One thing I was told as a grad student that I've never forgotten is, "Nobody has ever won a Nobel prize for having happy students".
At the time, I was struggling to keep up with the marking demands of a new (i.e. This was the first year it was taught) course I was TA'ing. I had around a hundred students and each one was generating 10-20 pages of handwritten lab reports per week. Student writing varied from human typewriter to medical prescription from a meth-addicted doctor. I tried to grade everything fairly and provide feedback about mistakes so students could learn.
My fellow TA's complained to the department that we were well over the hours we were supposed to be spending by a factor of at least 3. We were told to do less. Just to be clear, I wasn't worried about how much I was being paid. The problem was that I had my own research and coursework to do. We simply needed more TA's in that course due to the way lab assignments were designed. The prof teaching the course was apologetic and furnished me with the above quote.
This is teaching at a research focused university in a nutshell. There is no shortage of people who want to do a good job teaching, but the system is designed to force them to spend their time on other things.
Why is an institution of higher learning so hostile to those who want to put an honest effort into teaching? Just as nobody has ever won a Nobel prize for having happy students, no research focused university ranks well if they aren't churning out a lot of papers. Teaching competes with that priority.
If we want better educational outcomes for students, we need to do a better job of aligning the incentives governing universities with that goal.
It is so refreshing to see this take.
I was on a path to be a history Ph.D candidate - I wanted to teach, and archive diving is basically my own personal drug. The problem is it’s “publish or perish,” as we all know. My higher priority, i.e. teaching, was essentially an obstacle. You know how I know that? My own advisor and other department members told me not to get my doctorate (after writing a 60 page thesis mind you, which I’m still a tad bitter about given how this turns out haha).
They said no program wants to hear how I want to teach and that absolutely no one will hire me, then I won’t get published, and I’ll end up (if I’m lucky!) teaching at an expensive boarding school in a place I don’t get to choose.
I’m not saying I would’ve gotten into even a decent program. Hell I may have been a mediocre at best teacher. But it never felt right to me that teaching at colleges isn’t a viable career path. It was so odd to learn that my dream was simply not allowed, especially when it seemed so reasonable.
I didn’t find out until many years after graduating that the US is sprinkled with what are known as Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs), including a large number of well-regarded 4-year colleged which don’t have graduate programs, the professors don’t do (much) research (but do have PhDs generally) and the hiring and evaluation decisions are 90% based on teaching.
These institutions are usually on the small side and don’t make money in grants because they don’t do research, so they don’t spend millions in advertising or in sending out interviewers to thousands of high schools. So there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of even the ones you live near to.
These schools tend to produce both better experiences (less reliance on the painful “weed-out course” degree plan architecture of huge school) and somewhat better outcomes. I will almost certainly be sending my kids to be PUI and not a megaversity when they’re older.
One caveat- I went to one of these and had a very good experience, but finding a job is a huge problem later if you don’t already have connections from family etc, because of the lack of name recognition. Recruiting is much better at much lower ranked state schools.
How many of them have strong STEM programs though? My partner went to a PUI, but it was firmly a liberal arts school (not that you can't move into STEM with a liberal arts degree). I chose my own undergraduate school because it had a decent engineering program but obviously was a research university.
The two I can think of are Harvey Mudd and Rose Hulman.
I think a lot of times, "strong STEM programs" in the public perception is equated with "big research university" which leads to oxymoron when looking for PUI for STEM.
Loyola Marymount University, in LA, fits the description. The STEM program wasn't the most competitive out there (but that's in comparison to nearby schools like UCLA, Cal Poly, etc), but the teaching quality was top-notch and there was a pretty direct pipeline from the engineering school to the big aerospace/defense contractors in the surrounding area.
I don't know anybody from any of my programs who isn't either gainfully employed in their field of study, or at some competitive grad school, and we graduated in the middle of COVID.
Of course it seems to be in a competition with USC to be the most expensive stickerprice university in the country, but the dirty little secret of private schools is that almost no one pays that price. To keep diversity up they shower disadvantaged students with scholarships, to keep academic standards up they shower academically competitive students with scholarships, and that's all paid for by charging the obscenely rich an elevated tuition, who in exchange are put in a situation where they're rubbing shoulders with a mix of talented students and a much higher than average concentration of other rich kids, leading to networking opportunities for everyone involved.
I went to one of these liberal arts college. They all (typically) have science and math departments. Engineering typically doesn't fall under the purview of liberal arts (though pure science and math certainly do). The problem tends to be availability of upper-level electives if you actually care about learning certain topics and don't want to just complete the requirements. Also, your exposure to research opportunities are typically external to your own institution (there are exceptions to this). I'd say the required courses in the first two+ years are a better experience than large research universities though.
Many of them have excellent STEM programs. You don't have to be a world-renowned researcher to be an excellent educator and have excellent facilities. I have two kids that went to a PUI and then got funded by top-ranked research universities in their fields (geography and computer science) for their Masters and Ph.D. work. They've earned advanced degrees with a total debt of $28K.
This is related to the HN person yesterday asking whether going $180K in debt for MIT would be worth it?
I know somebody with really impressive engineering skills who works for Rolls-Royce and graduated from Rose Hulman. Anecdotal but if he is anything like their typical students, that school has a good engineering department.
That's the sort of institution I went to and got my engineering degree from it. It was great to actually get face time with Professors and have discussions with them. Plus, I got to study more than just engineering, which was huge for someone like me who enjoys literature and philosophy as well as the sciences.
Interesting; I have never heard the term Primarily Undergraduate Institutions, although it's clearly an established term. During my PhD program, when folks were on the job market, we called them "teaching colleges." Most people - rightly! - associate "teaching colleges" with colleges that train teachers, but in our context, we knew immediately what people meant: colleges where professors were expected to spend most of their time actually teaching with little to no research expectations.
I think these are the evolution of the community college system. Many institutions that previous issued two-year degrees and certificates began offering four-year degrees, perhaps in conjunction with a larger, local university to fill gaps.
Not really. A lot of these small liberal arts colleges date back to the 1800s. The more prestigious ones are often priced like private R1 institutions as well. I'm sure there are some two-year institutions that started offering four-year degrees, but it's not typically the case afaik.
Dropped out of a comp sci PhD program after a year for this exact same reason. Will go get my masters some day so I can teach in retirement, but was saddened teaching in higher
ed couldn’t be the end game.
I had an advisor in undergrad that tried to convince me to teach. Im glad I didn't listen to him. I hate my current job, but I'm certain I would have hated that more.
> I wanted to teach, and archive diving is basically my own personal drug. The problem is it’s “publish or perish,” as we all know. My higher priority, i.e. teaching, was essentially an obstacle.
I got an Associate's degree at a community college, and one of the most refreshing things about it was how un-focused the professors were on research. Teaching was their Number One, and I attribute much of my overall enjoyment to their attitudes.
I then transferred to a 4-year school and received my Bachelor's in two years. The professors at this university did research, but they were also committed to teaching and interpersonal relationships with students. I'd been given the option to transfer to a large (40k+ university), and although it was more well-known I knew that I'd be in gigantic class sizes with research-heavy instructors.
It's not that they're unfocused on research, they don't do research as part of their CC duties. IME many are bored retirees, underemployed MS/MA holders, or adjuncts moonlighting.
IME many aren't technically professors either, instead they're instructors. It's a weird distinction but academics huff and puff about it a lot.
Good question haha I ended up going into film! Just ended 10 years of freelancing as a cam op/editor/producer (we wear a lot of hats these days) and am now an in-house video producer for a tech start up in New Orleans. I also produce podcasts for a few clients on the side and co-host one show I produce.
My work has always had me “tech-adjacent.” Especially the way I operate. It’s kind of hard to explain in solid terms but yeah, a few years ago I found myself here and I’ve liked it ever since. A lot of the stuff is over my head, but that’s where I learn best. You never know where you’re going to find relevant information from seemingly irrelevant posts.
HN is also great for some of my hobbies. I like messing with computers, video games, modding, etc. and love reading about other hobbies and sub cultures. Also get a lot of great tech history content here.
UC Berkeley CS has teaching professors who no longer do research and solely teach.
They introduced this well after I graduated but I did take classes with some professors who became teaching professors. They were research professors when I took them.
I found the experienced professors competent even if some were uninspired. On the other hand, I generally had negative experiences with the graduate assistants and new professors.
The graduate students and new professors didn't know the material as well and didn't have much experience teaching. The older professors mostly knew the material much better and had an established process.
I had Stuart Russell, Raimund Seidel, Randy Katz, John Wawryznek, and others.
My worst class by far was taught by a visiting professor who just did not give a damn and basically read from a textbook. He was gone after a semester. I suspect it was partly due to his horrid student reviews.
I also had a math class taught by a well meaning fresh professor. It was on the fast Fourier transform and related techniques leading to it. Great topic choice but very awkwardly and confusingly taught. It is actually hugely relevant to video compression and decompression.
Weren’t Mike Clancy (I think he only had a bachelors) and Brian Harvey (I think he got a PhD but maybe in education) around when you were there? I took both their classes and I thought Clancy was there in the 70’s and Harvey maybe 80’s?
Super weird take IMO- I remember reading Feynman talk about how being able to teach was critical to being a great researcher. Similarly it seems that lots of faculty utilize the various experiences and perspectives of their graduate students to advance their own research. Teaching helps give them ideas so to speak.
Being able to teach is very different from the troubles of grading. I do enjoy teaching. But grading is draining and extremely time consuming. The only way it isn't extremely time consuming is to do it in a half assed manner. Which is why that is likely so common. Honestly, being inside academia I think one of the big reasons for grade inflation is simply because the effort it takes to grade seriously (and other academic politics that couple with this create bad incentive structures where you aren't focused on teaching nor on research).
You have misread the comment completely. The commenter isn't unhappy that they have to teach at all, in fact it appears that they are happy with that ("There is no shortage of people who want to do a good job teaching"). The issue is that they're forced to do far too much of it, and in this specific case grading hundreds of handwritten lab reports per week.
Pretty similar to my experience TA'ing at a researched focused school.
My first semester teaching a lab I was told "No one is remembered for being a good TA" and encouraged to do the absolute bare minimum to get paid so that I could focus on research.
This. It might be true that nobody _in academia_ remembers a good TA, but I would claim that the TA-student relationship is one of the best ways to create a network across classes at uni. Personally I have used connections to former TA's and students in industry on multiple occasions.
Why do US universities use students as teaching assistants in the first place?
If you study for a PhD in the UK then the academic and research work is what you are there for and all that you do. And that means you get it done in much less time.
Cheap labor, takes the load off of professors when it comes to the gruntwork (grading, etc.) so they can focus on research, teaching, and grantwriting, and it's part of the apprenticeship of grad students (which is what grad school and postdocs are supposed to be), introducing them to the world of teaching. In my PhD program, post-quals you had to fully teach one intro class as part of your degree requirements.
I don't read it at mutually exclusive, more that pleasing students is not going to advance your research. So more of a witty, be mindful about what you are trying to achieve, what the preconditions actually are and direct effort appropriately.
At the time, I was struggling to keep up with the marking demands of a new (i.e. This was the first year it was taught) course I was TA'ing. I had around a hundred students and each one was generating 10-20 pages of handwritten lab reports per week. Student writing varied from human typewriter to medical prescription from a meth-addicted doctor. I tried to grade everything fairly and provide feedback about mistakes so students could learn.
My fellow TA's complained to the department that we were well over the hours we were supposed to be spending by a factor of at least 3. We were told to do less. Just to be clear, I wasn't worried about how much I was being paid. The problem was that I had my own research and coursework to do. We simply needed more TA's in that course due to the way lab assignments were designed. The prof teaching the course was apologetic and furnished me with the above quote.
This is teaching at a research focused university in a nutshell. There is no shortage of people who want to do a good job teaching, but the system is designed to force them to spend their time on other things.
Why is an institution of higher learning so hostile to those who want to put an honest effort into teaching? Just as nobody has ever won a Nobel prize for having happy students, no research focused university ranks well if they aren't churning out a lot of papers. Teaching competes with that priority.
If we want better educational outcomes for students, we need to do a better job of aligning the incentives governing universities with that goal.