[simonebrunozzi]

> lecturers had to ask Dexter to take down notes a term at a time to ensure students weren't skipping lectures

This is just... Stupid. Instead of admitting what a poor job you're doing, you're trying to suppress a student, unpaid student, that did a better job than you. (the you is of course the lecturer)

Anecdote: I was a professor of Computer Science from 2004 to 2006, for two years. I was teaching Compilers. I was 25 years old when I started, and Compilers was the worst possible course to teach. I was paid the miserable sum of 1,600 eur per year, which is why the usual "university mafia" wasn't interested in putting someone else in that position (it happened at the end of my second year anyway, when the course was assigned to a full-time professor).

I didn't want my students to pay $150 for the book, as this was Italy in early 2000s and students didn't have a lot of money (probably true today), so I created a big handout book that they could download and print, free of charge, and released it with a Creative Commons license. Or you could order the printed version on Lulu (although, for some reason, this one had to have an "all rights reserved") [0].

Anyway, at some point a professor in the Math department threatened me because students were using my handout to study regular expressions, and it was (in his mind) hurting the sales of the book they were using for his course; that book was of course authored by the professor, and he was making some money from it. How shameful.

Oh, yes: of course I ignored the threats.

[0]: https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/simone-brunozzi/dispense-lab...

[908B64B197]

> I was paid the miserable sum of 1,600 eur per year, which is why the usual "university mafia" wasn't interested in putting someone else in that position

> Anyway, at some point a professor in the Math department threatened me because students were using my handout to study regular expressions, and it was (in his mind) hurting the sales of the book they were using for his course; that book was of course authored by the professor, and he was making some money from it. How shameful.

It sounds like you missed a potential revenue stream here haha! The fact that the math professor was mad about it meant that you had a potential market!

Also, aren't regex just documented everywhere on the internet? Maybe not in Italian...

[simonebrunozzi]

Everything is on the internet - it doesn't eliminate the need from students to have a textbook of sorts.

[NPDW]

While I have nothing but great things to say about my time at university, I always found it comical how grounded they were in their traditions.

Even under lockdown they refuse to record lectures, forcing the student to make sure they attended their 9am Saturday lecture, or miss the lecture and most definitely not understand any future lectures.

This becomes even more comical when you realise the lecturer is just reciting their own lecture notes and writing out the equations on the blackboard (not whiteboard of course!). However, I will always admire Professor Tim Gowers for teaching an entire Analysis course with no lecture notes and coming up with all of the proofs on the spot.