5 ms·

If you are referring to classroom teaching, this is simply a very minor and largely insignificant part of being a professor at an R1 school. Most of the profes

by csa 9y ago

If you are referring to classroom teaching, this is simply a very minor and largely insignificant part of being a professor at an R1 school. Most of the professors I know who are also good teachers are using those classes as the top of their recruiting funnel for one thing or another. As mentioned elsewhere, advising is often more important and usually takes up much more time.

monksy 9y ago
Teaching is the reason why professors are there. If you can't/don't want to teach you should be a professional researcher and admit that. That is what the tax payers support when supporting universities. (Via tutiion, etc.. [grants are not considered in this]) The current setup where a professor can delagate teaching to TAs, and overwork/underpay assistents/juniors is ethically wrong, often illegal in work practices (payment below min wage), and fraudulent to the students paying tutition.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- chriskanan 9y ago
  This is a big misconception regarding what professors do at research-oriented institutions. Teaching is why people get professorships at teaching universities, where the main part of your job is to teach (typically 6-8 courses per year). If you are getting a job at a research-oriented university, you typically teach 1-3 courses per year, and the focus of your activity is on running a world-class research program (doing research, training PhD students, and raising money to pay those students / buy equipment, etc.). Teaching is still important and takes time, but you have a lot of other responsibilities. There are an enormous amount of pulls on a professor's time, though, and most work very long hours (my colleagues and I probably work 60-80 hours per week and we aren't at Harvard). I don't think it is appropriate to delegate teaching to TAs (I delegate much grading and help with homework assignments). Regarding pay for research assistants, there simply isn't a way to change this in the US. There just isn't enough government funding. To pay a single PhD student a stipend of around $30K per year for 20 hours of work per week* costs a budget around $60-80K with overhead and other factors per year. Many US agencies (e.g., NSF) only fund around $100-150K per year if you win a grant (7% success rate for many of them), so you can only fund 1-2 PhD students with that and you fought really hard to get that award to pay your students (lots of rejections). Most universities also won't let you pay them higher salaries, even if you want to as a professor. I used to complain about these things as a graduate student, but once you get the job (and have made a ton of budgets) you see the world differently. I'd love to change things, but don't blame the professors for things way out of their control. * 20 hours of work per week that's not related to their thesis, etc. Most of the time we are trying to get students funded on projects where that 20 hours of work does apply to their thesis, so that they get more out of it. They of course must work much more than 20 hours per week on their thesis project(s) to do cutting-edge work and graduate on time.
- csa 9y ago
  There are a lot of commonly held misconceptions about the job of a professor in your comment, so I will break it down line by line. Note that this is simply for laying down the reality of today's professor job market rather than advocating that it should be one way or another. > Teaching is the reason why professors are there. This is a commonly held belief by non-academics. It is not one held by academics at R1 schools. Note that there are many lower level universities (not R1) at which the teaching is sometimes quite good. There are also very real things called "teaching colleges". If someone wants to go to a place with great teachers, they largely should not go to an R1 school. > If you can't/don't want to teach you should be a professional researcher and admit that. Being a professor at an R1 school is basically making the claim that you are a researcher -- one who happens to teach from time to time. > That is what the tax payers support when supporting universities. (Via tutiion, etc.. [grants are not considered in this]) Are you sure about that? This is a potentially huge discussion, but "teaching" is not high on the list of added value if you attend an R1 school. In fact, the instruction is often terrible. The idea is that you will be given access to resources, and smart, motivated people know how to avail themselves of useful resources. Taxpayers get research labs that spawn new industries, develop mature industries, and contribute to high value-add labor markets (great for local economy). Students get access to bleeding edge research, researchers, and tools. Much tuition these days goes towards facilities that the people who can pay want (e.g., nicer dorms, gyms, etc.). Note that many of the top student scholars at R1 schools pay little or no tuition. One could also argue that people pay tuition for access to certain social circles -- social capital is a real thing with real value at a wide range of R1 schools. I could go on, but the value derived from how tuition and taxpayer money is used is a deep and complex topic. > The current setup where a professor can delegate teaching to TAs, and overwork/underpay assistents/juniors is ethically wrong, often illegal in work practices (payment below min wage), and fraudulent to the students paying tuition. The delegation part is fine -- the content of the classes that have TAs is not terribly challenging or interesting to a professional in the field, so delegating it (especially for large classes) is an intelligent allocation of human resources. That said, the illegal parts you mentioned are terrible and should not happen. To be fair, the only cases I've directly seen of overly worked TA/RA labor was when the grad student was doing something wrong (e.g., grading with heuristics that were overly granular). That said, I have read stories, and I believe that they are true at least in part if not in whole.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  > Teaching is the reason why professors are there Repeating this line over and over does not make it so. (Tenure-track CS) professors at Harvard are not there to (primarily) teach (undergraduate) courses. This is just a fact. > If you can't/don't want to teach you should be a professional researcher and admit that Professional researchers do not typically advise doctoral students. So professors at research universities are doing a lot of teaching that someone at an industry lab probably would not be doing. Classroom teaching is not the only form of teaching, and professional researchers do not grow on trees. > Via tuition, etc... fraudulent to the students paying tutition Tenure-track professors at places like Harvard fund themselves through grants, not undergraduate tuition dollars.
- kaitai 9y ago
  Where do you think those "professional researcher" jobs are, if not at research universities?
  - jhbadger 9y ago
    There are also a lot of non-university research positions. The US has a large number of national laboratories where researchers work full time (mostly in the physical and mathematical sciences), plus government agencies like the NIH, FDA, and CDC where the focus in on biology/medicine. And other nations have other non-university jobs like Germany's Max Planck institutes for practically every type of science.

by csa 9y ago

monksy 9y ago

Teaching is the reason why professors are there. If you can't/don't want to teach you should be a professional researcher and admit that. That is what the tax payers support when supporting universities. (Via tutiion, etc.. [grants are not considered in this]) The current setup where a professor can delagate teaching to TAs, and overwork/underpay assistents/juniors is ethically wrong, often illegal in work practices (payment below min wage), and fraudulent to the students paying tutition.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
chriskanan 9y ago
This is a big misconception regarding what professors do at research-oriented institutions. Teaching is why people get professorships at teaching universities, where the main part of your job is to teach (typically 6-8 courses per year). If you are getting a job at a research-oriented university, you typically teach 1-3 courses per year, and the focus of your activity is on running a world-class research program (doing research, training PhD students, and raising money to pay those students / buy equipment, etc.). Teaching is still important and takes time, but you have a lot of other responsibilities. There are an enormous amount of pulls on a professor's time, though, and most work very long hours (my colleagues and I probably work 60-80 hours per week and we aren't at Harvard). I don't think it is appropriate to delegate teaching to TAs (I delegate much grading and help with homework assignments). Regarding pay for research assistants, there simply isn't a way to change this in the US. There just isn't enough government funding. To pay a single PhD student a stipend of around $30K per year for 20 hours of work per week* costs a budget around $60-80K with overhead and other factors per year. Many US agencies (e.g., NSF) only fund around $100-150K per year if you win a grant (7% success rate for many of them), so you can only fund 1-2 PhD students with that and you fought really hard to get that award to pay your students (lots of rejections). Most universities also won't let you pay them higher salaries, even if you want to as a professor. I used to complain about these things as a graduate student, but once you get the job (and have made a ton of budgets) you see the world differently. I'd love to change things, but don't blame the professors for things way out of their control. * 20 hours of work per week that's not related to their thesis, etc. Most of the time we are trying to get students funded on projects where that 20 hours of work does apply to their thesis, so that they get more out of it. They of course must work much more than 20 hours per week on their thesis project(s) to do cutting-edge work and graduate on time.
csa 9y ago
There are a lot of commonly held misconceptions about the job of a professor in your comment, so I will break it down line by line. Note that this is simply for laying down the reality of today's professor job market rather than advocating that it should be one way or another. > Teaching is the reason why professors are there. This is a commonly held belief by non-academics. It is not one held by academics at R1 schools. Note that there are many lower level universities (not R1) at which the teaching is sometimes quite good. There are also very real things called "teaching colleges". If someone wants to go to a place with great teachers, they largely should not go to an R1 school. > If you can't/don't want to teach you should be a professional researcher and admit that. Being a professor at an R1 school is basically making the claim that you are a researcher -- one who happens to teach from time to time. > That is what the tax payers support when supporting universities. (Via tutiion, etc.. [grants are not considered in this]) Are you sure about that? This is a potentially huge discussion, but "teaching" is not high on the list of added value if you attend an R1 school. In fact, the instruction is often terrible. The idea is that you will be given access to resources, and smart, motivated people know how to avail themselves of useful resources. Taxpayers get research labs that spawn new industries, develop mature industries, and contribute to high value-add labor markets (great for local economy). Students get access to bleeding edge research, researchers, and tools. Much tuition these days goes towards facilities that the people who can pay want (e.g., nicer dorms, gyms, etc.). Note that many of the top student scholars at R1 schools pay little or no tuition. One could also argue that people pay tuition for access to certain social circles -- social capital is a real thing with real value at a wide range of R1 schools. I could go on, but the value derived from how tuition and taxpayer money is used is a deep and complex topic. > The current setup where a professor can delegate teaching to TAs, and overwork/underpay assistents/juniors is ethically wrong, often illegal in work practices (payment below min wage), and fraudulent to the students paying tuition. The delegation part is fine -- the content of the classes that have TAs is not terribly challenging or interesting to a professional in the field, so delegating it (especially for large classes) is an intelligent allocation of human resources. That said, the illegal parts you mentioned are terrible and should not happen. To be fair, the only cases I've directly seen of overly worked TA/RA labor was when the grad student was doing something wrong (e.g., grading with heuristics that were overly granular). That said, I have read stories, and I believe that they are true at least in part if not in whole.
throwawayjava 9y ago
> Teaching is the reason why professors are there Repeating this line over and over does not make it so. (Tenure-track CS) professors at Harvard are not there to (primarily) teach (undergraduate) courses. This is just a fact. > If you can't/don't want to teach you should be a professional researcher and admit that Professional researchers do not typically advise doctoral students. So professors at research universities are doing a lot of teaching that someone at an industry lab probably would not be doing. Classroom teaching is not the only form of teaching, and professional researchers do not grow on trees. > Via tuition, etc... fraudulent to the students paying tutition Tenure-track professors at places like Harvard fund themselves through grants, not undergraduate tuition dollars.
kaitai 9y ago
Where do you think those "professional researcher" jobs are, if not at research universities?
- jhbadger 9y ago
  There are also a lot of non-university research positions. The US has a large number of national laboratories where researchers work full time (mostly in the physical and mathematical sciences), plus government agencies like the NIH, FDA, and CDC where the focus in on biology/medicine. And other nations have other non-university jobs like Germany's Max Planck institutes for practically every type of science.