MARTIN: Hiring part-time professors doesn’t make sense

Sometimes, I think college is hard. I often dream of inserting a pupil in my place, taking notes and passing exams. Imagine that. A student taking your academic spot, freeing up your schedule and reducing stress. Now the real kicker: pretend it costs you less money to have this person enrolled in university than to pay for tuition yourself. You get the degree in the end, you saved some money and you probably had much more fun with your academic load on your puppet’s shoulders.

Of course, this doesn’t feel quite right — something is morally out of balance. There’d be no genuine gain of knowledge, which is the point of education, after all. The replacement would learn for you, but at the end of four years, we’d know just as much as when we started. That’s the problem with taking shortcuts. Not only does it make us feel bad, but we go from beginning to end without ever really experiencing any of the journey.

Despite my lack of work ethic and my inclination to experience as much as I can in our wonderful city, I could never really send this proposed substitute student to class for me. I came to college because I wanted to learn. I came to Boston University because it’s the place where I imagined learning would be the most comfortable and valuable.

Frankly, I’ve been ecstatic with my courses and professors. However, a problem lies in the current approach BU has adopted in shaping our minds.

I think everyone would agree sending someone to class for you is wrong, both academically and morally. Why then, is it acceptable for BU to hire part-time professors? Is it not cheating our academic experience just as much? If you aren’t familiar with this this term, many of our teachers, our instructors, are hired on a semester-to-semester basis. For instance, I had a professor last semester who is no longer available on campus because she does not teach here this semester.

I find this concept of using part-time teachers at a globally ranked school to be disturbing for two reasons: it diminishes the opportunities to pursue a professional relationship with professors, and it’s really not a way a school should treat its staff. I don’t believe hospitals hire doctors on a surgery-to-surgery basis.

As I’m not on an equal intellectual level as my professors, I don’t think it wise to speak for them, but I do recall an instructor of mine who was very unhappy with the way BU endorses this system. Hiring part-time professors is simply the cheaper option, and this apparently justifies it.

Why not instead ensure our university has the best professors each and every year? Wouldn’t it be nice to have teachers the student body could interact with throughout their time here? Are excellent, permanent professors not the core of a successful school?

As a student, I think this system deeply takes away from the learning experience. Do you remember in high school when there was a substitute teacher? Most of the time, it meant a relatively easy day in class.

I’m not suggesting that substitutes are inadequate, but rather I’d like point out the importance of a classroom’s connection with its leader. Wisdom and knowledge are passed on to us by instructors. This is the sacred purpose of education. Losing connections with mentors inherently discourages academic growth, as the pursuit of knowledge requires a student to connect, on some level, with a provider of information.

Imagine we had an incredible professor who led a writing class on the topic of gothic literature. This professor was qualified, intelligent and approachable. Now, having a newfound interest in dark and grotesque pieces of literature, we wish to dig deeper. Would it not be splendid if we could discuss our ideas with an expert whom we have established a comfortable relationship with? A school that uses part-time professors limits the amount of interaction we can have with a professor.

The point is, professors are crucial when it comes to a student’s quest for knowledge.

We, as students, are less likely to retain knowledge if those who passed it on are only part of our academic experience for a semester. How can we regard a class as important if our school doesn’t keep the person who taught it?

Teachers are the most important tools in having a successful school. BU should try to hold onto good teachers for as long as it can, rather than take a convenient yet temporal shortcut that, in the end, depreciates the value of the institution’s very purpose: to learn.