A Caring Paradox

by Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/25/2004 12:24 PM EST
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  • Anonymous - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - link

    You speak the truth. I attend the UW and the teaching has been horrible. You have all these super smart graduates and what not but they can't teach for crap and would rather just work on there own projects. College has been a major disappointment.
  • naj - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link

    Well said Anand. We've got the same problem here at UCSB, and I imagine a lot of other universities do as well.
  • iRonManNCSU - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link

    I agree with that 100%... it is exactly the same thing that occurred to me after my second semester in college (i'm in my 4th now)...

    That post should be in the Technician... you should submit it for one of the opinion articles.
  • Adam K - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link

    Wow Anand, that was deep.
    I must say that I agree in many cases. But one thing that I noticed is that often students can influence their teachers to enjoy or hate the topic they teach. You might find a professor going through parts of their lives that are difficult. He or she might not like their students because there is one or two that really piss(ed) them off an earlier semester or quarter.
  • msva123 - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link

    "Some more entrepreneurial types might skip it entirely and engage themselves in an aggressive self-learning regiment á la John Carmack style."

    Good book related to this topic: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553...

    It looks dumb, but it suprised me with how good it was. You can probably get it at the library.
  • GhandiInstinct - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link

    You are a genius anonymous, I stand behind you in the next presidential elections.
  • Anonymous - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link

    I think a major problem with post-secondary education is that many people go into it with the idea that it is a means to an end. How common is it today to see high-school aged teenagers determining the university degree they will pursue based on the job market? I would argue that many people value their education only for the opportunity it affords them in the post-academic world. To really understand what I'm implying, I suppose I should define my interpretation of an education.

    To me, the primary goal of education is to instill in a person, an ability to teach themselves. As simplistic and obvious as this might sound, I believe a great deal of the current education system is actually a hinderance to this goal. The way many teach is shameful. I felt in many classes the same way I do when I read lyrics to a song without actually having heard the song. There is a sense of deep abstraction and an obvious disconnect. Another gripe of mine is testing. At worst, testing is an evaluation of one's ability to regurgitate material over fixed periods of time. At best, it's a benchmark of some neural hashing function we've acquired over the course of 12 weeks of study. You may be familiar with it. I believe the hashing function is something like this: if the professor said the material is on the test then store as much of the material in short term memory for quick recollection; otherwise discard the material or rely on long term memory from the first and only exposure to it. I would be willing to bet if a professor handed out a blank piece of paper for an exam, with a simple instruction - "Tell me as much about the subject as you can" - that the results would be horrific. Where to start? What to emphasize? How to explain? But in my opinion, these are the very questions that need to be answered in order to teach ourselves effectively. Not surprisingly, these questions were what the professor had to ask him/herself prior to the course. If the primary goal of education is to be able to teach oneself, then there is a duality - one must be a student and a teacher.

    Now, before you think I'm off on a tangent, let me bring this discussion back to the topic at hand. I believe 95% of post-secondary students are unwilling to accept this duality. They are merely a student; a consumer. They are there to consume their product - the degree. Universities are seen as little more than degree factories with a wide variation in degree quality and price that is seen in the products built in actual factories. I think much of the experience of post-secondary education depends upon the people with whom you share it; your fellow undergrads. I share your observations that many professors and undergrads are apathetic. I'm not an expert on this matter. But I would be willing to bet that students in general became apathetic first and that is what caused the professors to fall to that state. Following the simple rule of the market they're just being good producers and giving the consumers what they want, right? So how do you deal with this problem? I would say you deal with it the same way you deal with Walmart if you're offended by its business practices. Shop elsewhere. Universities may have a large marketshare of the post-secondary education market. But they don't have a monopoly. Some more entrepreneurial types might skip it entirely and engage themselves in an aggressive self-learning regiment á la John Carmack style. I think most people have disposed of the notion that a degree equals a particular level of intelligence. So if obtaining a degree does not enhance your intelligence, what is the point of obtaining it other than for the superficial reasons I mentioned at the beginning?
  • Gino - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link

    I couldn't agree more with Anand about undergrad. My public high school was a fantastic center for learning. The ambivalence of undergrad was a big letdown. But I went to law school and was amazed because they teach using the Socratic method.

    Students are expected to read the material and then discuss it. Everyone learns through questioning and thinking on your feet.

    Too many professors just lecture and use PowerPoint. Nothing happens in their classrooms.

    I understand that its difficult to teach 200 people in an auditorium, but unless a teacher engages the class there is little point in having a "talking head" standing at the front of the room. Why not watch it on video--or just read the book?
  • Wally - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link

    One useful way to get better classes is to have a major that is small. In my undergraduate studies my major had 18 students. The professors new everyone and if you missed class they knew it. I did have the 200+ person classes with a professor reading notes (that he also made you buy, and never once deviated from) but that was a relative exception.

    The University overall was 37,000+ students and very heavy into research.

    Grad school is a bit different since so much of your time is spent doing research and not in classes, and the classes tend to be much smaller anyway.
  • GhandiInstinct - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link

    Anand, completely agree. My explanation of all this is, people who choose a tedious career like professing tend to get so smart with themselves(because you need a PHD) that they feel like its all useless now. The ones who want to get class over with as fast as possible are the ones who join the field for money.
  • vinney - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link

    #2 - you're assuming that they care.
    the administration will readily tell you that teaching is not a number one priority - it's a problem with the way the higher education system has become - it's run like a business: profits first. research brings in money, so the administration pushes the professors (even the ones who care about teaching) to spend less time teaching and more time researching.
  • Holger Eilhard - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link

    Because they don't really care... Oh, and there we are, back on the main topic.
  • K1avg - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link

    I understand EXACTLY where you are coming from.

    I think the main difference between high school teachers and college profs is that in college, the huge amount of staff makes individual evaluations dern near impossible, and administrators are too concerned with other crap to actually CARE about how the teachers are doing.

    In high school, it's much different. A large high school might have MAYBE 75 teachers, tops. Admins are regularly dropping in on classes, and, here in Florida, some teachers' pay is based on their students' performance on the FCAT (standardized test).

    As far as student apathy, since high school is mandatory by law and doesn't cost anything, everybody comes to school. Unfortunately, a good half of those kids simply don't care about education, whether because they're great athletes, prostitutes, drug addicts, whatever. In college, on the other hand, students care because every one of them has paid out of the nose to get their education, and every one of them is mature enough to be concerned. There will always be the rich kids who just show up once a week and their parents buy their degrees for them. You made that point...

    Bravo on your courageous exposé! Keep up the good work! ;)
  • Anonymous - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link

    Why don't you complain directly to your profs or their superiors, then?
    After all, you ARE paying for their service!
  • Holger Eilhard - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link

    Hi,

    well I can just tell the same story about university profs/students in germany. No difference at all I suppose. It's pretty disturbing seeing someone a row in front of you playing quake or so... :(

    Holger

    PS: "class is over so I've got to run, how ironic, complaining about student apathy while blogging in class :)" *lol*

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