<p>They are going to end up offshoring the online grading the way they have with tech customer service. </p>
<p>This is why I caution those who don’t stand in solidarity with the onshore unskilled workers who want a raise in minimum wage. Those who believe education will leave their kids immune to falling out of whatever middle class we have lost post NAFTA are fools</p>
<p>I’ve had good and bad in all categories. I don’t think it can be predicted though word of mouth can be telling.</p>
<p>I have a friend who does adjunct teaching at a small college and is paid per student up to a cap. Essentially she does “piece work” Some terms her salary doesn’t cover her parking at the university. It has never covered day care or private school for her child. She can afford to do this because 1) her husband is able to support the family on his salary and 2) she has a small trust fund. She thinks she is providing an invaluable service to her students which would disappear if she refused to work for the salary offered. The university would just cut the classes she teaches. She teaches upper level classes and quite a few independent studies. She is paid nothing for the independent study classes, even though the students get credit. It is a complicated situation.</p>
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<p>I second this comment. Yes, ultimately it’s all individual; some tenured and tenure track faculty are outstanding teachers even at the introductory level, and some non-tenure-track instructors are terrible. But when you think about it, the results of this study shouldn’t be surprising. Tenure-track faculty at a research university like Northwestern are hired primarily on the basis of their scholarly potential, more so than on the basis of their teaching ability. They are expected to be (or to become) competent teachers. But at the end of the day, they’ll earn tenure (or not) on the basis of three criteria: research, teaching, and service. Everyone knows, however, that research is by far the most important of these. An outstanding scholar who is only an average (or sometimes even slightly below-average) teacher will often be granted tenure; an outstanding teacher who produces lackluster scholarship has virtually no chance. Of course, the ideal is the outstanding scholar who is also an outstanding teacher, but the reality is not everyone fits that description. </p>
<p>And even to the extent teaching is considered in the hiring and retention of tenured/tenure-track faculty (and it is, at every institution I’ve ever been associated with), it’s not necessarily success in teaching introductory undergrad courses that counts the most; the ability to teach advanced courses and graduate seminars on arcane topics in the faculty member’s own areas of scholarship and expertise may often be of equal or greater importance. So bottom line, tenured and tenure-track faculty at research universities are hired and retained on the basis of criteria that don’t systematically select for candidates with the greatest ability to teach introductory undergrad courses.</p>
<p>It’s an entirely different story with non-tenure-track instructors. They’re hired and retained strictly on the basis of their teaching ability, and more particularly their ability to teach introductory-level undergrad courses, since that’s what they’re typically hired to do. So if the university does a good job of hiring and evaluating these people and retaining the best of them, they should be, as a group, more effective teachers of introductory undergrad classes than tenured/tenure-track faculty as a group–though the two groups will span overlapping ranges of ability to teach such courses.</p>
<p>What I take away from this study is that Northwestern must be doing a good job of hiring, evaluating, and retaining non-tenure-track instructors. For that they deserve credit. But there’s no guarantee that same result obtains at other research universities. And the situation might be very different at LACs where teaching undergrads, including first- and second-year students in introductory courses, is a much more prominent part of the job description of tenured and tenure-track faculty, and presumably much more central to the criteria on which they’re hired and promoted.</p>
<p>By its location NU has a deeper pool of potential high quality adjuncts than other schools in smaller towns.</p>
<p>More coverage of the study:
[Adjuncts Are Better Teachers Than Tenured Professors, Study Finds
The Chronicle of Higher Education
September 9, 2013
By Dan Berrett](<a href=“Adjuncts Are Better Teachers Than Tenured Professors, Study Finds”>http://chronicle.com/article/Ad-juncts-Are-Bet-ter/141523/</a>)</p>
<p>This does not surprise me at all. Adjuncts who teach the same intro class over and over again are going to get pretty good at it. Tenured professors rarely teach intro classes if they can avoid it; when they do so, they are often just fulfilling their department service rota or something. Keep in mind that adjunct faculty and tenured faculty do not have identical jobs or responsibilities within the institution.</p>
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<p>I agree with this completely. Good teaching takes a lot of time and effort. There is little institutional incentive, however, for tenure-track and tenured faculty who want promotion to knock themselves out over the 101-level service class. It won’t get them anywhere.</p>
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<p>It’s already the case at many schools that being a tenured faculty member increasingly means routine stints as a part-time administrator (program director, chair or dean) overseeing an army of part-time instructors.</p>
<p>I think being at the level of tenured faculty can add a dimension to sophomore year-level classes and beyond (e.g., organic chemistry or quantum mechanics.) However, for intro level classes I think that research expertise beyond getting a PhD doesn’t help; rather, it is just teaching skill and effort. Some tenured faculty who are not in survival mode in terms of getting tenure and/or grants may end up being great teachers, so they may be as good as adjunct faculty.</p>
<p>And people rightly point out that adjunct profs are judged on how well they teach whereas research professors are promoted solely on their research record (unless they are at a small college.) People in academia are not immune to the carrot and the stick.</p>
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<p>Yes. Absolutely. I am wondering if, in the future, those in charge decide those positions can be filled more efficiently and cost effectively by non PhDs.</p>
<p>I think the general public is unaware how much work professors actually do, whether tenured or untenured. It looks to many like a very easy job. The idea tenured professors are underworked and overpaid and the university doesn’t really need them seems potentially a really easy sell to me. Getting rid of those salaries will save a lot of money. Then program administrators can be hired. For high salaries if they have business training and expertise. Or low salaries if they are clerical workers.</p>
<p>Then universities can concentrate on teaching job skills.</p>
<p>Well presumably you would need to have a strong knowledge of the discipline to supervise those teaching it at the college level, so there is that. Someone without the academic background to recognize instructional malpractice in a given area wouldn’t be very useful as a supervisor. Unfortunately the vast majority of college consumers (I won’t call them students) do not care; they are, for the most part, cargo cultists re education and only want the credential so that they can get a job. I believe the great privates will remain safe and will always have real professors. I fear for our public universities. I do not believe the politicians or the electorate will want to support them as centers of intellectual inquiry and higher learning. There will be relentless pressure to turn our great public institutions into subsidized versions of the University of Phoenix.</p>
<p>Someone is very cranky tonight because she received an awful batch of diagnostic essays and foresees a long semester ahead:)</p>
<p>^^I agree. </p>
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<p>[Pat</a> McCrory Lashes Out Against ‘Educational Elite’ And Liberal Arts College Courses](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Pat McCrory Lashes Out Against 'Educational Elite' And Liberal Arts College Courses | HuffPost College)</p>
<p>I hope this isn’t too political to post. If it is, I apologize and hope the moderators remove my post and not close the thread.</p>
<p>Yes- let’s only fund STEM majors. What can POSSIBLY go wrong there? :rolleyes: </p>
<p>Wait wait wait let me guess though! Who wants to take a bet on whether or not he believes that tax funding should go towards religious classes/schools?</p>
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<p>From those governors’ point of view, the science majors may ask inconvenient questions about the origin of life and the universe or temperature and weather changes over time. Just like how social studies majors may ask inconvenient questions about economics, politics, and other social issues, or inquire into things that they may find inherently distasteful.</p>
<p>Of course, the biology majors may be on their chopping block anyway, due to the poor job prospects for graduates.</p>
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<p>And with/without realizing it…they’ve essentially turned those universities into a fancified version of the vocational schools which existed many decades ago here in the US or still exist in many foreign countries for students who either aren’t academically inclined enough for college and/or are interested solely in learning job skills. </p>
<p>Only difference is that instead of starting at 13-15, students will now be starting at 17-21+</p>
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Exactly. In my husband’s department (at Northwestern), such faculty members are called lecturers, and I know that one of the senior lecturers regularly receives outstanding teaching ratings. It is misleading to refer to these semi-permanent members of the teaching faculty as adjuncts, as in the “Insider Higher Ed” article.</p>
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“Income from grants written by professors is the single largest contribution to the Stanford University budget (the second largest is endowment income, and student tuition is a distant third).”
<a href=“http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/guest-column-letting-scientists-off-the-leash/[/url]”>http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/guest-column-letting-scientists-off-the-leash/</a></p>
<p>Right. Scientists running labs bring money from outside. My impression is that since 2008, sources for that sort of funding have really dried up. I also have the impression things are really difficult right now. Maybe I am mistaken? It won’t be the first time. An acquaintance, who had run a lab for more than 20 years, was let go by his university around 2008. He still had a grant but they eliminated his university funding and essentially cut his department - as I understand it. Somehow it saved the university money. I hear a lot about funding challenges and decreasing numbers of positions for scientists at universities. If the outside funding is going away, universities won’t be able to count on it any longer.</p>
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<p>^from your link</p>
<p>adding: juillet and QuantMech are posting the sort of discussion I am familiar with over on the STEM surplus thread right now. Post docs and adjuncts and low salaries and the impact on all of us.</p>
<p>Fwiw, a friend in humanities at a Cal State weighed in. IHO, says funding for non-stem is so low a priority that he’s now the last prof in his specialty; when he stops teaching (partially retired,) he won’t be replaced at all.</p>
<p>I follow what is being taught in some of Harvard’s introductory math and science course. The intro CS course, CS50x (materials available online), has been taught by lecturer David Malan for several years and has become one of Harvard’s most popular courses. Some intro physics courses are taught by lecturer David Morin, whose books on mechanics and electricity and magnetism may be good for well-prepared physics majors.</p>
<p>I don’t think having instructors who are not researchers is a bad thing, but it does call into question the hiring practices and structure of research universities.</p>