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Professional Advantage over the students?

• saghm 4y ago
  Professional advantage over other professors who are either more scrupulous or less convincing. All else being equal, a professor with students clamoring to get into their course will have more influence than one whose course no one wants to take.
  • Balgair 4y ago
    I'd say it's the opposite. I'll speak to my experience in the US Ivory Tower and STEMy R1s mostly: Professors are ranked and gain tenure nearly entirely based on their research output as it relates to grant funding. Classes are generally seen as a cudgel to scare nontenured Professors into getting more grant money. If you slack on the grants, you have to teach classes, generally. It is a very intentional vicious cycle. A Professor with a popular class is a bad thing, as it means they'll have less time to research and apply for grants. Professors that like to teach generally go to much smaller colleges where the above comment may be true, but I don't have experience in those kinds of places and can't confirm or deny. It does sound really nice though!
    • gnicholas 4y ago
      I think that may be the experience in STEM, but not in humanities or social sciences. In this particular case, teaching was seen as a very important part of the job because it was at an elite liberal arts college. But even at R1 schools, humanities professors focus on writing/teaching, not grants as much.
  • gnicholas 4y ago
    In this case, the school was very small (1,400 students in total), so there was no competition between professors for enrollment. This was the weeder course for the major, so all majors had to take it. One professor taught it each fall, and it was always this professor — except when he was on leave.