Graduating computer-illiterate students who had to do a project in computer science was more of a headache.
For whom, you or those of us you have to work with them?
Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
11–20 of 127 posts
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I've had a long conversation with someone that is very much into this and there are some challenges but it definitely is possible.
Already there are tons of lectures online in flash video format. It's amazing the stuff you can learn about but to actually make lesson material and tests work in an online environment is far from simple (cheating for instance!).
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#13And here we have the reason why just about every single CS department in the US teaches Java instead of C or Scheme.
Java is an improvement though, especially under Eclipse.
Even better would be using Python followed by Scala.
Perhaps the issue is that too much class time is spent teaching details of a language and its libraries.
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#14To 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 Shake…
w00t for UW (CEng student here). pew pew.
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#15A 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…
It seems to me that you have it exactly backwards.
First, as a university professor (in the U.S.), I don't have a supervisor in the sense the term is used in business. Yes, my department has a chair, but this is a "first among equals" position, periodically elected from among the members of the department. Governance is mostly collegial in nature, and much of the evaluation & promotion process is handled by committees. (Note: all this varies a fair amount from one university to another.)
Second, I do whatever research I want; no one tells me what to research. My work needs to be able to get through a peer-review process and be published, but that is not much of a restriction on topics.
Certainly academia has its downside; things like political nastiness, low pay and other budgetary woes, and excessive paperwork are often cited, along with various troubles with the tenure system. More related to what the article is talking about, there is the question of the value of research. If research topics are chosen on the basis of interest, then there is not much incentive to do something that makes the world a better place, generates money for someone, or anything like that.
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#16Certainly, 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 be…
"The relevant question, before you throw out the entire institution, is: Are there real opportunities to do good work?"
I disagree. The relevant question is, "What is the best possible way to do good work, including practical concerns taking into account the behavior of real people and not just theoretical people, and is that what we have? If not, how can we get there?"
The way you ask the question is basically the same thing as the sunk cost fallacy. Yes, we've got a lot of investment in the current system, but if it isn't working, it's time to change it to something that will. Whatever that may be. And, again, the question is whether it is working with real people, not hypothetical people who are custom-designed to work with the system you want to be ideal.
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#17A 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…
Wouldn't you say that pursuing a startup is better than both industry and academia?
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#18A 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…
It seems to me that you have it exactly backwards. First, as a university professor (in the U.S.), I don't have a supervisor in the sense the term is used in business. Yes, my department has a chair, but this is a "first among equals" position, periodically elected from among the members of the department. Governance is mostly collegial in nature, and much of the evaluation & promotion process is handled by committee…
You don't have a supervisor. You have many and they hide behind anonymity -- namely your peers who evaluate your papers, grant proposals, etc.
In a way this is much worse than having a supervisor in industry. At least your supervisor wants you to succeed. Your peers not so much unless it suits their agenda.
The freedom you have is only an illusion. What good is this freedom if your grant proposals / papers get rejected?
Moreover, your freedom is severely restricted by the scientific approach demanded by computer science. It is hard to fund/publish novel ideas that are not easy to evaluate.
In startups, you can more easily explore novel ideas and change them without worrying about evaluation methodology. Ultimately, your criteria for success are simple: how many users do you have? how much money are you making? etc.
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Wouldn't you say that pursuing a startup is better than both industry and academia?
Not if you enjoy really theoretical work which is far away from the money.
Re: Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University
#20To 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 Shake…
pew pew. we have lazerz :)