Comment by throwawayjava | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawayjava | Hacker News Reader

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This criticism is unfair for many reasons:

1. Advising is teaching. In fact, advising is the majority component of an R1 teaching load! So, he DID discuss the teaching component of his job. A lot.

2. In terms of classroom teaching, he was probably teaching 1-2 courses per year at Harvard. So classroom teaching really wasn't the majority component of his job. It's unsurprising that he didn't spend much time talking about this minority component of his job, in the same way that it's unsurprising when a developer talks primarily about writing/reading/testing code rather than the ~20% of their workday activities that are something other than writing/reading/testing code.

Of course, one hopes that developers introspect on their effectiveness in various meetings, when talking to clients or internal stakeholders, and so on. But you'd be unsurprised if a dev, discussing their biggest mistakes during their first few years, focus on code-related mistakes.

3. Maybe he felt good about his non-advising, classroom teaching? The title of the post is "everything I did wrong", not "a summary of everything I did".

> classroom teaching really wasn't the majority component of his job.

It's the title of the job: Professor.

I've yet to see someone complain that software engineers don't build engines and are therefore bad at their jobs. Indeed, that'd be a silly argument.

Also, you've completely ignored my first point above. Even if we accept that teaching is the primary responsibility of a "Professor", it does not follow that this teaching manifests primarily as classroom teaching. Advising is teaching, and is the primary form of teaching undertaken by professors at certain research-intensive universities.

Incidentally, there are job titles that describe classroom teachers at research universities -- "instructor" or "teaching professor". The author of this post was not an "instructor" or a "teaching professor". He was an assistant and then associate professor. Classroom teaching was not a majority component of his job.

Luckily for every software engineer out there, historical cruft in the names of job titles is a bad criteria for evaluating job performance.

I don't think anyone would consider an software engineer to be someone who works on engines. They engineer software solutions. (Designing, developing, gathering requirements, and insure correctness)

To quote you,

>> It's the title of the job: Engineer.

From the dictionary: "Engineer: a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines"

Hopefully you see the point I'm making? Just because you think a job title means something, and just because that's an accurate historical meaning, doesn't mean that the job title retains the same meaning today.

I did say software engineer. It would be equally absurd to claim that a civic engineer or chemical engineer would be responsible for building an engine.

> It would be equally absurd

Yes, that was my point. Your argument -- that a professor should be expected teach in classrooms a lot because they're called a professor -- is absurd :-)

I think monsky's comment and the exchange below hit on an important point: different understandings of what a professor does.

I would venture that most people equate professor with teaching. While many of the people that responded to monksy, understand that the position is much more than that. Seeing this dichotomy is important to having a productive discussion.

This happens a lot in life. Another example from higher education—University President. Most people equate University President with something along the lines of U.S. President and hold the requisite expectations for them. Reality = fundraising figurehead.

My point of contention is that professors who do not teach or do so badly, should be treated and considered differently.

There should be a title of Graduate Advisor, and Teaching Professor (those who teach others to become a professor/teach in a classroom). There should be specialization on being an effective teacher. There should be pathways to success. Pushing all students into research and half heartedly force them to learn how to teach only re-enforces this idea.

For those "graduate professors" who just consider advising and mentoring grad students teaching, you have to apply that same logic that by mentoring anyone in the field, you're now a teacher. (That's a dualism)

My big issue here: we're completely ignoring the issue that a student comes into the university to learn. (Even if it's a research institution) By assigning "professors" that don't actually teach you're doing a huge disservice to everyone. In those cases students are left to their own devices, they're not going to do well for research, community, or industry. Really what's happening is people are paying for an apprentiship to become a researcher.

> There should be a title of... Teaching Professor

This is already a job title! An alternative, often equivalent title is "Instructor". And these people are primarily responsible for classroom teaching! And they are primarily evaluated upon that teaching! What you are asking for already exists.

There are also colleges and universities where all people with the title "professor" are dedicated to classroom teaching. Harvard isn't one of them.

> There should be a title of Graduate Advisor

There is. For historical reasons, at Harvard, the "Graduate Advisor" is called an "assistant/associate/full professor". But don't get confused by the name. These professors don't do much classroom teaching, just like most software engineers don't build engines. It's just a title, not a job description, and getting angry about it is just as silly as getting angry that most software engineers don't write software for engine control units!

> we're completely ignoring the issue that a student comes into the university to learn

And assisting in that learning is not the majority component of the jobs of tenure-track professors at research institutions.

> Really what's happening is people are paying for an apprenticeship to become a researcher.

Research grants, not undergraduate tuition, pay for tenure-track professors' research at places like Harvard.

You seem to have a deeply flawed understanding about what a modern research university is, how it operates, and what undergraduate tuition money is spent on. That's perfectly fine, except that you're continually arguing with people who try to explain to you your misconceptions.

When academia wants to educate their own, they don't use lectures - they use apprenticeships. Lectures are a cash cow they sell to the rest of society.

Most students come to university to be credentialed, and the higher prestige the institution the better - student demand seems to show they would rather listen to the ramble of a famous professor who can't wait to get back to the lab, than an effective dedicated teacher.

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