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Longest-Serving Professor at Cornell Reflects on Journey Through Academia

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Re: Longest-Serving Professor at Cornell Reflects on Journey Through Academia

#11

Post by Spooky23 »

mechhacker wrote: post #7
pixelmonkey wrote: post #2

Interesting quote here: > The university, although still of substantial size back then [50-60 years ago], operated in a bottom-up manner, Nerode told The Sun. "All the faculty in all departments met in the auditorium to decide the future of the university. It is now top-down, but that is also the case everywhere else," Nerode said. I wonder, is this bottom-up (professor-led) vs top-down (administrator-led) shift a re…

I've seen this play out in some heavily funded (mechanical engineering) organizations as well. Some are incredibly top-heavy, with decisions being flipped from the experts to the administrative staff who have at most 3-5 years of experience at the company and industry, but often less. The organizations that are self-funded from selling specialized products and not either government bids or wealthy backers are usually…

That’s a organizational pattern common in outsourcing scenarios. There’s a small cadre of people who know what they are talking about to some degree, who build whatever and define an operational process.

Then the operators do whatever they do, and usually aren’t empowered to do anything that changes the process.

Re: Longest-Serving Professor at Cornell Reflects on Journey Through Academia

#12

Post by mmmBacon »

He had some great observations as a young man. I studied physics decades later but the attitude was still the same.

The professor got up for the first session and said look to your right, look to your left, one of you won’t be here next semester,” he said. “I found that to be the attitude of physicists towards students: to cut down the number of students as much as possible and deal only with the ones that they wanted to. I just did not find that a very humanistic thing.”

Re: Longest-Serving Professor at Cornell Reflects on Journey Through Academia

#13

Post by o09rdk »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #2

Interesting quote here: > The university, although still of substantial size back then [50-60 years ago], operated in a bottom-up manner, Nerode told The Sun. "All the faculty in all departments met in the auditorium to decide the future of the university. It is now top-down, but that is also the case everywhere else," Nerode said. I wonder, is this bottom-up (professor-led) vs top-down (administrator-led) shift a re…

Not old-time, but tenured professor for 10 years. I definitely saw this happen in my time. The university has a faculty legislature that at one time was the administrative core, but it's largely a symbolic gesture at this point, kind of like the opposite of the royal family vis-a-vis parliament etc in England.

I do think this is a problem everywhere, in academics, in medicine, and probably other fields that I have less knowledge of. I think income inequality problems are really less of a problem per se (although still definitely a problem) than the power inequity problems that income inequality reflects. Some of it is rent-seeking monopoly problems, but I think there's a broader trend societally (as reflected in right-wing authoritarian trends globally) toward a lack of skepticism about power differentials, whether the inequalities we see are really justified in the magnitude we see them, and whether other power structures would be better.

I personally think with academics it's particularly problematic because the endgame (supposedly) is acquisition of knowledge where we don't really know what's going on, and I happen to believe the best environment for that is one where it's everything goes, closer to a democratic-libertarian-deregulated kind of environment.

My impressions of the time I was tenured are very close to what this guy is saying, although I think it's the tip of the iceberg and a lot of problems are being brushed over (appropriately I admit given that it's not really the right piece for it).

Re: Longest-Serving Professor at Cornell Reflects on Journey Through Academia

#14

Post by thechao »

pooper wrote: post #5
account73466 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your university is pretty small, it looks more like a faculty and it is somewhat more common for the latter to be professor-led.

Can confirm. When I mentioned to my professor at a small university that the registrar's office made a mistake on my record, he just said let's talk a walk and we walked to the registrar's office. They were all polite to him (and he was to them). The issue that the registrar's office had told me could not be fixed right away because blah blah blah got fixed right away.

This worked for me as a student at UT Austin (population in the low 40ks) in 90s/00s: be polite, ask for a change. Most administrators don’t care what your story is (so I never bothered to explain mine), but they do understand the system isn’t perfect. EDIT: and they really want written documentation.

Re: Longest-Serving Professor at Cornell Reflects on Journey Through Academia

#15

Post by ido »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #9

"I learned how to acquire new subjects because I had to walk into class and pick up everything that the people had done before," Nerode told The Sun. ... Nerode remarked that "there was no such thing as an academic advisor for people going to college." This is important. A fellow like Nerode could walk into any university and be fine, and his background is a major reason. Nowadays, universities are open to much wider…

Sorry if I'm being dense, but assuming you mean this definition of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocephalus

What is the analogy between that and the academic administrative layer?

Re: Longest-Serving Professor at Cornell Reflects on Journey Through Academia

#16

Post by barry-cotter »

ido wrote: post #15
HarryHirsch wrote: post #9

"I learned how to acquire new subjects because I had to walk into class and pick up everything that the people had done before," Nerode told The Sun. ... Nerode remarked that "there was no such thing as an academic advisor for people going to college." This is important. A fellow like Nerode could walk into any university and be fine, and his background is a major reason. Nowadays, universities are open to much wider…

Sorry if I'm being dense, but assuming you mean this definition of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocephalus What is the analogy between that and the academic administrative layer?

Big head = Mostly self-serving academic administration, providing little value to students.

Re: Longest-Serving Professor at Cornell Reflects on Journey Through Academia

#17

Post by allovernow »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #9

"I learned how to acquire new subjects because I had to walk into class and pick up everything that the people had done before," Nerode told The Sun. ... Nerode remarked that "there was no such thing as an academic advisor for people going to college." This is important. A fellow like Nerode could walk into any university and be fine, and his background is a major reason. Nowadays, universities are open to much wider…

I think over the last 2-3 decades standards have fallen across the board because ideals behind the original purpose of such services, to prevent underperformers from failing out, have morphed into a general administrative goal. I went through college in the early 10s, and there was a very clear implicit bias in all grading - failing students didn't look good for professors, departments, or schools in general now. The result was a consistent sort of unspoken grade padding. The goal of making college accessable to increasingly greater swaths of the population is amicable, but it rests on the again implicit assumption that a simple change of environment allows everyone to thrive equally - but the result is overall reduced rigor and a general watering down of the very meaning of a college degree.

More people may be going to school, but the distribution of talent hasn't changed much, and by the time you're entering college there is a minimum level of intrinsic ability necessary to really grasp technical degrees that no amount of tutoring will mitigate.

Re: Longest-Serving Professor at Cornell Reflects on Journey Through Academia

#18

Post by HarryHirsch »

allovernow wrote: post #17
HarryHirsch wrote: post #9

"I learned how to acquire new subjects because I had to walk into class and pick up everything that the people had done before," Nerode told The Sun. ... Nerode remarked that "there was no such thing as an academic advisor for people going to college." This is important. A fellow like Nerode could walk into any university and be fine, and his background is a major reason. Nowadays, universities are open to much wider…

I think over the last 2-3 decades standards have fallen across the board because ideals behind the original purpose of such services, to prevent underperformers from failing out, have morphed into a general administrative goal. I went through college in the early 10s, and there was a very clear implicit bias in all grading - failing students didn't look good for professors, departments, or schools in general now. The…

but it rests on the again implicit assumption that a simple change of environment allows everyone to thrive equally

This is emphatically not true. The SCS Noonan Scholar program is a very successful program for underrepresented minorities. Initially, they tried just giving money and a seat at an elite institution (Harvard, Amherst, that caliber), and they found that their students failed out of STEM subjects with regularity. So now they offer summer programs where they teach the subject and soft skills, i.e. time management, networking, & so on. This improved outcomes enormously. At Cornell they do the same. For some admits their summer program is mandatory.

Re: Longest-Serving Professor at Cornell Reflects on Journey Through Academia

#19

Post by dennis_jeeves »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #2

Interesting quote here: > The university, although still of substantial size back then [50-60 years ago], operated in a bottom-up manner, Nerode told The Sun. "All the faculty in all departments met in the auditorium to decide the future of the university. It is now top-down, but that is also the case everywhere else," Nerode said. I wonder, is this bottom-up (professor-led) vs top-down (administrator-led) shift a re…

'Animal Farm' phenomenon?

Re: Longest-Serving Professor at Cornell Reflects on Journey Through Academia

#20

Post by allovernow »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #18
allovernow wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think over the last 2-3 decades standards have fallen across the board because ideals behind the original purpose of such services, to prevent underperformers from failing out, have morphed into a general administrative goal. I went through college in the early 10s, and there was a very clear implicit bias in all grading - failing students didn't look good for professors, departments, or schools in general now. The…

but it rests on the again implicit assumption that a simple change of environment allows everyone to thrive equally This is emphatically not true. The SCS Noonan Scholar program is a very successful program for underrepresented minorities. Initially, they tried just giving money and a seat at an elite institution (Harvard, Amherst, that caliber), and they found that their students failed out of STEM subjects with reg…

You're talking about Ivy League institutions which sample from the tail end of the performance distribution. What works for the cream of the crop, whatever disadvantaged background it may come from, does not necessarily work for the rest. I the concept of distribution statistics is sorely lacking in much of the theory that underpins modern Western social policy, and the negative results are gradually accumulating.
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