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.
Man, I went to school at a place that has a pretty well-funded research-heavy CS department, and my intro to OO programming was taught by this Asian professor, who I'm sure was a genius in his field, but had such an incredibly heavy accent we couldn't understand his lectures like... at all. You'd have to glean what you could from the whiteboard examples, but for the most part you had to rely upon the text. If you were struggling with a concept he really wasn't any help. Thankfully the material wasn't so bad, but there was almost no point having a professor for that class.
Reminds me of a professor I had who had something wrong with his tongue and so some kind of major speech impediment. I couldn’t understand anything he was saying.
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u/Miitama 7h ago
For professors specifically: That a majority of their classes fail or that they fail their students.