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Where did you get 3 hours? If you know someone who prepares 3 hours for a 1 hour lecture, and it's not their first day or something, they have some kind of anx

Where did you get 3 hours? If you know someone who prepares 3 hours for a 1 hour lecture, and it's not their first day or something, they have some kind of anxiety disorder. The best lecturers I know just walk into class and start writing on the board and explaining things. Sometimes they have to ask the class what the material they are supposed to go over that class is. They can do this because they are competent. If you don't know what you are supposed to be teaching well enough to just teach it, you are wasting your student's time. Professors, especially good researchers, don't grade homework themselves unless they feel like it. Professors are compensated research. For them to make money on the side with the intellectual property they were compensated fully to create is just dishonest. Use the logic that professors should get to keep intellectual property they were paid to develop to any other profession. Coal miners should keep the coal they mine? Magazine editors should get to take their work and put it in a separate newsletter?

scott_s 17y ago
I got three hours from my own experience. I'm thinking of young professors who are in their first few years of teaching. You can't just walk into a class and expect to pull a good lesson out of thin air. Knowing material and being able to teach it well to students are two different things. Teaching is a skill that is independent of the knowledge you're trying to impart. Developing that skill takes time and effort. Professors frequently have to grade their own homework. TAs are not in infinite supply. I know my adviser commonly has to grade his own assignments. I said nothing about professors getting money from the IP they created. In fact, what I said was that most professors make every attempt to make their work as freely available as possible. It is in their own best interest to do so. When you do research in academia, your hardest problem is convincing others that your work is good and worthwhile. In the rare circumstance where academic research leads to something that could be sold, the patent is always joint with the university. You're upset with a person who doesn't exist.
- justin_vanw 17y ago
  You say they get to keep IP jointly with the University. Then you say that that person who keeps IP doesn't exist... You are talking on the general plight and struggles of academics, which is another subject, and a subject I have no comment for. This or that aspect of being a professor really has nothing to do with this topic. I am saying, again, that anything a professor develops, designs, or discovers while collecting a salary or having his research otherwise paid for out of tax revenues should have no ownership of it or financial compensation for it whatsoever (prizes are not compensation), and it should be placed in the public domain, just as the work of a government employee would be. Financial benefit should go to the party taking the financial risk. A professor takes no financial risk when he researches things, as he collects a salary regardless of his success or failure in any course of research. Rather, all financial risk and cost is paid out of tax revenues.
  - scott_s 17y ago
    Academics can patent their work jointly with their university, but they rarely do. They have very little incentive to do so: the gulf between what an academic produces and something that is widely useful is usually huge, and academics are not evaluated on patents. Most universities would probably prefer that professors and graduate students patent their work, since it's the university that's more likely to benefit. But professor and grad students rarely bother because, again, they have no incentive. I brought up professor work habits because I felt your impression of their work burden is wrong. I also got the impression that your mistaken impression was feeding your contempt. Let me put it this way: I am unaware of any academic who meets your description. All that I know and know of disseminate their work freely.

scott_s 17y ago

I got three hours from my own experience. I'm thinking of young professors who are in their first few years of teaching. You can't just walk into a class and expect to pull a good lesson out of thin air. Knowing material and being able to teach it well to students are two different things. Teaching is a skill that is independent of the knowledge you're trying to impart. Developing that skill takes time and effort. Professors frequently have to grade their own homework. TAs are not in infinite supply. I know my adviser commonly has to grade his own assignments. I said nothing about professors getting money from the IP they created. In fact, what I said was that most professors make every attempt to make their work as freely available as possible. It is in their own best interest to do so. When you do research in academia, your hardest problem is convincing others that your work is good and worthwhile. In the rare circumstance where academic research leads to something that could be sold, the patent is always joint with the university. You're upset with a person who doesn't exist.

justin_vanw 17y ago
You say they get to keep IP jointly with the University. Then you say that that person who keeps IP doesn't exist... You are talking on the general plight and struggles of academics, which is another subject, and a subject I have no comment for. This or that aspect of being a professor really has nothing to do with this topic. I am saying, again, that anything a professor develops, designs, or discovers while collecting a salary or having his research otherwise paid for out of tax revenues should have no ownership of it or financial compensation for it whatsoever (prizes are not compensation), and it should be placed in the public domain, just as the work of a government employee would be. Financial benefit should go to the party taking the financial risk. A professor takes no financial risk when he researches things, as he collects a salary regardless of his success or failure in any course of research. Rather, all financial risk and cost is paid out of tax revenues.
- scott_s 17y ago
  Academics can patent their work jointly with their university, but they rarely do. They have very little incentive to do so: the gulf between what an academic produces and something that is widely useful is usually huge, and academics are not evaluated on patents. Most universities would probably prefer that professors and graduate students patent their work, since it's the university that's more likely to benefit. But professor and grad students rarely bother because, again, they have no incentive. I brought up professor work habits because I felt your impression of their work burden is wrong. I also got the impression that your mistaken impression was feeding your contempt. Let me put it this way: I am unaware of any academic who meets your description. All that I know and know of disseminate their work freely.