Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
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Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
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Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#2A really interesting read and very much echoes some of the reasons I chose not to pursue a career in academia. When you realise you're at a fork in the road, and down one route lies being a supervisor's paper-churning-out slave, researching something that doesn't even interest you so the department can get more funding...grnnnh.
Edit: To clarify, this was my problem, as a PhD student with a PhD supervisor (not sure what the US term is; adviser?) who was forcing me to do the wrong thing all in the name of academia.
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#3That was very interesting.
I live in what you'd call a 3d world country (Mexico), and this stuff makes me think about why empires fall and others rise...
The rising stars get to watch how an empire falls ;-)
One of my dreams is to open a school that's much better than most of the schools in Mexico, using the good and bad examples of schools in countries like the US and the UK. My 2 cents to leave to the world.
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#4Certainly, there's loads of stupid "research" in academia—cranking out papers that interest no one, in order to justify tenure and more grants.
However, "90% of everything is crap". The relevant question, before you throw out the entire institution, is: Are there real opportunities to do good work?
Good work takes two main forms in academia: research and teaching. Is good research work being done? Is good teaching being done?
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#5To be fair to the time, in 1999, there was the dot-com bubble going on and a lot of students were going into CS for the wrong reasons so there could have been more at play than government objectives. I suspect there were a lot of CS students who did not enjoy programming in such programs, thus accounting for seniors who couldn't do projects. I know CS and programming are not the same, but I liken it to studying Shakespeare and not enjoying reading or writing.
Our school (UWaterloo) noticed a huge drop in CS enrollment soon after that, between 2002 and 2004 (roughly). At which point business programs saw a spike in enrollment. I wonder if this professor had stuck around whether he would have noticed an improvement once the stories of 24 year old billionaires were removed from the headlines.
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#6And here we have the reason why just about every single CS department in the US teaches Java instead of C or Scheme.
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#7A really interesting read and very much echoes some of the reasons I chose not to pursue a career in academia. When you realise you're at a fork in the road, and down one route lies being a supervisor's paper-churning-out slave, researching something that doesn't even interest you so the department can get more funding...grnnnh. Edit: To clarify, this was my problem, as a PhD student with a PhD supervisor (not sure w…
I wouldn't say that is an entirely accurate characterization. I don't know anyone in my department doing research that doesn't interest them. Students generally love the research they are doing and are probably a bit more autonomous than your comment seems to imply. I've taken both directions (industry then academia) and in industry I was a code-churning-out slave working on something that barely interested me. Now I work on my own on a topic that really interests me!
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#8That was very interesting. I live in what you'd call a 3d world country (Mexico), and this stuff makes me think about why empires fall and others rise... The rising stars get to watch how an empire falls ;-) One of my dreams is to open a school that's much better than most of the schools in Mexico, using the good and bad examples of schools in countries like the US and the UK. My 2 cents to leave to the world.
Your dreams are definitely worth pursuing!
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#9That was very interesting. I live in what you'd call a 3d world country (Mexico), and this stuff makes me think about why empires fall and others rise... The rising stars get to watch how an empire falls ;-) One of my dreams is to open a school that's much better than most of the schools in Mexico, using the good and bad examples of schools in countries like the US and the UK. My 2 cents to leave to the world.
Your dreams are definitely worth pursuing!
And probably a lot easier in the modern day as more and more people get access to the web. I'm very interested in web learning and am trying to put something together for it too.
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#10I had very similar experiences as a Computer Science undergraduate not many years ago at a prestigious British university. The expectations were so low that eventually I stopped attending lectures and got a full-time programming job and I still kept getting quite good grades. The problem is so widespread that it's not just about undergraduates; as an undergraduate I have met several PhD students who struggled with even basic programming or mathematical concepts.
Still, in a class of 300 people, there are still about 10 very talented and bright students who'd rather be (and not afraid of) writing Prolog interpreters and doing similarly interesting and cool stuff. There should be a way these students could learn advanced concepts with while being mentored by professors.