

Why do professors do (unfunded) research? - yummyfajitas
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/05/28/nber

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tom_b
It's worth thinking more about the "Faculty members like to do research"
reason.

It reminded me of habits and processes I've seen in non CS departments at my
local (large) university. It's extremely common for students to work as TAs or
as paid researchers on projects to support their own research.

Contrast this with my experience in grad comp sci studies, where almost
everyone was attached to a funded research project and you typically tried to
find some funded project that was a decent match for your interests. Very
rarely (never?) did a student in my department "work" on a funded project and
then do their personal research in an area different than that. Grad students
often hacked around on the side, but weren't doing deep research, writing
papers, or planning dissertations that weren't part of their funded research
project.

So maybe, the idea of professors doing unfunded research is simply a
continuation of the normal process - the "day job" that lets you do what you
really want to do on the side.

I hope that the "sorting students by using poor teachers" is simply
speculation on the parts of the authors. I like to think that the role of a
teacher in the classroom is to continue to struggle to best teach the students
who show up and show the passion and effort to learn.

I actually skimmed over the section in the paper linked from the article and
the paper authors say "Researchers may be poorer teachers to low-ability
students and thus better screeners" and are thus providing benefit to
employers who can avoid having to screen out lower ability employees in their
field. Maybe the real idea is to make sure only those students with passion
and are willing to make big efforts to learn show up in the first place and
the linked paper talks some about this. I just hate to think teachers abandon
well intentioned students as part of some screening process. I'm not
suggesting that screening type courses aren't OK (you have to appreciate that
some students will have an aptitude and some will not for a specific subject)
but rather that it would bug me for a student with the aptitude to not be able
to count on an honest teaching effort from a professor.

Otherwise, we might as well chuck the college/university system period and
learn on our own or by finding a solid mentor/apprentice setup. Come to think
of it, maybe that's what we should do anyway. The PG essay "After Credentials"
expresses the logical conclusion of that idea pretty well. It's why I think
more about my portfolio of work more than my degree collection and sometimes
wish I had spent more time on that portfolio instead of working from a very
grade-focused viewpoint during my undergrad and grad school time.

~~~
mgreenbe
Thankfully, it is just speculation. From their abstract:

    
    
      Virtually no evidence exists to test these theories or 
      establish their relative magnitudes.
    

PhD programs work on the mentor/apprentice setup, though the apprenticeship
usually teaches research methods, not engineering methods. To my mind, the
mentor/apprentice setup is great when the apprentices are genuine and
dedicated and the mentors are competent and equally dedicated. (And, of
course, the numbers line up! Fifty "apprentices" and one mentor is just a
class.)

I thoroughly agree with the relative value of your work and your school
"work". Grades are a means turned into an end, and the sooner one realizes
that the goal is understanding and not recognition the better. (It's
convenient that the recognition tends to follow unasked!)

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TallGuyShort
You can see the same phenomenon in our work places: the good hackers are the
ones who do it because they enjoy it. A programmer who has his own hobby
projects is self-motivated, more knowledgeable, and faster.

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asciilifeform
If you have to ask, you're a meat puppet. Internal motivation exists.

~~~
known
<http://tr.im/mKH0>

~~~
asciilifeform
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html>

------
mgreenbe
One of their possible reasons:

    
    
      Faculty members like to do research. "Research could be a 
      consumption good for faculty. If faculty enjoy engaging 
      in research, then, faculty could be paid partially ‘in 
      kind’ with research opportunities. Such in-kind payments 
      are consistent with the observed compensating 
      differential -- lower pay in academia compared to the 
      private sector for similar skills," the authors write.
    

You don't say! I would be tempted to dismiss this as academic navel-gazing,
but the abstract for the paper
<[http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14974>](http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14974>);
seems quite genuine:

    
    
      Some worry that faculty devoting more time to research 
      harms teaching and thus harms students' human capital 
      accumulation. ... Research is needed, particularly to 
      address what employers seek from higher education 
      graduates and to assess the validity of current measures 
      of teaching quality.
    

On the one hand, a candid look at university life is always a good thing.
Using the metrics like "human capital accumulation" may not be. Has anyone
done a comparative study of college and university mission statements?

Edited: to fix formatting of quotes.

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omouse
They _like_ it? What's hard to understand about that and why the hell are we
wasting time asking such stupid questions? :/

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dinkumthinkum
I'm not sure I agree that research has been less prevalent in the past.

