31–40 of 241 posts
It seems like there’s a gap in the market for a hard-nosed, teaching-first university. A place full of passionate professors with high standards. A place where high school valedictorians work their ass off for a B. A place where you feel your best will never be good enough because the standards are impossible... until, one day, you get an A. And that grade MEANS something. And after four years, the students walk out…
It seems like there’s a gap in the market for a hard-nosed, teaching-first university. A place full of passionate professors with high standards. A place where high school valedictorians work their ass off for a B. A place where you feel your best will never be good enough because the standards are impossible... until, one day, you get an A. And that grade MEANS something. And after four years, the students walk out…
I don't know how to say this without it sounding like a brag, but here goes anyway: this is University of Waterloo in a nutshell. I'm entering third year, studying math, and every single one of my friends has gone from high 90s in high school (multiple valedictorians) to struggling to keep an average in the 70s-80s range. Anecdotally, one of my friends did a work term for the Dean of Science (and pure mathematics pro…
The experience is effectively the same at any tier 1 university in the US. Some even have special names[2].
[1] https://www.studocu.com/en/course/university-of-waterloo/cal...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditions_of_the_Georgia_Inst...
It seems like there’s a gap in the market for a hard-nosed, teaching-first university. A place full of passionate professors with high standards. A place where high school valedictorians work their ass off for a B. A place where you feel your best will never be good enough because the standards are impossible... until, one day, you get an A. And that grade MEANS something. And after four years, the students walk out…
Exercising free speech is one thing. Challenging student views is fine. Using a required course as a trolling arena and being a pain in the ass to work with is, huge surprise, a great way not to get your contract renewed.
I have read probably 4 or 5 of these articles, written by professors/teachers, claiming to have been punished for their speech. 2 common threads about them. The first is that they rarely discuss specifics about what positions or what opinions got them censured. The second is that the comments section is typically full of drive by commenters who aren't responding to the content of the post in particular but to the ide…
Why should specifics of what is said matter if the point is free speech?
This is the world we live in now. Doesn’t matter if you actually harmed someone. What matters now is whether someone feels you as doing harm. The word of the person who perceives harm is taken as fact and the accused has little to no recourse or defense.
This is the world we live in now. Doesn’t matter if you actually harmed someone. What matters now is whether someone feels you as doing harm. The word of the person who perceives harm is taken as fact and the accused has little to no recourse or defense.
I haven't figured out a good opinion on the controversies of trigger warnings and safe spaces. It might be a brief pendulum swing. I think that we all could stand to show more sensitivity to everyone else, and I don't know whether that would be enough. But I've never met any 12th-grader who is so knowledgeable and wise that frosh year at a proper college shouldn't shake up their developing mind, and challenge much of…
Would you want to pay money to faculty who challenges the consumer's assumptions, or do you want to build a strong lifestyle brand, which in turn drives future "donations", sports income. Every other corporation is giving us information tailored to our desires, so why would a university want to risk the corporate enterprise on antagonistic professors with differing opinions? That just devalues the brand.
Note that the OP has been a "professor" at Duke for 20 years, but has essentially no job security. He's basically an independent contractor in the gig economy. That's kinda common in the community college level, but it looks like it's finally made its way to the elite schools too. We used to have secretaries for professors, but now the colleges have secretaries for the deputy assistant administrators.
So to me the trigger warning, safe space culture wars are only a symptom of the problem that our universities have become mirrors of the large corporations.
I have read probably 4 or 5 of these articles, written by professors/teachers, claiming to have been punished for their speech. 2 common threads about them. The first is that they rarely discuss specifics about what positions or what opinions got them censured. The second is that the comments section is typically full of drive by commenters who aren't responding to the content of the post in particular but to the ide…
You cannot say it doesn't discuss specifics.
I haven't figured out a good opinion on the controversies of trigger warnings and safe spaces. It might be a brief pendulum swing. I think that we all could stand to show more sensitivity to everyone else, and I don't know whether that would be enough. But I've never met any 12th-grader who is so knowledgeable and wise that frosh year at a proper college shouldn't shake up their developing mind, and challenge much of…
Not sure. But we're seeing more pushback on fat acceptance.[1]
[1] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/01/16/army-recruits...