of Professor as omnipotent, benevolent dictator of the classroom?  My last year in school the combined cost of tuition, books, and room and board hit $40,000.  At what point do you become not just a student, but also a fee for service consumer, with an appropriate set of expectations for some level of responsiveness and customer service?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>GuiA</author><text>See, that&amp;#x27;s one of the problems I have with outrageous tuition: it creates dumb expectations from students.&lt;p&gt;In most European countries, your education is quasi free, and as a result students don&amp;#x27;t complain about professors not providing &amp;quot;customer service&amp;quot;. You go to the university to learn from some of the most eminent figures of your field, people who have devoted their life to it, and you do as they say. If you&amp;#x27;re not happy, well you can just leave. And sure, some of them are quirky or do dumb stuff, but you&amp;#x27;re 19- you&amp;#x27;ll live. And TBH, even the professors I had in college who exposed me to the most BS are nothing compared to some of the BS I&amp;#x27;ve experienced in the real world, with clients&amp;#x2F;bosses&amp;#x2F;etc.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re going to University of Phoenix, sure, feel entitled to some degree of &amp;quot;customer service&amp;quot;. But if you&amp;#x27;re studying under Dijkstra, just suck it up and soak in as much as you can, even if  the &amp;quot;customer service&amp;quot; leaves to be desired. Again, you&amp;#x27;re 19- you&amp;#x27;ll live.&lt;p&gt;Sorry, this is a bit abrasive, but I&amp;#x27;ve been on multiple sides of the equation (student in EU university, student in US university, TA in EU university, TA in US university), and the students who say things like &amp;quot;I pay tuition, I&amp;#x27;m a paying customer, professors have to do X&amp;#x2F;Y&amp;#x2F;Z for me&amp;quot; are rarely the ones at the top of the class (and rarely aspire to do so).</text></comment>
<story><title>Dijkstra: “You will be treated as grown-ups”</title><url>http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD12xx/EWD1256.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nugget</author><text>Why do we celebrate this theme of Professor as omnipotent, benevolent dictator of the classroom?  My last year in school the combined cost of tuition, books, and room and board hit $40,000.  At what point do you become not just a student, but also a fee for service consumer, with an appropriate set of expectations for some level of responsiveness and customer service?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ColinWright</author><text>The service you seek is to gain knowledge and abilities.  There is a body of evidence to suggest that you cannot gain that knowledge and experience without making considerable effort, and that the role of the instructors, be they professor or lowly TA, is to give you the opportunity.  As such, getting easy-to-understand explanations, perfectly produced and complete notes, and attending entertaining lectures, is not the best way of achieving the stated goal.&lt;p&gt;Many lecturers are indeed less than ideal, and many instructors similarly fall short, but just because the students give them poor ratings, and complain about work loads, that does not mean that they are not being given exactly what is needed to achieve their stated goals.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t get physically fit by listening to work-out videos and watching people jog in the park.  You have to go out and do it yourself.  People hire personal trainers to devise a plan, and then to shout at them to make them stick to it and to put in the work.&lt;p&gt;Maybe that&amp;#x27;s a good analogy.  Maybe to get good at math (and programming) you actually need to put in the work, and true learning is born from the effort and confusion you go through before enlightenment.</text></comment>