My previous post stirred some people's emotions. Reading the comments, it seems part of that came from the tension between teaching and research in modern American universities.
In most countries, the role of universities is solely to educate their students. That's true of many colleges in the United States, but not of Research I universities. The majority of American universities you've heard of belong to this category: Harvard, Yale, UCLA, Stanford, MIT, CMU, Princeton, etc. In addition to teaching, these institutions have another equally important role, which is to produce high-quality research that benefits society. Indeed, many of the game-changing discoveries or inventions in the last century have been entirely or partly developed at American Research I universities: The Internet, Google, the cure for polio, vitamin D milk, even Gatorade. To a large extent, this is where Nobel prizes are won, and where the future is invented.
American Research I universities are also mostly responsible for educating the smartest people in the country (or even the world), both at the graduate and undergraduate levels. This includes most doctors, lawyers, politicians, US presidents, dot com billionaires, and yes, even Lady GaGa.
Combining these two very important roles may have benefits, but it also causes an unspoken tension. Is the job of a professor primarily to educate or to do research?
The interesting thing is that everybody seems to have a different opinion about this. Students and their paying parents, of course, think professors are there solely to educate; Professors mostly think they are there to do research; and university administrators seem to change their tune depending on whom they’re talking to.
As usual with me, I have more questions than answers. Should research and education be combined in this manner? Should professors primarily concentrate on research or teaching?
Regardless of what should happen, I can tell you that at least from a tenure-track professor’s point of view, the system at the vast majority of Research I universities is extremely biased towards the research side. Most of my friends at other universities chose to be professors because they want to do research without being pressed by economic outcomes like they would in a company, and consider teaching a bearable chore that they must do to get the freedom and prestige of being a professor. The hiring of faculty (at least at the ~15 Research I universities that have offered me a job) pays almost no attention to the potential quality of the candidates as teachers. The tenure process also puts teaching in the back seat. So in essence, professors are largely not selected, evaluated, or rewarded based on teaching.
This is not to say that there are no good teachers among the faculty at Research I universities. Many of the faculty both here at CMU and elsewhere are outstanding instructors and work very hard on their teaching. However, they do so out of pure love (and possibly a misconceived sense of duty), because the system is not set up for this.
Since I don’t want to get in trouble again with the commenters, I will end with a few disclaimers. First, I do spend a significant amount of time on my teaching (as evidenced by having won the teaching award). Second, there are very good institutions that educate smart people in the US that are not Research I universities and that concentrate solely on teaching.
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I'm glad you're posting frequently again.
ReplyDelete"In most countries, the role of universities is solely to educate their students."
ReplyDeleteIs this really true? I would instead say that the situation in most countries mirrors that in the US: the most ambitious institutions all take the Humboldtian approach of combining teaching and research, but there are also a large number of institutions which focus almost soley on teaching.
Note there are some ways in which the professor hiring process implicitly looks for teaching ability. Most universities lean toward hiring those who can give really good job talks, on top of having great research. The fact that the candidate can communicate their research so well usually implies they can also give good lectures in general. Also, the decisions behind grant proposals and conference papers (as opposed to journal papers) often have a lot to do with how clear and convincing the writing is. The point is that communication is a huge factor in both research and teaching, and if you can do it with research then usually teaching is only easier.
ReplyDelete> Is this really true? I would instead say that the situation in most countries mirrors that in the US
ReplyDeleteThat is largely only the case in the "first world."
> Note there are some ways in which the professor hiring process implicitly looks for teaching ability.
ReplyDeleteI've heard this argument before, but I think it's an after-the-fact explanation rather than a true desire by research universities to hire good teachers. A job talk is highly practiced, and in fact usually has received the feedback of many other people before hiring committees get to see it. I'd say the correlation between giving a good job talk and being a good instructor is only slightly positive.
Not only that, but the job talk is a tiny deciding factor for hiring, since only those who get an interview give job talks and the selection of who gets an interview usually doesn't take teaching into account. Typical numbers are something like: 500 candidates apply for a single faculty position, 5 get an interview (division by 100), and one gets the job (division by 5). If the job talk is only one factor from the 5:1 stage, you can see that numerically it has very little influence compared to research.
Many of the faculty both here at CMU and elsewhere are outstanding instructors and work very hard on their teaching. However, they do so out of pure love (and possibly a misconceived sense of duty).
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think this sense of duty is misconceived? It's part of the job, and I don't see why that duty is any less important than any other, even if monetary incentives are only directly tied to a different portion of the job. Duty is about not letting down those who depend on you (students in your classes, or other faculty who have to make up the work if you slack on a committee, for example). You have a very strange definition of "duty" if it only applies to those tasks that result in a direct monetary reward.
One way to think of it: External letter writers for a tenure case rarely, if ever, have any idea how good of a teacher a given professor is, nor do they really care. Getting tenure at a top university is first and foremost about research. If you are a stellar researcher and a crap teacher they will most likely tenure you. Not true if it's the other way around.
ReplyDeleteYou say that the research part is the most valuable one, yet most research from "Research I Universities" seems to be done by (PhD) students. I always thought that this was because professors took their educational role seriously - they were making sure that their students' research was flourishing.
ReplyDeleteBut what you are saying is that the professors should do research too? Do you have any good example of research done by a professor, and not a PhD student?
You're clearly not a professor :)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I didn't say research was more valuable. I just said that the system currently encourages research a lot more than teaching.
But yeah, I don't know what kind of experience you've had: most professors I know do a lot of research.
It seems that close to 100% of all research papers have students as primary authors - professors are either advisers (i.e., they are educators) or have their names on the papers because they wrote a successful grant application some time ago (i.e., they are salespeople and/or managers). At conferences, it is almost always students who give the talks.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the definition of "doing research" should be articulated? Sure, successfully advising students requires having a strong research background and a lot of ideas that serve as input to the students' research. But do you count advising students as "doing research"?
The main reason for that is to give students the exposure. They need to get a job, whereas professors don't.
ReplyDeleteSo are you saying that the PhD students from Research I Universities don't do any research themselves? All the papers and theses they "write" are, in fact, done by their professors? And that the main reason the PhD students are co-authors on papers is that they need to get a job afterward? It all sounds very strange.
ReplyDeleteThat's not what I said. The previous commenter said that professors don't do any research and he/she gave some bogus argument for why that is (that students are usually first authors, blah blah blah). I'm simply saying: professors definitely do research.
ReplyDeleteThat said, most grad students do some research as well.
From my experience at CMU I think a majority of the teachers put enough time into teaching to do a good job, but there are some exceptions. I had a class taught by a Turing winner in which it was obvious that the teacher didn't care and ended up doing a very poor job. In that situation the worst option is to have the teacher continue teaching in that manor. Either they need to stop teaching or put in enough effort to do a decent job. To the best of my knowledge the teacher is still teaching and doing a poor job.
ReplyDeleteprofessing is an honor, to disseminate a style or philosophy about whichever topic. or for those professors who are more akin to exclusive research, professing is a necessary job detail (but still, to advance a particular style or philosophy). there is an important distinction to be made between a full professor and a distinguished service full professor. further, exclusive research seems restricted to university staff or industry, not a professorship.
ReplyDeleteTom,
ReplyDeleteEven though "Turing Winner" isn't a unique identifier at CMU, since one of the CMU Turing award winners is a renowned teacher, its pretty clear who you are talking about...
Ontological fail: according to your own citation, "the term 'Research I University' is no longer valid, although many universities still use the term."
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: Your questions were about how much importance should be given on author order, and what may be learned from this.
ReplyDeleteThe role and ordering of authors on papers differ by discipline. In some fields, such as areas of biology or medicine, the lab director or PI will get their name (typically listed last) on all research publications that come out of their lab.
This is not, however, the typical situation for computer science. Some disciplines in CS traditionally list authors in alphabetic order (theory, for instance), while others list them in order of contributions (such as my own areas, systems and networking).
Within the "order of contributions", however, students are *typically* listed before faculty on the research. As Luis pointed out, this is to make sure that students get some credit for their contributions and give them exposure. But it's also because they are often more involved with the gory details of the project -- in systems, for example, students often do most of the hacking on projects -- and the research wouldn't get done without their hard work and ideas. (Faculty often have multiple research projects going on at the same time, so their time is split between these projects, while students are more focused on a single or couple projects.)
The fallacy of your statement, however, is the view that research is carried out by a single person working largely in isolation. Multiple students, faculty, and other colleagues are listed on papers, because they all play an active role in shaping and developing the work.
Which Turing Award winner at CMU is a "renowned teacher?" The two I had paled in comparison to Luis, Mackey, Schaeffer, Leoni, etc.
ReplyDeleteManuel Blum is the GOD. The best teacher ever!!!
ReplyDeleteIf you accept the starting point that universities have the objective to "produce" next generation scientists/professors it's kinda obvious that a good professor have to be good at research first. In the same way, the students have to be able to study correctly with such teachers (whom are not pushed to be good teacher)?
ReplyDeleteIn addition, in Research I Universities parents are paying for good researcher as it is currently the only way to evaluate the quality of the professor... are they any professor famous thanks to their teaching skill while being mediocre in research?
As a PhD candidate at an R1, this issue has frustrated me to no end. The PhD students around me who hope to enter academia have little or no interest to teach. As the product of a teaching college, I find it incredibly discouraging that there are those who aspire to be (or are) professors at institutions of education when their primary goal is not to educate students but to instead do research. While many of these people would be much better suited for research jobs in industry, they prefer the perks of academia and chose it to the detriment of their students. I'm tired of participating in a society where this kind of student neglect is acceptable.
ReplyDeleteMy personal end-goal is to teach undergraduates. To do this, however, a PhD is generally a prerequisite -- even teaching schools pride themselves on maintaining high PhD-to-student ratios. It seems counter-intuitive, however, to aim for a research degree which does little to improve ones teaching ability. I've often thought that a better use of my time, and a better way to prepare myself for future students, would have been to get a Masters in my field (CS) in addition to a Masters in Education. This breadth, however, is less marketable to even teaching colleges.
PhD recipients are not equipped (and generally do not want) to teach. How is this a good thing for undergraduate education? Certainly the problems of a research-oriented tenure process only compound the problem.
I agree it's very weird that PhD students get very little training on how to be good instructors.
ReplyDeleteWhat is this concept of research professor vs. teaching professor at CMU? Is it something to address this problem? Is one considered "superior" than the other?
ReplyDeleteAt CMU, like at most other universities, there are (at least) three "tracks" for faculty: tenure-track, teaching-track, and research-track. In general, tenure-track is the more "prestigious" position, since those are the professors that can get tenure, and the ones that normally participate in all the major departmental decisions. Research-track professors typically are not eligible for tenure, and also have to use grant money to pay for their salary (whereas the salary of tenure-track professors is guaranteed even if they can't get any grants). Teaching-track professors usually don't advice PhD students, are not eligible for tenure, and their teaching load is much higher.
ReplyDeleteAlthough there are exceptions to this rule, tenure-track professors have to both do research and teach, research-track professors only have to do research, and teaching track ones only have to teach.
However, in most departments, the number of teaching-track faculty is very small, and they mostly teach the introductory courses.
It varies by professor and department, but my impression is that at many Research I universities, the primary job of a professor is neither research nor teaching, but something closer to research-group manager. Especially in the large labs, their job is to oversee acquiring and allocating million-dollar budgets, meet with important people (say, DARPA contacts), serve on committees, hire and manage post-docs, research scientists, and grad students, etc. That does involve some research, but often at a very high level, more akin to setting general directions.
ReplyDeleteI think that is largely a correct statement.
ReplyDeleteThis is all rather strange to me. I'm only familiar with MIT and there all professors are on a research tenure track (and must be judged #1 or 2 in their field to succeed (maybe #3)), but all classes are taught by professors so at least adequate teaching ability is a non-negotiable. And in the two departments I was really familiar with there was an effort to teach grad students how to teach.
ReplyDeleteAnd professors, tenured or not, were subject to actionable feedback. After having read them myself, I witnessed a department head force a professor you've heard of to read every student evaluation of a course he'd just taught, one he cared a lot about, but had utterly failed as far as all but one student was concerned (and she was a special case). At the end of the process, the department head told the professor he'd never teach that course again....
I think you should blame our competition-oriented society for this phenomena.
ReplyDeleteSuppose that you are the dean of CMU CSD – the professor hirer.
Which one makes your department more famous and praised than other competitors - research or education?
Probably, the research will.
Another reason would be the fact that it is very hard to measure the goodness of teaching. It is relatively easy to say that the research performance of University A is better than University B this year since we have a lot of quantitative measures. But, it’s tricky to say this kind of argument in teaching.