Our school has a policy that if a teacher is more than 15 minutes late, class is canceled. I can’t imagine waiting an hour and a half- good lord.
So, in your mind, the fact that the teacher arrived 90 minutes late is evidence that the exam wasn’t very important? That’s rather syllogistic, don’t you think.
You assume that a teacher would only be late for an exam if it was an unimportant exam.
This teacher was 90 minutes late.
Therefore, the exam must not have been very important. :dubious:
Also, even if the test wasn’t important (something you haven’t demonstrated), it was extremely unprofessional for the teacher to schedule a test at that time, and then leave her students sitting in the classroom. Once she knew she was going to be too late for the test to go ahead, she should have called her Department’s office and asked someone to go over and tell the students they could leave. Of course there are times when an unavoidable accident or other unforeseen circumstance might delay a teacher, but according to the OP this teacher knew before the exam that she might be late, and didn’t do what was needed in order to make sure her professional obligations to her students were fulfilled.
And whether the “kiddos…worked damn hard all semester” or not isn’t the point. Simply handing out A’s for work that wasn’t even done is an abrogation of her responsibility to the students, to the institution, and to the people who will make decisions about those students based on their grades.
When I was an undergraduate, we didn’t have a set policy like that, more like a tradition. You give grad assistants 5 minutes, associate professors 10 minutes, and full professors 15 minutes. My Latin Reading professor was invariably late and we’d be counting down the seconds at the beginning of each class to see if we’d have a reprieve that day.
That was pretty much the standard that folks followed at U.Mass Lowell back in my days as well.
I only stayed later than that once, as I didn’t have the time to get all the way back to my dorm, and had other work that I could do… worked out well for me, as when the prof finally did show up, I was the only one there. We went out for a quick pint at Johnnys. (Old ‘Cheifs’ will remember that place… did you know they served food??? :D)
It’s always been 15 minutes at the schools I’ve gone to. Last term, the first day of class my math teacher was stuck in a horrible traffic jam, and was like 50 minutes late for an hour class. There were like 2 of us there when he finally arrived…I didnt really have anywhere else to be, so I sat around reading a book. He gave us the syllabus, and then we left.
I’ve always heard the “we only have to wait xx” minutes for a late professor rule, but I’ve never put much stock in it. I think it’s unofficial, something of an urban legend invented by students. And to be frank, I don’t think the professor would give a shit if s/he’s 20 minutes late, I would think he/she would still expect you to take the exam – you are at their mercy regardless. Too risky.
To each their own, however.
ETA: Nothing on my college’s website regarding the matter; also: snopes link.
I thnk that’s pretty standard at most institutions. However, for a final exam I would likely have sat there until the very end of the class.
Marc
In my college we weren’t allowed to get in to an exam if we were more than 15’ late unless we could convince the prof that our mother had been run over by an ambulance or something like that. Conversely, we were allowed to leave if the professor was late by 15’ or more; including “if the proctors are there but the professor is bringing the test sheets and is late by more than 15’”. The rule was written down after one of the professors was 20’ late to one of his exams; this meant that the exam started 30’ late and a couple of students almost missed their trains home; one did miss it (home as in “hometown”, not as in “back to their flats in town”). For big vacation periods, missing your train can mean that the next one with an opening is three days later.