3 ms·

>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

by 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.

by mhneu 9y ago

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.