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The American research university is two* institutions uncomfortably sharing an organization -- one has as its mission undergraduate and professional education a

The American research university is two* institutions uncomfortably sharing an organization -- one has as its mission undergraduate and professional education and the other cutting edge research. Some of the staff involved with the latter participate in larger or smaller ways in the former, but for those that excel at research, especially in STEM, its a more or less voluntary choice how much time and effort they choose to put into the teaching part of the university. There's also plenty of staff on both sides that don't at all overlap. There's all kind of post hoc explanations for why this historically contingent organizational structure is really super optimal and the best of all ways of setting things up, but frankly they aren't very convincing. Probably the least bad is the notion that this structure is the only politically palatable way to subsidize the intellectual output of arts and many of the social science. But even there, I'm not wholly convinced. *Actually more than two. There's also semi-pro sports teams among other things.

mhneu 9y ago
>There's all kind of post hoc explanations for why this historically contingent organizational structure is really super optimal... but frankly they aren't very convincing. Disagree. The best place for undergrads to get a top-notch education is where they have the opportunity to work with or even around top-notch researchers and people at the top of their fields. Yes, many faculty don't spend that much time with undergrads, but they spend some. And they spend time with grad students who spend time with undergrads. This is the best way we know how to organize great teaching for undergrads.
- Fomite 9y ago
  The opportunity to work with research faculty I would otherwise not have encountered literally changed my life.
  - mhneu 9y ago
    Me too.
  - auggierose 9y ago
    > Maker of artisinal, small-batch simulation models for the discerning infectious disease consumer. Would love to hear more :)
    - Fomite 9y ago
      I'm an infectious disease researcher who works with computational models of epidemics. I'm also in the Pacific Northwest, so it seemed...appropriate.
- thanatropism 9y ago
  > The best place for undergrads to get a top-notch education is where they have the opportunity to work with or even around top-notch researchers and people at the top of their fields. Isn´t the fact that colleges are places part of the problem to begin with? In the non-US place where I had my tertiary education, the university was in the major metropolis (it had plenty of green and even a small river crossing it, but it was still in the city). I lived at home with my parents. In the afternoons, I was able to go and attend "scientific initiation" classes at a nearby research institution that didn't issue undergraduate degrees but still had their researchers do some outreach. This at the cost of not taking an internship, which pretty much everyone else did, of course. I'm not saying this is any kind of ideal model, but the research-vocational university isn't the singular model for contact with the research life (another alternative: internships in dedicated research institutions). Of course, by refactoring the university, this... disrobes... the problem of funding research.
- BeetleB 9y ago
  >The best place for undergrads to get a top-notch education is where they have the opportunity to work with or even around top-notch researchers and people at the top of their fields. As someone who has spent time in both a low ranked university and a top 5 one, I cannot agree. The curriculum is more demanding in the top 5 one, so if you get through it, you'd be more educated. The quality of the instruction, though, was poorer. What really does make a difference, though, is having highly motivated peers. They'll make a bigger difference in driving you to do your best than top faculty members will.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  In addition, if you don't have some faculty at the top of the field, how are you ensuring that your undergrad curriculum remains up-to-date with, for instance, the last decade or two? What stops your teaching from getting stuck in the 1980s without faculty who keep up?
  - bradleyjg 9y ago
    How do community colleges or high schools ensure that they don't get stuck in the 1980s? Teaching is, or at least could be, its own profession with its own duty to stay current. We are really debating a line drawing exercise. Scholars have to teach Phd students because they are the only ones that know the material that phd students are learning. Even if a particular scholar or scholars in general are bad at pedagogy it doesn't matter, there's no other option. On the hand high school American history can be taught by people that aren't themselves historians. We can select people that are good at and like teaching instead of having no choice but to use the people whose passion is investing the marriage rituals of late 17th century puritan farmers. My contention is that the vast majority of undergraduate coursework is on the high school American history side of the line. Those arguing on the other side don't generally argue that e.g. intro to partial differential equations -- a sophomore / junior level course for majors -- needs to be taught by someone publishing in the field of mathematics. That only someone on the cutting edge understands it well enough to teach it to others. Rather they make some rather mystical and anecdote driven claims about how such professors are inherently superior at imparting this knowledge than would be professors that were selected for, and spent their time honing, their skills in teaching rather than their skills in publishing. It's a rather extraordinary claim that selecting for exactly the qualities we are looking for would produce inferior outcomes to selecting for some other tenuously related quality, so it requires a fair bit of evidence.
23049uekkki 9y ago
You're right about the 2/3 institutions part. You could add a 4th if you include administration and fundraising. I'm a tenured faculty member at one of the institutions discussed in the article, currently looking elsewhere for jobs. If I don't find an academic one, I'll probably leave and go into non-academic fields. I have mixed feelings about the article, because I think the takeaway message is about right, and well-meaning, but there's a subtext that's completely problematic and lost, which is this: The whole discussion in the article is about profit, and the loss of public [midwestern] university profits to other institutions. That is, the problem identified is in retention of profitable faculty: "midwestern universities are losing their most profitable faculty because they can't afford their salaries." Quality of research is equated with profit, grant dollars brought in, and so forth. Why is this a problem? A number of reasons. First and foremost, the cost and profit research brings in is not the same as quality. There's a number of studies showing that impact (itself a poor measure of quality, although sufficient) is only weakly related to grant funding. Lots of good research can be done on a minimal, if no budget, and assuming that grant dollars = research quality is wrong. It might be true for certain fields, where equipment costs, etc. are standard, but for other fields, like math, you don't need a huge budget. The second problem is that by defining research quality in terms of profitability, you're feeding the problems that caused the hollowing out of midwestern public universities to begin with. The problem is not actually decreased public funding of universities, the problem is in the devaluing of research as a public benefit. The defunding is a secondary consequence of the devaluing, not the problem itself. Crippling tenure in Wisconsin, and threatening it in Iowa, are other consequences of this devaluing. These discussions strike me as sort of stupid at some level, because those grants that are being brought in are federal grants, which means they are public. So what's really happening is that the states are saying "we don't want to support faculty doing research. If they can get money another way, let them." If you want to fund research, there's basically four ways to do it: A consumer can support a company or other institution directly, by purchasing goods or donating, or paying tuition, or whatever, which then funds research as part of its operations. A consumer can support the researcher directly through kickstarter-like mechanisms or directly to the researcher (rare today but happens). A citizen can provide taxes to the state which funds the researcher's salary, either at the university, or in another institution. This means the state is supporting the research. A citizen can provide taxes to the federal government, which funds the researcher's salary. This means the federal government is supporting the research. What's happened today is that the third option is being gutted. What we've done is essentially say that "research isn't valuable unless the researcher gets federal funds to do so, or is paid for by a private corporation." I'm a very highly cited researcher, by many metrics, but I don't bring in much grant money by the nature of my research. So by the university's metrics I'm not valuable. Maybe that's reasonable, but to me I increasingly feel like something's hollow in these discussions. I see administrators being quoted in this article and feel resentment, because I don't see them saying "see here, you need to give us money to support this wonderful research." What I see them saying is "see here, you need to give us money to pay the people who are bringing in money from elsewhere." What this does is feed the underlying problematic value assertion, which is that the research means nothing, it's the money. "We need money so we can make more money" is what they're actually saying.
santaclaus 9y ago
> Some of the staff involved with the latter participate in larger or smaller ways in the former Researchers are almost always faculty (yes, some places have research scientist type roles on staff).
- bradleyjg 9y ago
  Being faculty doesn't necessarily mean teaching undergraduates. There are "course buyout" programs in a lot of places.
  - Fomite 9y ago
    Exhibit A: Me. Tenure-track faculty, 0% Teaching Obligation.
kkylin 9y ago
"... but for those that excel at research, especially in STEM, its a more or less voluntary choice how much time and effort they choose to put into the teaching part of the university." This is highly field dependent. I'm on the math faculty at a public research university. The bulk of research funding in mathematics comes from the NSF, which generally does not buy out teaching (so most of us have no choice but to teach a full load). Not saying this is a bad thing -- there are aspects of teaching I really enjoy -- but the statement above is not quite accurate for fields like mathematics. Similarly, most of our graduate students are TAs most of the time, except when they have an external fellowship or when their advisor happens to have a grant to support them.
- Fomite 9y ago
  This. It's really only the NIH that's systematically designed around full-time research. Coming from that tradition into some more NSF funded proposals, it's a little jarring at times to have to remember that they're inherently assuming you're at least a majority hard money, and covering something like 25% effort is "I'm done" instead of "A nice start."
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

mhneu 9y ago

>There's all kind of post hoc explanations for why this historically contingent organizational structure is really super optimal... but frankly they aren't very convincing. Disagree. The best place for undergrads to get a top-notch education is where they have the opportunity to work with or even around top-notch researchers and people at the top of their fields. Yes, many faculty don't spend that much time with undergrads, but they spend some. And they spend time with grad students who spend time with undergrads. This is the best way we know how to organize great teaching for undergrads.

Fomite 9y ago
The opportunity to work with research faculty I would otherwise not have encountered literally changed my life.
- mhneu 9y ago
  Me too.
- auggierose 9y ago
  > Maker of artisinal, small-batch simulation models for the discerning infectious disease consumer. Would love to hear more :)
  - Fomite 9y ago
    I'm an infectious disease researcher who works with computational models of epidemics. I'm also in the Pacific Northwest, so it seemed...appropriate.
thanatropism 9y ago
> The best place for undergrads to get a top-notch education is where they have the opportunity to work with or even around top-notch researchers and people at the top of their fields. Isn´t the fact that colleges are places part of the problem to begin with? In the non-US place where I had my tertiary education, the university was in the major metropolis (it had plenty of green and even a small river crossing it, but it was still in the city). I lived at home with my parents. In the afternoons, I was able to go and attend "scientific initiation" classes at a nearby research institution that didn't issue undergraduate degrees but still had their researchers do some outreach. This at the cost of not taking an internship, which pretty much everyone else did, of course. I'm not saying this is any kind of ideal model, but the research-vocational university isn't the singular model for contact with the research life (another alternative: internships in dedicated research institutions). Of course, by refactoring the university, this... disrobes... the problem of funding research.
BeetleB 9y ago
>The best place for undergrads to get a top-notch education is where they have the opportunity to work with or even around top-notch researchers and people at the top of their fields. As someone who has spent time in both a low ranked university and a top 5 one, I cannot agree. The curriculum is more demanding in the top 5 one, so if you get through it, you'd be more educated. The quality of the instruction, though, was poorer. What really does make a difference, though, is having highly motivated peers. They'll make a bigger difference in driving you to do your best than top faculty members will.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
In addition, if you don't have some faculty at the top of the field, how are you ensuring that your undergrad curriculum remains up-to-date with, for instance, the last decade or two? What stops your teaching from getting stuck in the 1980s without faculty who keep up?
- bradleyjg 9y ago
  How do community colleges or high schools ensure that they don't get stuck in the 1980s? Teaching is, or at least could be, its own profession with its own duty to stay current. We are really debating a line drawing exercise. Scholars have to teach Phd students because they are the only ones that know the material that phd students are learning. Even if a particular scholar or scholars in general are bad at pedagogy it doesn't matter, there's no other option. On the hand high school American history can be taught by people that aren't themselves historians. We can select people that are good at and like teaching instead of having no choice but to use the people whose passion is investing the marriage rituals of late 17th century puritan farmers. My contention is that the vast majority of undergraduate coursework is on the high school American history side of the line. Those arguing on the other side don't generally argue that e.g. intro to partial differential equations -- a sophomore / junior level course for majors -- needs to be taught by someone publishing in the field of mathematics. That only someone on the cutting edge understands it well enough to teach it to others. Rather they make some rather mystical and anecdote driven claims about how such professors are inherently superior at imparting this knowledge than would be professors that were selected for, and spent their time honing, their skills in teaching rather than their skills in publishing. It's a rather extraordinary claim that selecting for exactly the qualities we are looking for would produce inferior outcomes to selecting for some other tenuously related quality, so it requires a fair bit of evidence.

23049uekkki 9y ago

You're right about the 2/3 institutions part. You could add a 4th if you include administration and fundraising. I'm a tenured faculty member at one of the institutions discussed in the article, currently looking elsewhere for jobs. If I don't find an academic one, I'll probably leave and go into non-academic fields. I have mixed feelings about the article, because I think the takeaway message is about right, and well-meaning, but there's a subtext that's completely problematic and lost, which is this: The whole discussion in the article is about profit, and the loss of public [midwestern] university profits to other institutions. That is, the problem identified is in retention of profitable faculty: "midwestern universities are losing their most profitable faculty because they can't afford their salaries." Quality of research is equated with profit, grant dollars brought in, and so forth. Why is this a problem? A number of reasons. First and foremost, the cost and profit research brings in is not the same as quality. There's a number of studies showing that impact (itself a poor measure of quality, although sufficient) is only weakly related to grant funding. Lots of good research can be done on a minimal, if no budget, and assuming that grant dollars = research quality is wrong. It might be true for certain fields, where equipment costs, etc. are standard, but for other fields, like math, you don't need a huge budget. The second problem is that by defining research quality in terms of profitability, you're feeding the problems that caused the hollowing out of midwestern public universities to begin with. The problem is not actually decreased public funding of universities, the problem is in the devaluing of research as a public benefit. The defunding is a secondary consequence of the devaluing, not the problem itself. Crippling tenure in Wisconsin, and threatening it in Iowa, are other consequences of this devaluing. These discussions strike me as sort of stupid at some level, because those grants that are being brought in are federal grants, which means they are public. So what's really happening is that the states are saying "we don't want to support faculty doing research. If they can get money another way, let them." If you want to fund research, there's basically four ways to do it: A consumer can support a company or other institution directly, by purchasing goods or donating, or paying tuition, or whatever, which then funds research as part of its operations. A consumer can support the researcher directly through kickstarter-like mechanisms or directly to the researcher (rare today but happens). A citizen can provide taxes to the state which funds the researcher's salary, either at the university, or in another institution. This means the state is supporting the research. A citizen can provide taxes to the federal government, which funds the researcher's salary. This means the federal government is supporting the research. What's happened today is that the third option is being gutted. What we've done is essentially say that "research isn't valuable unless the researcher gets federal funds to do so, or is paid for by a private corporation." I'm a very highly cited researcher, by many metrics, but I don't bring in much grant money by the nature of my research. So by the university's metrics I'm not valuable. Maybe that's reasonable, but to me I increasingly feel like something's hollow in these discussions. I see administrators being quoted in this article and feel resentment, because I don't see them saying "see here, you need to give us money to support this wonderful research." What I see them saying is "see here, you need to give us money to pay the people who are bringing in money from elsewhere." What this does is feed the underlying problematic value assertion, which is that the research means nothing, it's the money. "We need money so we can make more money" is what they're actually saying.

santaclaus 9y ago

> Some of the staff involved with the latter participate in larger or smaller ways in the former Researchers are almost always faculty (yes, some places have research scientist type roles on staff).

bradleyjg 9y ago
Being faculty doesn't necessarily mean teaching undergraduates. There are "course buyout" programs in a lot of places.
- Fomite 9y ago
  Exhibit A: Me. Tenure-track faculty, 0% Teaching Obligation.

kkylin 9y ago

"... but for those that excel at research, especially in STEM, its a more or less voluntary choice how much time and effort they choose to put into the teaching part of the university." This is highly field dependent. I'm on the math faculty at a public research university. The bulk of research funding in mathematics comes from the NSF, which generally does not buy out teaching (so most of us have no choice but to teach a full load). Not saying this is a bad thing -- there are aspects of teaching I really enjoy -- but the statement above is not quite accurate for fields like mathematics. Similarly, most of our graduate students are TAs most of the time, except when they have an external fellowship or when their advisor happens to have a grant to support them.

Fomite 9y ago
This. It's really only the NIH that's systematically designed around full-time research. Coming from that tradition into some more NSF funded proposals, it's a little jarring at times to have to remember that they're inherently assuming you're at least a majority hard money, and covering something like 25% effort is "I'm done" instead of "A nice start."

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]