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Agreed -- making alternatives, which are as good for the professor, and free for the student, seems like a great idea. Correcting incentives is indeed hard. My

by iguy 8y ago

Agreed -- making alternatives, which are as good for the professor, and free for the student, seems like a great idea. Correcting incentives is indeed hard. My guess is that, with professors, the ideal is actually zero explicit incentive: teaching well, or passing lots of students, should get you no more money, and neither more nor less subsequent teaching duties. They will never all be great, but the ones who are great at gaming any reward system the administrators can think up, those ones are always terrible. And seeing them richly rewarded is disheartening for the more honest.

ethbro 8y ago
As the child of tenured research faculty (before they left for greener pastures), I'm well aware of the systemic dysfunction. But throwing up our hands and saying "We can't do anything perfect about this problem, so it's better to do nothing" doesn't make progress either. To the GP's "Projects like this pilot are a much better idea [than explicit incentives]", my comment was in continuation of the sentiment that "It doesn't matter if you have excellent, free materials, if economic incentives (for-profit publishers) dissuade faculty from using them." Will any system be gamed? Invariably. So we tweak it. And tweak it again. Weaning academia (and I'm specifically looking at community colleges and technical schools, who I know are far worse offenders given their lesser resources) off for-profit course material seems a just deployment of incentives and government resources, because it's a barrier to entry market rather than an ongoing investment. After materials of marketable quality are produced, the system is likely to be self-sustaining with the correct revenue direction. The only reason it hasn't been done is the cost of producing the initial materials, and the unwillingness of any one user to bear that entire cost.

by iguy 8y ago

ethbro 8y ago

As the child of tenured research faculty (before they left for greener pastures), I'm well aware of the systemic dysfunction. But throwing up our hands and saying "We can't do anything perfect about this problem, so it's better to do nothing" doesn't make progress either. To the GP's "Projects like this pilot are a much better idea [than explicit incentives]", my comment was in continuation of the sentiment that "It doesn't matter if you have excellent, free materials, if economic incentives (for-profit publishers) dissuade faculty from using them." Will any system be gamed? Invariably. So we tweak it. And tweak it again. Weaning academia (and I'm specifically looking at community colleges and technical schools, who I know are far worse offenders given their lesser resources) off for-profit course material seems a just deployment of incentives and government resources, because it's a barrier to entry market rather than an ongoing investment. After materials of marketable quality are produced, the system is likely to be self-sustaining with the correct revenue direction. The only reason it hasn't been done is the cost of producing the initial materials, and the unwillingness of any one user to bear that entire cost.