[RoyalHenOil]

This was my general experience as well. The very best quality education I ever received was in my 7th grade math class, followed closely by my 7th grade English class.

I did have some very excellent university classes (including ones that were so good that I audited them without receiving credit), but I also had a lot that were positively abysmal, taught by professors who were experiencing severe mental health issues (one who'd had a stroke and could no longer comprehend the material, another who was going through a mental break and stopped teaching us altogether, etc.) or extremely stressed grad students who were not fluent in English and spent class time trying to catch up with their PhD workload.

My best university-level education actually came after I graduated and got a job working in a lab at my university. During that time, I worked closely with the professor and grad students, and it was such an amazing learning opportunity that I will never forget for the rest of my life — sadly cut short by the 2008 financial crisis.

[wnissen]

If you look at how most professors and adjuncts are rewarded and paid, it makes sense. You can't get quality instruction from a adjunct who is only a half-step away from sleeping in their car, especially when they know they might be gone mid-semester due to a budget cut. Even the full professors are trying to bring in enough grants, oversee enough RAs and TAs to do the work for the grants, get some of their own research done, and barely have time to teach. Teachers in high school have a high teaching load relative to colleges and universities, but they are doing a job and generally are paid at least middle class wages.

[com2kid]

I had a math prof who didn't speak English.

Didn't matter, one of the best courses I ever took. He made the math look beautiful on the old fashion chalk board. Absolutely wonderful and enlightening equations.

[hn_acc1]

Better than the one who didn't speak much english and complained how chinese is so much easier because you don't have to learn a new word for beef, you just combine the symbols for "cow" and "meat", and still didn't know the material well.