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<p>hey Mom, is there situation that certain assistant professor works super hard for five years, delivers good research work as well as publications/funding and gets tenure… But after that he just shuts off and become a sit-back type of relaxing guy to enjoy the “no-firing” policy of a tenure position?</p>
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<p>Well, actually, that’s not entirely true, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is well understood that publications, as a simple count value, is a noisy signal, even when controlling for the prestige of the journal. Many articles in A-level journals are never cited even once even after being in press for years, indicating that the article has probably had little impact on the academic community. In contrast, some articles from low-level journals become heavily cited and are considered to be seminal in their field. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the peer review process is notorious for rejecting some of the most important papers of all time, often times because the referees simply did not understand them. For example, Rosalyn Yalow’s seminal paper on radioimmunoassay techniques to measure heretofore unmeasurably small levels of biological substances such as insulin - the paper (and related works) that would later make Yalow the first female Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine - was rejected by the journal Science. She famously framed her rejection letter and then published it in the far less prestigious Journal of Clinical Investigation. Similarly, Kary Mullis’s paper that first announced his discovery of the polymerase chain reaction was rejected by both Science and Nature and was eventually published in the relatively unprestigious Methods in Enzymology. Mullis later won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery and PCR is now an indispensable technique within the fields of genetic engineering and molecular biology. </p>
<p>More complicated still are the academic works that do not undergo the peer review process. As you surely know, junior faculty in the humanities and sometimes in the social sciences can be tenured via the publication of books, which are inherently non-peer-reviewed. Clearly some academic books are of higher quality than others, but there is no truly objective way to measure that value. Any such judgments are inevitably clouded, even if unconsciously, by one’s personal relationship towards the author. If somebody has just been a complete jerk to everybody in the department - or has a reputation for not spending sufficient time on research - then his book is probably going to earn a lower-than-deserved review no matter how brilliant it may be.</p>
<p>Even citation count is deeply unreliable: many papers are highly cited only due to the criticism they’ve engendered. For example, the infamous cold fusion paper by Fleischmann & Pons is one of the most heavily cited papers of that field, but almost all of their cites are criticisms of their methods as junk science, possibly fraudulent science, and both of them have effectively been drummed out of the academic community. Yet a naive measure of simple citation count would conclude that they published one of the most ‘influential’ papers in the history of their field. </p>
<p>Finally, even publication/citation count within top journals is often times insufficient to earn tenure by itself at the top schools, although admittedly may be enough to earn tenure at a lower-ranked school. What truly matters at the top schools is not that you have lots of highly cited papers in top journals, but rather that your papers together comprise an overarching theme as a body of literature. For example, I can think of a number of instances where junior faculty with impressive lists of publications in terms of A-level journals were nonetheless denied tenure in favor of other junior faculty with far more modest C.V.‘s because the latter’s papers comprised a more coherent theme. They took a concept and were able to prove its utility again and again in a number of different settings. That makes for a more compelling tenure case (at least to the top schools) than a long sequence of scattershot one-offs’. </p>
<p>The upshot is that tenure review is inherently a subjective process, at least at the top schools. Nobody really knows exactly what it takes to earn tenure, and that’s why the review process is such an inherently stressful procedure for all parties involved. That’s also why academic politics can be so poisonous, as, no matter how high quality your research may be, if enough senior faculty members simply decide that you’re unworthy, then you’ll be denied tenure. Heck, even a tenure decision from the department can be vetoed by the administration. As an infamous case in point, Christina Romer, currently Obama’s Chair of the CEA, was famously denied tenure at Harvard despite being endorsed by the department, being vetoed by Drew Faust herself. {In fairness, Christina Romer was already tenured at Berkeley, so she simply returned there and was later tapped by the Obama Administration.} </p>
<p>[Faust</a> Vetoes Tenure Decision | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2008/5/22/faust-vetoes-tenure-decision-with-word/]Faust”>Faust Vetoes Tenure Decision | News | The Harvard Crimson) </p>
<p>In another example, political scientist Peter Berkowitz, now of the Hoover Institute, was denied tenure promotion at Harvard despite the endorsement of the department by former President Neil Rudenstine. </p>
<p>[The</a> Berkowitz Tenure Review](<a href=“http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/eon/evidence/berkowitz.html]The”>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/eon/evidence/berkowitz.html)</p>
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<p>I know that question was not addressed to me, but I can tell you that the answer is definitely yes. Believe me, there are a lot of senior faculty at the top schools who basically aren’t doing anything academic.</p>
<p>To support Momwaitingfornew’s comment about publish or perish, I’d like to state the following: I am in strong support of publish or perish for the reasons stated below.</p>
<p>For most of us doing research in the sciences, we rely on grants. Grants $$ does drop from the sky. It comes from taxpayers dollars and private donations usually from individuals similar to your neighbors. therefore, no one has a right to this money. When judging who should be supported by these very limited dollars, the researchers who are able to accomplish and deliver their research results to the research community in the form of peer-reviewed publications-are the ones who must be supported. Research is not about effort. it goes without saying you spend 24/7 on it! It is about reaching demonstratable milestones and putting your data up for peer-review. the end result is that the $$ given to one researcher benefits the entire research community by that researchers publications.</p>
<p>Hence, it is important to understand and obtain good standing in your field. This involves not only accomplishing research, but learning how to articulate in a manner that can be understood and utilized by the larger research community. Many of the issues alluded to by Sakky are all addressed by this principle.</p>
<p>In the end, peer review is sloppy (like democracy), but it does work better than any other system! A good researcher learns how to communicate and teach well because they must to survive and thrive in their research community. The issue of teaching undergrads is just how much time can be devoted to developing new lectures etc. But as I stated in an earlier post, the most important teaching is not the basics learned in didactic lectures. Its what happens outside the classroom when undergrads get to participate in top tier research. </p>
<p>And to Sakky’s last point, the senior faculty who are no longer active researchers, they end up being assigned more and more of the departmental teaching. so it can come full circle!</p>
<p>Mr. Zoo: I’m sure some people slack off; however, the work ethic needed to attain tenure is usually in the bones of the professor, not some tacked on quality for the sake of tenure. Besides, getting tenure is not the end of promotions. You still must work hard to be promoted from associate professor to full professor, something that is not too different from tenure review.</p>
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<p>…or not. For example, if certain senior faculty becomes politically powerful within the department, whether by dint of knowing the department head well, or by becoming the department head themselves, they can delegate not only all teaching responsibility, but also most administrative tasks, to other faculty, especially to junior faculty who don’t dare object. Then, because they’re already tenured, they don’t have to engage in research either. In short, they don’t have to do anything at all, and because they have tenure, nobody can do anything about it. Frankly and sadly, there are many departments that are filled with deadwood that engages in precisely this sort of behavior. </p>
<p>But even if it were true that those who aren’t active researchers are stuck with more teaching responsibilities, that’s not to say that they have to teach well. They can simply do a terrible job of teaching, and tenure shields them from any repercussions. </p>
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<p>Sure, if you want that promotion. Yet some faculty are perfectly satisfied with simply remaining at the (tenured) associate level forever in lieu of the work necessary to be promoted to the full level. </p>
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<p>While I agree that the work ethic most likely lingers, the real question is where that work ethic is directed. For example, without naming names, I can think of quite a few tenured professors of engineering, science, economics, or business who spend the bulk of their time on their own startup tech companies or consulting firms, as corporate board directors, or serving as partners or advisors to venture capital firms or hedge funds. </p>
<p>Consider what Charles Ferguson said in his autobiography: High Stakes, No Prisoners:</p>
<p>*"LECG (the Law and Economics Consulting Group) is the largest corporate antitrust consulting firm in the United States with revenues of more than $50 million [in 1999]…Rich Gilbert [Professor and former Chair of Economics at UCBerkeley] was a founder of LECG. When he entered the government [by taking a leave of absence from Berkeley to become senior Economist at the Department of Justice in 1993], he sold his LECG stock back to LECG, thus avoiding conflict of interest restrictions. Then, when he left Justice two years later, he repurchased it; his LECG stock is now worth more than $30 million. [Two other senior economists at the DoJ, Carl Shapiro and Dan Rubinfeld, were, not coincidentally, also Berkeley Professors of Economics, and were also members of LECG]. Carl Shapiro formed his own antitrust consulting firm with Michael Katz, another Berkeley professor who had just been the chief economist of the FCC. Their firm, the Tilden Group, was recently acquired by the other large corporate antitrust consulting firm, Charles River Associates. Katz and another Berkeley professor, Glenn woroch, run a research project, the Consotium for Research on Telecommunications Policy, which is funded almost entirely by the Ameritech Foundation (now run by SBC/AT&T). Woroch also consults for BellSouth (now part of AT&T). Daniel Rubinfeld, the Justice chief economist until late 1998, **owned more than $6 million in LECG stock **while working for Justice, representing the overhwleming majority of his personal wealth. LECG’s newest senior partner is Laura Tyson, [the former dean of both UCBerkeley’s business school and former dean of London Business School], who is also a director of Ameritech (now part of AT&T) [and also a director of Eastman Kodak] and was the chairwoman of the National Economic Council in the first Clinton administration.</p>
<p>Berkeley is in no way unique. MIT’s Jerry Hausman recently published a highly polemic paper in a Brookings volume, attacking the FCC for not giving the telephone monopolies more freedom in the Internet industry. What Hausman did not mention in the paper is that he has received millions of dollars from the telecommunications industry for regulatory consulting and expert testimony. NYU’s William Baumol, another famous economist and a past president of the American Economic Association, has a confidential consulting version of his curriculum vita containing a fifty-page supplement listing his expert witness engagements, for which he is paid more than one thousand dollars per hour…Peter Temin, former chair of the MIT Economics Department, has consulted for AT&T on antitrust and regulatory matters since the 1970’s. Robert Crandall [former professor of economics at MIT, George Washington, and the University of Maryland and current Brookings fellow], consults for Bell Atlantic [now Verizon]." *</p>
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<li>pages 346-347, “High Stakes, No Prisoners”, Charles Ferguson.</li>
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<p>“…Frank Fisher, a professor at MIT…has practically made a career out of corporate antitrust consulting…” - p. 322</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/High-Stakes-No-Prisoners-Internet/dp/0812931432[/url]”>http://www.amazon.com/High-Stakes-No-Prisoners-Internet/dp/0812931432</a></p>
<p>I therefore have no doubt that those (fully tenured) professors are indeed still working very hard. The real question is, what exactly are they working on? Seems as if many of them are working hard to enrich themselves personally through their side businesses, rather than producing academic research or developing their teaching capabilities.</p>
<p>I guess I live in a much friendlier world and a world in which I’ve been fortunate enough to see many basic research discoveries (made at substantial effort by all concerned) translated into effective therapies in current use.</p>
<p>all of this was dependent on outstanding mentorship received at all stages and provided by individuals at all stages of their career. All practical demonstrations of effective teachers!</p>
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<p>Actually, I think that addresses few of the issues I have brought up. Consider your notion of the ‘publish-or-perish’ principle as it relates to the grant funding procedure. That leaves open the question: what about those disciplines that do not rely upon grants? Let’s face it: probably only a minority of the faculty and certainly a minority of the students are involved in disciplines that involve significant grant-writing. Practically none of the humanities, only perhaps a fraction of the social sciences (i.e. certain categories of psychology or economics), and certainly little of professional disciplines such as law, nursing, or business involve significant grant writing. Yet the fact remains that junior faculty members of English, History, Philosophy, or theoretical (i.e. proof-oriented, as opposed to empirical) Economics are well-advised to spend the bulk of their time on research if they desire promotion to tenure. </p>
<p>In other words, the causal connection between outside funding and research results that supposedly benefit the academic community for those particular faculty is tenuous at best. For example, if I’m a newly minted assistant professor of English and I want to be promoted to tenure, I will probably need to publish a series of books on heretofore undiscovered theories of certain works of literature. Yet that style of research probably consumes little - sometimes zero - grant funding. Perhaps you need to travel to view primary sources, perhaps you need to pay subscription fees to access certain works. But often times you don’t even need that. {I’ve known professors of humanities whose research endeavors consists solely of decamping to the university library.} The same could be said for theoretical mathematics: the famous Poincare Conjecture was recently proved by a Russian recluse who lives with his mother. It is therefore entirely unclear how this sort of research paradigm conforms to the grant-oriented one that you proposed, or, indeed, whether it is even appropriate to require such a heavy research component within the tenure decisions of those particular disciplines. </p>
<p>But the even larger issue involved is, even if we do accept that grant funding and the accompanying peer-review process has to foster a publish-or-perish mentality, it is entirely clear why that needs to affect the university’s teaching environment or indeed why researchers even need to work at universities at all. For example, we already have government-sponsored National Laboratories and associated non-government labs such as the Santa Fe Institute where PhD-level scientists and engineers are awarded numerous grants to produce oceans of highly respected peer-reviewed papers. Therefore those people who want to devote their lives to research can simply work there. College students would not therefore have to suffer from poor teaching at the hands of a science or engineering assistant professor who is more concerned with garnering enough grants to publish in order to win tenure rather than in actually trying to teach a high quality lecture. Even if we accept that such research has to be performed at a university - whether due to knowledge spillover effects amongst faculty members or to general prestige concerns of the university - again, those professors who simply want to perform research and are not really interested in teaching should be allowed to do so, leaving the teaching to those who actually care for it. </p>
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<p>Is it? I’m not so sure, and the fact is, many of the most important papers in scientific history were never peer reviewed. For example, arguably the most productive year ever enjoyed by a single scientist in all history consisted of Einstein’s so-called ‘Annus Mirabilis’ (the ‘Miracle Year’) in which he published 4 papers, all of which were considered Nobel worthy, and one, the paper on the photoelectric effect, of which actually did win the Nobel (and which was arguably the least important of the four, the others on special relativity, stochasticism of Brownian motion which finally proved the undeniable existence of the atom, and matter-energy equivalence: E=mcsquared). Not a single one of the Annus Mirabilis papers underwent peer review. {Note, they were editor reviewed, but not peer reviewed.} Similarly, Crick & Watson’s Nobel Prize winning paper that first revealed the double-helix structure of DNA was published in Nature without undergoing peer review. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was disseminated by the un-peer-reviewed series of books including The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man. One can stretch back in time to groundbreaking scientific concepts such as Newtonian mechanics, the Copernican heliocentric solar system, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, or Carnot’s laying of the foundations of the laws of thermodynamics. Not a single one of these ideas was peer reviewed. Heck, the most productive period of the development of human knowledge, including scientific knowledge, in all human history is arguably a 75-100 year period in the 4th century BC when the bulk of Western philosophy and much of the foundations of logic, physics, biology, mathematics, and astronomy were all developed within ancient Greece. Again, none of their ideas were disseminated through peer review. Similarly, the Age of Enlightenment of the late 1700’s included the development of Kant’s theory of knowledge, the advent of modern economics through the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the discovery of mathematical analysis through Euler, and key advances in political science and sociology through such thinkers as David Hume and Voltaire. Again, none of them seemed to be hindered by the lack of a modern system of peer review.</p>
<p>The point of that discourse into the history of science is that it is entirely unclear as to whether peer review truly is the best method we know of to propagate the development of knowledge. Society has clearly been able to quickly advance the state of knowledge in past times in history without the structure of peer review.</p>
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<p>Nobody is denying that there are some effective teachers out there. The question is whether there are enough of them, and whether the current publish-or-perish mentality and the tenure review process actually serves to hinder the development of more effective teachers.</p>
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<p>That may work for those particular undergrads who actually desire to participate in research and embark upon academic careers? But what about those who don’t? Let’s face it: most undergraduates are not really interested in research careers. They just want to pick up a degree, learn something about a particular topic, and then move on to a regular job. The problem is that, as I said, many professors are not particularly incentivized to be strong teachers, which means that many undergrads don’t learn much.</p>
<p>I have had many undergraduates work in my lab just for the experience. Some have gone on to be lawyers, social workers and some even researchers. </p>
<p>I live in a world of real people-mostly doing the best they can to balance all aspects of their lives. I continue to state that I’ve been impressed by the efforts and accomplishments of many.</p>
<p>But I can see that I live in a more optimistic and Sakky lives in a more pessimistic world. Each have validity.</p>
<p>To be clear, I too am impressed by the ability of many junior faculty to gamely meet multiple conflicting goals such as both research and teaching.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I’m simply trying to be realistic about the impact of incentive systems on real-world decision making. When research is more strongly rewarded than is teaching - as it usually is at the research universities - it is only natural to expect that junior faculty will tend to trade better teaching for better research. And while that tradeoff might indeed boost the academic community as a whole, it doesn’t do much for the undergraduates who are not aiming to become academics themselves.</p>
<p>I beg to differ on your last point. Education is NOT only vocational. Students also must actively engage with their education at this stage of their lives (not being passive learners). Therefore, I have strongly encouraged all of the students I mentor to seek out research activities in any field (arts, humannities, sciences). I make this suggestion not because I think they will pursue anyone of these as a career. Instead when making the choice to join a large research university, a student should seek out to be exposed to that sort of teaching excellence and that type of research environment that they many never get a chance to have again. </p>
<p>What you learn from these experiences is so much more relevant than any expertise in a specific field.</p>
<p>If a student wishes a lower faculty-student ratio at places in which the priority is teaching, I always recommend small liberal arts colleges. Save the big schools for post-graduate study.</p>
<p>Having said that, I do respect your viewpoint.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong: I’m on your side. Education should not be purely vocational and should not be seen as such.</p>
<p>On the other hand, we have to be realistic. Most students do indeed view their education in a purely vocational and mercenary manner. The primary goal is to obtain the degree and leverage it to a decent career (or to use it to vault themselves into a professional grad school such as med or law school and then to a decent career). We may not like it, we may not agree with it, but that is the reality. Ask yourself honestly: if college degrees did not lead to higher salaries and more desirable career outcomes, how many people would still attend college?</p>
<p>they lead to higher salaries but not because of vocation. My undergrad degree and my career are quite different! Most english and history majors go into business. What you are learning is thinking and problem solving skils. Understanding excellence and the drive of excellence. Rarely are practical majors-taken because of their practical nature and not an individuals interest-a good financial investment. Technology and expertise are too rapidly outdated. </p>
<p>Its the thinking and assessment skills that are important to learn. Its also a plus to learn about how people will devote extraoridinary amounts of time for a passion: as seen in the prof’s spending way more than 12 hours a day on their research passions (be it English lit or “practical” engineering).</p>
<p>To echo ParAlum’s assessment of education: the transformation from freshman to senior in terms of critical thinking skills can be astounding. Freshman often arrive wanting to be told what to write, what to memorize, what the professors want from them. Their arguments tend to be black-and-white, forced into their often simplistic view of the world. The best students leave with confidence that they can analyze a text or evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a study; their arguments are nuanced and realistic. They are not afraid of intellectual challenges. Part of this is maturity, of course, but much has been learned through the demands of their education. These individuals then become a valuable part of the work force because they are able to solve problems and analyze new situations under pressure. They are able to communicate their ideas in a coherent manner. The acquisition of a knowledge set is not nearly as important as knowing what to do with a new one.</p>
<p>But I know that’s not your point: you pointed out that the motivation of many students is to get a job. Here on CC, many students seem to believe that a “brand name” education is worth going $200,000 in debt because they expect to make that much in their first two years out of college. That kind of thinking is wrong on so many levels that I won’t go into it here except to note that it’s the kind of superficial thinking that may follow them into college but that, in the course of their education, is unlikely to follow them out. While students may attend college “just to get a job,” they don’t usually stay for that reason.</p>
<p>Quite a few of you guys have emphasized so much about about letting students participate in top tier research as one important aspect of teaching that surpasses the quality of lecture. Why is this so? How can a student do good research if he doesn’t learn the materials well in class?</p>
<p>I mean, I’ve heard many people saying “research experience is much more important than GPA”. However, isn’t GPA, given in the context of a school, an indicator of how well a students grasps the concepts? This just makes “research” sounds more like a regular practice than a passion in pioneering new scientific discoveries.</p>
<p>Because research is the career, not learning about myriad facts & concepts spanning multiple biological fields.</p>
<p>Besides, the lab bench is just as good, if not better, a place to learn about ideas relevant to or utilizable for your research.</p>
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A student with a perfect GPA but no significant research experience has demonstrated zero ability to succeed in research. On the other hand, a student with impressive research experience has obviously demonstrated research ability, and a non-perfect (but still acceptable) GPA does not detract from that. In fact, the research experience is an indication that the student can grasp research concepts just fine, regardless of the non-perfect-but-acceptable, too-many-other-factors-involved-to-make-this-a-stalwart-indication-of-research-ability-anyway GPA.</p>
<p>^well said. In addition, additional year or two of research in the field of interest is often an effective way to remediate or balance a modest GPA, when looking for better employment or post-graduate education</p>
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<p>Then perhaps you’d like to dissuade some of the prospective engineering students from pursuing those majors. Let’s face it: many (probably most) engineering students are are in the major not because of any inherent love of engineering but simply because they’ve heard that it provides relatively high salaries (at least to start). Engineering is usually among the most difficult and painful majors at any school, and the fact is, if engineers didn’t receive such high starting salaries, far fewer students would choose it for a major. </p>
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<p>While I can agree that perhaps the inherent character and intellectual development are valuable components of the education, what is at least as important - if not more so - is signaling value of the the degree itself. </p>
<p>Let me put it to you this way. Take a guy who has almost - but not quite - finished his degree. He’s finished 3.5 years of a 4- year college program. Hence, he has obtained almost all of the intellectual development he is ever going to extract from his college education. Spending that additional half-year in college is not really going to make him that much better. It’s not as if the program is back-loaded to provide him exponential intellectual benefits within the final term. </p>
<p>But what that extra half-year will do is allow him to graduate. That’s what employers and grad schools want, whether we agree or not. To them, you either have the degree, or you don’t, and if you don’t, they won’t care why. You can’t argue with them that you “almost” have a degree, and hence have “almost” all of the benefits of a college education. They want to see the degree. </p>
<p>In other words, while the internal intellectual development of a college education is not backloaded, the marketing benefits of a college education are. If you’re finished with 7 out of 8 semesters of a degree program, you might as well spend that last semester to finish the whole thing and obtain that degree and its associated benefits. That’s far a far more marketable attribute than simply saying that you “attended” college but never graduate. </p>
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<p>I never mentioned the issue of obtaining “brand-name” education on this particular thread; that’s a different issue entirely. I’m simply talking about the fact that many (probably most) college students view a college education primarily as a way to improve their career prospects.</p>