[Uni] why is it that, like, middle-aged dudes with mildly scruffy facial hair are always the best college professors, it's a really weird trend but i've noticed that it almost always hold true

"Mildly scruffy" is the perfect middle ground between "cares about their appearance enough to practice hygiene" and "cares enough about their field of research to get lost in it for days at a time"

Middle-aged means they're probably not tenured so they have to work for a living

Dudes is because academia is still incredibly misogynist

Yeah on both of those

yeah “not tenured” is def a big part of it, one of my fav profs was an adjunct and he cared so much

Yeah you want tenured professors as a university, but as a student tenured professors are literally the worst thing you can have, ever

Tenure means that the professor is valued more as a researcher than a teacher

i had a tenured prof who was rly cool but he wasted like half of his lectures talking ab social justice and his personal interests

and it was like my guy I’m here bc i want to learn ab computer science

oh no terminally online compsci prof

it wasn’t even like intro it was functional programming

Occasionally you have tenure programs that allow for a teaching-focused tenured professor, but those tend to be at colleges (no grad program). Like, my position is teaching-focused but not tenure track, even though the position is intended to be long-term (for both them and me) and has promotion opportunities.