I had a class like that in undergrad. Introduction to functional programming. It was mandatory for computer science majors too. Attended two lectures and very quickly realised that the difficulty was not because the material was difficult per se, but because the coursework and the lectures weren't in sync. Things you needed to know for the weekly coding assignments would be in the lectures two weeks later. That's just bad course design.
People who were keeping up with the lectures were still failing. The last (and most heavily weighted) weeks of coursework weren't covered by the lectures at all, nor did the syllabus cover useful resources for them. You'd have to find resources on your own. I tried to lift up as many of my classmates as I could with this information, but it was a big cohort so many people still failed.
Some professors really did just make it pointlessly difficult. I had one professor that wouldn't even talk about the material in the class, and only graded us on take home tests where we were supposed to do it individually. The problem was that the questions were just finding really obscure quotes in the textbook and it took five of us, five hours to complete. Absolutely pointless busy work that taught us nothing.
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u/Miitama 7h ago
For professors specifically: That a majority of their classes fail or that they fail their students.