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Not only do teaching skills play no role in getting tenure at a place like Stanford, teaching is actually a threat to research productivity and research univers

by rsj_hn 7y ago

Not only do teaching skills play no role in getting tenure at a place like Stanford, teaching is actually a threat to research productivity and research universities will hire professors who do as little teaching as possible, leaving most of it to older who professors who are no longer productive researchers or to post docs, teaching assistants or other staff. To understand how this works, the researcher will apply for some grant, say $300,000 to study some question in geometry. Now, why does a mathematician need grant money when their only tools are a paper and pencil (maybe a laptop with Tex installed)? First, the university gets 1/3 of that money as "overhead", so the researcher is left with $200,000. Then, the researcher will pay to "buy out" his teaching load which is more money paid to the university, say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year. With the remaining $50,000, he may spend money to fund a post doc to come and assist him for a semester. Again, that money goes to the university. So the researcher may get $300,000 but it all ends up in the pocket of the University, which in turn pays him a good salary with the assumption that he keeps the grants coming. A place like Stanford gets about 1/3 of its funding from these research grants, 1/3 from its endowment, and 1/3 from tuition. It hires researches to get the grants, grad students and adjuncts to teach, and the sports teams and other events help with endowment. Thus research professors are hired on the basis of their ability to avoid teaching loads, not on their teaching skills.

jimmyvalmer 7y ago
Yes, this. Neither students nor teachers are well served by this grossly inefficient enterprise that wears young faculty so thin that it effectively violates several OSHA guidelines. I've always believed the college lecture format is an utter waste of time for everyone. I dream of a day when universities all become pure research institutions, and undergrads teach themselves with the help of AI feedback systems.
- toxik 7y ago
  That sounds dystopian and unlikely to ever work. Learning is a social endeavor.
jedberg 7y ago
> say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year Is that why she is teaching two classes in her first semester, including one which is lower division? Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes, you give them graduate seminars. I appreciate your cynicism, but based on her teaching load, I'm going to guess that she is also a good teacher.
- jimmyvalmer 7y ago
  > Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes Since when? The hard-and-fast rule is junior faculty are assigned intro classes. We often give youthful teachers higher marks than crusty, doddering emeriti, perhaps for good reason, perhaps not. > I appreciate your cynicism, but based on her teaching load, I'm going to > guess that she is also a good teacher. GP did not question her teaching ability, but your inference of said ability from her impressive ascent at Stanford. It's a bit like inferring LeBron James must really be mature since he entered the NBA straight from high school.
- boyobo 7y ago
  > > say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year Is that why she is teaching two classes in her first semester, including one which is lower division? Not really sure what you're saying. The fact that she's teaching just means that she isn't using (or doesn't have) a research grant to `buy out' of teaching. > Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes, you give them graduate seminars. Again, I don't know where you got this idea from. Usually (in a math research department such as the one at Stanford) whoever's arranging the teaching assignments doesn't look at an instructors teaching credentials at all, unless they are egregiously bad. So all we can conclude is that she isn't absolutely awful at teaching. The fact of the matter is that many researchers (due to their incentives) view teaching, especially lower division courses, as a chore, so really anyone in the department who wants to teach such a course is not going to get much opposition.
- rsj_hn 7y ago
  Not sure why you are accusing me of cynicism or arguing that a teaching load of two classes (typically 6 hours per week of instruction) in one semester is something to be proud of for a full time teacher. Go to your local teaching college to see people teach 4-5 classes each semester, or to your high school where they teach 5-6 one hour classes each day -- and do it without a bevy of grad students to grade papers for them, hold office hours so that the professor doesn't need to, answer student questions, hold seminars, write and correct exams. I am merely describing to you how this stuff works. My descriptions are accurate, from the overhead that universities take to the shifting of teaching loads onto adjuncts and grad students to the relative weight of teaching on research hires. You can verify by discussing these issues with someone else who went through the grad school experience and saw it all first hand -- I did it at Stanford. As to why such an anodyne and factual description of reality strikes you as cynical is something you have to come to grips with. There are reasons for this system. Lots of grant money is available -- should it not be available? Should we not be funding this stuff? Given that grant money is available for research, it makes sense that specialists who are good at getting grants would be allowed to do that -- get grants -- whereas others who are good at teaching be allowed to do that. Obviously universities are going to compete to find these specialists and will pay them well. The only problem here is that when people think of Stanford as a great research institution (which it is), they just assume that is must be a great teaching college, which it isn't. It's pretty mediocre on that front, yet that's what people assume, because they think a good researcher must be a good teacher. Listen, many good researchers can't even speak english at anything approaching a college level. At Stanford. They aren't there to teach. Researchers do research, and teachers teach. That is probably the thing that is upsetting you, but really a moment's reflection should tell you that these are all simple consequences of the multiple hats a research university like Stanford is expected to wear. If you want a good education, go to a teaching college -- there are many out there.

by rsj_hn 7y ago

jimmyvalmer 7y ago

Yes, this. Neither students nor teachers are well served by this grossly inefficient enterprise that wears young faculty so thin that it effectively violates several OSHA guidelines. I've always believed the college lecture format is an utter waste of time for everyone. I dream of a day when universities all become pure research institutions, and undergrads teach themselves with the help of AI feedback systems.

toxik 7y ago
That sounds dystopian and unlikely to ever work. Learning is a social endeavor.

jedberg 7y ago

> say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year Is that why she is teaching two classes in her first semester, including one which is lower division? Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes, you give them graduate seminars. I appreciate your cynicism, but based on her teaching load, I'm going to guess that she is also a good teacher.

jimmyvalmer 7y ago
> Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes Since when? The hard-and-fast rule is junior faculty are assigned intro classes. We often give youthful teachers higher marks than crusty, doddering emeriti, perhaps for good reason, perhaps not. > I appreciate your cynicism, but based on her teaching load, I'm going to > guess that she is also a good teacher. GP did not question her teaching ability, but your inference of said ability from her impressive ascent at Stanford. It's a bit like inferring LeBron James must really be mature since he entered the NBA straight from high school.
boyobo 7y ago
> > say $150,000 to not teach 2 classes for a year Is that why she is teaching two classes in her first semester, including one which is lower division? Not really sure what you're saying. The fact that she's teaching just means that she isn't using (or doesn't have) a research grant to `buy out' of teaching. > Usually you don't put the crappy teachers in the lower division classes, you give them graduate seminars. Again, I don't know where you got this idea from. Usually (in a math research department such as the one at Stanford) whoever's arranging the teaching assignments doesn't look at an instructors teaching credentials at all, unless they are egregiously bad. So all we can conclude is that she isn't absolutely awful at teaching. The fact of the matter is that many researchers (due to their incentives) view teaching, especially lower division courses, as a chore, so really anyone in the department who wants to teach such a course is not going to get much opposition.
rsj_hn 7y ago
Not sure why you are accusing me of cynicism or arguing that a teaching load of two classes (typically 6 hours per week of instruction) in one semester is something to be proud of for a full time teacher. Go to your local teaching college to see people teach 4-5 classes each semester, or to your high school where they teach 5-6 one hour classes each day -- and do it without a bevy of grad students to grade papers for them, hold office hours so that the professor doesn't need to, answer student questions, hold seminars, write and correct exams. I am merely describing to you how this stuff works. My descriptions are accurate, from the overhead that universities take to the shifting of teaching loads onto adjuncts and grad students to the relative weight of teaching on research hires. You can verify by discussing these issues with someone else who went through the grad school experience and saw it all first hand -- I did it at Stanford. As to why such an anodyne and factual description of reality strikes you as cynical is something you have to come to grips with. There are reasons for this system. Lots of grant money is available -- should it not be available? Should we not be funding this stuff? Given that grant money is available for research, it makes sense that specialists who are good at getting grants would be allowed to do that -- get grants -- whereas others who are good at teaching be allowed to do that. Obviously universities are going to compete to find these specialists and will pay them well. The only problem here is that when people think of Stanford as a great research institution (which it is), they just assume that is must be a great teaching college, which it isn't. It's pretty mediocre on that front, yet that's what people assume, because they think a good researcher must be a good teacher. Listen, many good researchers can't even speak english at anything approaching a college level. At Stanford. They aren't there to teach. Researchers do research, and teachers teach. That is probably the thing that is upsetting you, but really a moment's reflection should tell you that these are all simple consequences of the multiple hats a research university like Stanford is expected to wear. If you want a good education, go to a teaching college -- there are many out there.