When characterizing a professional academic teacher, we should consider all the expectations that university teachers face. These can relate both to their research/academic work, various forms of didactic work or the building of certain kind of relations with students. Exploring and defining the factors relevant to the ways in which lecturers effectively influence the educational process seems to be indispensable, especially in the context of planning for the employment of professional academic staff with the appropriate competences and approach to work or, perhaps above all, the required attitude towards students. It is therefore as important to plan the employment of academic staff, based on the information acquired, for example in the evaluation process, as it is to plan well for courses adjusted to a given educational level. In this sense, it is very helpful to find out about students' requirements as far as their teachers are concerned, to examine what qualities they prefer in a teacher, what relations they expect etc., while also taking into consideration students' age and their prior educational experience. This knowledge can enable teachers to plan for specific forms of didactic work as needed, and adopt an approach that fosters the building of good relations with students, based on the old, well tried and tested master – pupil formula, which involves mutual respect, understating and partnership that can potentially bring advantages and satisfaction to both parties engaged in the educational process. The main aim of the current study is to present the results of research regarding students' preferred characteristics of academic teachers, conducted at the Faculty of Education, University of Rzeszow (PL) and the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Geneva (CH). The comparative research involved a sample of 413 full-time students, 268 from a Polish university (n=268), and 145 from a Swiss university (n=145). The analysis of research materials demonstrate that as far as the characterization of an academic teacher is concerned, students from the two universities expressed different priorities. The differences are not even subtle as the two groups chose to give precedence to different qualities. A univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicates that the variable that differentiates the attributing of significance to individual factors (groups of characteristics) between undergraduate and postgraduate students at both universities is the level of study.