Comment by creer

None of this is all or nothing. The school could offer catch-up classes. The school and the professor could test and refuse registration in a class for students that are missing the prerequisites. Which means they would need to test at the beginning of the class - and extra work. The school could offer a mechanism for doing that without letting the students stranded with no classes they can register into. etc, etc.

But yeah, of course it's absurd to expect one professor to run this on their own when it's really a school-level issue.

For me as the student, it has always been frustrating to see a professor start the class material WAY back from what they stated as the prerequisites. (When it was too late for me to switch to another class - as least at conferences I can walk out and do something else.)

For me as the professor, it was frustrating that there was no framework at the school to address the problem. The problem was harder than "do I flunk them?", it was "who do I teach for?" It would be part of my job to change this - if things were structured for this to be part of my job. At some schools it is, at others not.