The odds are that every college student will encounter an instructor who they will want to fire; however, the student ends up paying the price for it.According to MATC’s Student-Initiated Refund page on INFOnline, if a student drops on days 1-12 of class, the student loses 20% of the cost of that class. As a student, I don’t understand this.
With other businesses, if we feel that the services we received were not up to our standards we can fire them and get a full refund. Colleges are a business as much as any other, and students are paying for a service. We deserve to be able to get a full refund if an instructor does not provide adequate services. It would be helpful if there was a way for students to be informed about prospective instructors. This could avoid problems before they existed. For those most complained about, they should be removed.
Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of ways for students to know about an instructor prior to taking the class. Sometimes students luck out, and we get what we paid for. However, there are those times when the instructor doesn’t do a good job, and we end up feeling as though we have wasted our money and time.
A few ideas that may work are to allow students to drop classes without any penalty, and an area easily accessed by students where they can review instructors and view their reviews.
The time limit can be as simple as within the first three classes a student can drop a class for a full refund. On average this is plenty of time to see whether or not this instructor is right for you. Requiring that students who drop classes this soon submit full discloser as to why that student was displeased with that instructor, will help others know about that instructor.
The end of class reviews need to be either online or somewhere other than the classroom. Otherwise they are uncomfortable because the instructor will likely know who wrote what. That can make students less likely to be honest for fear of some kind of negative repercussion for a bad review. The reviews need to be easy for all students (and faculty) to access. However, in order for this process to work, the reviews need to be mandatory.
Having reviews public will allow everyone to see who makes a great teacher and who doesn’t. Students will be able to pick instructors that will give them the service they’re paying for. An added result will be that students are less likely to use the three-day refund policy. Plus, faculty can use the reviews to know which instructors are doing their jobs.
Of course, there are those students who get mad at instructors. The potential for some students to demand refunds or offer nasty reviews of a teacher for revenge does exist. However, this is likely to be rare. Plus, the good instructors will have more positive reviews than negative ones.
I have heard comments about the instructors at MATC from other people. Those statements have included that the teachers here aren’t as good as the ones at a four-year university. Many of us don’t agree with that.
MATC has many great instructors, however it’s always the few bad apples that spoil the whole barrel. Maybe the fear of exposure will either have them change their ways, or move on. Either way, the result will be beneficial to MATC as a whole.
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