“Students want a degree not knowledge,” this is the last thing I read from some professor who was wondering why students are less interested in knowledge and care only about acquiring degrees. Here are some questions that should be posed before walking into this article’s main topic:- Should we suppose that knowledge leads to a degree? Is it possible to get a degree without knowledge? Is it possible to get both knowledge and a degree?
Degrees are no longer a serious test of knowledge or intelligence, as the educational standards are lacking the criteria necessary for producing real candidates able to take decisions, solve problems
and work on their own. Students are trained to focus on gaining knowledge that enables them to pass exams. They do not learn for learning’s sake nor do they think about how using this knowledge will help them with their careers in the future. Is this a problem with the students or with the education system?
and work on their own. Students are trained to focus on gaining knowledge that enables them to pass exams. They do not learn for learning’s sake nor do they think about how using this knowledge will help them with their careers in the future. Is this a problem with the students or with the education system?
Every year a new batch of students joins the college and another batch graduates, so we can consider students to be a dynamic factor, and the static factor that doesn't change every year is the system of the colleges. Students have many problems with this crap system, yet they are not the root cause of this. Having to solve these problems distracts students, and there’s no time for learning as they are not ready to receive information and they do not have a free, clear mind.
To solve a problem you have to first acknowledge that there is a problem and define what it is. In this article I am only going to discuss my college’s problems (Mansoura Faculty of Dentistry), I am sure that’s quite similar to what is happening in other colleges in Egypt and even in some other countries, but I would like to talk about some experiences I’ve had.
In this article, as I said already, I am only going to mention the problems that exist, so that doesn’t mean that the entire college system and all the professors are bad. We have a lot of good things as well and some real good professors, who I hope will remain as good as they are now, loving and caring about students and dealing with them like father like son. So the following 12 things are just problems that exist which don’t have anything to do with the other good things.
1: Professors/lecturers
We have some professors whose goals in life are to make students’ lives miserable, they are complicated and have a difficult personality, they are the main reason why some students hate the college so much, they deliberately create problems and obstacles for students. You can’t even get a minute with such professors, they talk down to you and act superior toward students. They have a big negative effect on the college system, especially since most of them are heading some of the departments.
In terms of lectures some professors don’t know how to do them, they are so boring, they act like flash memory readers (as one of my friends describes them), they just read what’s on the projector screen. Despite that, some professors have good knowledge but they don’t know how to pass on the information to students. There are also some professors who are so mean that they don’t want to share any knowledge with students. Haven't they asked themselves why 75% of students don’t attend lectures?!
2: Curriculum
The curriculum is bullshit, half the stuff we learnt has nothing to do with dentistry anyway and some stuff is out of date, even though we still practice it till now. Other stuff is new but we don’t put it into practice as the college is lacking those new devices and materials that are needed.
The curriculum is not organized and it is imbalanced. One year you may have to take an advanced course and next they make you do the elementary course and start from scratch again. Also, one year you take a certain number of classes and find next year they ask you to do double the number instead.
On the other hand, there’s no particular academic source for studying, sometimes we study by using books produced by other universities, sometimes we use global reference sources, sometimes we study from the professor’s notes and sometimes we don’t find a source at all to use. It could take you longer to find the source you’re looking for than to actually study the material itself.
3:Exams
We have many paper exams that you wouldn't be able to study for, if you only started revision a few days in advance. In addition to this sometimes you will have an exam in 10 chapters and find all the exam questions cover only 2 chapters out of the 10, so if you didn't study those 2 chapters very well, consider yourself having already failed the exam, even if you had studied the other 8 chapters very well.
The practical exam is a whole different story, you have to get a patient for the exam and you can fail if your patient doesn't show up at the exam time, in addition there’s no criteria for evaluating the students, you will find some professors like your work and others say, “What the f**k is that?!” It’s related to the style and personality of the professor in question.
The oral exam is a game of luck, it doesn't first depend on how hard you are studying, but on which professor will be your examiner, more than how much you've studied.
4: Patients
One time I thought that going to the clinic I’d find the patients waiting there, but that was a delusion. To get a patient you’ll have to fight for a battle and win. You have to wake up early, go to the college like a crazy man who’s lost something and start the process of finding one, so you will miss out on a lot of sessions at the clinics and lectures searching for a patient. Students treat the patient like a fish and act like the clever fisherman who was able to catch it, regardless of the way used, like bribing patients.
On top of that, regarding the Removable Prosthodontic patients, there are some people who don’t have teeth and their job is working as a patient. They let the student do some dental work on them and in return students pay them money. For some of them poverty has driven them to do this job and for others greed is the motivation.
5: Dental Materials
You have to buy everything on your own starting from the gloves you are wearing and ending with the filling materials you are using for the patients. That was unbelievable for me at the beginning. Dental materials are expensive and numerous, and this creates a wide gap between students. You can find some rich student who has all the stuff he needs and another student who has some poor instruments that will affect the quality of his work. You’ll even find some students that don’t meet the requirements because they lack money. The more money you have, the more you will learn.
6: Clinics
The number of dental chairs in the clinics are not enough for the number of students. It’s supposed that every student has his own dental chair, but that doesn’t happen, around 5 students share one dental chair provided that all the dental chairs are fine, as we have some clinics where only 5 to 7 chairs work in the whole clinic.
7: Nepotism
Nepotism, nepotism and nepotism. Like many places in Egypt, nepotism is the secret word for getting what you want. Our college hasn’t been spared from that. Some professors are biased toward their sons or relatives. They give them higher marks than other students, they treat them in a special way. I am not going to mention any stories to prevent turning this article into one about my personal affairs, but I am sure every student has been a witness to nepotism at some point in his life.
8: Schedule
The class schedule is not balanced. I can’t imagine how a student could do lectures plus practical classes from 8 am to 6 pm without any breaks, it’s impossible for any human being to keep doing that consistently.
9: Lab and Technicians
You have to pay for the lab work from your own pocket, since the patients come to the college expecting free treatment. Dental technicians in our college are like NASA scientists, they pretend to understand everything in this universe. It’s not easy to deal with them, as they don’t finish the work at the agreed time. They may spoil your work and end up blaming you, saying your work wasn't good enough.
10: Nurses
Some nurses are not well-educated and not qualified to be nurses, they are always sad and glum and always saying the word “No”. I can’t believe some nurses shout at students and treat them badly.
11: Employers
Many employers don’t do their job like other employers in the rest of the government offices, they just come in the morning, have breakfast during work, sit on the chair, read newspapers and then go home. If you ask them for something related to their job, they start making up excuses to escape from doing it, especially those who are responsible for student activities.
12: Requirements
After all of these obstacles and problems, professors expect a crazy number of requirements from you without taking anything into consideration. Also, the requirements depend on quantity, not quality, you can find a student taking 2 times to make a complex restoration and one student taking only one time for a simple restoration and yet it doesn’t matter, the important thing is to reach the requirements, whatever way is used.
Now it's you turn to leave comments and tell us about some problems you are facing.
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