

Teach or Perish - barry-cotter
http://chronicle.com/article/Teach-or-Perish/151187/

======
pjc50
_There is nothing wrong with importing theory into studies of literature, art,
cinema, and so forth. It was ill-advised to bring so much theory—and almost
always the same dense and ideologically tinctured brand of it—to bear on our
vast canon of texts and traditions._

Well, yes. If the answer to all questions is always the same a line of inquiry
becomes uninteresting. And this is tied to the article's main line of
reasoning about academia becoming a closed loop. They stopped engaging with
students, let alone the general public. And the public has forgotten the
importance of high culture, while always being vulnerable to anti-
intellectualism. Couple that with the greatly increased cost of university
making it a heavy financial investment, and the stream of curious
undergraduates dries up.

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jordanpg
Some good points made, but the author ignores a lot of things about the state
of undergraduate (and graduate, to a lesser extent) classrooms. Factors like
rampant grade inflation and students with large varieties of extra needs mean
that the professor's attention is hugely split between teaching and
administration. I'm happy to go on record and say that I do not want our best
minds wasting a lot of time with course admin, metrics, evaluations, and
"collaborative digital learning". Maybe there is a good reason that the
senior, storied profs want to distance themselves from these things.

The solution I see is to _disincentivize_ the university for the large swaths
of students (again both grad and undergrad) who have no business being there
in the first place.

~~~
germinalphrase
I agree with you, but we can't de-incentivize high education without de-
coupling educational certification with age-based grade advancement.

Everyone knows that 80-years-ago you could get a 'good' job with only a high
school education, while you now need some level of higher-education. This
isn't because young people are (necessarily) gaining important life/job-
related skills during these four years after high school. It is social
signaling, or - if you like - credentials inflation. The thinking is: if you
can make it through a bachelor's degree then you must be reasonably
intelligent to do entry-level work. This says nothing about the actual need
for higher education.

By de-coupling educational attainment from age offers the opportunity to
advance young people through stages of education based on their skills, not
merely their age. In doing so, graduating from high school becomes a standard
moment for progress benchmarking. Some students will show significant ability,
others won't. Advanced students will go on to do advanced work and lower
skilled students won't be penalized (as they currently are) with having their
high school diploma withheld from them (a significant employment problem for
many low-skilled workers).

It allows businesses to look at high school graduates and assess whether or
not their skills are adequate for the current opening rather than merely
assuming that a bachelor's degree is necessary to do the work. In this way, we
incentivize trying to advance quickly through high school while also de-
incentivizing the _default_ choice of a four-year degree.

~~~
nickstefan12
It's the law of unintended consequences. Political people saw how much better
off the college educated were way back when and decided that "everyone should
go to college". What they did not understand was that scarcity of college
grads and the socioeconomic signaling it provided were the true source of
better life. The now "everyone is college educated" are no better off because
of the signaling and scarcity has been lost.

It's deeply connected to socialist ideals to have everyone go to college. If
people are upset that everyone going to college don't get to be ahead of
everyone, then what they're really mad at is socialism, not college.

------
tokenadult
This is a really good article and I am glad it was submitted here for our
discussion. The author makes a good point that professors and institutions of
higher education that receive public subsidies (which is essentially all of
them, in the United States and most other countries) need to be able to make a
case that they are providing general public benefits through their activities
to keep the subsidies flowing in a democratic political system. The author is
helpful to emphasize mentoring and developing the next generation as part of a
professor's core job.

~~~
ende
What does democracy have to do with it?

~~~
stinkytaco
That if they cannot demonstrate public good, the public may decide that they
would rather not support the institution and said public subsidies.

~~~
ende
Ok I see what you're saying now.

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redthrow
Here's what Elon Musk said during his conversation with Sal Khan, the founder
of Khan Academy (that he invested) about online courses by talented teachers:

\---

 _Elon Musk: The analogy I sometimes use is, you 've seen like Batman – like
the Chris Nolan movie – like the original one. And it's pretty frickin
awesome. Right? You've got incredible special effects, great script multiple
takes, amazing actors, and great sound. It's very... is very engaging But if
you would instead say okay that you have the same script so, at least the same
script, and you said, ok now that script, instead of having movies, we're
going to have that script performed by the local town troupe. Okay and so in
every small town in America, if movies didn't exist, they'd have to, then,
recreate the Dark Knight.

SAL: Right.

ELON: Like with home-sewn costumes, and, like jumping across the stage – not
giving their lines quite right, and not really looking like the people in the
movie. And no special effects – that would suck. It would be terrible.

SAL: That's right. Very, very –

ELON: That's education._

\---

And here's the author's characterization of online courses:

\---

 _Our disarticulation of knowledge accumulation and knowledge transmission
also leaves us exposed to an even more frightening adversary. I refer to tech
and its maniacal destabilizing energy. Financiers have recognized that there’s
good money to be made in conveying knowledge; their thoughts, naturally, do
not linger on the costly infrastructure that produces knowledge. Working in
tandem with the digital wizards, they wager that they can do it better than we
can and cash out in the process. Given that they’re up against a cohort that
has very little interest, or dexterity, in sharing its immense store of
wisdom, the money and tech people like their odds._

\---

Also, lectures themselves are not that great to begin with, so that's
something to consider too:

[http://educationoutrage.blogspot.ca/2015/01/why-do-we-
give-l...](http://educationoutrage.blogspot.ca/2015/01/why-do-we-give-
lectures-why-does-anyone.html)

~~~
taeric
As someone that enjoys going to theater and dance events, I only take issue
with the idea that this would suck and be terrible. Less produced. Sure. More
work for the audience to imagine what is happening? Sure.

Terrible? Not so much.

I do think it cuts to the core of some of the problems with education reform.
No amount of work by the teachers will prevent the students from having to
work. No amount of work from the teachers will prevent some students from
failing.

My belief is that we need to make sure when a student fails, they use that
failure as a lesson. Too often we beat people up with the failure such that
they aren't learning from mistakes, but recovering from them.

~~~
redthrow
> More work for the audience to imagine what is happening? Sure

But this kind of 'work' is meaningless though.

Books that contain a lot of typos/errors give students a lot of 'work' to
'imagine' what's going on, but that kind of work/imagination don't have to
exist if the quality material was produced in the first place.

~~~
taeric
I feel we are shifting some metaphors here. The work I was referring to in
that sentence was in the imagination of the audience during a theatrical
performance. And I don't feel it is meaningless.

~~~
dropit_sphere
Yes, but it was Elon that did the shifting, and you that (unintentionally, I'm
sure) took it too far. All Elon was trying to communicate was that
centralization of production of cheaply replicable goods allows higher
quality. If that applies to theater, explain that concept with reference to
theater. If it doesn't apply to theater, throw it out for another metaphor.

~~~
taeric
Right, I was trying to throw it out. Production value is surprisingly low in
value when it comes to education. My children have learned more from scrap
paper laying around the house than they have from books, at this point. (They
are young, so not yet in the target of these efforts.)

Basically, my assertion would be that no amount of production value will make
up for experimentation done by the student.

~~~
dropit_sphere
I see now, and this is a good point. But I'm not certain that production value
is a single variable in this case---there's production value that encourages
experimentation, and production value that discourages it.

~~~
taeric
Certainly, I try and be careful not to make it sound like I have a solution
here. Because I don't.

------
ChuckMcM
_" There is one occupation, however, that rarely figures in their reveries.
Few of these kids hanker to become professors."_

Perhaps there have been so many words written about how teaching jobs are not
only few and far between, but they are underpaid and unloved by the very
institutions that offer them. If you have read about adjunct professors who
are homeless, or post docs 10 years into their search for a teaching position,
you start to get the idea that maybe that isn't a smart move.

I suspect that much of the writing is for effect, and to promote a discussion
on the pay and benefits of being a professor but it has the effect to turning
away people who might one day pursue that role.

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PaulHoule
I would say that academia has some blame for rampant anti-intellectualism in
that many of it's fashions have led to it.

The identity politics of the 1980's, for instance, was a gift to the
Republicans. Go tell a poor white that he has "white privilege" and should be
ashamed for being white, and you've turned him off to the left forever. (This
is just one example of how the academic machine erases people's experience;
prior to 1970 in New England it did not matter so much if you were white or
black, but what kind of white or black was everything)

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6d0debc071
Related, also harsh reading:

"Why I am Not a Professor OR The Decline and Fall of the British University"
Dr Mark Tarver, 2007

[http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/decline.htm](http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/decline.htm)

