<p>Many great teachers can be found at CC's too but I don't think people are lining up to shell out $40,000+ a year to go to CC. I was truly shocked that the percentage was in that range. I could see 10-20% to cover intro English and French etc. classes where a full prof is not that important.
I'd bet most paying those bills would be a little upset too.</p>
<p>sjmom,
garland and I are in agreement. (And I knew her S was at Columbia.) The sarcasm was meant toward the earlier posters, not directed toward her or in competition with her.</p>
<p>Geesh, looks like I hit a nerve.</p>
<p>I find it curious that the Ivyparents are actually so defensive about their choices, and go out of their way to disclaim any interest in status etc. </p>
<p>For the record, I will quote part of my original post:</p>
<p>
[quote]
...thank the Ivies for providing a place where the seekers of status and privelidge can hang out for four years, ...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If someone construes that to be saying that ALL who attend Ivies want status and priv., then I suggest that those readers are a bit defensive. </p>
<p>I do not know wy a regular poster like soozievt needs to drag in what my own family did several years ago, other than as some backhanded way of attacking the credibility of a posting that did not even say what she accuses it of saying. Nonetheless, for the record I will clarify that my own D did in fact apply to some schools that were closer to home than the one she ultimately ended up attending. I suppose it stretches credibility of some readers to think that geography influenced her applications. </p>
<p>These flames are just one more reminder of why it is so important to protect our identities here. One never knows how past postings will be used out of context in some sort of attack.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>Tenure-track faculty members teach only 40 percent of classes in the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts and Sciences</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>I guess I don't see what the problem is with this. If the people in the classroom are good at instruction and know their stuff, who cares what track they are on? I assume that tenure at Penn is like most schools, and is weighted heavily toward research and publications - not classroom ability.</p>
<p>The real question is whether undergrads DO have exposure to these high powered faculty when and where it counts - senior seminars, specialized classes, and blockbuster lectures (Jackson's History of NYC at Columbia, "Thinking about Thinking" at Harvard, etc.).</p>
<p>Some of the worst classes I had in undergrad school were taught by senior faculty - we depended on less exalted profs and TAs to help sort things out.</p>
<p>I don't want to suggest that it's good if an undergrad goes four years without ever taking a class from tenured faculty - just that a percentage (like the one quoted by disgruntled grad students) isn't particularly meaningful, IMO.</p>
<p>
I just really dislike being lumped into a group, like "Ivyparents", where there is a lot of behavior and thought processes assumed. H and I are the proud products of a state university, and I would say that I'm tired of people making so many assumptions about us based on where our son goes to college.</p>
<p>He--, I'm PROUD of my son's college choice! Oh wait, it's an IVY! I AM AN IVY PARENT!! Can I get a t-shirt made?<br>
Ya know what? I would have been happy with Georgia, Chicago or Indiana, too. (and less poor).<br>
I think he "really wants an education". That's one reason he chose the IVY. He liked a lot of other things about it, too- the city it is in, the track coach, the cereal bar across the street from campus......
He knew he could get a great education at Williams, too, but it wasn't the right fit for him. Could it be possible that many of our kids who choose Ivy League schools do so because it is the right fit?</p>
<p>Why women buy $1000 Louis Vuitton persons when a $40 Macy's one will do?</p>
<p>If it's worth it to YOU, then it's worth it.</p>
<p>Newmassdad - go back and read my post. I said it DID play a part utlimately in my S's choice. He felt the status of an Ivy would help him when it came time to find a job. I am from PA, but never paid any attention to what an Ivy was, and knew nothing about Penn. (Don't follow football.) </p>
<p>S was attracted to the school because of the PPE program. We visited, and he loved Philly and the campus. We were listening to an admissions officer give her spiel when we visited, and she said something about Ivy (downplaying it, actually) and I turned to my H and asked if Penn was an Ivy. He thought that was funny. I honestly did think it only had to do with football. I learned that Cornell (another school S was interested in) was an Ivy at the same time. He also applied to a bunch of other good schools - non-Ivy. Only our state school gave him more money than Penn, and I do believe part of his decision to go to Penn was that it had a bigger "wow" factor than UGA.</p>
<p>Penn, however, is a funny school to talk about when discussing prestige, because outside of CC, people generally say, "Oh, great football team. Is Paterno still there?"</p>
<p>I think the profs are important- but % of tenured profs wasn't a criteria we had- full time was- but not tenure
admittedly even though I am not a big fan of classifying students by numbers- the "caliber" of student was a criteria
probably one of the biggest differences between a Cc and a university- because CCs do not have any admission requirements, let alone a certain SAT score and GPA</p>
<p>I know some schools utilize a great many TAs as well, I think that number and size of majority of classes probably has more relevance than if the prof has been teaching there 10 years or 30.</p>
<p>Newmassdad: you know, there is nothing quite so obnoxious as someone who deliberately insults a group of students (never mind parents) in such an offhand and, frankly, mean-spirited way, and then pretends innocence with that tired "ooh, I hit a nerve" routine.</p>
<p>Yup, you did. Gratuitous put-downs of large groups of people you don't know are beyond pointless, but you didn't really have a point, did you, besides throwing stones.</p>
<p>Susan, regarding your post#16.</p>
<p>What I <em>do</em> get is that newmassdad has worked in a location or several locations where he has encountered a pronounced & blind appeal, & rigid expectations, of Ivy matriculation, particularly certain Ivies. I believe that such pockets of social pressure & social desire do exist. However, that is a VERY parochial assumption on his part to universalize that experience. When did he last look at the demographics of acceptances at even HYP, let alone the range of Ivies? Ironically, I believe that HYP accepts a broader range (because they get a broader cross-section) of students from all regions than UChicago does. Fifty States, all 4 corners of the globe. That would also be true of Columbia, who is interested in geographical diversity Major. In the majority of those applicants' locations, students are mainly seeking Ivies not for social status, but for what they perceive to be excellence, esp. in many cases in particular subject areas (Business, Engineering, History, & on). Whether those perceptions are accurate in all cases, is another question. Whether the excellence sought will match the excellence of the student's effort, is also another question. But to claim or imply that "real" students apply to & attend only UChicago, Reed, & Oberlin, while all Ivy students are not academically oriented or motivated, is just plain ignorant, as well as insulting.</p>
<p>Academics aside, people choose <em>locations</em> for schools, & to some, location is as or more important than the "name" of the school or even the program being sought. Some people cannot abide cold weather, so they do not apply to Carleton or Macalester. Some people are asthmatic, & thus prefer to avoid some locations in Southern California. Others actually figure in trips home & proximate airports as a major factor in their decisions. My D had a choice between the midwest & the East Coast. Due to her <em>academic</em> interests, & due to co-existing friendships in the Northeast, she chose the Northeast. Her choice wasn't better or worse than someone else's choice; it was just the right choice for her.</p>
<p>For the record, nmd, YOU are the flamer, not "Ivyparents."<br>
You are the attacker who has gone "out of your way" to do so. Generally people are defensive when stereotyped, & when insulted. You do not differentiate; supposed exceptions are not apparent in your posts. Perhaps you could brush up on your communication skills if you think it's just so obvious that you didn't mean "us." Imo, the gratuitous "backhanding" is from you, not from your repliers.</p>
<p>"Why women buy $1000 Louis Vuitton persons"-</p>
<p>I assume you mean "purses" and not "persons". And, yeah, I like Louis Vuitton purses.</p>
<p>That's an incredibly stupid statement to say all ivy league students are "status seekers." My family is nowhere near rich, but my father taught me discipline growing up and the value of a good education, I worked my ass off in high school because I loved to learn and because I wanted to get an education at a university that promised an amazing one. I am at an ivy league institution now and I must say I am receiving an excellent education, with excellent professors and a generally nice student body. There are certainly status seekers, but do they not exist at some of the institutions you named? I am not a person of "privelage". In fact I will likely have a great deal to pay in loans coming out of graduation, and I worry about paying that off.</p>
<p>This whole thread is based on the results of a self-serving and misleading study.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The many adjunct professors who are accomplished practitioners in their fields are wrongly counted in the study.</p></li>
<li><p>The full-time "lecturers" who have PhDs but do nothing but teach are wrongly counted.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Why don't these grad students tell the truth and give us numbers on how many grad students actually teach the classes? Probably because not that many of them do.</p>
<p>
[quote]
2 earlier comments: I don't understand the problem? Does a tenure track prof necessarily have special skills one who isn't on that track doesn't have?</p>
<p>AND: Tenure track faculty aren't likely to teach the majority of the classes at many universities. In a good many cases, students will be taught by research faculty or adjuncts (or TA's at a few schools). What's the harm?
[/quote]
I don't want to offer an opinion on attending an ivy or not, but the non-tenure track issue is something else entirely. The use of part-time profs is becoming a serious problem in colleges. According to an article in CNN
[quote]
How's this for the job not of your dreams: It typically requires an advanced degree, and a workweek somewhere in the 60-hour range, with work on weekends likely. The pay is low, there are no benefits, no job security. To get by, in the course of any given week, you'll likely have to commute to several, often widely-scattered job sites. At none of those places will you have an office -- or sometimes even a mailbox -- to call your own.</p>
<p>Welcome to the lowlands of higher education -- the growing realm of the so-called adjunct professor. And this is not some obscure sub-stratum of academia we're talking about here: Nearly half of all college and university teachers now are adjuncts, up from just 20 percent of professors 20 years ago. According to the U.S. Department of Education, between 1995 and 1997 more than two-thirds of new professors were hired as adjuncts. </p>
<p>Dubson is one of the country's better paid adjuncts. Teaching right through the summer -- as almost all adjuncts do -- with 10 years' experience, he expects to earn about $40,000 this year, in one of the country's most expensive cities. The average adjunct earns $10,000 to $15,000 less than that.
[/quote]
PBS aired a show a while back "Declining by Degrees" about the sad state of many colleges. Part of the problem is part-time profs who are exploited by the colleges to teach classes. As many know, there is a PhD glut and profs from even top schools struggle to earn enough to live. Here's an excerpt from the show transcript
[quote]
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ARE ALSO TRYING TO BALANCE THEIR
BUDGETS BY HIRING PART-TIME TEACHERS. BOB GIBSON IS HELPING
TO BALANCE THREE BUDGETS.</p>
<p>BOB GIBSON: I teach at this stage in my life as many as 11 courses every semester.</p>
<p>GIBSON TEACHES PHILOSOPHY. THIS SEMESTER HE HAS 280
STUDENTS IN 9 CLASSES AT THREE COLLEGES IN THE DENVER
METROPOLITAN AREA.</p>
<p>BOB GIBSON: That was unimaginable to me when I began my career, when a normal load was four courses.</p>
<p>MANY OF GIBSONS CLASSES ARE AT COMMUNITY COLLEGE OF
DENVER, WHERE PART-TIMERS DO MOST OF THE TEACHING.</p>
<p>Gibson Ive just completed my third class of the day, I started at 8:30 with the Community College of Denver intro course</p>
<p>GEORGE KUH: The time that one might spend in quiet solitude or talking with students in an advising capacity just isnt there. They dont expect students to do as much of the activities as full time faculty do, that would contribute to deep learning. In other words, they dont necessarily ask students in assignments to draw from diverse perspectives. From different points of view. From different courses. It stands to reason; they arent part of the fabric of the institution. They wouldnt know what courses to suggest students to draw from. They arent part of that system. Its a structural problem, there arent as many of those and they dont have as much time to devote to the activity
[/quote]
And the problem exists at even the more prestigious schools. At many schools the contracts of the part-timers are limited. After a few years they're shooed away and replaced. An interesting article was in the ucla Daily Bruin in 2002.
[quote]
The University of California must make undergraduate classroom education a higher priority, last year's UCLA Distinguished Faculty award honoree George Leddy said at a lecture Monday. </p>
<p>After teaching at the university since 1996, this spring marks his 18th quarter as a lecturer at the school. Eighteen quarters is the maximum amount of time UC lecturers are contracted for. </p>
[/quote]
</a></p>
<p>I don't buy expensive purses- for example Michael green who used to be a designer at Coach has very nice purses
but they each are comparable quality it is just one has a "name"
My D school is actually more expensive than Harvard according to the comparsion at US news and they have just sent info that they are raising it next year and will be expanding some depts!
we knew this was going to happen
my daughters elementary school when she left added a whole new building , her middle-high school added a sports facility and an arts facility, so it is only par for the course that her college will be adding to her dept as well as to others.
Younger sister won't be outdone- her high school ,which was old when my mother went there, will open a renovated building with two performance halls- the fall after she graduates ;)</p>
<p>Moving beyond this unfortunate detour into personal choices, the main issues are twofold: 1. whether it is better to be taught by tenured profs (this is what I understand the posters to mean, since tenure-track faculty do not yet have tenure) as opposed to TAs; and 2. whether schools that charge a lot for tuition are short-changing their TAs and the undergraduates. </p>
<p>It is not clear that tenured faculty are better than non-tenured faculty; presumably, however, both are supposed to be more experienced than the average TA who is a graduate student. One would hope that TAs have guidance from profs, but this may vary from school to school and indeed from prof to prof. My S is in some small classes, and his TAS have ranged in quality. One has been inadequate, but the rest have been great. He had one TA in a class that had only 11 student (and the prof was fully involved in all aspects of the class). Contrast this to the experience of S1 in a LAC. In one case, he was shut out of a class he really wanted to take because the prof tried to keep the enrolment below 30. In another, the prof did let the class size grow to over 40. In neither case was there a TA. I think S2 has the better deal--and the costs of attendance are exactly the same at the two schools.
I would feel very differently if S2 were taught largely by TAs, but that is not the case.
In the case of cost, however, the comparison seems to be with state schools. I don't know what the prevalence of TA-taught classes is in such schools. Whatever the case, my two Ss were more comfortable in small and mid-sized schools, so that pretty much eliminated most state schools, including our own.</p>
<p>Thanks for bringing us back on topic, marite. Let's keep discussion focused on the original topic, everyone.</p>
<p>I'd say tenure-track--not just tenured. We might reasonably assume that those selected for the TT positions were the top people from the time the job opened and are "better" than the adjuncts floating around the system. Does that mean better teachers--maybe not, but they probably have better track records from better programs.
I don't think TA's are part of this discussion as they actually teach few classes.</p>
<p>*The Project on Faculty Appointments, where I work at Harvard University, conducted a survey of more than 2,000 doctoral candidates at 65 top-tier universities in 1999-2000. It showed that 20 percent of students in the social sciences and humanities, 29 percent in the sciences, and 28 percent in the professions of business, education, and engineering would accept a non-tenure-track offer over a tenure-track offer holding everything equal about the two positions. That's a rather startling conclusion given that the ultimate goal for most aspiring faculty members has always been to land a tenure-track job.</p>
<p>Throughout graduate school, scholars are socialized to tenure, an employment policy so entrenched that it defines the culture of the academy. Economic security, academic freedom, and autonomy -- what's not to love? Why settle for anything less?</p>
<p>Senior scholars may raise their eyebrows, but in fact, more and more scholars are opting for life off the tenure track. Does this mean they are settling for less? The answer is no; in fact, many are negotiating for more in the process. There appear to be three logical groupings of doctoral candidates who prefer the non-tenure track.*</p>
<p>From the Chronicle of higher ed</p>