5 ms·

I think what we have is a glut of people who don't want to enter the workforce, and have this naive dream of academia, tenure, and doing research. In my humble

I think what we have is a glut of people who don't want to enter the workforce, and have this naive dream of academia, tenure, and doing research. In my humble opinion, the purpose of a professor at a university is to TEACH. Not research, that should be secondary to their teaching duties. Universities are deceiving PhD students into thinking this magical world of research, and lifetime tenure awaits them at the end of the PhD rainbow.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rjsw 9y ago
As the child of a tenured professor, the employment contract didn't even used to mention teaching, the job was to do research.
oddlyaromatic 9y ago
Mine didn't. I did an MA and got an up close view of the life of many academics and recognized it was not for me. But the general impression I got was there are two good reasons to do a phd: 1. For pleasure/curiosity/enjoyment (as in you are independently wealthy). 2. If you can't see yourself being happy in any other life and you understand the compromises you have to make (poor income, high competition, having to move a lot, etc.) I know some wonderful PhDs who got doctorates with this very understanding and love their lives. But I didn't have the wealth to do it for fun, and I generally land on my feet and get happy no matter what, so I didn't borrow any more trouble and moved on with my life. America's universities maybe may be different but this is how it was in Ireland!
mjfl 9y ago
I'm a PhD student with no intention of going into academia. I just love science, and being able to do it for 5 more years is inherently fulfilling to me. That's why I came back to grad school after working for two years. Let's be real, real life kind of sucks. Now I get paid less but I feel like I'm living in luxury. I have no illusion about the money I'm sacrificing but in my mind I've made a fair trade.
enraged_camel 9y ago
>>In my humble opinion, the purpose of a professor at a university is to TEACH. Not research, that should be secondary to their teaching duties. No. PhDs are extremely specialized on a very narrow topic within a single field. They spend years researching that topic to the exclusion of everything else. Asking PhDs to teach is like asking brain surgeons to treat common cold. They probably can do it, but it's a gross waste of their skills and expertise.
- barry-cotter 9y ago
  If there is no demand for your skills they can’t be wasted. There’s no necessary reason why being really good at literary criticism is any more socially valuable than being really good at Counter Strike. If no one’s willing to pay you for it I hope you had fun learning to do it because otherwise it was a waste.
greglindahl 9y ago
Do you have a source for this tale of successful deception of poor grad students by universities other than your own imagination? When I went to grad school in the sciences in the 1990s we were all well aware of the job market, because students were constantly finishing and we'd know what jobs they got.
ineedasername 9y ago
Well, yes & no. It is an oddly contradictory system in this way, especially when you consider Teacher Ed. programs that certify their graduates to teach below the college level. Implicit therein is a recognition that teaching is a specialized profession requiring specialized skills. Yet faculty in higher ed are not expected to have any specialized training in this area, and all learning of it is "on the job". The result is an educational environment where the most visible job requirement for faculty is to teach courses in their field. But that is the portion of their responsibilities for which, from an incentives perspective, they are least accountable. Instead, to obtain a tenure-track position and ultimately earn tenure itself, primary requirements are research and publishing output, with double++ good to eleventy for bringing research grants to their institution. Teaching and advising/mentoring, not quite an afterthought, is much lower in priority & weighting in tenure review.
- ineedasername 9y ago
  I should add that the faculty most consistently dedicated to quality instruction and student mentoring seem to be those who already have tenure, though it is a minority of them. Anecdotally, I perceive higher consistent quality of instruction from adjunct faculty though. I'm not sure if that is because they often end up teaching more courses and gain more experience thereby, or because they have less need to sink time into other research, or some other factor. I have seen faculty in tenure track positions penalized for focusing too much on the side of student instruction, advising, etc. In one particular case tenure was denied on the basis of a light research portfolio despite an extensive and impressive track record of well-rated course instruction and an impressive dedication to meeting with students far more the the minimum required time. (2.5 office hours/week) Of course there may have been more to the denial, I only know the publicly available details from the fallout when a dispute was filed.
opportune 9y ago
Universities just need to do a better job of separating teaching and research in my opinion. Someone with a PhD in algebraic graph theory isn't going to want to teach 20 year olds what a group is, or grade their tests, and they shouldn't have to. For every undergraduate class, there are probably more than enough 25 year olds with degrees in that subject capable of teaching that class better than that professor might. But, whoever teaches the class should first and foremost be a good teacher who actually wants to teach, and not whichever professor/grad student could be drafted into duty. The main problem with universities these days is that they are given the duty of both teaching and research, but they force people to teach that don't want to (some professors, grad students). In addition many people view universities more as job training than learning about a specific subject. If you go to college to get a degree in CS, but all you want to do is get a job at Google, you don't need CS experts to teach you intro to data structures or how to write SQL. I think the long term solution is to entirely separate the realms of research and teaching, or to make teaching as a research professor entirely "opt-in" outside of discipline specific classes (the algebraic graph theory professor should probably be the one teaching algebraic graph theory). My university has been relying more and more on teaching-only professors to teach CS classes and I think it's a wonderful solution. The teaching-only professors are much more personable and engaged in the actual teaching, and the research professors get to focus on what they're good at.
mikebenfield 9y ago
> Not research, that should be secondary to their teaching duties. Why?
- martin1975 9y ago
  I'd say because teaching has a higher payoff for the students being taught. They can get jobs immediately after college and contribute... Research on the other hand, outside of the self-serving aspect - like how many papers one gets published - has hardly any immediate benefits relative to the benefits of teaching... and few long term benefits. It's more of a gamble.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rjsw 9y ago

As the child of a tenured professor, the employment contract didn't even used to mention teaching, the job was to do research.

oddlyaromatic 9y ago

Mine didn't. I did an MA and got an up close view of the life of many academics and recognized it was not for me. But the general impression I got was there are two good reasons to do a phd: 1. For pleasure/curiosity/enjoyment (as in you are independently wealthy). 2. If you can't see yourself being happy in any other life and you understand the compromises you have to make (poor income, high competition, having to move a lot, etc.) I know some wonderful PhDs who got doctorates with this very understanding and love their lives. But I didn't have the wealth to do it for fun, and I generally land on my feet and get happy no matter what, so I didn't borrow any more trouble and moved on with my life. America's universities maybe may be different but this is how it was in Ireland!

mjfl 9y ago

I'm a PhD student with no intention of going into academia. I just love science, and being able to do it for 5 more years is inherently fulfilling to me. That's why I came back to grad school after working for two years. Let's be real, real life kind of sucks. Now I get paid less but I feel like I'm living in luxury. I have no illusion about the money I'm sacrificing but in my mind I've made a fair trade.

enraged_camel 9y ago

>>In my humble opinion, the purpose of a professor at a university is to TEACH. Not research, that should be secondary to their teaching duties. No. PhDs are extremely specialized on a very narrow topic within a single field. They spend years researching that topic to the exclusion of everything else. Asking PhDs to teach is like asking brain surgeons to treat common cold. They probably can do it, but it's a gross waste of their skills and expertise.

barry-cotter 9y ago
If there is no demand for your skills they can’t be wasted. There’s no necessary reason why being really good at literary criticism is any more socially valuable than being really good at Counter Strike. If no one’s willing to pay you for it I hope you had fun learning to do it because otherwise it was a waste.

greglindahl 9y ago

Do you have a source for this tale of successful deception of poor grad students by universities other than your own imagination? When I went to grad school in the sciences in the 1990s we were all well aware of the job market, because students were constantly finishing and we'd know what jobs they got.

ineedasername 9y ago

Well, yes & no. It is an oddly contradictory system in this way, especially when you consider Teacher Ed. programs that certify their graduates to teach below the college level. Implicit therein is a recognition that teaching is a specialized profession requiring specialized skills. Yet faculty in higher ed are not expected to have any specialized training in this area, and all learning of it is "on the job". The result is an educational environment where the most visible job requirement for faculty is to teach courses in their field. But that is the portion of their responsibilities for which, from an incentives perspective, they are least accountable. Instead, to obtain a tenure-track position and ultimately earn tenure itself, primary requirements are research and publishing output, with double++ good to eleventy for bringing research grants to their institution. Teaching and advising/mentoring, not quite an afterthought, is much lower in priority & weighting in tenure review.

ineedasername 9y ago
I should add that the faculty most consistently dedicated to quality instruction and student mentoring seem to be those who already have tenure, though it is a minority of them. Anecdotally, I perceive higher consistent quality of instruction from adjunct faculty though. I'm not sure if that is because they often end up teaching more courses and gain more experience thereby, or because they have less need to sink time into other research, or some other factor. I have seen faculty in tenure track positions penalized for focusing too much on the side of student instruction, advising, etc. In one particular case tenure was denied on the basis of a light research portfolio despite an extensive and impressive track record of well-rated course instruction and an impressive dedication to meeting with students far more the the minimum required time. (2.5 office hours/week) Of course there may have been more to the denial, I only know the publicly available details from the fallout when a dispute was filed.

opportune 9y ago

Universities just need to do a better job of separating teaching and research in my opinion. Someone with a PhD in algebraic graph theory isn't going to want to teach 20 year olds what a group is, or grade their tests, and they shouldn't have to. For every undergraduate class, there are probably more than enough 25 year olds with degrees in that subject capable of teaching that class better than that professor might. But, whoever teaches the class should first and foremost be a good teacher who actually wants to teach, and not whichever professor/grad student could be drafted into duty. The main problem with universities these days is that they are given the duty of both teaching and research, but they force people to teach that don't want to (some professors, grad students). In addition many people view universities more as job training than learning about a specific subject. If you go to college to get a degree in CS, but all you want to do is get a job at Google, you don't need CS experts to teach you intro to data structures or how to write SQL. I think the long term solution is to entirely separate the realms of research and teaching, or to make teaching as a research professor entirely "opt-in" outside of discipline specific classes (the algebraic graph theory professor should probably be the one teaching algebraic graph theory). My university has been relying more and more on teaching-only professors to teach CS classes and I think it's a wonderful solution. The teaching-only professors are much more personable and engaged in the actual teaching, and the research professors get to focus on what they're good at.

mikebenfield 9y ago

> Not research, that should be secondary to their teaching duties. Why?

martin1975 9y ago
I'd say because teaching has a higher payoff for the students being taught. They can get jobs immediately after college and contribute... Research on the other hand, outside of the self-serving aspect - like how many papers one gets published - has hardly any immediate benefits relative to the benefits of teaching... and few long term benefits. It's more of a gamble.