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The article title "...with Schools Attached" misses an important fact about most universities. The purpose of most universities is to engage in scientific resea
by Pyxl101 11y ago
The article title "...with Schools Attached" misses an important fact about most universities. The purpose of most universities is to engage in scientific research. They are not schools, not primarily. They are chiefly research institutions that, yes, have schools attached.
For more about this, read: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/05/29/the-purpose-of-harvard-is-not-to-educate-people/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/05/29/...
> [T]here is one misimpression that people seem to have, that might as well be corrected before any hasty actions are taken: the purpose of Harvard is not to educate students. If anything, its primary purpose is to produce research and scholarly work. Nobody should be surprised that the gigantic endowment isn’t put to use in providing top-flight educational experiences for a much larger pool of students; it could be, for sure, but that’s not the goal. The endowment is there to help build new facilities, launch new research initiatives, and attract the best faculty. [...]
> Don’t believe me? Here is the test: when was the last time Harvard made a senior tenure offer to someone because they were a world-class educator, rather than a world-class researcher? Not only is the answer “never,” the question itself is somewhat laughable.
> This is not a value judgment, nor is it a particular complaint about Harvard. It’s true of any top-ranked private research university, including Caltech. (Note that Caltech has over 1200 faculty members and fewer than 900 undergraduate students.) And it is not a statement about universities in general; many large public universities, and smaller liberal-arts schools, take education very seriously as a primary mission. This is by no means incompatible with being a top-notch research institution — the physics departments at places like Berkeley or UC Santa Barbara would be the envy of almost any private research university. But those places also take their educational mission very seriously, which Harvard, honestly, does not.
- timrpeterson 11y agoExcept, they treat their researchers like total crap. Taking 2/3 of all grant money for overhead? Salaries for 45 year olds with 20 years of experience that are the same or worse as 25 year old with zero experience in private sector. Publish or perish? This whole thing you say these schools focus on, research? Pathetic. And trust me I know I've been at all the top schools and am now a professor.
- 50CNT 11y agoComing from an outsider, having heard about how much sifting there is in Academia, couldn't that be because there's more people that want to be researchers than there are research positions? Someone who works in a sub-field without private sector research positions and with post-docs pushing up against them doesn't seem to be in the strongest negotiating position. I do agree however that it is messed up.
- adminprof 11y agoIt's strange to me that you're a professor but the things you're saying aren't true. The 2/3 grant money thing I think you are talking about indirect costs? That's not money off the top of received grants, it's computed like a tip, where when you receive $1 of grant funding, the university receives $0.66. And only on non-equipment, non-tuition (for funding students) items. So it usually works out to being about 35%. And Ivy League universities pay their faculty quite well, especially in computer science. I don't know of any cases where a entry-level software engineer is paid even close to what a full computer science professor makes on even their 9-month salary. This makes me ask, have you really "been at all the top schools and am now a professor"? I feel like any assistant professor would know these things.
- tanderson92 11y agoLet's make sure to compare apples to apples, even when discounting the 9-month salary (no CS professor truly gets the summer off, that isn't how the academy functions): * Entry-level software engineers have 0 months experience. * Full professors in CS have 5 yrs of a Ph.D., and perhaps 2-4 years of postdoctoral experience, and 5-7 years of professorial work.
- adminprof 11y agoTotally agree the comparison isn't equal. But what I'm saying is that the 9-month salary is already way higher than an industry salary. If they worked the 3 summer months funded by a grant, it's like getting a 33% bonus on top of their 9-month salary.
- Chinjut 11y agoWhy specifically "scientific" research? Don't schools have large departments besides the sciences?