The professors for my classes at the University of Zürich (UZH) and ETH tend to be practitioners in their fields who are spending their free time teaching as opposed to being full time professors. While I do have 2 classes that are hosted by full time faculty, those 2 classes are core curriculum classes for students here, while the elective classes are all taught by industry professionals. There is almost no support staff for any of my classes, as courses rely mainly on exams and not exercises, meaning there is not as much strain on the professor to grade things. For almost all of my classes, the final exam is worth 50%-100% of the final grade and there are not many assignments. I only have one class with any support staff at all and the TA’s job is only to answer questions on the forum, and nothing else. Professors mainly rely on online tools for assistance in teaching their classes. All classes have an online forum attached to the class for students to discuss assignments and questions with the professor in the rare case of having assignments.
My most interesting professor is my Technology Entrepreneurship class taught through ETH. Because UZH and ETH are sister schools, students can take classes at either. My Technology Entrepreneurship professor is an industry professional. He works with startups at the C-level doing a variety of things. He has many years of experience working on both the entrepreneurship and the investing scenes and uses this experience to talk about lectures. He also brings in guest speakers bi-weekly to discuss their areas expertise. I really like the class because of how it is centered on experiences rather than textbook facts, making the lectures more interesting.
