‘Caring’, ‘inspirational’, ‘hilarious’: James Franco’s former students share how he fared as a lecturer

‘Caring’, ‘inspirational’, ‘hilarious’: James Franco’s former students share how he fared as a lecturer
Actor James Franco. Image via Andrea Raffin/Shutterstock.

James Franco: Hollywood star, filmmaker, and … professor?

Yep, you read that right: over the past few years, James Franco has done several brief stints as a lecturer at a number of universities.

He’s taught classes at New York University (NYU); Columbia University; University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); University of Southern California; and California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

As an actor, Franco may be used to having his acting chops dissected and evaluated, but how about his teaching performance?

Well, if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be under the tutelage of a Hollywood A-Lister, wonder no more: his students have reviewed his teaching performance on RateMyProfessors.com, specifically those who took his class at NYU in 2011 and CalArts in 2012.

Students generally found his classes fairly easy with decent teaching quality, giving him an overall ranking of 3.8 (NYU) and 4.2 (CalArts). The website puts scores of 3.5 to 5 as “Good”.

Many students enjoyed his class and found him caring, down-to-earth, and funny.

However, some students pointed out that he appeared to be tired while teaching the class and wasn’t too great at giving feedback.

Some also commented that he was difficult to get a hold of outside of lectures.

Then there were some students who got a bit distracted in class …

All in all, Franco wasn’t too shabby at the whole professor business, but perhaps he’d better stick to acting and filmmaking.

Let’s just hope he wasn’t too hard on any students found sleeping during a lecture …

Image via Twitter.

Screenshots via RateMyProfessors.com

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