College time is often the time of first love, relationships, and new experiences. It also means meeting new people and new professors. Sometimes these things mix up, and students and professors fall in love with each other. So what is going on when this happens? We polled 1000 students and 1000 professors from all over the USA to find out!
How Do Students and Their Profs See Their Relationships
The relationship between students and professors has always been a complex issue. Someone may treat it as a problem, but someone, on the contrary, still considers their university professor a crush. But how do students and teachers themselves feel about this? And even more, so those who have had time to be in such relationships. This is what we wanted to find out. Both students LovingWomen (69%) and professors (73%) mostly answered that they have favorite students or teachers, respectively. But just having preferences doesn’t mean anything romantic. The reasons can be very different. Our next logical question was: what can make a student/teacher your favorite?
For the students, the answer was obvious. 84% said that the way the professor teaches is an essential factor for them. A pleasant, understandable, and modern approach to teaching makes good teachers stand out, quickly turning their class into the most visited one. 58% indicated the personal qualities of a professor as a factor that can turn them into a favorite one. 25% indicated how the teacher grades and only 16% stated appearance as a decisive factor.
The professors’ answers varied slightly. Personal qualities were the most significant factor here. 75% chose it. In the comment to the question section, many respondents specified that among these traits, they value politeness and an equal and positive attitude towards other students and teachers the most. For 63%, the decisive factor was the academic results of their students. Respondents wrote that they love to see a student’s commitment to learning and their academic discipline in particular. 13% of professors stated that students’ appearance is valuable to them.
Are Romantic Relationships a Taboo?
But the fact that a professor or a student has a favorite person in class or a teacher to listen to does not mean they are connected with a romantic relationship. As we see above, the reasons can be completely different, from learning or teaching skills to personal qualities or politeness.
We wanted to find out how often professors and students enter relationships and how they relate. First, we wanted to know the respondents’ opinions about this relationship. 52% of students said that relationships with teachers should be taboo. At the same time, among professors, this figure was somewhat higher. 68% believe that romantic relationships between teachers and students are unacceptable.
Returning to the possibility of such a romantic relationship, we asked our respondents if they would date a professor/student if they were sure no one would find out. Here, the results have varied considerably. 48% of students said they could accept it and go for a romantic relationship with their professors, although this figure was only 17% among professors. We see that students are more open to romantic relationships with their teachers.
Among the teachers’ comments, it was also often mentioned that their answer would depend on whether the student was currently in their class.
30% of professors noted that they know someone from their colleagues who dates or has ever dated a student. Among students, the same figure was 35%. We can see that even though only 17% of the professors said they would date a student, almost every third of them knows someone who did.