Coming to the U of R for a good education? THINK AGAIN!!!!

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Rochester
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<p>This is hilarious. The Faculty handbook basically states that the most important factor in hiring new faculty is how good their research is. </p>

<p>Now, for the parents and students not familiar with academia, DO NOT THINK THEIR RESEARCH will help you at all. Yeah, maybe for the small % who wants to get a PhD and might get some opportunity to do research in an awesome professor's lab. But even that should be secondary to a good education!</p>

<p>Applied</a> Ethics: One professor’s struggle becomes a matter of discourse | Campus Times</p>

<p>I copy and pasted the important part: </p>

<p>"According to the Faculty Handbook, the principal factors considered for a professor’s promotion to tenure are “teaching, scholarly or artistic work and service to the department, school and University.” But Glick says that UR, like most other research universities, “has emphasized publications over teaching when making hiring decisions.”</p>

<p>“It’s not like [the University] doesn’t care about teaching,” he said. “They do. But being a strong researcher can actually get you a job at a place like this, whereas being a strong teacher without being a strong researcher will not get you a job. At least, not one that’s going to last.”</p>

<p>Yes, all top tier research schools do emphasis on the research when it comes to hiring professors. HOWEVER, U of R bill themselves as the smallest Tier 1 research University. That is bad, why? Because, in large schools with strong research (think large state schools U of Wisconsin, OSU, Rutgers) you will have tons of top prof in their field of research but you will also have prof. who are great at teaching and teaching is what they do!! So you get the best of both worlds! Whereas, here, it is certainly lopsided. The faculty that gets the best position and salary are the research heavy prof, and hey, if they are good at teaching too? That's icing on the cake. </p>

<p>This **** me off. What is the point of college if it isn't to learn? Honestly, I have learned MORE at community college classes I took while in High School than here. Also for those who think prof. can be both great researchers and teachers, it is very hard. I am not saying prof here do not care about teaching, but with how things work, it's hard. There is just no time!</p>

<p>Think about it. To get tenure, you need about 4-6 research publications or 2-3 STRONG research publications in top journals such as Science, Nature A YEAR. So to do that, you need to work in the lab, and spend tons of time with your graduate students (because whatever research they publish, you are on the paper since you are their mentor). Where does that leave time and energy to UNDERGRADUATE teaching? You do lesson plans on the fly ( I have had prof. admit in class, " Oh sorry, I did the power point lesson this morning and I must have missed some slides. Don't worry, I will send them to you via email later") </p>

<p>Also, the prof. who teach full time, are usually the older ones that do not have labs anymore and they stick around because of tenure. Yes some are great, but for the most part, a lot of them are jaded because they are stuck teaching beginner courses and will talk about advanced material that has nothing to do with the beginning class. Without a strong basic knowledge, you are at a disadvantage later on. </p>

<p>Any thoughts, questions and comments, please ask. I am not trying to ram anything through, I am just trying to expose the truth about things. I will provide proof to every statement I make. Can the U of R Representative on here do the same?</p>

2

<p>Before you spend so much time ragging on UR or any other school, I suggest you educate yourself about how academia works. If you want to have a discussion about the topics you actually raise, without your weird vitriol about UR, this board has a forum appropriate for that.</p>

3

<p>Whatisit–</p>

<p>You’re unhappy with UR. We get that. </p>

<p>What you’re saying about the hiring of research profs is pretty standard. Profs at research U are hired for their research, not for their teaching. That’s true everywhere, not just at UR. </p>

<p>If you really want an intimate teacher-student relationship with your instructors–you should go to a LAC. The focus of a LAC is on teaching. (And you will still find lousy teachers there too.)</p>

<p>You’re attacking UR for being what it advertised itself as being–a research university.</p>

<p>BTW, one of the raison d’entre for college is teach the student to be responsible for his own learning. The prof isn’t there to spoon feed you knowledge, but to offer some assistance and point you in the proper direction so you can teach yourself. An educated learner is self-directed.</p>

4

<p>FYI - the big research schools care even less about good teaching than the small research schools. In the big institutions, it is publish or perish, and if you happen to be a decent teacher, that is great, but if you are not a good teacher and you are bringing lots of research dollars into the school, we will live with you anyway.</p>

5

<p>" Before you spend so much time ragging on UR or any other school, I suggest you educate yourself about how academia works. If you want to have a discussion about the topics you actually raise, without your weird vitriol about UR, this board has a forum appropriate for that. "</p>

<p>Trust me. I know exactly and way too well how academics work. </p>

<p>"What you’re saying about the hiring of research profs is pretty standard. Profs at research U are hired for their research, not for their teaching. That’s true everywhere, not just at UR. "</p>

<p>That isn’t true everywhere. There are universities that have a two track system where you can be tenured based on research or teaching. Thus, you get a good balance of good teachers and good researchers.</p>

6

<p>Ok someone asked me about positives at U of R. </p>

<p>So I will list them. I am not some crazy student bent on revenge. I am merely feeling like this $50 THOUSAND dollar a year education is not what they try to sell uninformed/misinformed high school students and parents. </p>

<p>Positives:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>no core requirement so you don’t have to ever take a chem class if you don’t want. They have just the whole cluster thing. Basically, there is social science, natural science and then humanities. So for one, u fulfil with ur major, (example: math major is natural science) then the other two, you have to take at least 12 credits worth of related classes in that category. So for social science, u can do a mixture of anthropology and psych courses having to do with… say the racism and psychology. For Humanities, you can so stuff like english or history etc. So what that means is it is easy to do a double major if u wanted or a major or minor since a minor is just 3 more classes added on to a cluster. U get what I mean?</p></li>
<li><p>student here are generally nice. No stealing books from lib that everyone needs, etc. </p></li>
</ul>

<p>-easy to find research position in Med center and attached med school. (though pretty much all schools with any research (ex. state schools) have that too since every prof loves an free extra hand)</p>

<ul>
<li>Campus is pretty compact so nice to not have to walk all outside too long in the freezing weather. (NYU was on my list but having to walk 12 blocks to another class? ugh)</li>
</ul>

<p>-off campus housing is pretty cheap in terms of rent, however u will need a car since campus is bordered by a cemetery, river, 19th ward (kinda ghetto neighborhood) and the medical center takes up the closest 2 block. any place near campus is usually snatched up and expensive. </p>

<p>-gym is good and has lots of equipments and up to date.</p>

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<p>Wrong. While humanities TT positions tend to weight teaching more heavily than science and social science TT positions, NO major research university hires on separate “teaching” vs “research” tracks. Just does not happen. Didn’t happen 30 years ago when DH was fresh out of his doc and job hunting. Didn’t happen when I left my grad program (in humanities) ABD and went job hunting. Didn’t happen 10 years ago when DH’s post docs went job hunting. Didn’t happen last year when a friend was trying to place his 3 graduating PhD students.</p>

<p>I’d love to know your source for your contention there’s a two track system.</p>

8

<p>I won’t trust you about how academia works: you’re a kid. You have no idea. Again, if you want to talk about this topic, there is a forum on CC for discussing academia.</p>

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<p>Lergnom, </p>

<p>Great argument! I’m just a “kid” so how could I possibly know anything as hard as “academia”? I mean I am only 21, have supported myself throughout college, have a double degree in Microbiology and Anthropology, traveled the world, have a uncle who is a tenured professor at a Ivy League school, thought about getting a PhD and talked to numerous PhD students, young and old professors about the whole process of Academia. </p>

<p>Guess what the a professor said to me? " Be prepared to kiss a lot of a** until you are tenured and deal with red tape bull*****." I had worked in his lab for 2 years so he trusted me and knew me enough to tell me this. </p>

<p>So once again, I applaud the logic behind your argument. Now according to you, Einstein’s four famous papers published when he was 26 must be full of crap since he was way too young, just a kid compared to the other great scientific minds of his time.</p>

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<p>whatisit - I for one thank you for posting your views here. I think folks should consider all info when making such an important and expensive decision. They can pick and choose how each piece of info factors into their personal decision.</p>

<p>My questions for you are:(1) Knowing what you now know, where do you go from here? And (2) how is this different from what you were initially planning?</p>

11

<p>Thing is, kid, I don’t believe you because if you had that level of maturity you wouldn’t be posting to start a fight. And your lack of logic in your response indicates more: it is irrational to jump from you, an unknown person posting flame-bait material anonymously in an online forum, to comparing yourself with Einstein being under 26. There is an old thing on the net called the “crackpot scale.” You just got like 10 points.</p>

<p>And if you post something that isn’t intended to provoke, then I would respond to it in that manner.</p>

12

<p>OP, I cannot help but say your post helped. I have been recently accepted with a 20k scholarship and need all the various views available before I commit. I had no idea that students may experience something like this at a (relatively) small research university, and your post enlightened me. Adult posters here tend to advise us out of good will and wisdom, but the truth is that they are not experiencing this school here and now, in person, first hand, as students. Thank you for posting it here!</p>

13

<p>Although I do appreciate the opinions you’re providing, I agree with Lergnom that people would be more likely to listen to them if you presented them a little more maturely. Rochester is not perfect, nor is any school. Good for you that you’re blunt and aren’t sugarcoating anything, but please don’t suggest that your opinions are the be all end all, or that every student entering U of R will have a negative experience like you have. Plenty of students get a “good education” and much more at Rochester, and I am genuinely sorry that you feel as though that has not been your experience. Please, point out the negatives about U of R, give us information that we can’t gather from the website, but please do so maturely and with the fact in mind that your opinions are opinions - not truths.</p>

<p>And from a prospective student’s perspective, I’d like to point out that this has not deterred me from considering Rochester. I realize that the OP is pointing out “problems” that almost any university similar to Rochester would have (whether or not they are even an issue is a separate issue), and the only negative feelings I have toward U of R stem from the fact that I would run into a person like whatisit on campus. Fortunately, the majority of the U of R students I’ve talked to are mature young adults who have a lot more respect for their school and are making the most of the amazing opportunity they’ve been given.</p>

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<p>i would have to agree with backtous. this is still valuable information. as a student who is in the process of receiving admissions decisions, it’s especially important that i have the opportunity to look at colleges completely–both the good and bad aspects of each of my choices–so i don’t end up dissatisfied as whatisit is. </p>

<p>so parents, perhaps consider not being so quick to extinguish talk of bad experiences at the university. part of any good decision making strategy is HONESTLY considering both the pros and cons of any choice and not naively allowing myself to be surrounded by people who will tell me what i want to hear. i’m sure that’s the kind of thing you would expect your children to do, so let this be an opportunity for such.</p>

15

<p>I’ve never denied D2 has had some awful teachers at UR (see my posts last year about freshman bio professors or my post in the Parent forum about one her upper level bio profs this fall). </p>

<p>What I’ve objected to is the OP’s assertion that other research Us, even LACs for that matter, don’t have the same problem. Bad teaching is not a UR specific issue. Nor is valuing research over teaching in the tenure process.</p>

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<p>It’s okay to honestly provide a negative critique of university instead of just posting mostly positive information. It may encourage changes.</p>

<p>The U of R forum is appropriate because that the school OP knows. He/she is citing text school-specific manuals. Yes, this may be a problem at others schools too, but I assume he hasn’t researched their practices. In the Vanderbilt forum, a lot of complaints about rich students forming cliques periodically comes up. This is probably common to a lot of colleges too, but it would be absurd to refrain from posting the information in the Vanderbilt forum and add it as a general post instead.</p>

<p>The U or R, as far as i know, is a fine school. It would be better to discuss why the teachers are great. Maybe they focus on research, for example, that they are excited about and bring into the classroom. How do you measure the quality of teaching?- It’s not how popular a professor is on some web-sites (maybe the opposite).</p>

17

<p>Since no current student has yet denied whatisit’s claim, I will do it:</p>

<p>I am a Renaissance scholar studying physics and math at the University of Rochester, and I am impressed by almost all of my professors’ expository style in classes; I think that my professors teach very well.</p>

<p>Now, let me just say to prospective students that this type of anecdotal information is not strong evidence for anything. You have very little idea whether you will end up dissatisfied like whatisit, or satisfied like me.</p>

<p>In any case, I argue that the more important factor is whether you will learn well in courses, rather than whether the professors are good teachers. Now, of course, having good teachers helps you learn, but there are more important factors, such as your willingness to work, and your relative intelligence; you are unlikely to learn well if you are relatively less intelligent than everyone else, because most classes are - to some extent - adaptive towards the average student (that is, professors adjust the difficulty of a class depending on the average ability of the students).</p>

<p>Additionally, your willingness to work and your intelligence changes your perception of a good teacher. On the one hand, for a hardworking and intelligent student, a good teacher might be someone who sets a lot of challenging homework, and skips over simple explanations in lecture. On the other hand, for a lazy and not-so-bright student, a good teacher might be someone who sets very little homework, and explains everything very carefully. The upshot of this is that it is often a mistake to make broad statements about the teaching abilities of all professors at a college, because the perceived teaching ability of a professor is dependent on the student.</p>

<p>Perhaps you are right, whatisit; perhaps the professors at the University of Rochester are indeed bad teachers, relative to other comparable colleges. However, the evidence that you have presented for this view is woefully insufficient. At the very least, to make such a strong claim, I would expect you to have taken courses from a wide selection of other colleges, or to have done a statistical analysis based on a dataset you have obtained by other means.</p>

<p>I make no such strong claim; I do not claim that the professors at the University of Rochester are better teachers than those at comparable colleges. However, I do make the weak claim that a strongly prepared physics or math student is likely to learn well in honors courses at the University of Rochester. This is all that I am justified to claim because this is exactly what I have experienced here as a student. It would absurd for me to extend this claim to something about all students and all professors at the University of Rochester.</p>

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<p>Ironclaw posted a thoughtful and insightful reply to this issue. I have been following this thread with some frustration. Let me first say, for informational purposes, that I have a BS, MS, MD and PhD…and I am tenured, so I think I have some credibility here. From my perspective, and based on my own experience, what the original poster sadly misses is the realization that college, unlike high school, is not based on the “learn what you are told” concept. At its core, a university education is based on the notion that you are primarily responsible for educating yourself. What a good college provides is an atmosphere of learning where you are surrounded by individuals who share your desire to learn and faculty who are experts in their field. It is nice if a lecturer is entertaining and organized but what really counts is whether he/she is at the cutting edge of the field, and the simple truth is that successful researchers are the ones who satisfy that criterion. Absent that, you have instructors who are good speakers and who are gifted at relating facts discovered by others. By definition, the information related by these individuals will always be dated and their real understanding of the subject they teach will never be at the level of the active researcher. The latter may not be the best “teacher” but he/she will know where the field is heading and is far better equipped to answer questions posed by inquisitive students, and to offer opportunities for valuable research experience. If you are looking for a well presented, logical coverage of the basics of a course, I suggest you read the textbook-it is likely to be clearer than any oral presentation. What a leading research university like UR provides, and a community college (as well as many LACs) can never provide, is access to leaders in various fields, and the value of this is incalculable. For those who may be thinking about a future in research/academia (as it seems the original poster may be) understanding this concept is crucial. College is only the first step. The ability to “self-educate” is absolutely essential for success in graduate school and in an independent faculty position.</p>

19

<p>Thanks Ironclaw. I’m also going to chime in, even though I haven’t been here for as long as you have.</p>

<p>I spent almost 3 years at a major state school (not in NY) before leaving it due to financial aid issues. I had several good teacher, but only ran into one who I would class as exceptional and the kind of professor who makes you thrilled to hear them speak and to talk to them and they change the way you think. By contrast, I’ve spent half a semester at the U of R, and I’ve met two professors already who I would consider exceptional. At my prior college you generally spoke to professors only during office hours and usually about the class only, maybe to ask for some extra readings. Here I’ve been able to seek out professors outside of class time and ask them about interesting things and have them really pay attention and make good recommendations of other places to go to find out more about what I care about. I feel like the professors really want to spend time talking to you if you show a passion or interest in something, rather than seeing you interacting with them outside of class as a burden to be ended as soon as possible. As far as my own experience is concerned, I like the professors much more here!</p>

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<p>Thank you all for your insightful comments, positive and negative.</p>

<p>I have some thoughts of my own, namely that criticism is most effective when it is constructive, rather than destructive. If you have significant concerns about the quality of the education you are receiving, there are individuals on campus available for you to speak with, including those of us in the admissions office. I for one feel that disparaging remarks lose value when the individual making them has not attempted to express their concern to the appropriate members of the campus community. I do not mean to assume that whatisit has not done so, but I have yet to hear that he/she has. Also -this is my own personal opinion and perhaps a contradiction to my participation on CC - I think we live in a world in which anonymity is too easy. Too many students are too comfortable signing on to an online forum to make disparaging remarks about other people/organizations without the courage to attach their names to them. The only way in which we are ever going to improve is to have a meaningful and productive conversation, and that includes a willingness to provide context and to give your complaints an identity.</p>

<p>That being said, constructive criticism is incredibly valuable on this forum and elsewhere. I am not in the business of discouraging criticism in an effort to portray Rochester in perfect terms - I am more concerned with providing information to students and their families so that they can make educated and well-informed decisions regarding their futures. I would be making my job a lot more difficult if I were to attempt to enroll students that were ultimately set-up to be disappointed. So, comments pertaining to the weaknesses of the University of Rochester are not to be discouraged, but I do hope they are offered with some context and in an effort to engender constructive conversation.</p>