I think this a difference between the system and the people. I think most people would agree with you that most faculty are passionate about their subjects and do care about helping students learn.

However the system has changed around them. Grade inflation is real. Student writing is atrocious and getting worse. There is a "the customer is always right" mentality that has taken hold which lowers standards. Studies show students spend less time in class and less time working on academics outside of class. Undergrad term papers used to be, what, maybe 40-50 pages? Now I see 10-12 page term papers regularly. 12 pages? That's not a term paper. Almost no one gets an F. Friday is like a day off on many campuses - there are almost no classes and the faculty has come to expect 3-day weekends as the standard. That is a financial drain on colleges who have a ton of overhead and a nearly empty campus 3 days out of 7.

Also many faculty members (in my experience) from the liberal arts or sciences look down their noses at the so-called "professional programs" (business, accounting, nursing, physician assistants, etc.). This may be unique to small liberal-arts colleges but I doubt it. Ironically these type of small colleges are the ones in the most danger of closing - and it is likely professional programs that will save them. But many faculty have very pie-in-the-sky ideas about a "liberal arts education", that are mostly not that relevant to today's students or today's economy.

R1 STEM tenure-track profs must be somewhere in the 50%+ range of not giving a **** about most students, especially undergrads.

I was a part of this world for 12 years, and that wasn’t my personal experience. I think most professors cared, especially if a student took interest and initiative.

If there is a problem, I think it has more to do with structural issues and how incentives are aligned, than any malaise of widespread professor apathy.

Yes it's mostly due to the incentive structures which are largely fubar. paper count rules all.

I think Uke makes a good point. And based on my own experience of college and graduate school and of being a TA for three years, I agree with his sentiment, based of course just on my own personal experience at two large public universities and interactions with a few others. I was a science major, mostly.


There are problems in Universities, both public and private, as in any large bureaucracy. I recognized and discussed with fellow graduate students and my thesis professors some systemic problems that repeatedly came to my attention when immersed within academia. Details are too burdensome to fully divulge and are personal anyway, and only one data point. But the upshot of all this was that I declined the PhD path that was offered to me after finishing my MS, and instead pursed a professional career outside academia. I have not regretted that decision. However, if I had perused the PhD I doubt if I would have regretted that decision.

Also it is easy to see the flaws in not just others, but large organizations and businesses as well. I have had many discussions on this very subject with an engineering friend that spent 35 years at Boeing. Many of his criticism of this large business mirror those that people aim at Universities (and governments). And yet he is also proud of what he and his team of engineers accomplished within the Boeing structure. The same can be said of many people within academia. You end up having mixed feelings about how they function well and don't function very well at all.

Not true. Most take teaching quite seriously and treat it quite professionally.

Also most R1 Stem tenure and tenure-track professors are much better teachers than most professors at other levels. Deep understanding is one of the keys to teaching well.

I think a lot of the perceived professor apathy is related to student apathy and a cultural disconnect for groups of people who are often ~40 years apart. I'd guess that very few students are taking college as serious as these professors were. It's a different time, with different stressors and expectations.

Just as an example, in 1965 3% of the population enrolled in private or public institutions. In 2010 (peak enrollment) that was up to 7%. Kids are doing it because it's expected rather than a true desire. Professors are presented with a lethargic student population that isn't coming to class, doing the homework, participating in discussion, or visiting them after classes.

I always got back what I put into college. That means not much the first couple years, and a whole lot the past couple of years. And the professors enthusiasm typically matched mine

It is true there is often tension between faculty and admin. But I'm on a lot of committees with deans and involved in faculty governance a bit and for the most part I'm happy there. I get frustrated, for instance, that too much money is spent on sports and arts and sciences are getting squeezed hard at my institution. But the people working are pretty amazingly dedicated and to me, as a more junior faculty, have largely been an inspiration to me.

Or let me put it differently: you and I can disagree on the specific alt-right "let's attack universities" issue du jour whether that is like affirmative action admission policies or whether student government can ban ben shapiro, and sometimes I might disagree with an admin decision on these issues, but at the core I think admin is genuinely trying to do a pretty good job even if they have somewhat different priorities than faculty.

Yeah, it seems like at some point college went from something someone might choose to do if they were interested, to something everyone needs to do as some sort of finishing school before entering the 21st Century job market, with no guarantees at the end for many.

And this problem is amplified by the fact non wealthy people are often forced to go into massive debt to do so. And this creates non ideal incentive structures, such as the rich scamming to get their kids who have zero interest into college, and generally kids going to college who have no real interest and going into massive debt to do so.

False, most take seriously that which will get them tenure. Namely, publishing papers. Obviously this varies by institution and individual.

Deep understanding of a particular research topic is not as important as good teaching skills and dedicated preparation for teaching most classes, especially undergrad.

Another big problem with the need to produce publishing volume is the prevalence of low quality papers.

This is the thread where we discuss the Koch brothers having influence over hiring, professor placement and syllabus because of the amount they were donating to GMU, right?

I'm in STEM at an R1. While there are some colleagues who don't take their teaching seriously, the overwhelming majority does. And it somewhat varies, but teaching is included in most promotion criteria. For instance, i work a lot with an associate professor who had their tenure delayed purely for teaching reasons, and they have completely turned it around and work insanely hard on it now. The official numbesr for my institution is teaching is 30% of a tenure track researcher's work, with 60% for research and 10% for service duties.

I do agree with max that for most 1-3rd year courses, you don't need to be deeply invested in edge of research content. I teach Calculus for instance. Most of the reason I'm good at that has nothing to do with mathematics research.

As for "publish or perish" well yes, this is a thing, but most departments are very acutely aware not just of number of papers but the citations, journal reputations, and overall quality. There are some fringe cases where someone gets 15 ****ty papers and scrapes their way into tenure, or one savant publishes one amazing one but it doesn't get counted as sufficient for tenure. But certainly quality not number is a part of every promotion committee I would be aware of.

Some schools have requirements on number of papers published to keep tenure. NYU Stern gives professors the option to teach more classes or write more papers.

I also TAed for some professors that are coasting on old papers. One of them just happened to co-author a paper with a Nobel prize winner and, at least when I TAed for him, did no real research to speak of.

He, and his TAs at least, were quite professional in teaching though. My experience is with the exception of some old relics, schools are very serious about teaching quality now. I know some professors got in trouble when career services told the dean they were getting yelled for not teaching people how to do DCF properly.

The first two points don't jibe with my experience as a faculty member or administrator.

The last one is certainly true, but mainly at mediocre institutions or in countries where the overall level is low, and researchers are not allowed to set their own objectives according to their own criteria.

With respect to teaching - preparation is more about knowing what one is talking about and having good perspective than carefully preparing line by line one's lectures. Doing research impacts teaching indirectly, but importantly (and vice-versa). The process of thinking it entails is very relevant to teaching well. Faculty who do no research pose more artificial problems, make poor choices of what to emphasize, are more stuck on tradition, etc. If you compare how a good researcher at a top tier university teaches calculus with how a typical service professor at a run of the mill teaches it, you will normally see a big difference, if you are competent to make the judgment (of course most observers are not competent to judge, and that includes most students). These are meant as statistical statements, about distributions, not about individuals. But people focus far too much on the anecdotal exceptions.

With respect to tenure, it is hard to get tenured at a good US university being a bad teacher. I know people denied or delayed tenure because of bad teaching evaluations. At research universities, no one gets tenure because of teaching performance, but bad teaching performance can certainly prevent getting tenure. The dynamics in other countries are different, but generally the same principle operates - one needs to produce research to compete for positions, and bad teaching generally does suppose an obstacle to being hired .

I have worked in a place where there were some genuinely bad teachers, but this reflects that it was a mediocre and poorly run institution (despite being a flagship public university with an undeservedly good reputation locally). The lack of incentives of any sort coupled with secure employment leads to complacency and laziness. A culture of mediocrity leads to hiring even more mediocre people who won't threaten the established mediocrity.

People who are able to publish enough of enough quality to obtain tenure at good universities are generally hard working and professional in their approach to their jobs, and this extends to teaching. It generally translates into taking teaching seriously even when they don't like it. Some few become stars and get spoiled and perhaps neglect teaching, but this is not common, although very noticeable when it occurs. The job market in science/engineering/economics/law is simply too competitive for many who neglect teaching to succeed.

Ok, someone informed me that you are actually teaching math, which brings me to the question why you are even posting on this subject. Mathematical conclusions are either boolean [true] or [false]. It can be safely assumed that nobody here has a problem with the education in math at university level, and math professors can't push a political agenda either. It would be a different story if you were a professor of sociology.

Nevertheless I want to make clear: You were not the subject of this criticism.

Nah, winging it almost always results in a degraded lecture. I'll take a prepared lecture faculty any day over cutting-edge research prof that's in there winging it.

My claims were only about R1 universities because they are only based on personal anecdotes. If you have some statistics, by all means feel free to share.

Finally, I don't (entirely) blame the professors since it is the incentive structure they have to work with. Finding lazy profs is rare.


Anyway, maybe we should get back to the topics OP wants to discus, like how terrible the reverse discrimination is, how anti-american-first-amendment safe space campuses are, and how bad it is to be sending our bright young children off to be brainwashed by the liberal/leftist/commie professors is.

lol

Since this post did not get moderated, I'll reply now.

No, you're the racist.

If we're going to argue about AA, lets try to actually have an argument. Juan thinks AA is discriminatory and therefore is racist. Max thinks AA is not discriminatory and that opposition to AA is racist. Fine. You can argue about whether or not it is in fact discriminatory. That is clearly the disagreement, e.g.

Also, is this really just about Harvard? It may be useful to talk about Harvard specifically in that case, especially if the evidence that AA is discriminatory against Asians specifically comes from that case and is not necessarily generalizable.

Juan: I probably should have given you a warning for the first post I quoted above. I think you understand that the disagreement is about whether or not various admissions programs are discriminatory or not, so you should acknowledge that this is the disagreement rather than using the "have you stopped beating your wife" framing of the argument, which is needlessly provocative. Of course Max should not have responded although I understand that he got frustrated waiting for me.

In any case, if you want to have the argument, go ahead and have it. Or else you can both move on.

Yes, I said I was in math above. However, I'm in the college of arts and science, so all college level initiatives I work on intersect with many different disciplines. For instance, I work on the college's governance committee for pedagogy and part of my role is working with those professors of sociology you seem to have a problem with to try and turn the dial on the quality of teaching across the college. So while it is true i am more familiar with STEM disciplines, my comments are applying pretty broadly.

By the way, it isn't true that math professors can't push a political agenda. I think it is important that math programs try and connect their content to real issues in the world. It is easiest in data science and statistics programs to talk about "political" issues, but this can be done even in low level courses. I once remember quoting mike huckabee as an example of a converse error

That's certainly my impression too.

Yup to almost all of this.

This is bull****. My experience is the opposite. Teaching only faculty are in my mind far MORE likely to try reforms and not teaching in the "traditional" ways. I lead a large team at a public R1 literally about reforming Calculus. We've managed to get every single teaching focused faculty member on board innovating and implimenting active learning opposed to traditional lecturer, but less than half of tenured research progressor. It isn't that they do bad work, it's still pretty high quality, but they are definitely far more stuck on tradition.

I think you are emphasizing the wrong things in teaching. Calculus is "easy" content wise for anyone with a math PhD. The marginal gain from being research active is fairly small. However, what is more important is being an expert at creating an effective teaching environment, and that is separate from being an effective researcher. Because many researchers are dedicated and hardworking people, they can develop both, but I would WAY prefer in a vacuum to choose someone who was well versed in education research, and had a math PhD, than someone who was research active in PDEs, say, but didn't know or care much about the science of learning.

I will say your comment is likely true for the ridiculously underpaid adjunct class that should be eliminated as much as possible in place of permanent, ideally tenured, teaching focused faculty positions in my mind. That is a huge positive shift these days in academia to move this direction.

What on earth are you talking about?

In the case of harvard, asians are systematically being discriminated against based on their race. It would be like saying "juan, in a case where a women is being struck by a man, why are you using the stop beating your wife argument". Second of all, I'm not suggesting max cut has done anything, never mind something as serious as beating his wife. The example here is absolutely awful.

I can't believe this actually needs to be explained but ok. Think this through. Every time someone applies affirmative action, they are engaging in racial discrimination. It's literally the intent and design. How is this even debatable?Every time someone applying for a job, school, promotion, etc and affirmative action is applied, then by default someone else has been punished for their race. It's completely impossible to avoid. So not only is this true by definition and default, we are talking about harvard where its happening to asian applicants specifically.

It should also be clear i said support a policy that discriminates against asians for being asian. This is not only a true statement, its also very different that asking "why do you enjoy seeing asians being punished for being asian?". Look, we are going to encounter these situations over and over in political discussion. Why do you favor no intervention in syria can also be framed with the heart of the issue. How do you justify sitting back and watching children being gassed? Thats a very fair and obvious question. The answer will obviously be a justification as to the consequences of intervening (which are bad). If there were no consequences to intervening, it wouldn't be a a debate would it? If the world were that simple, then there wouldn't be arguments.

If you support AA then by definition you support racial discrimination. In the case of harvard, you are confronted with the fact that asians are being punished for being asian. Sorry, thats just the fact of the matter in reality and hypothetically (if you deny the evidence but support AA). If you support a policy that punishes asians for being asian, then you should clarify your justification. I never called him a racist, i was actually trying to hold his hand and guide him towards formulating a complete thought. Instead of doing that, he cried foul and for moderation. Perhaps this is what happens when you reach the limits of your intellectual capability

I'm too tired to read that with the required attention, but it looks like there's some arguing in there, and that's good. If I don't respond to it for a while I hope you'll understand I'm sick, not ignoring you.

While I've only taught in universities where all faculty in principle also do research, some of them have been engineering institutions where not all older faculty teaching mathematics had either a PhD or were mathematicians, and the difference in the quality of the teaching, even at the level of setting exam problems in calculus classes, is pretty obvious to anyone with more level. (Some of what you mention is very specific to the US, and while I have taught in the US, I don't do so now.) It's not a question of whether who is teaching the calculus knows calculus, it's a question of the choices they make when teaching it. A typical lower level teacher spends a lot of time teaching about improper integrals of type I and type II; a better teacher describes these things in an entirely different way. Do you prove the Bolzano theorem using an abstract continuity argument or using a constructive interval bisection argument (that moreover gives an error bound)? Whatever the "right" answer is, some faculty can't or don't even think about questions like these, and research faculty are more likely to think about them and maybe decide to do none of the above and skip the proof for drawing a picture ... (Yes, where I work such things are taught with proofs to engineering students ; this is not the US.)

Much of teaching "innovation" is questionable insofar as improving educational outcomes. At any rate, far less clearly successful than many seem to think. Nonetheless, almost all the successful teaching innovation and experimentation I've seen (and I've seen quite a bit) has been undertaken by people either simultaneously actively engaged in research or with research backgrounds. I can't think of an exception.

I don't agree with you with respect to the "science of learning". That's precisely what I think active and formerly active researchers do much better. Their research work forces them to reexamine basic questions and issues and they bring such an approach to teaching calculus, or arithmetic, or whatever. They tend to focus more on core issues and filter the marginally relevant and tedious out better, and they tend to better identify the confusions that operate at the most elementary levels. It's no accident that Gelfand ran a succesful correspondence school, and it's no accident that some of the best books ever written about mathematics education were written by an excellent researcher like Polya. Right now Terry Tao is one of the best expositors out there; I've never gotten to see him teach, but I'd be amazed if he weren't an excellent teacher.

In the context of university level mathematics education, a teacher who has been involved in research has more level, and it's reasonable to assume (speaking statistically again), is harder working, more professional, and has more educational experience, than someone who has not. This statement is possibly less true or even false in environments where there exist teaching only faculty, but this situation is rare outside the US with its liberal arts curriculums, something with little analogue elsewhere. Nonetheless, if you look at the math faculty at the best liberal arts, teaching oriented places in the US, they all come from research backgrounds, PhDs from Princeton, postdocs at MIT, etc., they just decided to focus on something other than only research.

I wholeheartedly agree that there should be stable teaching oriented faculty positions, and believe that this is one of the strongest points of the US non-system of higher education (its nonsystematic flexibility is another), but I also think that those most suited for such positions will mostly continue to be involved in some kind of research.