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I agree. If that’s the mentality of a Harvard student, I’m glad my kids chose other schools. I send them for more than an academic education. An entitlement attitude is not what I’m paying money for.</p>
<p>If it’s accepted practice and everybody knows it and adjusts their behavior accordingly, then there is absolutely no “entitlement attitude” involved.</p>
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<p>Same thing at Rice. I wouldn’t dream to walk out of a class in the middle of the lecture unless I’d cleared it with the professor ahead of time, or unless my face had turned absolutely green and I was plainly about to hurl.</p>
<p>NC–“adjusted behavior” means teaching-lite. Teaching that can be interrupted, teaching that presupposes some people won’t learn it since they’re shopping elsewhere at the time, teaching that’s contingent. Not what I’d want to pay for or sit through.</p>
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<p>I still have yet to read where “shopping,” particularly as practiced by this student, is an accepted and established practice at this grad school.</p>
<p>Let’s face it…nobody would have even known about this incident if the prof didn’t receive the letter from this student calling the professor out. </p>
<p>I think it is far more telling that a student would be calling the professor out for his behavior than what the professor, himself, did. This generation of young adults has always been treasured to the nth degree to the point where they receive participation trophies for showing up in youth sports like AYSO. Just for showing up. </p>
<p>It may be ridiculous for me to bring it up, but I sometimes sense that some youth today see just “showing up” as being valued. That’s not how it works in academia, nor will it in the future work world. Achievement counts far more than just being there. And being on time counts for all kinds of jobs, doesn’t it? </p>
<p>Perhaps in some people’s viewpoints, he was over the top (but I don’t think so). It was a valuable lesson that may have taught others - either in his class, or on the viral network - that he considered his classroom an environment where real learning is going on which will count on the “test” - the test of life, that is.</p>
<p>My S is at another grad school where there is also a shopping period. The class he shopped meets twice per week for one hour and half. Many of the classes he was interested in meet at the same time. If he had found out upon attending the class that it was not what he wanted to study for the next 13 weeks, he would have walked out of that class to shop another that met at exactly the same time. With my blessing.
There is absolutely no entitlement involved. Shopping period means exactly that: students try out different classes, many of whom meet at exactly the same time.
If you go to a store and try some clothes on and they don’t fit, you are not obliged to buy them just because you tried them on. You try different ones until you find clothes that fit.</p>
<p>“Not what I’d want to pay for or sit through.”</p>
<p>Instead of enduring “teaching lite” for the one week of shopping period…you’d rather pay for and sit through 15 weeks of a class that’s all wrong for you (too easy, too hard, presupposes goals you don’t have, fellow students take it too seriously/not seriously enough, prof is boring as hell, prof is obnoxious, etc.) when there’s another class that you would have loved and gotten more out of, if only you’d gotten to see both professors in action?</p>
<p>Not me.</p>
<p>No, there is nothing wrong in trying on clothes before you decide to buy, but it’s not courteous to be disruptive in taking someone else’s clothes or ripping something off a manaquin’s (sp?) without asking for permission first. </p>
<p>No one is disagreeing with student’s rights in shopping around, it is the manner it’s done that’s in question.</p>
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That’s a much worse analogy than the theater.</p>
<p>Hey, I like my theater analogy.:)</p>
<p>Yale also has a shopping period where it’s accepted practice for students to go to multiple classes during one class period–but professors all expect students to come late or get up and leave in the middle of class. It seems like that is not the case with the business school in question.</p>
<p>oldfort: It was MY theater analogy which Marite criticized. You just joined in :)</p>
<p>I find this student to be completely inappropriate. Not only in their shopping for classes at a school that doesn’t have a “shopping” policy, but also in their self-entitled emailing of the professor. </p>
<p>I applaud the professor, for saying what I’m sure many others would like to have said. If the student takes his message to heart, that could possibly serve him more than the class itself. With that said, the decision to share the email with other students was inapproriate, imho.</p>
<p>As far as the policy of “shopping” itself, I am glad my UG did not allow it. I had writing assignments due by the second or third day of class in most of my classes, if I were “shopping,” by the time I picked a class, I’d already be at a disadvantage.</p>
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I don’t believe we know this to be the case, do we? People are just assuming that there is no policy at Stern (or, equally to the point, no well-established informal practice) regarding “shopping,” because presumably the professor would not have reacted the way he did if there were. But this may be giving the prof more credit for reasonableness than he deserves. It’s entirely possible that there is an explicit or implicit shopping policy but he considers his classes too important to be subject to it.</p>
<p>“without asking for permission first.”</p>
<p>By teaching at Harvard or Yale, you’re agreeing to abide by the policies of the school, including shopping. If you come and go quietly, and you don’t interrupt with questions on material that might have been covered already, I don’t see what the big deal is.</p>
<p>“I had writing assignments due by the second or third day of class in most of my classes, if I were “shopping,” by the time I picked a class, I’d already be at a disadvantage.”</p>
<p>And you don’t think it places you at a disadvantage to have a professor you hate?</p>
<p>You don’t learn enough in the first week of classes at Harvard that it doesn’t matter if you’ve missed it? Then I’m really glad my kids didn’t go there.</p>
<p>Frankly I like the idea of shopping period. As I wrote earlier in this thread, my kid had shopping period at Brown. I don’t think NYU has an official shopping period (my other kid went there). For a school without a shopping period I think you attend the classes you registered for, but you could ask a professor if you could come to the first class for another class that maybe might not have enough room and so on. But I think you would be asking the teacher in advance and not necessarily showing up half way through the class. So, at issue here is whether Stern has a formal shopping period where this type of thing is the norm. It didn’t sound like the norm as the professor wasn’t expecting this. For a school without a clear cut shopping period, then I think it behooves the student to ask for permission to sit in on a class they are not registered for with the hopes of adding/dropping, and also coming to class on time. If there is an issue that the class only meets once/week at the same time another class the student is shopping, then the student might ask the professor in advance and work it out. For schools that have a formal shopping period, this works differently as it is expected the students may visit classes before formally committing to their schedule of courses.</p>
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<p>Exactly.</p>
<p>Hanna–can you really tell you will “hate” a class from one half an hour of dropping in? And can one really expect to negotiate an entire college experience without getting through a class that one finds one doesn’t love? Heck, read the online syllabi of the prof, talk to friends, look at rating pages, figure out what you need to graduate, and then deal with the dang classs. What more is going to by a drive-by visit that can’t be learned through some diligent research?</p>
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<p>Sometimes you can. I spent half an hour in a class once and realized the professor had talked for 30 minutes and said nothing. I assumed the rest of the quarter would be the same so I took another class that I loved within the first 30 minutes of being there.</p>