The article disparages universities for having a larger and larger percentage of courses taught by lecturers rather than researching profs, but in my experience (ME, Stanford) the lecturers did a much better job teaching me than the Profs did, on average. Probably because they saw it as their primary occupation rather than an annoyance.
Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students
31–40 of 121 posts
Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students
#32"A glance at scholarly journals or university-press catalogs might make one wonder how much of this "research" is advancing knowledge and how much is part of a guild's need to credentialize its members." A glance? Really? Judging the life's work of a few thousand people who got into academia to do research is easily judged in a 'glance'? It's interesting that some would like universities to be little more than vocati…
just a glance is enough at this table of contents of academic journal - classical and quantum gravity- http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/27/17 to wonder how much of this -research- is advancing knowledge and how much is --about advancing the career of the authors--
It's a very good question, and hardly a trivial one. Quite a lot of science is nearly worthless, and only published to pad the author's cv. A couple of blog posts on the topic:
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/06/24/all_those_wo...
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/06/25/what_to_do_w...
Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students
#33Oh God yes, I can't agree with this more. My wife worked as an adjunct at Indiana University, killing herself with a 15-hour load for eight thousand bucks while the president of the university, who arguably contributes nothing whatsoever, earned a cool $425,000 and had a free luxury house on campus. This year, she's got a real job (for a year as a visiting professor) for $35K and benefits; it's going to feel like we'…
Eight ? Or Eighty? Eight seems terribly small!
edit: I just read on and you mention her new salary is $35K and it's a huge improvement but I find it still hard to believe that someone would actually go to work 15 hours per day for a $8K pay per year. That works out to be substantially less than minimum wage.
Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students
#34Oh God yes, I can't agree with this more. My wife worked as an adjunct at Indiana University, killing herself with a 15-hour load for eight thousand bucks while the president of the university, who arguably contributes nothing whatsoever, earned a cool $425,000 and had a free luxury house on campus. This year, she's got a real job (for a year as a visiting professor) for $35K and benefits; it's going to feel like we'…
the president of the university, who arguably contributes nothing whatsoever, earned a cool $425,000 and had a free luxury house on campus. University presidents may well be overpaid, but it is simply uninformed to claim that they "contribute nothing whatsoever." Besides setting the direction of the entire institution, an effective president will raise far more income for the school via fundraising than the cost of t…
Great. That's a wonderful justification for paying the majority of their actual instructors less than minimum wage with no benefits at all - then they can attract that guy to raise more money than they pay him.
Sooner or later, America will have to start funding its research and its education as two separate services; the current model isn't working. It's just taking a very long time to be obvious.
Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students
#35"A glance at scholarly journals or university-press catalogs might make one wonder how much of this "research" is advancing knowledge and how much is part of a guild's need to credentialize its members." A glance? Really? Judging the life's work of a few thousand people who got into academia to do research is easily judged in a 'glance'? It's interesting that some would like universities to be little more than vocati…
Some years ago, I saw a 60 minutes episode on issues in higher education. The reporter picked a biology journal off a shelf, read its arcane title, and exclaimed "who actually reads this stuff?" to back up her claim about how useless journals are... as if she were somehow qualified to judge the importance of a paper by its title. I couldn't help but imagining what she would have said if she picked up a paper titled "…
Fortunately it's not up to her to decide. That said, it seems that some papers go out of their way to hide what the paper is really about by looking at the title.
Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students
#36I would like to know how much of this applies to universities in the UK. Here there is a lot of public funding, but we're moving towards paying more funding as time goes on.
Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students
#37Oh God yes, I can't agree with this more. My wife worked as an adjunct at Indiana University, killing herself with a 15-hour load for eight thousand bucks while the president of the university, who arguably contributes nothing whatsoever, earned a cool $425,000 and had a free luxury house on campus. This year, she's got a real job (for a year as a visiting professor) for $35K and benefits; it's going to feel like we'…
Eight ? Or Eighty? Eight seems terribly small! edit: I just read on and you mention her new salary is $35K and it's a huge improvement but I find it still hard to believe that someone would actually go to work 15 hours per day for a $8K pay per year. That works out to be substantially less than minimum wage.
She didn't work fifteen hours a day. She taught fifteen credit hours.
Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students
#38i found this review more informative than the recent post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1559480 about the interview with the authors in the atlantic magazine what the authors are saying is true in general for any -bureaucracy- and education is the oldest and biggest existing bureaucracy even after it divided itself into secular and religious education in the 18th century any bureaucracy must -grow- continually…
Actually, I think that the Catholic church is the oldest existing bureaucracy.
Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students
#39Oh God yes, I can't agree with this more. My wife worked as an adjunct at Indiana University, killing herself with a 15-hour load for eight thousand bucks while the president of the university, who arguably contributes nothing whatsoever, earned a cool $425,000 and had a free luxury house on campus. This year, she's got a real job (for a year as a visiting professor) for $35K and benefits; it's going to feel like we'…
Eight ? Or Eighty? Eight seems terribly small! edit: I just read on and you mention her new salary is $35K and it's a huge improvement but I find it still hard to believe that someone would actually go to work 15 hours per day for a $8K pay per year. That works out to be substantially less than minimum wage.
I looked into teaching math at a California community college and the pay was just under $2000 per course. A course was either 3 or 4 credits. $8K for 15 credit-hours worth of teaching in Indiana sounds about right. When my sister was an adjunct faculty at a big state school she made $17K a year.
Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students
#40Oh God yes, I can't agree with this more. My wife worked as an adjunct at Indiana University, killing herself with a 15-hour load for eight thousand bucks while the president of the university, who arguably contributes nothing whatsoever, earned a cool $425,000 and had a free luxury house on campus. This year, she's got a real job (for a year as a visiting professor) for $35K and benefits; it's going to feel like we'…
Eight ? Or Eighty? Eight seems terribly small! edit: I just read on and you mention her new salary is $35K and it's a huge improvement but I find it still hard to believe that someone would actually go to work 15 hours per day for a $8K pay per year. That works out to be substantially less than minimum wage.
He's saying she's being paid eight thousand for teaching fifteen credits of classes in a single semester. Presumably she'd make another eight the next semester and a couple extra thousand in the summer. So probably $22,000 a year.