[anrope]

That's fair.

Still, in my experience (which is nothing special, 4 years undergrad, in second year of masters) there are definitely professors who consider teaching an unfortunate side-requirement of their research. And I don't think it's unique to my school. I think this sucks.

I have been working as a teacher's assistant for a few semesters now, and I hear what you're saying about students who really don't care. I think especially in engineering, you get students who chose the major just because they got good grades in math and science and heard engineering pays well. Then those students complain when you ask them to work hard (or even just work).

Sidenote: WebCT :( haha. My school paid (and will continue to pay) a ridiculous amount for some enterprise course scheduling/billing/etc. software that would have been a great project in software engineering (e.g. large project management). All while we're having major budget issues.