Posted on 01/26/2018 8:03:28 AM PST by 3161J410
Higher-paid professors at research universities spend less time instructing undergraduate students compared to their lower-paid counterparts. Considering that faculty pay makes up on average two-thirds of total instructional costs at American research universities, the impact of classifying faculty research activities as an instructional cost could have a substantial impact on tuition rates. But more research doesn’t guarantee better research, as noted by Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein, who says a “publish-or-perish” mentality has gripped professors at American research universities. Bauerlein points to the excessive level of focus the academic community places on William Shakespeare as an example. Some 21,674 scholarly publications on the English poet were published in a 26-year period between 1980 and 2006. What more can be said about Shakespeare?
And who’s teaching undergraduates while professors are busy hammering out the 21,675th study on Shakespeare? Numerous studies have shown that undergraduate students bear the cost of pervasive “publish-or-perish” mentality in higher education results in the form of higher tuition, larger class sizes and higher student-faculty ratios.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
RHIP
Many senior-level academics don’t teach any classes at all. They give seminars, lead research teams, or attend parties where they whack alimni for endowments. They haven’t seen the inside of a classroom for decades.
Aside from Hollywood academia is the worst and most expoitative employer in America. A small slice of faculty enjoys the good life while the overwhelming majority of teaching is done by adjuncts and grad students who have no job security and who struggle to make ends meet. Funny how the two worst employers are also the most Progressive.
Worse, many offload their teaching responsibilities to their graduate student "teaching assistants" many of whom barely speak understandable English. This is especially true in the sciences. Undergrads are left trying to learn when taught by somebody who doesn't know how to teach, can barely speak the language, and because they are also a student, is devoting as little time as possible to their teaching assignment.
Worse, many offload their teaching responsibilities to their graduate student "teaching assistants" many of whom barely speak English, especially in the sciences. Undergrads are left trying to learn when taught by somebody who doesn't know how to teach and can barely speak the language.
When I was in college one of my professors said his compatriots called tenure “retirement.”
Try getting through some of those publications.
Total bull.
And one knows the departments from which the bull comes.
Academics, my Obamahole.
“Many senior-level academics don’t teach any classes at all. They give seminars...”
I took plenty of seminars. All of the professors taught in them. Maybe I had more serious professors.
Research that’s being done by STEM professors can be valuable, very valuable. On the other hand, research that’s being done by non-STEM professors...usually a waste of time and money.
And let me add one more thing. Research that’s being done by education professors is worse than just being wasteful. The nonsense those folks churn out is usually harmful.
WTH. Research universties require their tenured faculty to engage in research. Of course they don’t spend much time teaching undergraduates.
Even if they want to teach undergraduates, they may not be the best teachers. The level of creative brilliance that some of these people possess is best utilized at the graduate level.
I know the political science journals have been unreadable and incomprehensible for decades now. History journals prefer the same topics ad nauseum and often will reject good articles that do not have archival sources. In many cases, it’s the sources the reviewers look at, rather than the specific content.
The reason why professors are doing worthless research is because there’s so much federal grant money out there funding worthless research. Cut funding, particularly for humanities & “social science”, and you will see more professors in the classroom, and fewer worthless PhDs (no research funding = no PhD slots)
> Try getting through some of those publications. Total bull.<
Very true. And to show that, there are pranksters who submit nonsense articles to academic publications. Most of those nonsense articles get accepted, and are published.
Here’s an article about that:
https://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763
Victor Davis Hanson discussed this in his book “Who Killed Homer?”
His main focus was on why Latin and Greek are no longer taught very much in school. And in those cases where Classics are still taught, it is highly political “Gender Identity in Ancient Sparta” type stuff.
Hanson maintains that ancient authors have a lot to teach us and that ancient languages can enhance a person’s intellectual life. I agree, but that is not the topic of this thread.
Hanson pointed out that academics don’t teach. They hate to teach. They get “lesser mortals” to teach the classes. The Professors just write stupid, trite crap for journals that no one reads, and they go on junkets. They are very well-paid to do almost nothing.
But note that is not especially new. In 1946 Hermann Hesse wrote “Magister Ludi (the Glass Bead Game)” which was a novel of the future and looked back at the intellectually arid 20th century where academics wasted everyone’s time by writing about “Caloric intake of blacksmith’s apprentices in Bavaria 1585-1595”. (I just made that up, but Hesse was parodying research that causes one to say “Who the hell cares?”)
““Caloric intake of blacksmith’s apprentices in Bavaria 1585-1595”.
That actually sounds VERY interesting. :-)
.
I own the film options — trying to get Ben Affleck interested but he won’t take my calls.
Research
VDH is a historian that teaches. The evidence is his book “The Second World Wars” . I got it for Christmas and just began reading it. It is hard. It is fairly new, 2017.
In it the topic is WW II but mixed in with the state of the various nations at war and their forces (even air forces) are a few words on the Punic wars and the Peloponnesian war.
His grasp of world history is phenomenal and his desire to spend so much time writing such a huge book to essentially teach me is very much appreciated.
Tenure means nothing these days. You can be fired for saying something that the Left finds “offensive”. Tenure won’t save you if you get photographed hanging with Nazis or the KKK.
It only saves you from being fired for being a bad teacher.
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