Comment by monksy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by monksy | Hacker News Reader

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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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