<p>My DH was a professor (tenured) who left academia largely because he felt so much of the research activity and publishing was absolutely useless yet the road to making full professor and advancement to higher prestige appointments. He read this piece and agreed. He has been a PI many times for many millions of dollars of NSF and NIH research, over 100 publications . . . and yes taught a wee bit along the way. He thinks research doesn’t really belong in a teaching context, at least not for undergraduates. Having been a student, graduate student, TF, post-doc, assistant prof and associate prof at research universities, I think he has a little bit of an understanding.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, in each discipline of science, there is a different type of philosophy. In biology, they are studying the big ideas, like the systems of organisms. How photosynthesis works, or how ATP is utilized by the organism. In physics, it is the polar opposite. It takes everything to the bare bone, picking at it, looking for patterns that apply elsewhere. Chemistry kind of stands as the bridge between those disciplines.</p>
<p>You have to know subject very well and be able to teach. These are different skills and talents. Not every teacher possess both.</p>
<p>Yes BC. UW has done exactly that with very nice results. And that does not include several alumni/prof started companies who expanded out of the parks into their own campus such as Epic.</p>
<p>[University</a> Research Park (URP) - The Property](<a href=“http://www.universityresearchpark.org/property/]University”>http://www.universityresearchpark.org/property/)</p>
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<p>Some schools require a compilers course. I believe that most don’t.</p>
<p>I should mention that the overhead (the amount of $$ that the college or university keeps from a research grant (private or public) obtained by faculty) is 40% in most research schools. That means many departments make more money of research than tuition in public universities.</p>
<p>What most people don’t understand is how political the whole grant-getting process is. For the really big money research grants from the federal govt it involves loving up the heads of big agencies within NIH and NSF, figuring out the pet research interests of those people and then pitching the proposal to appeal to them. It’s very much a marketing game. The biases of those in power of the governmental agencies in charge of doling out the research dollars have very profound influences on what research gets done. One NIH study DH worked on produced early findings diametrically opposite of the hypothesis. The whole research team was terrified that the NIH would find out and cut off any renewals. It was just very clear that certain results would be necessary for further funding. Is that the right environment for objective science? </p>
<p>It’s very naive to think that industry research is biased but academic research is fully objective. That’s a complete myth.</p>
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<p>The coursework at Cal States and junior colleges is not as advanced or as rigorous as at research universities. In the case of junior colleges, most of the material is really high school material. There are lecturers who don’t do research who teach at research universities, even Harvard. Sometimes they are very good, but they tend to teach the intro level stuff. These guys still have PhDs though, so they spent 5-6 of their life being on the cutting edge of research. I’d wager that profs at the Cal States have PhDs, too. If you think it’s important for them to have PhDs, you necessarily have to support academic research. </p>
<p>The other thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that part of the reason for academic research is to train future scientists and engineers. Most of these scientists and engineers go into industry.</p>
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<p>OK, but the solution isn’t to shut down all research.</p>
<p>^ Certainly not. We need research. We depend on it.</p>
<p>No answers here. I do think a lot of preposterous research goes on among profs with very little to add to the dialogue in their fields and that they would be more useful focussing on teaching.</p>
<p>So many experts on academic research of every type on this thread. My my.</p>
<p>As a tenured researcher with several NIH-funded grants both as a PI and a collaborator, I must share a different view than what is expressed in #47. The majority of research funds that I am aware of, at least at NIH, are awarded after grant proposals have received a very favorable peer review by panels comprised of non-NIH investigators (who are typically very accomplished researchers themselves). Loving up the agency folks won’t do any good unless you score well in peer review, and believe me, that can be an unpredictable and very political process (i.e., researcher A doesn’t like researcher B, and researcher A reviews researcher B’s grant proposal and gives it a poor score- it happens). Only research proposals that score in the tippy top ranges get funded, and in this economic climate that means that only about 7-8% of all proposals submitted get funded. Believe me, I have been on both ends as one who submits and reviews grant proposals, and the science that is being funded is not useless. Research funding in industry is determined by the company and may be biased per their shareholders or other financial interests - there is no peer review process in industry. </p>
<p>What agencies like NIH do, however, is define priorities for areas of research that they want to fund, but it is inaccurate and a bit simplistic to state that these priorities are driven by “pet interests.” The process for defining these priorities varies but is often driven not just by internal agency folks but also with input from external researchers as well. And occasionally congressional influence, for better or worse. </p>
<p>It’s very difficult to do extramurally funded research in this economic climate. The worry from inside academia is that we will lose good scientists who depend on NIH funding but may lose their funding, and that younger PhD’s will be discouraged from pursuing research careers.</p>
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<p>Perhaps- only some research is good research and sometimes the findings do not work out. But it seems preposterous that someone outside of a field actually believes they can judge the value of research to a field and the knowledge base thet is being creating and develope. Just because a lay person (anyone outside of the field) can’t see the direct practical value or use of a particular study does not remotely mean it isn’t an extremely valuable piece of a puzzle that is necessary for knowledge advancement, one that may ultimately also be extremely important for some application that a lay person can understand. If that ‘pointless’ study was not done and that “useless” nugget of information not retrieved, a cascade of important applications down the road might never happen. </p>
<p>Likewise, lay people aren’t typically in a position to judge a study on the basis of a title, an operationalization or a particular context which they pick up from some kind of press release…which may have absolutely nothing to do with the underlying tested theory and ultimate use of the findings. Sure the press can write up “bozo gets grant to study how jam sticks to bread” because everyday reader can comprehend the operationalization…but the actually purpose and use of the study has nothing to do with neither bread nor jam yet it is answering a critical question pertaining to say material science. </p>
<p>For those that balk at research I ask: what on earth are your students being taught in university and where did that knowledge come from?</p>
<p>the wall st. journal is little more than a right-wing rag.</p>
<p>Last time I got in this argument on CC, I was told the fact that we do federally funded research on abuse interventions for people in a marginalized/vulnerable population is doubly bad because we’re just spending more government money to research people that we “waste” lots of government money on anyway (never mind that research–gasp–has linked abuse to higher rates of unemployment in this population, so our research might actually reduce economic burden!)… still picking up my jaw from the ground from that one! :eek:</p>
<p>psych_ :</p>
<p>I’m sorry; my post was a little vitriolic. It is certainly true that university researchers have to work extremely hard to get federal research funding. And in fairness to those faculty who are certainly pressured by their department heads to bring in funding, just preparing the grant proposals is a huge endeavor. So typically, you’ll have researchers preparing proposals while also fulfilling the research plan of already funded research, writing papers and perhaps teaching a bit around the edges. It is not as if they sit around and are lazy. Would never want to suggest that.</p>
<p>It’s just the way the academic world is incentivized. It’s why I’m trying to get my rising senior to carefully consider LACs with good systems in place to help their students land research experiences during the summers but focus the resources on teaching through the academic year.</p>
<p>I do have trouble with some of the very arcane humanities and social science research that apparently keeps professors out of the classroom. Really, how many more books on Hamlet do we need? I think the author of the piece brings out some valid questions when she notes the increase in volume of literature and other humanities publications but decrease in actual consumption of those works. There’s something deeply wrong with that model.</p>
<p>And as a parent who sent a kid to an elite university undergrad, I can tell you that many of his papers were read, graded, and commented upon my grad students and not professors. At $200K for the degree, that is a little bit hard to justify.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why you are clumping humanities and social sciences, particularly when responding to psych, who is likely a psychologist (social science). The research being done in social sciences and humanities is very different. Social sciences include psychology, economics, political science (which contrary to what people think, it’s closer to economics than history), etc. They are very different from humanities. And I should say, very little grants are given in the humanities, precisely for the reason you mention.</p>
<p>I am sorry if I am blunt, but it’s a pet peeve of mine: social sciences and humanities are very different.</p>
<p>^ Very true. Some of the best research is very interdisciplinary and pulls in social science, life sciences, and quantitative sciences. And of course, there’s great humanities research that goes on, no doubt. </p>
<p>It’s the incentives model and the way universities essentially exploit their researchers that ends up pulling professors out to the classrooms. That warrants scrutiny.</p>
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<p>It may well be. But at the same time, it has the highest circulation of any paper in the US.</p>
<p>But more to the point, even right-wing rags are sometimes correct. Similarly, the NYTimes could be said to be a left-wing rag, but they too are sometimes correct. </p>
<p>You should address the points that were made in the op-ed.</p>
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<p>Well, actually, that’s not quite true. Mike Clancy - one of the better CS lecturers at Berkeley - does not hold a PhD or even a master’s. Yet that hasn’t stopped him from winning numerous teaching awards and winning tenure as a “Senior Lecturer with Security of Employment”. </p>
<p>[Personal</a> professional information](<a href=“http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~clancy/web/about_me.html]Personal”>Personal professional information)</p>