Do profs CARE about undergraduates (PROF answers)

Do professors care about undergraduates?

There is no doubt that professors care about undergraduates at the two-year college level, but questions arise when you get to a university. I will explain why it might be different for four-year universities.

If you aren’t familiar with how colleges work in the United States, I will give you a quick recap.

Two-year colleges (junior or community) have freshmen and sophomore students. Sure, some are taking courses as upperclassmen to transfer to their university, but that makes up a small minority of students.

At a four-year university, they have students who are working towards undergraduate degrees and graduate degrees.

We usually call community colleges teaching institutions and universities are known as research institutions. This is because a lot of the professors at universities must engage in research to obtain tenure and they are encouraged to continue bringing in grants and publishing research.

This helps get their institution a good reputation. The better the institution looks to the public, the more students wants to go there. It is all in their favor. But of course the professors want to contribute to their field too.

What can happen at these universities is that professors are teaching fewer classes because they are having to complete so much research and publish papers.

Professors at a two-year college may care more about their undergraduate students because that is all they have to focus on. They aren’t usually pumping out research and they are certainly not teaching graduate students.

Some professors at 4-year institutions will teach graduate students and this is when a lot of undergraduate students think that their professors just don’t care about them.

As a former professor, I can totally understand why a student would wonder if their professor cared about them as an undergraduate if they were teaching graduate students too.

You see, graduate students take a lot more time because their courses are usually more intense and they are mentoring them for other outside projects. So they get relatively close.

I would imagine undergraduate students could be forgotten especially if these professors are only teaching one or two classes each term.

READ MORE : How many courses does a professor teach?

It isn’t that professors try to ignore undergraduates or they don’t like them, it’s just that their priorities are completely different at a four-year university.

Also, some professors are adjuncts that primarily teach undergraduates so that the full-time professors can focus on their other priorities. This just means that they might have a full-time job doing something else and teaching is just a side hustle for them.

Please don’t generalize this and think that every professor feels this way. But as an undergraduate and graduate student myself, I can say that I was nameless to my professors as an undergraduate, but not at the graduate level.

It isn’t that the professors intentionally choose to rarely care about undergraduates, it’s just hard when you don’t have a lot of interaction with them and the class sizes are relatively large compared to a graduate class.

But at a two-year college, the undergraduate students are the only students professors have to focus on. They aren’t running around publishing research or securing grants constantly. Instead, they are focused on getting undergraduates prepared to transfer to a university.

READ MORE : Is a community college better?

I guess I say all this to get students to understand that professors might not seem to care about undergraduates at a four-year university as much as they might care at a community college.

But not because they are intentionally ignoring those students but because of their circumstances.

Finally, all colleges care about undergraduate students because they need them to complete their degree. It isn’t a secret that a lot of funding is tied to students’ enrollment and completion so every college should care.

If a student doesn’t complete their degree then the college gets less enrollment and less funding or revenue. So, it’s in the college’s interest to care about EVERY student regardless of their class.

And quite frankly, some of these undergraduate students will become graduate students so it is in the university’s interest to pay attention to them too.

I really think that every professor genuinely cares about undergraduate students, but it can be hard to give them a lot of individualized attention because there are so many other college related activities that they have to be a part of too.

So, it looks like they are just sweeping undergrads under the rug but they aren’t.

READ MORE : Do professors care about students’ grades

READ MORE : Do professors care about students?

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