Why are there so many foreign professors at college campuses?

Question

i cannot stand all the foreigner professors! i mean i have nothing against them or anything but how am i suppose to learn when the guy teaching me cant speak! just wondering if anyone else feels the same way??

Answer 1

This is a common complaint I heard when I was at UC Berkeley. The reason why a lot of universities have foreign instructors is because many of them are leaders and laureates in their field. They come to American universities like Berkeley because THEY want to learn, too, and top tier universities afford them opportunities and RESOURCES to do highly innovative research.

I had a biochemistry professor who spoke with a heavy Chinese accent. Brilliant guy. Prolific research. Couldn't understand a damned thing he said. His specialty was DNA chemistry, and one day he was lecturing on the mechanics of DNA supercoiling, about something called a "riding number." So all in my notes, I had paragraphs about "riding numbers." Well, when I got home and read the chapter in my text, it was actually "WRITHING number", not "riding number."

My advice would be to start or join a study group, take full advantage of office hours with a teaching assistant, and read the text ahead of the lecture. If your professors are email or IM savvy, I would also recommend corresponding that way. Even if you can't understand them when they talk, they are very likely to be highly eloquent and articulate with written words.

And if you're not at a major university, and you are still having trouble understanding professors whose primary language is not English, bear in mind, a lot of smaller colleges have trouble attracting faculty. So if they're not in a lab curing cancer, they're teaching you because your school couldn't find anyone better. Again, try emailing these profs, so you don't have to try to decipher them through a thick accent.

Answer 2

Because they have worked hard to get the education that qualifies them for the positions, while Americans and Brits have either tended to just get by, including allowing the Government to help support them, or have gone after more lucrative jobs.