Why I’m No Longer a Professor(johncbeck.tumblr.com) |
Why I’m No Longer a Professor(johncbeck.tumblr.com) |
The UT Southwestern Medical Center is driven by residents' evaluations of their supervisors, and routinely operate on patients with absolutely no supervision present. The actual doctors are afraid of getting poor reviews and killing their chances for advancement, as has happened to their peers. So the residents do as they wish, often at great risk and harm to the patient.
I unfortunately have experience with this facility. My brother-in-law was operated on by their residents for a routine removal of a skin graft. Their supervisor (one of the faculty members mentioned in the article linked below) was not present. My brother-in-law received 5 holes in his intestines and was unable to eat for 12 months, surviving on TPN alone. The Mayo Clinic finally resected his bowels, leaving him questionably enough intestines for a normal life. Sadly, for state-affiliated medical facilities in Texas, there is little recourse after the fact. The state has limited damages in such a way that no attorney was interested in the case.
More details here: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/dallas/headlin...
But I don't feel like there are many places for me to go- auditing courses is the best I've come up with.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who has this "demand" ... I just wish there was a way to connect the supply and demand in a better way :)
There's been a lot of ink spilled lately about ending the expectation that everyone should go to college. I'd like to see more about how everybody is expected to stop learning after that, unless they're looking for more degrees (or the ubiquitous MBA in marketing/finance), and especially if they have a good job.
I think that the main reason is because a la carte education would collapse its awful pricing structure. Having the majority of your student body not tied to your university for their entire future would end up confusing and improving a lot of things IMO. I'd love to shop by professor, and arbitrarily retake courses of study in my adult life if I feel I'm getting rusty.
And I think that new point of view is manifest in your observation. When one views an educated populace as a benefit to society, the kind of continuing education that you mention makes sense. When you take that more individualistic perspective, education that does not produce a monetary return on investment isn't valued and will be harder to come by. The actual education is of secondary concern to the degree that will increase your compensation going forward.
I've spent the overwhelming majority of my life as a student. I'm certainly not going to let that change just because I'm earning income now.
Who has this expectation? To me your perspective is weird because it suggests that if you're not taking classes you're not learning. And I would say that I often see arguments for college along the lines of it helping you "learn how to learn" on your own.
Universities have precisely the opposite problem: professors love to teach high-level classes in their fields of interest but they don't particularly care for the intro-level classes.
I am a teacher in Higher Education in India and this is what I am experiencing now. If I give good grades to students and entertain them they will give good feedback and that will in turn fetch me more incentives. No need to teach students anything.
Teaching is something that can be enjoyed but if it get worse, you cant find a job worst than this.
For the first time in my career, I understand why I’m so nervous and irritable every time I walk into a classroom. In my own small way—in the only way I personally will ever be able to comprehend it—I am feeling the burden of preparing the next generation of humans to be more humane and better individuals. It is an awesome responsibility. But it is also why I’m a teacher.
1. http://www.hult.edu/ja-jp/news/blogs/2012/july/why-im-a-teac...
The only thing I could think of is starting my own school but I haven't gotten myself to make that jump yet.
It can work very well indeed. Younger teachers with vocational experience (e.g. graphic designers teaching part time) can produce superb briefs that they even get 'customers' to evaluate.
I once had to write a University level module on 'scientific method'. That could be really dry, but I hit on the idea of getting the students to interview a research scientist of post-doc or higher experience level (the university in question had plenty of those around) about the extent to which the philosophers' idea of the scientific method actually worked. Each group of students rapidly found a lot of tension around the publishing and peer review processes. Big discussions! Good quality reports!
Do you have adult basic education in the US? Sorting out people's basic maths (I mean being able to check their change, find the value of a percentage, check wage slips) is another area where there is a lot of autonomy and opportunity for creativity.
Have the OA and others here given thought to mentoring teachers that are in training? They can challenge your assumptions and refresh your practice as well.
As you can see, I'm in mid-50s and still going.
Only when you threaten to rock the boat do the esteemed gentlemen show their mafia qualities.
My complaints are generally that teaching evaluations don't matter enough. I like teaching, and I'm good at it, but you can only afford to be as good as you can be in the 20% of your time you can carve out of the grant-writing budget to devote to students. Spend too much time teaching and it won't matter how much the students learn.
I saw a news article about suicides among 50-something men
in the US going up by 50%.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health-jan-june13-suicide_05-...
Edit - I found the report moments after posting that link. Here it is:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6217a1.htm?mobile...
I did find this:
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/public-health...
"Before the recession, men were more likely to commit suicide than women. This gap grew once the economic crisis began: While suicide rates increased for both genders, the increase for men was four times greater than that of women."
Sitting in a huge room, copying things off of a blackboard or simply trying to stay awake watching one slide after the other (usually stuffed with text so that you had to choose between listening to the professor or reading the slide) wasn't fun at all.
I can program just for the fun of it, but I have a hard time learning just to learn something new. Wish it wasn't like that, but it is. So when I learn it's more like this:
1. I learn about new tools that I can use to make things
2. I pick one or two and try to do something
3. I get stuck, but I have a much better understanding of the problems involved now
Now that's the point at which I'd like to be able to talk to a teacher and get back to #1, but this time on a higher level. I need to "play" with knowledge in order to understand it.
Education is notorious for having people quit due to feeling disillusioned, constrained, or opposed by the systems around it. The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers in the UK did a survey of its members in 2013 and found 84% felt demoralized with 50% having considered quitting the profession entirely in the past 12 months.
I think this happens more than just in education, but I can believe that education has a healthy stake.
A very good point.
That is my impression, too. It is very very disappointing, as I am at the beginning of the trajectory John C. Beck just ended. His decision and words do not surprise me a bit...
I didn't find out why, yet. The gist of my current theory is, that this crumbles down from old minds in politics getting more and more detached from what is actually happening in and around the {academe/increasingly digital} world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMqJvhmD5Yg
Of course Carlin is a comedian and there is no evidence (that I am aware of) of a conspiracy to dumb down education. I think it's probably more of a case of a noxious wilting blight disease called bureaucracy. Education certainly isn't the only institution stunted and crippled by this infection either.
The bottom line is... if you want a good rounded education, you are going to have to do it yourself. An institution might help with this but isn't going to be the whole answer...and, they are becoming less helpful it seems. Although there are no doubt some corners of the academic world that have so far proved resistant to bureaucratic blight... these are becoming less and less frequent.
I think if more emphasis were placed on the importance of career development early on, students would have better focus. In addition, teachers need to do a better job at demonstarting how learning can benefit their students. It is in everybody's best interests to have an informed and educated society.
Best way is to force them to adapt. MOOCs seem to be the thing that will make education assess its business practices.
I wish I didn't have to refer to education as a business, but alas, the idea that you can fine-tune any organization through business cases has been perpetuated.
A diploma from a prestigious university only means you can go through better gilded doors. After that, your measure is how much money you helped your employer make.
After a while, the metric becomes what you've done (in the past) to prove your worth.
If MOOCs are taken seriously, and can compete with prestigious diplomas when it comes to that first job, then you've got a game changer.
Sadly, the only way to make a business (again, pains me to say that) pay attention is if they lose money.
You seem to think it's a broken one (so do I).
You're a savvy business man.
Change it!
Of course, administrations can't wait 10 years for feedback, more's the pity.
Or perhaps restructuring their courses so that there's more practical work - perhaps working closely with companies in the area with internship schemes - to allow for more accurate in course feedback.
Or getting feedback from other teachers in the domain - that would be imperfect but I suspect might still be better than asking the students, assuming that the teachers were generally trustworthy folks.
Or doing, optional, follow up quizzes on the material taught... six months down the line and paying the students £20 each to do so - that would at least help to assess retained material (though not the worth of that material itself I suppose.)
Just make opting out of each individual question easy (add a N/A or "don't remember" option). Sure, you'll collect less data, but I imagine that you'll get at least partial cancellation after multiplication by the SNR, possibly much more than partial cancellation.
Not all of them, no. Of course not.
But you remember the great ones, and you remember the god damned awful ones. The great leave an emotional mark on you, they inspired you to go into their field, they showed you something that wowed you and has stuck with you over those 10 years. And the damned awful ones leave emotional scars that don't fade, and you'll talk to old veterans/classmates about them like you did a tour of 'Nam together...
Of course some courses lend themselves to imparting this information better than others, and if you end up in fields other than your major there may be less chances to find your learning useful.
You go to Oxbridge/ivy league universities for the contacts not just the piece of paper
Those contacts you make in big-name schools are mostly wishful thinking. Those places don't train you to be a friend. They train you to be ruthless, efficient "winners".
Make your FU money and bail. Nietzsche explained why;
> He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
p.s. a white collar mcjob makes more than an adjunct "professor".
Going to eaton then oxford and the bullingdon club opens far more doors look at the UK Cabinet.
Do you think Pres Obahma would he be where he is today without going to Harvard and had just a community organizer with just a local Chicago high school education.
He won't rock the boat. He won't go JFK on people and cause a ruckus.
Do you really believe an upper-middle-class lawyer can breeze past the multi-billionaires?
Look at what's happening in Detroit. Who the scapegoat is for the downfall of an entire city.