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I had one large reason to stop being a teacher: the pay.The other reasons were bad, don’t get me wrong, but the more I thought about it the more I realized I just couldn’t warrant how much I worked for how little I was being paid.The district I worked in was West Contra Costa Unified. I was a strange form of teacher: I grew up and graduated from this district, and I still lived in this district. Some of the other teachers lived here, but were not products of this district. I only knew of 1 other teacher who was both a product of, and still lived in the district, and he left as well.As a former math teacher, let’s run some numbers. The year I started the base pay for me was ~$40,000. That’s $3,333 per month gross. I was “lucky” in the sense that I was already married and had a kid, so I did get some tax taken out, but I kept more of my paycheck. Many other first-year or starting teachers do not have that “luxury.” I took home about 80% of my gross, giving me about $2,667 net (after tax). There’s then the union dues, which I think was about $100, giving me $2,567. Oh and my insurance was something like $300 dollars a month (maybe $400, I can’t remember) so I ended up taking home ~ $2,267.Richmond, California Cost of LivingThat link gives you some helpful little charts and graphs for how much it costs to live in the city of Richmond. Now, I technically live in San Pablo, a smaller town that is sort of encircled by Richmond, but the numbers are almost identical. Some ones I’d like to talk about are the rents in the areaStudio - $10201 Bedroom - $12132 Bedroom - $14883 Bedroom - $19934 Bedroom - $2310I started this with a wife and a son, so let’s say that we go for a 2 bedroom.From my $2267 I deduct $1488 to get a whopping $779 to pay the rest of my bills. Car insurance was $80 at the time, so I had $699. Phone bill was $145, leaving me with $554. I had to pay on some debts (credit cards, mostly) totaling about $180 a month, which gave me $374. My wife had some debts as well, and being the main (and for awhile only) source of income, I paid those too. About another $70 if I remember correctly. Oh and my home internet, gotta have that, which ran me $80 for most of the time I was teaching. We are at $224.Now for a moment let’s talk about what it takes to become a teacher.Bachelor’s Degree. This cost me ~18,000 worth of debt. I got my degree in mathematics. Mathematician Salary ( which I found on a website I’ve never heard of and am too tired to check right now) in California. According to it a “junior” mathematician can earn ~$82k per year.In California you have to pass two sets of tests if you want to be a single-subject teacher. I was lucky to get a waiver from my college to not have to take the subject matter tests, but I still had to take the basic skills test, which was $80 I did not have at the time.You then had to go through a credentialing program. That you had to pay for. I went further into debt for this.You are also expected to start “student teaching” — which is not paid and takes up most of your time during the day so you can’t have another job.While student teaching, and somehow earning money through magic, you are also expected to pass some sort of end-teacher evaluation proving that you can be an effective teacher. This requires a level of repetition that would make any younger sibling a-la “the mimic game” jealous because you effectively say the same ~20 lines worth of information about a million and a half times through what can become a ridiculously large set of documents (I had lesson plans in this format that were like 12 pages long. my regular lesson plans were like a page. Maybe 2, but they didn’t need the stupid ass repetition).At about the same tax rates, the career I could have had with my degree would mean that gross per month I’d make $6,866 per month. At a similar take-home percentage, that gives me $5,466, and with the same set of bills I would have (unless I missed one a bill) $3,423 left over. Same me, same education level, very different salaries.And with my whopping $224, I had nothing to give my son. That money got quickly digested by food and gas for our cars.But I was expected to get to work early to prepare whatever I needed to prepare for my lessons throughout the day. I was supposed to give up my prep period to deal with students or to cover a class that was not mine because my district bleeds substitutes and there was never enough to cover all the absences during a day. I expected to stay late for any other meetings that couldn’t meet during the day, and I was then supposed to grade work received from students, this was done at home most of the time, by the way. I barely felt like I had any time to do anything for myself. I was also expected, by a contract that I did not want to pass, to do 10 hours of my time outside of all of this.I say this with the deepest venom in my voice: Fuck that 10 hours. How dare they add that ridiculous clause into our contract.The fact that I could leave teaching, with no other qualifications other than what I already needed to become a teacher anyway, and over double my salary? That’s why teachers complain about their pay. Because most of them have degrees in something that could pay them much more money and provide a better home-life balance, but they chose this profession hoping to make a difference, but instead get told by the bottom line on their paychecks that they aren’t worth the money to make teaching competitive with their other field.Granted, I don’t expect teacher salaries to match a developer’s salary, but the pay hit shouldn’t be over a 50% loss moving from Field Degree is in -> teaching.

From this question, I assume you’re not a college student. . . .In the US, at most colleges / universities that I am aware of, students do in fact evaluate the courses they’ve taken, and the instructors who teach them, at the end of each semester. There are standard questions answered with a numerical rating, which can be averaged over all students (e.g. “This instructor’s English was clear and easy to understand. 5 = Agree Strongly; 4 = Agree. . . . “) There is also space for students to write any comments they want to (“Dr Wagnor is teh WORST teacher here becaus his review sessions are USELESS. . . “)Where I teach, the evaluations are on-line and students can fill them out at any time during the last two weeks or so of class. Before they were on-line, there was one day I’d have to schedule in advance when I’d start class, someone else would walk in with the evaluation forms, and I’d walk out for about fifteen minutes or so and wait around with my thumb up my metaphorical backside while my students filled out their course evaluation forms.Exactly how seriously these evaluations are taken depends on policies at the college; a lot also depends on the personalities of the dean, department head, tenure and promotions committee, and so on. I’ve heard of everything from student evals being roundfiled and utterly forgotten, to instructors getting raked over the coals for some comment like “She should smile more.” I recall one administrator who once expounded at great length and amazing detail at me, for fifteen minutes I’ll never have back, on how my evaluation scores were high, but "failing to show a steady trend of improvement." I don’t know many instructors who like getting these back. Administrators who are focused on the “customer satisfaction” model of education have been known to seriously damage faculty careers for the stupidest reasons imaginable. This is why most of us tend to rank student evals, on a scale of pleasant things to experience, somewhere between “hemorrhoid flareup” and “unpleasant dental procedure”.The problem is this: Some students are mature enough to provide genuinely thoughtful feedback—the sort of comments that make the instructor say, “You know, that’s something I could improve on.” That’s fine. However, these seem to get drowned out by comments from students who hate the instructor for not just giving them automatic As without asking them to think. That “Dr Wagnor is teh WORST teacher” comment I quoted is nearly a direct quote. I’d been holding review sessions before each exam, where I’d help students prepare—but I asked the students to come with questions prepared; I wasn’t just going to repeat a month’s worth of lectures, or tell them the answers in advance. This was not good enough for my student (these are anonymous evaluations, but I knew exactly who it was), who thought “review session” meant “professor tells you exactly what’s going to be on the test, so you don’t clutter your overstuffed mind with learning one itty bitty thing more than absolutely necessary”.Most of us in the biz have similar horror stories. Female instructors seem to have it even worse—every so often they get complaints about being insufficiently attractive, or they get attacked for being bitches if they try to show any rigor (or for being airheads if they don’t; you can’t effin’ win with some people). There’s a defunct (and sorely missed) series of blogs that were set up for professors to share horror stories, including student evaluation horror stories: Rate Your Students. Posts like this explain how it goes down: "If One Of Us Stands Up. We Can All Stand Up." Furlong from Fursville is Finished. And: On Student Evaluations . And More on Expectations, Evaluation, and That Tricky Reality . And on the successor blog to Rate Your Students, 10 Ways to Boost your Student Evaluations . . . . and so on.If you don’t get to evaluate your teachers, I’m guessing you’re in secondary school or high school, where this isn’t a common practice as far as I know. (Although it may be getting more common: see Why Kids Should Grade Teachers ).Me, I just now tell my students to please remember, when they fill out my evaluations, that “bastard” is spelled with two a’s. But then, I have tenure. . .

You have some good answers already. Here is a summary of the points I agree with:Universities hire faculty to be researchers, not teachers. Being an outstanding scientist or scholar does not necessarily mean that one is also an effective teacher.Universities do not require (and often don’t even offer) instruction on how to teach. As a result, faculty must seek out resources and try things on their own — while also writing papers and proposals, keeping up with their fields, and putting in time in professional service.Few universities evaluate teaching in a meaningful way. A terrible teacher may or may not get tenure or a raise; a mediocre researcher definitely won’t get either. With that set of incentives, which skillset do you think will get the greater investment of time and attention?Students in university settings are supposed to be active learners, meaning that they should be seeking out information and attempting to master the material on their own. The onus is not on the teacher, but on the student. Unfortunately, many students don’t know how to study effectively.With all that, it is still the case that there are excellent teachers among the faculty at most institutions. Some universities provide resources to help improve classroom instruction, and provides major recognition for the most effective teachers.For example, at Purdue, we have several forms of recognition and advancement of outstanding teaching; here are a few:Teaching Academy - Center for Instructional Excellence - Purdue UniversityTeaching for Tomorrow Fellowship Awards ProgramBook of Great TeachersCharles B. Murphy Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching AwardThat doesn’t mean we don’t have some poor teachers, but the university community here — and at many schools — does recognize the importance of good teaching.