5 ms·

Most academics didn't choose the career for the management side of their responsibilities. Perhaps concentrating those responsibilities in a few managerial type

Most academics didn't choose the career for the management side of their responsibilities. Perhaps concentrating those responsibilities in a few managerial types would free many people to do what they really want.

marcinzm 3y ago
> they really want You mean work on things they don't want to work on but are forced to by the management layer for fear of losing all funding/their jobs?
- curiousgibbon 3y ago
  Right, naively assuming the creation of a management class is a good thing doesn't sound wise.
shortrounddev2 3y ago
I've always disliked the perverse incentive of universities to hire professors who are good researchers but perhaps abysmal instructors. They may be subject matter experts but that doesn't necessarily qualify them to teach. They know as much, and often pawn off their undergrad classes on their grad students. I had a CS theory professor who was always out at math conferences and it made me wondering what the point of paying thousands in tuition to that school was if I'm just getting an underpaid grad student to teach me everything. I've heard some professors are recruited with the explicit promise that they'll do a minimal amount of actual teaching. Ironically this can mean that the supposedly "best" universities in the country have some of the worst in-class experience for undergrads, where huge lecture halls with 200 students are taught the fundamentals by people only a couple years older than them and not the world-renowned experts that they paid to see. If this isn't good enough for them, it's on the student to make up the difference via after-class labs with the grad students who help them solve their homework problems It feels like in some universities, research is the point and the undergrad programs simply exist to subsidize the graduate and PhD work and not to develop a new generation of people for the good of society
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  The point of professors is to grow doctoral students into new professors. The point of undergraduates is to learn enough on their own that merely talking with them does not make the professor want to poke his own eyes out. There are two kinds of intern - those who want me to teach them and those that learn by them selves and Injust point out what’s wrong Yes I should do much much more to reach out but …
  - shortrounddev2 3y ago
    >The point of undergraduates is to learn enough on their own that merely talking with them does not make the professor want to poke his own eyes out. I would agree if the students weren't paying insane sums to be there. When they pay tens of thousands a year to be there and be taught by experts, it's disrespectful to the customer to not even show up for work. If the student is required to teach themself, then what value does the university add? Why not just buy a set of textbooks and have some kind of exam company certify you? What is the value proposition of an institution which doesn't give a fuck about its customers?
    - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
      1. This is mostly confusing individual paying for their own education and a state paying for future workers. Even the US is coming round to the idea it has to forgive most student loans which eventually becomes state pays for university (because now that 50% kids go to further education the school leaving age is now 21) 2. You are not there to be taught. You are there to learn on your own, near people who will tell you an effective way to get through the syllabus (ie grabbing a text book on your own require huge amounts of effort and is probably impossible in say chemistry or most sciences. This is the other part of the fees - paying for buildings, explosive glowing stuff etc etc 3. Other students - 50% of the experience of university is meeting people not from your walk of life, getting to work with them, have sex with them etc. see point 1. It’s not about educating one person - it’s about building a new generation 4. That’s why well designed conscription actually seems to breed stronger societies (but usually confounded by most conscription is during times of actual war so hard to tell but post WWII societies seemed more egalitarian- but again lost confounding factors
drewcoo 3y ago
> Most academics didn't choose the career for the management side of their responsibilities Except for MBAs, who did? And why exactly should academics be some kind of special case when it comes to money?
tarboreus 3y ago
This is blinkered given the hockey-stick growth of higher ed management over the past ~30 years. If anything, there was a much reduced need to write grants back when there were few managers in the university. Bureaucrats create bureaucracy, they don't protect people from it.

marcinzm 3y ago

> they really want You mean work on things they don't want to work on but are forced to by the management layer for fear of losing all funding/their jobs?

curiousgibbon 3y ago
Right, naively assuming the creation of a management class is a good thing doesn't sound wise.

shortrounddev2 3y ago

I've always disliked the perverse incentive of universities to hire professors who are good researchers but perhaps abysmal instructors. They may be subject matter experts but that doesn't necessarily qualify them to teach. They know as much, and often pawn off their undergrad classes on their grad students. I had a CS theory professor who was always out at math conferences and it made me wondering what the point of paying thousands in tuition to that school was if I'm just getting an underpaid grad student to teach me everything. I've heard some professors are recruited with the explicit promise that they'll do a minimal amount of actual teaching. Ironically this can mean that the supposedly "best" universities in the country have some of the worst in-class experience for undergrads, where huge lecture halls with 200 students are taught the fundamentals by people only a couple years older than them and not the world-renowned experts that they paid to see. If this isn't good enough for them, it's on the student to make up the difference via after-class labs with the grad students who help them solve their homework problems It feels like in some universities, research is the point and the undergrad programs simply exist to subsidize the graduate and PhD work and not to develop a new generation of people for the good of society

lifeisstillgood 3y ago
The point of professors is to grow doctoral students into new professors. The point of undergraduates is to learn enough on their own that merely talking with them does not make the professor want to poke his own eyes out. There are two kinds of intern - those who want me to teach them and those that learn by them selves and Injust point out what’s wrong Yes I should do much much more to reach out but …
- shortrounddev2 3y ago
  >The point of undergraduates is to learn enough on their own that merely talking with them does not make the professor want to poke his own eyes out. I would agree if the students weren't paying insane sums to be there. When they pay tens of thousands a year to be there and be taught by experts, it's disrespectful to the customer to not even show up for work. If the student is required to teach themself, then what value does the university add? Why not just buy a set of textbooks and have some kind of exam company certify you? What is the value proposition of an institution which doesn't give a fuck about its customers?
  - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
    1. This is mostly confusing individual paying for their own education and a state paying for future workers. Even the US is coming round to the idea it has to forgive most student loans which eventually becomes state pays for university (because now that 50% kids go to further education the school leaving age is now 21) 2. You are not there to be taught. You are there to learn on your own, near people who will tell you an effective way to get through the syllabus (ie grabbing a text book on your own require huge amounts of effort and is probably impossible in say chemistry or most sciences. This is the other part of the fees - paying for buildings, explosive glowing stuff etc etc 3. Other students - 50% of the experience of university is meeting people not from your walk of life, getting to work with them, have sex with them etc. see point 1. It’s not about educating one person - it’s about building a new generation 4. That’s why well designed conscription actually seems to breed stronger societies (but usually confounded by most conscription is during times of actual war so hard to tell but post WWII societies seemed more egalitarian- but again lost confounding factors

drewcoo 3y ago

> Most academics didn't choose the career for the management side of their responsibilities Except for MBAs, who did? And why exactly should academics be some kind of special case when it comes to money?

tarboreus 3y ago

This is blinkered given the hockey-stick growth of higher ed management over the past ~30 years. If anything, there was a much reduced need to write grants back when there were few managers in the university. Bureaucrats create bureaucracy, they don't protect people from it.