Professor writes rant after no one shows up to his class
Look, some of us have skipped class here and there for whatever reason. But it's pretty bad when everyone does the same too. And in the first week.
Adrian Raftery, an associate professor at Australia's Deakin University, was not impressed when no one showed up for his class, and wrote a LinkedIn post accompanied with a photo of the empty class on Tuesday.
"I don't know about you but my generation always showed up for lectures and seminars, particularly at the start of semester," he wrote.
"Here is my first class for 2nd semester which was supposed to have started 15 mins ago. After being pumped up to give a great class, I am deflated that they couldn't bother their arse to show up."
Raftery teaches estate planning, a postgraduate class which he describes as "a mixture of law, superannuation, tax and financial planning -- and would be one of the hardest they will encounter in their whole course."
"Students don't realise that their lecturers could be their best advocates for getting a job," he added.
In more than six years of teaching, Raftery told Mashable it's the first time he has ever come across an empty classroom, something that hasn't happened again since his public rant.
"I think I've actually spoken about the elephant in the room."
But he has received thousands of supportive messages regarding his post, which he said he wrote in "frustration," many of which said he's helped to uncover an issue in tertiary education.
"I think I've actually spoken about the elephant in the room, that so few academics have had the courage to talk about," he said.
Raftery, who doesn't describe himself as a "career educator," acknowledges the incident has left him reflecting on how educators can improve their engagement and delivery in classes, so students turn up.
After all, this incident isn't isolated. A teacher went on a Twitter rant in January, and we're sure there are other educators left miffed by an empty or poorly attended classroom.
"Over time in the longer term I think we can get actually some significant changes that'll improve the learning experience for students -- that's my goal," Raftery explained.
Either that, or students are too damn lazy.
