Some new students are puzzled by how they should address the lecturer and other academic staff. Some resort to referring to all of them as Professor. This is appropriate in some countries, but not in Australia and New Zealand, where professor refers to a grade or position in a department. Only a small proportion of academic staff are professors. Professors are typically at the top of the pay scale and have been promoted to that level by publishing large amounts of research. Other common positions are given below (but there is some variation between universities).

So how to address your lecturer? These days, less formality is common and many lecturers prefer to be addressed by their given name. If for some reason you want to address them more formally, you can call them Professor (family name) (but only if they actually are employed as a professor). Otherwise, in 95%+ of cases you can refer to them as Doctor (family name), because nearly all academics will have a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) or other doctorate degree. You can verify their qualifications on the university website.

Don’t fire off an angry e-mail to academic staff without thinking it over for a couple of days. Whether your gripes about the course are legitimate or not, complaining while upset could be counterproductive. It’s often best to choose your words carefully and talk it over with other students before complaining. Similarly, be careful about what you write on social media about academic staff. There have been instances where students have gotten in trouble for criticisms they have expressed on social media. University staff members do read social media, and universities have expansive sets of rules that give them broad powers over student conduct.

Students often think of lecturers or tutors as like school teachers and expect individual support. Sometimes even to the level of the lecturer setting aside a block of time to explain a complex topic on a one-to-one basis. However, lecturers are quite different from school teachers and typically their role is more narrowly defined. Their responsibilities to students relate solely to giving a lecture along with some marking and administrative work.

Some will view their teaching duties as an obligation but not their primary focus which is research. A reasonable proportion have little enthusiasm for teaching or interacting with students, especially when they are teaching the same course for the tenth or twentieth time. Nevertheless, some lecturers will have office hours and may be happy to answer questions and give additional guidance.

It’s probably wise to keep expectations in check about how much assistance you can reasonably expect, as undergraduate classes can have many hundreds of students. This means there are practical constraints as to how much individual support a lecturer can give. For this reason, students are expected to seek support from their peers or in tutorials rather than direct from the lecturer.

While there are some lecturers who really enjoy teaching and are happy to interact with students, don’t expect all lecturers to be like this. Some lack empathy and display gate-keeping attitudes. If a student doesn’t understand something, the default assumption is that this is due to a lack of student effort.

One thing that is worth noting is that some lecturers are hired on short term contracts just to teach classes. Even so, don’t expect much one-on-one tuition, as they could have many classes to teach.

As mentioned, some lecturers may view their main focus as research rather than teaching. Also, they lack time to give individual attention to students. Another area that confuses students is differing expectations regarding the purpose of the lecture and required standards.

Lecturers view the purpose of the lecture as to give a quick overview of the main points. It’s then the student’s responsibility to do the detailed learning. Whereas students expect the lecturer to give a detailed explanation and carefully guide them through the material.

Differing expectations can also arise around the standards students are expected to reach. These days, some high schools do a relatively poor job of preparing students for university, meaning that the level and pace of university is a huge shock. Also, some universities have relatively theoretical course content which differs from the practical orientation some students were expecting. The lecturer can do an adequate job teaching the material, but it’s too tough for some students given their level of preparation.

It’s relatively common for lecturers or tutors to ignore emails or other electronic communications from students. So don’t be surprised if your email with the subject line of "help" or "urgent" goes unanswered. This is frustrating for students, especially given how high fees are. If you want a response from a lecturer, it is probably best to try and see them in person. Alternatively, it might be something your classmates can help with. As a general rule, don’t expect a prompt response to any electronic communication from any university employee.

While some lecturers make an effort to reply, there are a myriad of reasons why some e-mails aren’t responded to. These can include:

While some lecturers do an excellent job, this isn’t always the case. Some students might be wondering why their lecturer is an ineffective instructor.

High school teachers go through relatively extensive training to learn how to teach effectively, along with regular in-service training. In contrast, university lecturers receive minimal training in terms of how to teach effectively. It’s no surprise then that some university lecturers aren’t the best at communicating effectively.

The quote at the beginning of the chapter is a slightly fictionalised account of a complaint about a university maths lecturer on social media. Anyone who has experience dealing with university lecturers knows that they can fall on a very broad spectrum from very helpful to extremely unhelpful. Based on the number of students that defended Professor K, it seems that students were broadly supportive of Professor K. So why was Albert unhappy with Professor K? There could be a lot of reasons:

As mentioned previously, students and lecturers often have different ideas regarding the lecturer’s role. The student feels that they are paying a lot of fees and hence the lecturer should be responsive and explain some point in detail, even if it is explained clearly elsewhere.

In contrast, the lecturer believes the student should locate and make sense of information by themselves. If the student can’t prove they have made a reasonable attempt to do this, then the lecturer isn’t obligated to help. In addition, the student struggling with material encourages deeper learner and builds intellect.

In summary, different expectations and philosophies around education can sometimes lead to complaints by students about lecturers. The lecturer expects the student to be an independent learner, whereas the student expects the lecturer to be something closer to a school teacher.

Ultimately, nobody knows for certain what happened when Albert went to see Professor K, so his complaint may or may not be justified. Maybe Albert’s question really was dealt with in a dismissive manner, or perhaps Albert just wasn’t happy when Professor K told him to read chapter X of the coursebook again. As mentioned in an earlier section, it is wise not to air complaints so publicly, as they can often get back to the lecturer like they did in this case.

Professor K seems to have also over-reacted and thrown his toys out of the cot. When teaching a large number of students, no matter how good a job a lecturer does, there are always going to be a small number of unhappy students for a variety of reasons. Cancelling office hours based on a small number of complaints seems to be depriving a large number of students of a valuable resource due to something they have no control over.