Why your "cool" professor low-key sucks

Photo courtesy of Priscilla Du Preez via Unsplash

We can all think of that one professor. You know the one: they hate deadlines, don’t have a syllabus and just love going off-topic. They’re just like us! And who can complain? An easy A is an easy A, but was that A worth the tuition you paid to get it? I certainly don’t think so, and neither should you.

Before we assign blame to our university’s “cool” professors, we must be careful that the actual cool professors are not caught in the crossfire. The distinction between these two types of professors is clear. An actual cool professor cares about their lesson plan, their syllabus and their assignments. They care about teaching while simultaneously caring about you, your mental health and your life.

A “cool” professor does not care about any of these things. They are less focused on actually teaching and more concerned with the opinions of a room of teenagers and 20-somethings and the check they get at the end of each month.

A “cool” professor would rather do anything than teach. To a lot of us, this is great. A class with one of these professors can be a breath of fresh air from your regular class schedule, work and extracurriculars. But what do you get out of these classes? In my experience, you get very little. 

Sure, everything your “cool” professor does means less work for you, but have you ever thought about how it also means significantly less work for them? By assigning less, they grade less; by teaching less, they plan less (if at all); and by letting class out early, they spend less time teaching (again, if at all). The “cool” professor is a waste of time. They don’t prepare their lessons, they don’t attempt to keep the class focused, and most of all, they do not teach.

If a professor doesn’t teach, students can’t learn. At face value, this doesn’t seem like that big a deal. Regardless of whether you learned something or not, you passed the class, you got the credits and you’re one step closer to commencement. I’d argue that higher education can and should be much more than just getting a diploma. You can learn so much on this campus in and outside of classes, and “cool” professors hinder your potential.

Disregarding my idealistic view of higher education, “cool” professors also fail to serve those who view higher education pragmatically. When we graduate, we will enter a ridiculously competitive job market. In this market, standing out to employers is crucial to succeed and a “cool” professor does nothing to help their students stand out.

I understand that different learning and teaching styles exist and that the many combinations of the two are not all compatible, but this is not a teaching style – this is laziness. Professors are employees whose job description, according to an Indeed listing for an “Assistant/Associate/ Full Professor of Education” (education is purely used as a random example), includes “teaching undergraduate and/or graduate courses.” “Cool” professors are more concerned with being seen as “cool” to a room of young people than with doing what they are paid to do: teach.

That last piece is important because the money Hofstra University uses to pay these professors doesn’t come out of Jessica Eads’, Susan Poser’s or even David Mack’s pockets. It comes from ours. According to the Hofstra Bursar website, one credit hour costs $1,825. Given that most of the courses at this university are three credits, we can conclude that one class costs us about $5,475. Of course, scholarships exist, but it is likely that, regardless of financial aid, most people’s classes will run them back at least several thousand dollars – several thousand dollars that are not well spent by having your time wasted by a professor without a lesson plan. Seriously, think back to your last class with one of these professors. Was your experience worth over $5,000? Absolutely not.

Even though it may feel like you work for your professors, really your professors work for you. You are – although not directly – paying them for your education, and any professor who fails to deliver an education under the guise of being “cool” is not cool, they are just lazy.