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You may be looking in the wrong place. Faculty and other teaching staff are not usually paid directly by students paying tuition. At larger research universit

by rwl 13y ago

You may be looking in the wrong place. Faculty and other teaching staff are not usually paid directly by students paying tuition. At larger research universities, tuition might not even make up a significant portion of their salaries (which are also paid by things like government grants, interest on endowments, etc.). They are paid to do research, and their incentives are aligned not toward better teaching but toward publishing and bringing in grant money. Teaching is time-consuming and takes away from those activities, so not all professors like doing it or do it well. The people who in my experience are most responsive to undergraduates (and their parents) qua paying customers are administrators and "development" people. These people are paid to bring in money in the form of tuition and donations from parents and alumni. With them, you can expect to get some pretty special treatment if you're willing to pay for it, though of course that special treatment isn't supposed to extend to how you're treated in the classroom. And there are good reasons for that: not everyone can pay full tuition, and students shouldn't get more attention/higher grades/etc. just because they're paying more. I'm not saying this is the way things are everywhere, and I'm certainly not saying it's the way things ought to be. I do think that many faculty need to take teaching more seriously, and their incentives should be better aligned in that direction. Still, I'm not convinced that education would improve if faculty started seeing students as fee for service customers. In the extreme, I think that would tend to increase faculty's tendency to pander to students, instead of creating and sharing new knowledge with them.

mahyarm 13y ago
Then these overqualified research professors should not waste their time teaching and have this conflict of interest. They should be just mentoring the next generation of research professors and doing their research, since that is where most of their money comes from anyway. I've gotten far superior instruction in math for example from dedicated instructors at community colleges than I ever got at my university. 30 people sized classes vs 300 sized and it was almost half price. These community colleges are only devoted to teaching and generally they do just fine. A dedicated 24/7 tutor lab and khan academy to be honest would of even been better in some aspects, since you can just tunnel through material, have a tutor help you in a spot you get stuck in and keep on tunneling.
- claudius 13y ago
  > They should be just mentoring the next generation of research professors and doing their research, since that is where most of their money comes from anyway. That’s exactly what universities are intended to do: Educate the future researchers and front-edge users of a particular field. For the more practically oriented, there are universities of applied sciences (the difference in naming is much more obvious in German: Universität ./. Fachhochschule) and even the dual education system with its trade schools. The idea that every lowly programmer who wants to learn ‘just enough maths’ should go to university is – IMHO – frankly bullshit.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  >Then these overqualified research professors should not waste their time teaching and have this conflict of interest. They should be just mentoring the next generation of research professors and doing their research, since that is where most of their money comes from anyway. That's just not the way research works. I've gotten far superior instruction in math for example from dedicated instructors at community colleges than I ever got at my university. 30 people sized classes vs 300 sized and it was almost half price. One of the best courses I've ever taken was a "300 sized" chemistry class. The lecturer was a master at lecturing, his classes filled almost immediately. He also put a lot of effort into meeting with students, despite having a dozen or so TA's to manage. >These community colleges are only devoted to teaching and generally they do just fine. I'm an instructor at a CC and I can tell you it is a mixed bag. Our math dept is weak.
  - mahyarm 13y ago
    How does research 'work' then? Of course you are going to get mixed bag results in any institution. Sometimes you will get research professors who are good instructors like your I'm guessing 300 person intro chemistry course, but the incentives lead to weaker instruction than a pure instructor. Especially in entry level courses. You get travesties such as people who have very thick accents and bad language skills teaching second year courses because it's a research university.
    - 13y ago

by rwl 13y ago

mahyarm 13y ago

Then these overqualified research professors should not waste their time teaching and have this conflict of interest. They should be just mentoring the next generation of research professors and doing their research, since that is where most of their money comes from anyway. I've gotten far superior instruction in math for example from dedicated instructors at community colleges than I ever got at my university. 30 people sized classes vs 300 sized and it was almost half price. These community colleges are only devoted to teaching and generally they do just fine. A dedicated 24/7 tutor lab and khan academy to be honest would of even been better in some aspects, since you can just tunnel through material, have a tutor help you in a spot you get stuck in and keep on tunneling.

claudius 13y ago
> They should be just mentoring the next generation of research professors and doing their research, since that is where most of their money comes from anyway. That’s exactly what universities are intended to do: Educate the future researchers and front-edge users of a particular field. For the more practically oriented, there are universities of applied sciences (the difference in naming is much more obvious in German: Universität ./. Fachhochschule) and even the dual education system with its trade schools. The idea that every lowly programmer who wants to learn ‘just enough maths’ should go to university is – IMHO – frankly bullshit.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
>Then these overqualified research professors should not waste their time teaching and have this conflict of interest. They should be just mentoring the next generation of research professors and doing their research, since that is where most of their money comes from anyway. That's just not the way research works. I've gotten far superior instruction in math for example from dedicated instructors at community colleges than I ever got at my university. 30 people sized classes vs 300 sized and it was almost half price. One of the best courses I've ever taken was a "300 sized" chemistry class. The lecturer was a master at lecturing, his classes filled almost immediately. He also put a lot of effort into meeting with students, despite having a dozen or so TA's to manage. >These community colleges are only devoted to teaching and generally they do just fine. I'm an instructor at a CC and I can tell you it is a mixed bag. Our math dept is weak.
- mahyarm 13y ago
  How does research 'work' then? Of course you are going to get mixed bag results in any institution. Sometimes you will get research professors who are good instructors like your I'm guessing 300 person intro chemistry course, but the incentives lead to weaker instruction than a pure instructor. Especially in entry level courses. You get travesties such as people who have very thick accents and bad language skills teaching second year courses because it's a research university.
  - 13y ago