<p>Budget shortfalls and the increasing privatization of some publics:</p>
<p>We will likely begin seeing more online courses taught by adjuncts or TAs taking up the slack, perhaps even for students living on campus.</p>
<p>Begin? Online courses taught by TAs and adjuncts, including for students living on campus has been happening for some time now. The only problem is that the students who do best in these classes are those who are already bright and motivated. Oh, and that the time actually spent creating and teaching a quality online class is in no way adequately compensated. Been there, done that (do that) and got the t-shirt.</p>
<p>I understand “blended” courses are becoming common for on-campus students, but I was under the impression that solely on-line was more rare. The question will be, “Is an adjunct taught on-line course at UC Berkeley better than an on-line course taught at the University of Phoenix?” (Not meaning to pick on UCB, just a top public with $$$ problems.)</p>
<p>I have talked with people who teach University of Phoenix courses. The University of Phoenix model is pretty impressive in terms of what they do to deliver consistent quality to the students, and to improve the courses continuously, including constant student feedback. It’s not something that a traditional university would ever do unless it made a massive commitment to restructure its educational model for the online world. In all its profit-driven glory, the University of Phoenix may well be the equivalent of Toyota in 1965, and Berkeley et al. the equivalent of GM.</p>
<p>I’m not certain that I would agree with the ‘public university as General Motors’ model. At least not yet. I think what is likely to ultimately happen is that both higher education models will exist, er co-exist successfully. U of Phoenix type programs will increase, while the state flagship re-tools and survive. It reminds me of a question put to my freshman Ivy Tower Poly Sci professor ages ago when asked about the money the Sun Belt universities like Texas A&M (they had just hired away some notable prof from the East) was investing to raise their school’s profile. The my old professor sort of scoffed and said, “yeah, but the prestige is still in the East and that will continue.” Thirty years later, was he right?</p>
<p>EngProfMom wrote:
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<p>LOL!</p>
<p>Thanks for the article. I think that elements of this transition have been discussed here for quite some time.</p>
<p>I’ve noticed quite a high demand for peer tutors at my son’s school. I guess that they are cheaper than TAs and professors of any kind. It’s gotten to the point that there aren’t enough peer tutors at his school to meet demand. I’d say that there are plenty of students that are qualified to tutor but the school wants 5 hour blocks of time in the evening and science and engineering students usually can’t afford that kind of time commitment.</p>
<p>I do not know where public higher education will go but I do think that it will be a rocky ride.</p>
<p>I went to UCD over 25 years ago, and back then you would only see a professor in a lower division course if the lecture was 150 students or more. Otherwise you would get TAs or adjuncts. Upper division EE courses were usually 70 to 100 students. So it doesn’t really sound like that big of a change. Peer tutoring was the norm, and in engineering it was hard to get on the schedule.</p>
<p>Fifteen years ago my husband was taking online courses, from Stanford.</p>
<p>This transition has started decades ago.</p>
<p>Anyone else think it interesting that the article talked on state flagship universities referenced UCLA but not Berkeley?</p>
<p>^UCLA has been particularly hard hit; that’s probably why.</p>
<p>They could have added UT-Austin to that article. Science enrollment is up 10%, and the teaching budget is being cut 5% a year for the next three years. We already have general chemistry classes with 400+ students. Knock down a wall and there’s no reason we can’t go to 800. Quality education for the masses!</p>
<p>I’ve taught online courses to supplement my income, which my chair has offered me in lieu of raises, and I don’t disdain them. It is hard work and I have had some good students. I have also had students who were looking for an easy course and were sorely disappointed. </p>
<p>What I do wonder about, given how time-consuming it is to do a good job teaching online, is whether any of my busy colleagues, facing the same circumstances as I, needing or wanting to get more income-producing work, subsequently “contract out” (say, to younger family members, or to students outside of the US, in a version off-shore contracting) significant portions of the time-consuming part of the work, which for an English Prof means responding to student posts, grading papers, and the like. </p>
<p>This practice is in some ways not too different from the use of undergraduate “peer tutors” which is, as BCEagle notes, cheaper than hiring faculty or TAs. </p>
<p>The stunningly positive evaluations that I receive from students in my online courses, where they compare their online experience with my courses to other online courses that they have had makes me wonder what kind of evaluation is being done, of online courses, if any.</p>
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<p>The first scandal is that the stimulus money dedicated to education is being used in this way. Paying off bad debts is hardly a stimulus. Of course, the “too-big-to-fail” sirens’ chant is one that the Obama administration is all too willing to find attractive. Let’s give more money to the same people who are showing no clue nor interest in being fiscally responsible is very popular in Washington. What will they do next year and the year after? </p>
<p>The second scandal is the continuous denial of how common the story of Ms. Li is at the main public universities, and especially at the research juggernauts. </p>
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<p>Is throwing more TAs at the poor students a workable solution? Only if one accepts a watered-down education and a fools’ proposal. </p>
<p>Perhaps time has come to reevaluate a model where teaching is considered a nuisance while the pursuit of accolades, prizes, and research have become the true Shangri-La of educators. Making the primadonas of education who live in ivory towers work a bit more might be a good start. Eliminate all sabbaticals and light schedules for the next decade might follow. Rather than following the “publish or perish” mantra, let’s see how they react to “teach more or perish” for a while.</p>
<p>/sigh</p>
<p>You are describing the conditions at most regional universities where faculty place the greatest emphasis on teaching. Many of these faculty work very hard with little or no TA support, often teaching 4 or 5 courses a semester. Oh yea, these are likely to be listed as a third tier school.</p>
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<p>It’s not a bad deal for independent learners.</p>
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<p>The research folks bring a lot of money into universities too. I saw a job posting
recently where it was made very clear in the job description that the ability to bring
in research money was far more important than teaching ability. If you are a student
that wants research opportunities, then bringing in professors that are good at getting
research grants can result in research jobs while you are a student.</p>
<p>If you are looking for a lot of hand-holding, then you may be disappointed. We’re going
to more of a self-serve model (independent learning, TAs, peer tutors) in public
education.</p>
<p>BCEagle, I think xiggi’s point that is that high-quality, experienced teaching is at the heart of every educational setting, with college being no exception. </p>
<p>Great teaching is the opposite of “hand-holding.” It liberates the student to be a scholar; it creates & rewards independence. Peer learning is an important element of undergraduate years (and usually considered essential – requiring “residency” – on the graduate level). However, peer learning cannot substitute for more expert mentoring and role-modeling until greater academic maturity is reached. College students deserve such guides, and they and their parents pay for that guidance (via professors), not just for an opportunity, with a registration number, to “teach themselves.”</p>
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<p>Ah it’s not all bad. Keep in mind if we didn’t have research, we’d have no content to teach in our classes. Researchers typically bring in massive amounts of resources to the university, most of which are taxed and go into the general coffers. And no accomplished researcher I know works less than 60 hours a week. </p>
<p>While a case could be made to get rid of tenure, sabbatical, light teaching loads, cut salaries and so forth…it only works if all your national and world wide competition followed suit. Otherwise you have a mass exodus of faculty that typically bring the ‘name’ to national universities, and all that goes with it. In fact up here in Canada we are very very actively (and successfully) head-hunting talent from states that have froze or cut faculty salaries. And I’ve been writing LOTS of letters of recommendation for well known faculty in places like Arizona and California who are fleeing to better states for faculty.</p>
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<p>Not bad for … whom? Where is the data that demonstrates the direct relation between the research produced at an university and the teaching of undergraduates? If research is so profitable why are schools such as Berkeley and UCLA so often cited for their deteriorating finances? Was that 1 billion shortfall at the UC a journalistic misrepresentation?</p>
<p>And, as far as undergraduates should be concerned, it really does not matter if a researcher spends 60 hours or 40 hours at work; the only thing that should matter to an undergraduate is how much time the researcher devotes to what should be his PRIMARY role and mission at the school, namely TEACHING. It is clear that education has ceased to be the top priority at several large research universities.</p>
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<p>And should we wonder WHY said faculty is fleeing? Is it because of dedication to teaching or … the preservation of a particularly well-protected lifestyle?</p>
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<p>That’s clearly not the case in a majority of our educational
institutions. And it isn’t necessary for everyone. There are lots of
students that can learn college-level material from a book, course
lectures or audio tapes. The student needs to be self-motivated
though. These kinds of students shouldn’t have problems with large
lecture halls or classes taught by TAs.</p>
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<p>I don’t see how you can have one without the other given that the
requirement for hand-holding is a continuim. </p>
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<p>How do you create independence? I will ask a professor
about this aspect of teaching next week. My guess is that he will
just laugh. I suppose that it works if you have the right kind of
student but trying to remediate eighteen years of ingrained habits
in one semester is completely unrealistic. The material has to
already be there.</p>
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<p>If we look at our best institutions, they expect that maturity to
already be there. I don’t know that college students deserve such
people. I don’t know how you execute personal instruction in a large
classroom or lecture hall.</p>
<p>In my industry, work is all about teaching yourselves. In the old
days, we went to training courses. Today, the expectation is that
we come up to speed on new technologies mostly on our own. We do
provide some hand-holding for new hires but there are many that
do quite well without that hand-holding.</p>
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<p>I don’t know if it is so profitable so much as it keeps the lights on
and allows the department to offer a variety of courses. If you have
such a profit center and it offsets the costs of teaching courses,
then I am all for it. It may very well be that tuition and fees would
have to rise without research.</p>
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<p>That is your opinion. I do run into students that highly value their
research opportunities. If parents want teaching universities, then
they do have that choice with their dollars.</p>
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<p>The potential is clearly already there, or they would not have become finalists in the first place. But it is an unformed potential which requires at least a little bit of refinement and grooming. It is not an automatic process. Yes, I believe strongly in independent research on the undergraduate level as the most important learning opportunity, whether the institution is intimate or large. No one held my hand at my huge public. But the cognitive connections are made more possible by great teaching which communicates, leads, stimulates, and encourages greater independent inquisitiveness.</p>
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<p>Create was not as accurate a word as encourage, promote. (It results in the desire for independent scholarship, thus it’s an indirect product or creation of great teaching.} And if he laughs at the thought of great professors encouraging independence, he’s a jerk and does not belong at any level of education. In that case he just wants to hear himself talk and collect a salary, and his laughter would be further confirmation of what a jerk he is.</p>