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finally prospective college students have a way to judge a university that is objective. ask them what percentage of adjuncts they have, lower is obviously bet

finally prospective college students have a way to judge a university that is objective. ask them what percentage of adjuncts they have, lower is obviously better. then plot versus tuition cost, then you can figure out the optimal ratio of adjunct/tuition for your budget.

paulcole 3y ago
> ask them what percentage of adjuncts they have, lower is obviously better. As a 17-year old high school senior what would your process be to “ask them”? And does it matter what the university’s percentage is vs. the percentage in the program the prospective student is interested in? And wouldn’t students turning down schools because of too many adjuncts just lead to more adjuncts as there’s less tuition money coming in? This has all the hallmarks of “Walk into the office, shake the manager’s hand and hand them your resume.” Sounds good and it has probably worked for somebody!
leetcrew 3y ago
a lot of this blog post is about how universities come up with a long list of titles to avoid calling adjuncts "adjuncts". so you could ask this question, and the admissions officer would (somewhat) honestly answer that they don't have any adjuncts. then you would go and have most of your classes taught by people who are adjuncts in every way except their title. a better question might be "what percentage of faculty are tenure track?" or "what percentage of courses are taught by tenure track faculty?". that said, I don't see much evidence that the "teacher-scholar" model brings a lot of value to undergraduate education in the first place. even in a fast-moving field like CS, the vast majority of the BS curriculum is stuff that was figured out decades ago. by far the best "professor" I had in my CS degree was actually an MS student TA who really liked operating systems. technically, he wasn't even allowed to teach that class, but I guess the department looked the other way because he got great reviews and they didn't have to pay him much.

paulcole 3y ago

> ask them what percentage of adjuncts they have, lower is obviously better. As a 17-year old high school senior what would your process be to “ask them”? And does it matter what the university’s percentage is vs. the percentage in the program the prospective student is interested in? And wouldn’t students turning down schools because of too many adjuncts just lead to more adjuncts as there’s less tuition money coming in? This has all the hallmarks of “Walk into the office, shake the manager’s hand and hand them your resume.” Sounds good and it has probably worked for somebody!

leetcrew 3y ago

a lot of this blog post is about how universities come up with a long list of titles to avoid calling adjuncts "adjuncts". so you could ask this question, and the admissions officer would (somewhat) honestly answer that they don't have any adjuncts. then you would go and have most of your classes taught by people who are adjuncts in every way except their title. a better question might be "what percentage of faculty are tenure track?" or "what percentage of courses are taught by tenure track faculty?". that said, I don't see much evidence that the "teacher-scholar" model brings a lot of value to undergraduate education in the first place. even in a fast-moving field like CS, the vast majority of the BS curriculum is stuff that was figured out decades ago. by far the best "professor" I had in my CS degree was actually an MS student TA who really liked operating systems. technically, he wasn't even allowed to teach that class, but I guess the department looked the other way because he got great reviews and they didn't have to pay him much.