Uneducational Crisis Pt. 1: Human Factor

If there's one thing worse than a bad programmer, it's a failed programmer turned professor. I don't know how common this is in United States, but here in Chile you see it a lot. And try as I might to pretend that I don't care, it's actually driving me nuts. Quite understandably, too: I could be doing interesting things instead of trying to guess what the latest in a row of brain-dead dilettantes wants me to write as a solution to his "ingenious" exam exercise.

On the other hand, this way I get the first-hand insight into the problems with education in CS field. Some of these problems, I suppose, are local and owe their existence to a variety of economic, political and technological factors, but I'm convinced that some are universal. Nonetheless, I shall not discriminate: I'll go over them all and a plague on both their houses.

This article, the first in the series, deals with the professors themselves.

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood...

Over the time, I learned to distinguish two types of CS professors:

1. The Geek. This guy knows his stuff, because he actually works in computer industry and does his job well. Sometimes he is motivated by a genuine desire to teach new generations, but often he is teaching just to make a bit of money on the side or to lend a bit of academic weight to his name. More often than not, he is wonderfully inept at imparting his knowledge to the students, because he's a computer geek, not a teacher. All in all, he's guaranteed to be relaxed, easy-going and flexible. Mostly harmless.
   
2. The Prima Donna. Who needs knowledge when you have Orwellian authority? This is the guy who will typically boast at least 20 years of experience in computer industry, who has a prominent consulting company and is certified by Carnegie Mello [sic] University. His classes are pure poetry. Vogon poetry, to be precise.

The Prima Donna is the type that does the most damage, so he merits detailed dissection.

Spot the Prima Donna

A Prima Donna professor is rather easy to recognize. He will exhibit a combination of several seamlessly coupled behavioral patterns from the following list:

• Smugness. Usually one of the first signs that you're dealing with a Prima Donna is that self-satisfied attitude aimed to make you feel that some day, with lots of effort and a divine intervention or two, you'll get to be as good as this guy.
• Hand Waving. One of the most valuable techniques for explaining the unknown is the hand waving. To those who came to learn, it seems that the Prima Donna is making a herculean effort to explain the concept and that they are simply too dumb to understand him.
• Stating the Obvious. A good presentation slide will show only the key concepts and leave the explanation to the presenter. A bad presentation slide will show all the information in a pile of text you won't bother to read. In both cases, the Prima Donna will repeat the contents of the slide, with lots of Hand Waving, and you'll be left no wiser than before.
  
• Exasperation. Sometimes a braver student will ask the Prima Donna to clarify something previously "explained" by Hand Waving and Stating the Obvious. If the Prima Donna is not in the mood to do it all again, he'll inform the audience that he explained it several times already.
• Selective Hearing. If there's a student willing to press the issue despite the Exasperation, the Prima Donna might choose to answer another student's unrelated query or to simply go on to the next topic.
• Condescension. You never know when you might get lucky: sometimes a Prima Donna will even give away unearned points when correcting an exam. But don't worry, he will make sure to inform you about it.
• Objective Subjectivity. He might be teaching you how to solve problems that have more than one correct solution, but you better make sure you solve the problems the way Prima Donna taught you to do it.
• Asserting the Authority. The Prima Donna will make sure you don't forget that he's the professor and you're the student, which means you owe him certain respect. He'll be especially sensitive about certain forms of disrespect, such as disagreeing with him.
• Showcasing the Merits. In case you don't seem to be convinced of the Prima Donna's authority, you'll be informed of one or more of his certifications, nominations, recognitions, citations, publications, you-get-the-idea-tions.
  

Occasionally, you might get really unlucky and wind up with an embodiment of the archetypal Prima Donna. If there is an option to get the authorities to replace him, go for it.

Damage Done

It's becoming increasingly popular to be a nerd. Sure, you're still going to be bullied in school, but at least now you know you might be in store for a bright future. And those around you know it too. People tend to pay attention to things that might make them rich and when one of the richest persons in the world is downright nerdy, you can bet it won't go unnoticed.

The net result is that you get a lot of CS students who are in it for the glory and riches. These people don't know a lot about computers, but that's okay, because they're there to learn. The problem is that a lot of them also lack the talent. They're simply not good at computer science or any natural science at all.

Imagine all these people trying to learn about pointers from a Geek professor. Confusion abounds, chaos reigns supreme and in the end a lot of them will either fail the course (and hopefully change major) or pass the course having learned nothing.

Now imagine them trying to learn about pointers from a Prima Donna. Apart from becoming utterly frustrated and dejected, they'll learn a lot of garbage. The things that will stick the most are the parts that the Prima Donna invented or misinterpreted, because those are the most vivid explanations the Prima Donna will offer. That's the core of what makes him an "eminence" in the "computing world".

And now imagine yourself working with them on a project. Imagine working on a piece of code that has to traverse a tree with a co-worker who believes that "recursion is for programmers who have no style." Imagine hunting down an interoperability bug caused by bad handling of character encoding in a code written by a person who has been taught that "ASCII table is physically implemented in the microprocessor." Imagine writing business logic that has to use a database designed by someone convinced that a transactional database must satisfy the fifth normal form.

Not a cheerful thought, is it?