TITLE: Empathy for Teachers Doing Research
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: November 17, 2014  3:34 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
I appreciate that there are different kinds of university,
with different foci.  Still, I couldn't help but laugh
while reading Doug McKee's
<A HREF="http://teachbetter.co/blog/2014/11/11/balancing-research-and-teaching/">
   Balancing Research and Teaching at an Elite University</A>.
After acknowledging that he would "like to see the bar for
teaching raised at least a little bit", McKee reminds us why
they can't raise it too far:  Faculty who spend too much time
on their teaching will produce lower-quality research, and
this will cause the prestige of the university to suffer.
But students should know what's going on:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 I'd also like to see more honesty about the primacy of research
 in the promotion process.  This would make the expectations of
 the undergraduates more reasonable and give them more empathy
 for the faculty (especially the junior faculty).
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Reading this, I laughed out loud, as my first thought was,
"You're kidding, right?"  I'm all for more empathy for
professors; teaching is a tough job.  But I doubt "My teaching
isn't very good because I spend all my time on research, and the
university is happy with that." is going to elicit much sympathy.

Then again, I may be seeing the world from the perspective of
a different sort of university.  Many students are at elite
universities in large part for the prestige of the school.
Faculty research is what maintains the university's prestige.
So maybe those students view subpar classroom teaching simply
as part of the cost of doing business.

Then there was this:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 Undergraduates may not always get a great teacher in the
 classroom, but they are always learning from someone at the
 cutting edge of their discipline, and there is no substitute
 for that.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, there is.  It's called good teaching.  Being talked
at by an all-research, no-teaching Nobel laureate for fifty
minutes a day, three days a week, may score high on the
prestige meter, but it won't teach you how to think.  Then again,
with high enough admission standards, perhaps the students can
take care of themselves.

I don't mean to sound harsh.  Many research professors are also
excellent teachers, and in some courses, being at the forefront
of the discipline's knowledge is a great advantage.  And I do
feel empathy for faculty who find themselves in a position where
the reward structure effectively forces them to devote little or
no time to their teaching.  Teaching well takes time.

But let's also keep in mind that those same faculty members chose
to work at an elite university and, unlike many of their their
students, the faculty know what that means for the balance
between research and teaching in their careers.

Over the last decade or two, funding for public universities in
most states has fallen dramatically compared to the cost of
instruction.  I hope state legislatures eventually remember that
great teaching takes time, and take that into account when they
are allocating resources among the institutions that focus on
research and those that focus on students.
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