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That's the hundred-billion-dollar question, isn't it. My radical proposal is to separate the research institutions from the universities -- especially the publ
by vanniv 7y ago
That's the hundred-billion-dollar question, isn't it.
My radical proposal is to separate the research institutions from the universities -- especially the public universities. If you want public research institutes, that's fine -- but they should be their own entities.
The university system, with its mix of research and instruction, and its tenure-vs-non-tenure system creates terrible incentives.
Top researchers are rarely also the best instructors -- and so it makes little sense for the two occupations to be so intimately tied.
The university funding model is terribly destructive to top science labs as well -- the university sees them as a source of prestige, sure, but more importantly as a source of that all-too-critical grant money (entirely too much of which is bogarted by the rest of the university) -- putting many of the labs in this place where they have to keep securing grants at an ever-increasing pace no matter what, to keep the rest of the university flush with cash to spend elsewhere.
There's really no good reason why research needs to be done at a university, or why a research institution needs a body of lecturers and students.
- CrazyStat 7y agoI absolutely agree. My wife did a PhD at an elite private university, undergrad tuition north of $50k/year not including room and board and other expenses. At one point three senior professors in her department went to the department chair and the dean with a proposal to revamp a notoriously unpopular intro class in their department. Rather than having it taught by adjuncts or postdocs, the three of them would team teach it. They would change the syllabus to bring it up to date with the current methods in the field--it had hardly been touched in two decades. They were told to forget about it. The University said it was a waste of time for them to teach undergrads. Presumably the kids applying to these types of universities are not aware of how little concern the institution has for the quality of their education (the perceived quality, on the other hand, is extremely important--but only loosely connected to the actual quality).
- vanniv 7y agoThe current undergraduate university market is almost entirely a reputational marketplace -- people are shopping for reputation/prestige. It turns out that prestige has very little to do with undergraduate education quality. This used to make lots of sense -- for centuries, college was more important as a place to meet other people as it was a place to actually learn useful skills -- and so you were primarily trying to go to the highest-class place you could get yourself in to. In this day and age, though, I don't think that's the right way to approach choosing a school.
- sjy 7y agoWhat do you think has changed? Is shopping for prestige a less useful strategy than it used to be? Now that more people go to university, arguably prestige is even more important.
- tfehring 7y agoI agree with all of this except the last sentence, which I entirely disagree with. The gap between elites and non-elites is growing, and as a result, the value of breaking into the social circles of the wealthy and "legacy" students who dominate elite schools is also growing. Meanwhile, high-quality educational content is becoming more widely available - often published for free by those same elite schools - so the value of the education itself is approaching zero. (For some programs, notably elite MBA programs, the value of the education is basically zero already and has been for some time.) If a course is taught by a TA or adjunct who barely speaks the language in which it's conducted, rather than by the distinguished professors whose names are on the department website, that's an annoyance, but all it costs you is some time on Khan Academy or Coursera to learn the material on your own. Your well-connected classmate who introduces you to a hiring manager or angel investor will have a much larger impact on your life.
- Frost1x 7y agoMost research at universities are held afloat by incredibly cheap yet fairly capable and specialized student labor: everything from post docs to undergrads. I'm not sure how you get around that unless you can nationally and efficiently provide central administrative services associated university research institutions provide. You could of course lower compensation for academics to incentivize other professionals to support research but you'll find academics fleeing to other opportunities in many cases.
- dodobirdlord 7y agoAcademic compensation is already low compared to what a most capable researchers could earn doing less interesting but more profitable work in industry. The competitiveness of the field isn't because the pay is good, people are competitive for all the same reasons that they are willing to work in the academy to begin with.
- vanniv 7y agoThe post doc that works at a university today could work at a research institution tomorrow in an otherwise-identical job. Accreditation could be performed for research institutions just as it is for university departments today -- PhD candidates could work in research institutions just as well as they do in university departments. The few classes they take are all within the department that they're researching in anyway, and are also all separate from classes that undergrads take -- so moving that education out of the university and in to the research institute seems fine too. That's not to say that instituting my plan would be easy. I did call it 'radical', after all