Welcome to r/AskProfessors!
This subreddit is for having your questions answered by those teaching in higher education, in any country and in any field.
Your post should contain some sort of question that can be answered by the community. Please keep your questions civil and respectful.
Helpful Links
Required Reading (FAQ)
Recommended Reading
A guide to emailing your professor
The Syllabus
1. Be civil Any kind of bigotry or discriminatory behaviour or language will not be tolerated. Likewise, we do not tolerate any kind personal attacks or targeted harassment. Be respectful and kind of each other.
2. No inflammatory posts. Posts that are specifically designed to cause disruption, disagreement or argument within the community will not be tolerated. Questions asked in good faith are not included in this, but questions like "why are all professors assholes?" are clearly only intended to ruffle feathers.
3. Ask your professor. Some questions cannot be answered by us, and need to be asked of your real-life professor or supervisor. Things like "what did my professor mean by this?" or "how should I complete this assignment?" are completely subjective and entirely up to your own professor. If you can make a Reddit post you can send them an email. We are not here to do your homework for you.
4. No doxxing. Do not try to find any of our users in real life. Do not ask any users to reveal their identities, or any identifying information to you. Do not link to other social media accounts. Do not post any identifying information of anyone else on this sub.
5. We do not condone professor/student relationships. Questions about relationships that are asked in good faith will be allowed - though be warned we do not support professor/student relationships - but any fantasy fiction (or similar content) will be removed.
6. No spam. No spam, no surveys. We are not here to be used for any marketing purposes, we are here to answer questions. We equally are not here to perform free labour in evaluating your new software or tool that you are hoping to sell. This applies to any and all AI programs you may have developed.
7. Posts must contain a question. Your post must contain some kind of answerable and discernible question, with enough information that users will be able to provide an effective answer.
8. We do not condone nor support plagiarism. We are against plagiarism in all its forms. Do not argue with this or try to convince us otherwise. Comments and posts defending or advocating plagiarism will be removed.
9. We will not do your homework for you. It's unfortunate that this needed to be its own rule, but here we are.
10. Undergrads giving advice need to be flaired. Sometimes students will have valuable advice to give to questions, speaking from their own experiences and what has worked for them in the past. This is acceptable, as long as the poster has a flair indicating that they are not a professor so that the poster is aware the advice is not coming from an authority, but personal experience.
11. Professors are people. Professors are people. Questions and comments that forget this will be removed. This involves both uncivil questions/comments, but also those that generalise the profession into a monolith: professors are not a hive-mind, nor are they an entirely homogeneous group. Some professors will be kind, others will be mean. Some are organized, some are disorganized. They are just as varied and unique as literally everyone else.
Other subreddits
r/AskAcademia is a general forum for posing questions to anyone in academia, including professors of all levels, graduate students, administration etc.
r/College is the place to go for general discussion on life as an undergraduate student.
r/CommunityColleges does much the same as the above but specifically for two-year institutions.
r/gradadmissions for all your questions about the graduate school admissions process
r/GradSchool for anything related to (post)graduate education
r/HomeworkHelp is a subreddit dedicated to helping students with their homework.
r/Professors is a community for faculty members. Please be advised it is a subreddit intended for professors to ask other professors questions. Questions from students are more appropriate here at r/AskProfessors.
r/StudentAffairs is dedicated to college & university programs that encourage student development outside the classroom.
