Students spend thousands of dollars to attend college and certain standards are expected from universities with the hefty sum of money students take out in loans.

One such standard includes professors and their willingness to teach students. 

USI, among other schools, does not meet these requirements. Students are suffering because some professors don’t care about their classes. The university in particular does not seem to hold these professors accountable. 

If the school does not care to provide us with professors who want to be here and are passionate about teaching students, then it is hard to imagine why we are giving the university our resources.

Indiana University is another school that The Washington Post has covered lately because of professors who are unprofessional and lack the drive to perform their jobs at a level acceptable for students. This is an indication that universities as a whole need to do better.  

If it were not for students yearning to acquire a higher education, universities would not be here. 

Businesses often complain they cannot find graduates qualified to do their jobs because they did not learn much about what they were studying.  

The lack of involved professors contributes to this dilemma. If they are not worried about having class or discussions, how do they expect students to learn?

Many teachers say, “It’s in your book,” when they don’t want to take the time to go over examples and teach students. If it were as easy as reading books, there would be no need to stay at universities and fork over the money to pay them. 

I’m not saying every professor should teach everyone at the exact same level because that is impossible. Passionate professors work hard to give their students every chance to learn and even then some students may still struggle in class. 

Everyone learns differently and some classes come easily to some more than others. Students have a responsibility to seek extra help and dig deeper into the material. 

Professors’ responsibility, however, is to teach and energize their students. The university’s responsibility is to analyze its faculty and evaluate their performance.

Many students have expressed concerns and warned fellow students about the professors to avoid. A professor in an online class of mine even emailed us stating they would not be teaching us and to not expect much help from them.

Online classes consist of more student responsibility, yet we are still paying to have an instructor.

One fellow student I spoke to explained their experience with a math professor and said, “the professor that I had for this class was not encouraging at all. Whenever I missed problems on my tests, this professor would leave comments like ‘no’ and ‘really?’”

It would be helpful if students could access the course evaluations students give at the end of every semester. 

The website, “Rate My Professor” comes in handy, but is limited. Some reviews date back several years and may no longer be relevant. 

Seeing anonymous reviews at the end of a semester can give students a better idea on how the professor is currently performing. 

Out of a sample of 341 professors rated on the website, 155 of them scored lower than 3.5 stars. The university should pay closer attention to these reviews and the way their instructors interact with their students. 

Professors should not be allowed to blow off their classes and behave unprofessionally without any sort of consequence. Students are the ones who suffer in the end.