Daniel Drezner (a tenured professor at Tufts) and Megan McArdle (economics editor/blogger at The Atlantic) talk about why elite schools don't care about teaching. I think that Megan overstates the extent to which even the best schools don't care about teaching. Over the summer, I was speaking with a professor at one of the top business schools who protested vigorously that although research drove tenure decisions, a really bad teacher would not get tenure no matter how good his or her research.
The real question, as Dan suggests at the end, is how we tell the good teachers from the bad. There is a lot of attention being paid right now -- particularly at teaching schools -- to student evaluations and, I promise, grad students and new faculty care about their evaluations. But, if learning is the point, then student evaluations are problematic; as Dan says, most students value easy grading without too much work over disciplined learning.
Of course, how any particular school approaches this question is a matter of strategy. How does that school go to market and how does it differentiate itself from its competitors? UMass has a murky strategy, and murky is never good. UMass will never be the high quality competitor in the University industry in Massachusetts, nor is it clear how UMass can differentiate its classroom product. That leaves it with being the low cost competitor, which is good for a state school but not how UMass wants to see itself, or with focusing on campus life. As a large state school campus in the middle of cornfields, UMass has a party school reputation (just Google ZooMass). On the one hand, this is a good market positioning if your target market is underachieving high schoolers (which is exactly UMass's market). On the other hand, the Administration hates this image with the white hot passion of a thousand nuns.
One way for UMass to square this circle is to lobby against partying, which it does, while putting a lot of emphasis on teaching evaluations, which it doesn't do. This leaves UMass with a murky image and an emphasis on the school as the economical alternative for Massachusetts high school students.
Sorry to say I didn't watch the video because I despite this particular format, but I got in a lot of trouble in graduate school for pointing out how little the department cared about teaching. Ironically, my primary nemesis was one of the very few professors with whom I got along, who was later denied tenure despite being a world class name in his field. The reason? He worked with too many graduate student and so didn't publish enough.
ReplyDeleteWhy didn't that department care? Because most of its funding came and continues to come from research money. Actual teaching is a loss leader and engaged in only as necessary to keep the brochures glossy.
The general applicability of this is debatable, but the usual advice to "follow the money" seems to be a good place to start.
As far as murky marketing slogans go, I drive by USD several times a week, and they have a billboard that says, "USD: One of a kind, second to none."
ReplyDeleteIf they're one of a kind, it seems kinda worrisome that they're even contemplating the possibility of being in second place.
Ultimately, the only way to really objectively rate a school is ROI. After correcting for socio-economic factors, what is the expected life time earnings.
Who cares about teaching as long as the school sets you up for reasonably lucrative careers relative to the cost?
SH: What's interesting is that Management doesn't get much in the way of grant money. Go to the grant writers and tell them you need money to study why some companies are more profitable than other companies, and they look at you funny.
ReplyDeleteFrom the University's point of view, the point of having a Management Department and a School of Management is to attract paying students. We're there to pay the bills. And while I wouldn't say we don't care about teaching, it is clearly not what we're rewarded for at the most prominent schools.
Bret: That is a particularly uninspiring slogan, right of there with "O'Donnell: Not a Witch."
I care about learning separate from earning. I firmly believe that both the individual's life and society as a whole are better for a good education.
David wrote: "I firmly believe that both the individual's life and society as a whole are better for a good education."
ReplyDeleteEducation? Or Learning? And what's the difference between "education" and "good education"?
Your statement strikes me as one of the platitudes that really has almost no meaning.