

Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students - cwan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703720504575377140202306852.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

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alexandros
"A glance at scholarly journals or university-press catalogs might make one
wonder how much of this "research" is advancing knowledge and how much is part
of a guild's need to credentialize its members."

A glance? Really? Judging the life's work of a few thousand people who got
into academia to do research is easily judged in a 'glance'? It's interesting
that some would like universities to be little more than vocational training
programs, but I've never seen such dismissal of the work produced by academia
in such a high profile outlet, with no evidence to back it up whatsoever.

EDIT: Reading further, I see that they did look more closely.. at sociology
journals. Why the strange choice? Biology, computing, medicine, physics not
interesting enough?

~~~
baddspellar
Some years ago, I saw a 60 minutes episode on issues in higher education. The
reporter picked a biology journal off a shelf, read its arcane title, and
exclaimed "who actually reads this stuff?" to back up her claim about how
useless journals are... as if she were somehow qualified to judge the
importance of a paper by its title.

I couldn't help but imagining what she would have said if she picked up a
paper titled "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" or "On formally
undecidable propositions of. Principia Mathematica and related systems".

~~~
jacquesm
Fortunately it's not up to her to decide. That said, it seems that some papers
go out of their way to hide what the paper is really about by looking at the
title.

~~~
sprout
Usually you just don't know. I got shamed in front of a prof once by saying
that a given paper title was a good way to make people not want to come to
your talk, and he responded by explaining why he thought it was an interesting
talk.

There are plenty of examples of things that might be meaningless to a graph-
theory professor that are a core part of the language of a combinatorics
specialist.

And of course, undergrads and humanities majors best keep their mouths shut.

~~~
derefr
One of the things taught to undergrads _in_ the humanities—specifically, in
communications design—is that you should make the metadata of something
interesting-seeming to a wider audience than the data it represents, so that
it spreads further—that way, more of the people interested in the data will
see it.

As an example, one of my friends told me about a very interesting paper
called, and I quote, "Three Monkeys something something." He didn't know what
it was about, but he said it "sounded like something I'd be interested in." He
was quite right—but if it hadn't been for the monkeys, he wouldn't had
anything vivid about the paper to recall at all.

------
jessriedel
All of this outrage just stems from a confusion over the point of private
research universities.

The Purpose of Harvard is Not to Educate People:
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/05/29/...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/05/29/the-
purpose-of-harvard-is-not-to-educate-people/)

State universities, yes, those are supposed to educate people. But not Ivy
League schools. Their purpose is to produce new knowledge.

The authors of the OP article then conflate two discussions: (1) Should
private research universities focus on education instead of research? (I would
give that a resounding _no_.) (2) Are the private research universities
_actually_ producing useful knowledge? (Here, I would be somewhat negative,
but probably not for the trite reasons cited by the authors.)

Those are _completely_ different questions, especially since one is
_empirical_ and one is _normative_. And it is a hallmark of poor
editorializing to try to address both an empirical question and a normative
question in the same small space.

~~~
josh33
Um, really ignorant question here, but what book on reasoning can I read to be
able to see through arguments and debates like you just did? I want to learn
about empirical and normative questions, etc.

~~~
jessriedel
Boy, it's hard to answer such a flattering comment without letting it get to
your head and sounding like a pompous jerk!

I'll give the same advice I give as a teaching grad student to undergrads who
think us grad students are incredibly smart: it only takes a tiny amount of
knowledge or training for someone to have that you don't for them to seem _so_
much smarter. Don't be fooled. As a grad student enslaved by a university, I
have become quite familiar with all the arguments about the purpose and place
of research vs. teaching.

Anyways, this confusion between normative and empirical claims is extremely
common; once you become aware of the difference, you see it everywhere. The
easiest way to familiarize yourself with this and related ideas is to take a
introductory course on moral philosophy or read an introductory textbook.
Unfortunately, even if I thought the book I used in college was all that great
(it was OK), I forgot the name of it. The material is fairly universal at the
introductory level, though, so any decent book would do.

~~~
foenix
This book got me started:
[http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/?vi...](http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/?view=usa&ci=9780195134582)

As a student about to start on the honours portion of my degree, I find solace
in analytic philosophy (as opposed to those damn ethical/post-modern
philosophers).

------
nphase
My father is a senior, tenured professor of mechanical engineering. He's won a
bunch of prizes and fellowships. He's probably one of the best in his field. I
don't ever recall anything about substantial raises. In fact, all I ever hear
out of him is that they're cutting staff, restricting bonuses and cutting
raises.

This coming from a man who works on research and the related papers/books
almost every waking hour of his life. I'm serious too, I grew up around it.
Saturday and Sunday, absolutely. Friday night, definitely. Breaks only for PBS
News Hour/CNN, meals, and the occasional friendly tennis match (when the
rotator cuff isn't giving him trouble).

He teaches only one undergraduate class a semester. Sure, you might consider
that a "light teaching load," but that would be insulting to the graduate,
doctorate, and post-doc students who fought hard to spend 50+ hour weeks in
the lab (those students probably spend more than 80 hour weeks there
themselves). If he could, he'd opt out of that class too. Can't blame him
either: most of those students aren't even interested in being an engineer,
they're just in it for the degree.

His biggest complaint? Administrative overhead. The university and related
agencies take sometimes up to half of his grant money. Hard to pay those
students at those rates. Which means he has to spend more time there himself.
Time that's getting scarcer due to increases in course and paper requirements.

If you ask him, he'll tell you that colleges serve their administration (in
the same way that some say government only exists to serve itself). But maybe
someone's just holding on to that 58% raise check for him.

~~~
mkramlich
It's been observed that once any organization reaches a certain size or age it
acquires so many institutional rules and traditions, and has so many layers of
staff, that it effectively lives more to serve itself than to serve the
outside world. It also acts increasingly not to fight the problem it was meant
to be a solution for, but to actually preserve and continue that problem,
thereby maximizing the chance for future job security for the institution
itself. It will increasingly not want to cure the problem, but to temporarily
alleviate it -- alleviate it for only as long as the institution's services
are purchased. Once that happens, the organization has become a bureaucracy.

------
zabuni
Terrible review of the book. Doesn't really get to the meat of what he was
trying to say about colleges.

One, the article never mentions that the author wants to get rid of all
degrees except liberal arts. He is totally against college as "training".

He's also against the standard complaints of colleges, tenure, sports, ivy
leagues, etc. etc.

It's be much more enlightning to go this NPR transcript or his website:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1289333...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128933357&ps=cprs)
<http://highereducationquestionmark.com/?page_id=52>

------
siglesias
In my experience, it's the professors who operate on the Richard Feynman model
who are the most successful. While there are lots of professors who are of the
mind that teaching and researching are antithetical, I had a few who were just
PHENOMENAL, passionate lecturers who say teaching and the future of research
as going hand in hand. And it's not so much the material they conveyed; it was
the passion for the subject. To me, that's where all of the brilliant students
go, to the professors who convince them, through their passion and excitement
for the next generation, to take up a particular field of study. In that
regard, I think the system can on some level work itself out. Programs with
little regard for the next generation simply burn out and attract fewer
acolytes. When I look back on my education, as well as what I got out of
college, it's totally the handful of passionate professors who shaped me and
influenced my future.

------
Vivtek
Oh God yes, I can't agree with this more. My wife worked as an adjunct at
Indiana University, killing herself with a 15-hour load for eight thousand
bucks while the president of the university, who arguably contributes nothing
whatsoever, earned a cool $425,000 and had a free luxury house on campus.

This year, she's got a real job (for a year as a visiting professor) for $35K
and benefits; it's going to feel like we're rolling in cash. This is after 30
years of education, including a doctorate in theoretical physics.

The American university system may well have jumped the shark.

~~~
jacquesm
Eight ? Or Eighty? Eight seems terribly small!

edit: I just read on and you mention her new salary is $35K and it's a huge
improvement but I find it still hard to believe that someone would actually go
to work 15 hours per day for a $8K pay per year. That works out to be
substantially less than minimum wage.

~~~
starkfist
I looked into teaching math at a California community college and the pay was
just under $2000 per course. A course was either 3 or 4 credits. $8K for 15
credit-hours worth of teaching in Indiana sounds about right. When my sister
was an adjunct faculty at a big state school she made $17K a year.

~~~
fmora
Wow. I had no idea pays were this low. How do you live? Is the job really that
great? Why put up with it? I started making 50K a year when I first graduated
from college and I still complained it was too low after a year there. And now
I think that making $100K a year is still too low. You need to choose a
different career. Else no point in complaining.

------
RK
Isn't the old joke that colleges are the only place where the employees get
all of the good parking and the paying customers get the shitty, far away
parking.

~~~
harry
Man, if only that was the truth here at KU. Everyone has shit parking here
unless you carry a massive title or tenure. maybe 100 cars total don't have to
hike up a hill.

~~~
forsaken
Cool that you're at KU. I'm living in lawrence -- working at the Journal World
on Django stuff :)

------
woodall
I go to a state funded college. This is my last semester and was lucky enough
to get a great internship. I wanted to start early, however, I live pretty far
away. I decided I would just live in the dorms.

I started negotiations and was surprised at how much it would cost me to stay
there for 20 days- 1/2 of what it cost me to live there for a whole semester!
After some digging- first they told me that it was not allowed(rooming early)-
I find out that they do this on purpose to keep kids from bunking early.

Normally I wouldn't have a problem with this but, I am a senior meaning I've
spent a ton of money at that school. I have also served on the housing board
for the dorms I was going to live in- volunteer work for the school. They were
also very rigid and would not really help me- a future alum.

Needless to say I couldn't afford the amount and as a result I start my
internship later which makes my schedule even more cramped. I know what I will
be doing when they start soliciting money.

------
robobenjie
The article disparages universities for having a larger and larger percentage
of courses taught by lecturers rather than researching profs, but in my
experience (ME, Stanford) the lecturers did a much better job teaching me than
the Profs did, on average. Probably because they saw it as their primary
occupation rather than an annoyance.

------
nkassis
I found the title of this article quite ironic because that's exactly what
happened to me in college. I was employed by the school and benefited more
than the regular students. I was able to get a job on campus as a Sys admin
and that's where most of my education came from. I really wish the opportunity
I had was offered to more students on campus. Working 40hrs and going to
school more than half time (9 hours or so) was a hard but the experience
really put me ahead when I was applying for work. I already had 5 years of
experience when I graduated and got the first job I applied for when I decided
to leave the school.

I guess my point is, if you go to a school try to find a decent job on campus
(not something useless like working as a library clerk if you want to be a
programmer). Most universities will pay for your school if you work for them
full time.

I still ended up racking some student debt ( I didn't work full time for the
first 2 years which got expensive) but hopefully I'll have that gone soon. Not
so lucky for my wife, she's earning a masters in library science right now and
we are looking at over 50K total for her education. I'll probably have to get
a new job when she graduates to cover the increased expense. 50K is
ridiculous, and they won't give you 30 years to pay that off anymore.

------
rnfein
I have not read the book the article references. However, in reference to what
Mr. Hacker and Ms. Dreifus call the "immorality" of using adjunct professors,
the article's author does not address the fact that there are potentially very
good reasons why the use of adjuncts is increasing.

In engineering, for example, adjunct professors may come from industry and
provide students with perspective and experience full-time professors may not
provide.

Adjunct professors may choose to teach as adjuncts because they have a passion
and a talent for teaching they want to pursue without the pressures of
publication. Many full-time professors may readily admit that the pressures of
producing academic work causes the quality of their teaching to decrease.
Perhaps this is one reason Yale offers its professors time so that both the
quality of teaching and research remains high.

Some departments opt to hire adjunct professors because its set of full-time
professors does not have the expertise to offer a course in a particular area
of the field. While this may seem more applicable to technical fields, any
department that opts to do this can provide students with more diversity and
variety in course offerings over an academic year and over a student's
academic career.

~~~
abalashov
Adjunct professors != adjunct instructors.

VERY important distinction.

------
justinph
As someone who has gone to college and worked in a college, I couldn't agree
more. It was great to work there as a staff member (IT), but as an adjunct
professor, the pay was laughably low and not even close to worth it. Having a
large amount of debt now is a burden, but bearable because I went into a good
field. However, if I was a student today, just a decade later, I'd be taking
on twice the amount of detb, and I'm not sure that'd be worth it.

------
elai
To be honest I'm glad that professors are doing more research and instructors
are more pure instructors. The typical professor has 4 jobs: Researcher,
Fundraiser, Teacher and Evaluator. They all have a conflict of interest with
each other in some way and they'll all steal your shower focus. If they were
all separated, universities could provide much better services in each job
category. I remember Knuth saying something along the lines of "I retired so I
can actually focus on research and attend less meetings". Students won't have
to deal with the scheduling nightmare that is final exams because professors
are too valuable to provide flexible (scheduling wise) examination services.
Things like back to back finals or having them 3 days after the 'get all of
your large projects in' end of classes rush don't have to happen anymore!
People who want to interact with professors can come on as undergrad research
assistants/apprentices and actually learn some research vs. some extension of
high school. Professors wouldn't have to deal with something alot of them
aren't that good at and most dread and actually get the grants they need!

------
NathanKP
The title suggests that all colleges are effected, but the facts in the
article primarily criticize the major "elitist" colleges. I go to a local
community college, and do not see this problem personally.

------
locopati
There have been a lot of articles recently attacking higher education. Maybe
there's some merit there, but one might also ask 'who is served by denegrating
higher education as an option for the people? who benefits by a less educated
public?'

~~~
jargon
1) The students who are currently being misled into believing $125k in debt
and a piece of paper are a sure ticket to financial freedom.

2) Startups who want students to eschew school for lower salaries at the
startups because they don't have the credentials to get into the Fortune 500.

3) Bitter students who are now $125k in debt with no chance of bankruptcy to
alleviate that debt and no job to pay it off, but want an outlet for their
frustration and evidence of a community with a common predicament.

4) Community colleges that are cheaper and often provide a better more focused
education with smaller class sizes, less elitist student populations, and
shorter times to degrees.

5) Students who are well served by attending colleges that aren't filled to
the rafters by rich kids who need 4 more years of baby sitting or who go,
because well, you are supposed to, meh.

6) A society that is better served by a real focus on the quality of education
provided for its citizens who benefit from the products of a well educated
work force which is increasingly diverging from useful and practical skills
into a grade inflated joy ride through 4 years of drunken debauchery.

------
anamax
Of course colleges serve the people who work there. All organizations head
that direction. The only thing that stops that progression is when the folks
paying the bills take their money elsewhere.

------
vondur
I don' think that this is news to anyone that works in higher ed. I work at a
University and its repeated all throughout the campus. Basically
administrators want to set up their own little empires on the campus and make
themselves seem indispensable. I'm pretty sure things like this happen at most
large organizations in some form.

~~~
wmil
Organizations don't even have to be large for this to happen. If you're
ambitious there's no place for you to move up finding a new job isn't the only
option. People often try to redefine or expand their current job.

When it gets out of control it's a sure sign of a management problem.

------
aliston
It's ironic the article mentions Stanford, then describes university
presidents as not having "done anything memorable, apart perhaps from firing a
popular athletic coach." The president of Stanford is John Hennessy, a founder
of MIPS and a board member of Google and Cisco among others.

------
balding_n_tired
"For a long time, despite the occasional charge of liberal dogma on campus or
of a watered-down curriculum, people tended to think the best of the college
and university they attended."

Not in my experience.

------
tome
I would like to know how much of this applies to universities in the UK. Here
there is a lot of public funding, but we're moving towards paying more funding
as time goes on.

------
stretchwithme
when people pay for their own choices, they carefully weigh the costs and
benefits involved. And the market is disciplined by this.

But when people are able to shift the costs to others or borrow money from
those who lend to anybody, many aren't careful at all. And the market responds
to take advantage of this.

------
Roydanroy
This article is rubbish.

~~~
gwern
Your mom is rubbish.

(Did you see what I did there? I responded to a worthless comment with an
equally worthless one.)

------
zeynel1
i found this review more informative than the recent post
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1559480> about the interview with the
authors in the atlantic magazine

what the authors are saying is true in general for any -bureaucracy- and
education is the oldest and biggest existing bureaucracy even after it divided
itself into secular and religious education in the 18th century

any bureaucracy must -grow- continually to perpetuate itself - education does
this by making education longer and longer

~~~
wake_up_sticky
Actually, I think that the Catholic church is the oldest existing bureaucracy.

~~~
zeynel1
the same occurred to me as well thats why i qualified by saying that education
divided itself into secular and religious education - as i read in this
wikipedia page <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_school> \--currently the
church operates the worlds largest non-governmental school system-- so it
would be very hard to separate catholic church and education

