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> Teaching, meanwhile, gets subordinated to the world of fake research, to the detriment of professors themselves and the students they're supposed to be teachi
by sndean 10y ago
> Teaching, meanwhile, gets subordinated to the world of fake research, to the detriment of professors themselves and the students they're supposed to be teaching.
This was pretty eye opening for me in grad school when I saw that, after certain professors received a windfall of grant money, they would buy their way out of teaching. (This was in a biochemistry dept.)
It seemed very backwards to me that the professors that were doing some of the best work of their careers would pay to avoid interacting with students. The ones that had to teach classes to grad students were the ones who haven't published anything in 10 years.
- aaron-lebo 10y agoThe flip side of that is the almost predatory nature of professors looking for the best student that they can co-opt to work on their own research. Sometimes it seems like the only reason undergraduate and graduate classes exist are as a place to gather herds of students and pick the best.The others fall through the cracks.
- throwaway3h09ha 10y agoI know this isn't a popular view, but why would you want to distract yourself when you're doing real impactful work? If you were working at a startup would people accuse you of neglecting students, as if doing the best work in the field, like a startup, doesn't use up most of your time? I talked to a former academic who did amazing research, got multiple best paper awards, and then because of some personality conflicts in her department she got forced out over her teaching philosophy (in part because she was making people look bad by comparison). It seems like the teaching thing is mainly orthogonal to doing good work, other than for recruiting, and it's something that people can use against you when your research speaks for itself so strongly they don't have anything on you.