No, really, why would you wait? Don’t I have profs who go over the syllabus and start lectures during the first class meeting? Shouldn’t profs want the students to know what they’re getting into before the classes begin?
Isn’t this the truth? Is the fact they’re teaching this semester such surprise to them? Don’t I have travel plans to finalize, that had the prof answered my emails I could already have finalized? If they can’t be bothered with that, wouldn’t posting the syllabus be the least they could do?
Sure, isn’t it better to let them know what they’re in for so they can figure out if they should drop another class to keep yours because it’ll be more interesting/useful?
Why not both?
Maybe because I don’t know until the middle of the fist week of classes how many students I have in the class? And the way I deal with homework and exams differs if I have a class with 12 students or one with 200?
Don’t I have profs who go over the syllabus and start lectures during the first class meeting
Isn’t this pretty standard?
How can the syllabus help with this? Doesn’t your school have the academic calendar and final exam schedule set and easily found on the school website or catalogue?
Can I ask if this was a state university? Because in my experience this kind of thing is most common at private research universities, but will usually get sorted at schools like mine before the person gets tenure?
Doessn’t the structure of the courses I’m taking make your points invalid? Does anyone in my program actually have finals, isn’t everything project related and don’t the specific due dates, particularly for presentations matter? Have I even ever had a final exam in grad school?
Wow, really? What’s up with your school that they don’t set the class sizes/enrollment limits before registration?
Did @OtherMichael just give me a legit like, or an “other” like?
Why don’t Lego have all their bricks in stock?
How am I supposed to build these with only 95% of the parts?
Wouldn’t it have been nice to know I couldn’t get all the parts before I bought the instructions?
Because “upper limit” does not equal “limit”? Because students spend the first week “shopping” for classes, so enrollment isn’t stable until the end of that week? Because we have only half the faculty we really need to cover our classes properly, so we never know which sections are going to be closed and have the student shifted to other ones, greatly increasing their size? Because at least one or two (usually temporary) faculty don’t show up as expected at the beginning of the semester, so we have last-minute shuffling to do?
How hard should I be working on the syllabus when I might discover on the first day of classes that I will be teaching an entirely different class (as has happened more than once)?
[quote=“critter, post:3403, topic:76536”]
Doessn’t the structure of the courses I’m taking make your points invalid? … Have I even ever had a final exam in grad school?[/quote]
Isn’t grad school a whole different kettle of fish? Aren’t you presumed sufficiently capable as to be able to handle an unstructured/open-ended semester schedule?
Aren’t I though, and isn’t that part of what I love about it? Didn’t I mention that presentations are a specific concern? Won’t it be hard to give one from Bosnia?
Didn’t I miss that, until now?
Wasn’t it sort of a little bit of both, because he was a new hire (this was his first class at the school) from a large state school but to a small private one? Didn’t we assume his wife was probably the real hire, valued highly enough that he was allowed to have a non-TT adjunct position at the same school?
Why wouldn’t your school know those numbers, or at least within a small margin of error?
Don’t you have to have the textbook(s) ordered in time to be in the bookstore before the course starts? Wouldn’t you need to know the number of students for that, as well?
So basically the students lose a week of learning at the start of every semester? How can any real teaching happen that week, if no one has the required textbooks or is able to do any research/homework/studying toward the goals of the course?
Don’t you teach the same or similar courses each year, so you have at least 90% of the syllabus already in place from the last class?
Doesn’t this frustrate you, to have such a disorganized administration?
Is that awesome or what? What is this emotion I am feeling right now, am I sad for you?
Then isn’t it likely that the problem will sort itself out (especially at a small school where teaching is usually well-monitored),. albeit too late for your kid?
Why wouldn’t your school know those numbers, or at least within a small margin of error?
Because while they (or rather my department) know roughly how many students will want to take courses at each level, we don’t know how many faculty there will be to cover them in the fall? Isn’t this a side effect of over half our tenure track faculty retiring, and all the replacements being on short-term contracts that aren’t funded until the last minute (if at all)?
Don’t you have to have the textbook(s) ordered in time to be in the bookstore before the course starts? Wouldn’t you need to know the number of students for that, as well?
Don’t we send estimates, and don’t they usually order at least 30% of the number we send them?
So basically the students lose a week of learning at the start of every semester?
Isn’t this an unfortunate reality at many schools today? Haven’t I seen it at all the (many) places I’ve taught over the years, including (for example) the flagship campus of your state university?
Don’t you teach the same or similar courses each year, so you have at least 90% of the syllabus already in place from the last class?
Yes for lower-division courses, but don’t I teach an extremely wide variety of upper-division and graduate classes? Wouldn’t this be a boring job if we always taught the same classes? And does knowing the material or even the text in advance help with the structural issue of not knowing how large the class is, or when I’ll be free for office hours, things that affect the syllabus?
Doesn’t this frustrate you, to have such a disorganized administration?
Don’t you get used to it, after enough time? And adopt coping strategies, like not releasing a syllabus until the first week of class?
Does every statement have to be a question in the post?
don’t we have some minimal sort of rules in this game?