We Pretend to Teach, They Pretend to Learn

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303531204579204201833906182?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

by grellas • 13 years ago

43 48 13 years ago

online.wsj.com

bushido• 13 years ago

Alternate url[0], in case WSJ requests you to log-in/subscribe to read the article.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=We+Pretend+to+Teach%2C+They+...

edit: changed link to point to google search, click on the search result (first result in my case); it should lead to an article that doesn't require a login.

mandalar12• 13 years ago

It also requires to log-in.

dasil003• 13 years ago

Worked for me after the original link didn't.

mdip• 13 years ago

I got the login as well. I launched chrome in Incognito mode and the link from the google search worked. I'm guessing they set a cookie or something to get people who clicked the link directly then tried to work around it via Google.

buckbova• 13 years ago

Worked for me. Thanks.

nnnnni• 13 years ago

Ugh, "log in to view the rest of the article". Nope.

daphneokeefe• 13 years ago

Paywall

drcube• 13 years ago

No paywall at Google cache:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%3...

jimhefferon• 13 years ago

The kind of tripe I hear around the fac lounge sometimes; I get my tea and leave as quickly as I can.

dragontamer• 13 years ago

The point of lecture is not to "teach", the same way a high school lecture was. A College Lecture was designed to introduce concepts and clarify questions that occurred in studies.

But "learning" and "teaching" don't really happen in the lecture halls. They happen in the labs, in the after-hour question / answer sessions. After all, it is difficult for a professor to individually answer questions when there are 300 students in a hall (and similarly, most students are too shy to ask a question in front of so many people).

Surprise, college is not the baby-hand-holding that high school / grade school was. Students are expected to learn by themselves, and set up their own study groups. Students are expected to come to after-lecture study halls for clarification.

-------------------

Lets put it this way. The student is the one who is paying for the education. If the student wastes his $30,000+ by partying and socializing all day long, the problem is NOT with the professors.

j2kun6• 13 years ago

But the onus is on the institution to only grant degrees to those who deserve it. The worthlessness comes when you start giving bachelor's degrees to people who chose to waste their tuition on partying, and this is what's happening.

HarryHirsch• 13 years ago

But the onus is on the institution to only grant degrees to those who deserve it

Unfortunately, with an ever greater share of universities' budgets coming from tuition, they cannot afford to throw people out. It's also why you see so many summer courses offered where for lack of time they cannot even hope to cover the material appropiately, and it's why you see this proliferation of taught masters degrees. It's disgusting, and it ought to stop.

worthlessness comes when you start giving bachelor's degrees to people who chose to waste their tuition on partying

Taught Masters degrees sold to students whose GPA isn't sufficient to get them into medical school are a different kind of worthless. They are disgusting and reprehensible.

al2o3cr2• 13 years ago

"Deserve" seems to be a highly-loaded word here. If you can't remember anything taught in a class a year after taking it, do you really "deserve" credit for learning it? How would such a thing even be measured, let alone enforced?

hosh2• 13 years ago

This is a fair point.

However, now that college loans are collateralized, I don't think many college students really feel the pain and stake put into getting a college education.

I took courses at a community college for a stint. The courses I took during the day were drastically different from the courses I took during the night.

The day classes were filled with young college kids, not much different from the classes I took at Ohio State, all "clocking in" to put in their time.

The night classes were filled with professionals trying to get a Business Administration degree. They all work full time. Many have families that they are giving up time with to spend in class. Many are paying for college on their own, or through their jobs. The level of maturity and interest was significantly higher.

Justifying humanities is a bit more difficult. There are no observable practical employment opportunities with the humanities. Instead, they are meant to open up self-awareness, to give words and expression to one's own narrative, and in coming to greater understanding of self, it helps one to better navigate in the world. You don't get into the humanities to be able to get a job. You get into the humanities to get a handle on your life. In some ways, this is a much more profound education than an engineering program that teaches you how to make stuff. And I wonder, what would happen for those night school folks who self-select into humanities?

wonderzombie3• 13 years ago

I agree with you re: humanities. I should also say that I think it's a shame if what's "useful" is the only thing that we, as a society, decide to focus on. What about literature, art, and culture? Should we just content ourselves with Hollywood blockbusters and reality TV?

wonderzombie3• 13 years ago

They covered this; it's sort of a rational choice, in the sense that since college is required for everyone, kids just want their certification. You or I might not like this attitude (I don't) but it's not altogether surprising, is it? Perhaps with the ascendance of such as standardized testing, you just want to get the "right" answers with the least effort.

I was like this in high school (solid B student b/c lazy), but for whatever reason, I grew out of it in college and have since reacquainted myself with the joy of learning. I can understand why the whole thing might seem like a joke, especially if everyone around you feels the same way.

Maybe we should ask questions about why kids' expectations are what they are. I'll bet you they're a lagging indicator of some characteristic(s) of our educational system. As I said upthread, as adults we're beholden to them for making sure they turn out OK. To put it charitably, it's misguided to blame kids for the results of adult decisions.

orclev2• 13 years ago

I've always enjoyed learning, but I despised school and most college courses. Thankfully I'm an autodidact and don't need the school system to learn or else I'm afraid I wouldn't know much of anything. The public school system is in shambles and can barely be counted on to teach the most fundamental of curriculum let alone more advanced courses that should function as the foundation of future college learning. The university system in contrast is less interested in teaching any particular thing than it is in wringing every last cent of tuition out of each student before they either drop out, flunk out, or somehow manage to navigate the various flaming hoops and traps the university's have erected to stand between students and their eventual departure from them.

Nominally the various classes are supposed to provide an opportunity to learn, but in practice they're little more than a set of speed-bumps designed to prolong the amount of time a given student spends at the university. To that end it's really in the best interest of the university to do as little actual teaching they can as opposed to as much testing as possible, and it's largely reflected in the curriculum of many professors.

Once you've cleared the bar of the bachelors however things change somewhat. With most students leaving after attaining a bachelors (or a masters in the case of business students, and a PhD in the case of medical students), those left are destined to become faculty (or at least attempt to become faculty) and to take part in the other major fundraising activity in the university system, the attaining of grants. At this point the emphasis shifts from delaying attainment of your degree to press-ganging you into becoming a cog in the grant generating departments. In the post-grad track you're only as good to the university as the grant dollars you're helping to bring in.

Ultimately the problem boils down to the shift in emphasis of universities from places of higher learning, to businesses geared around extracting maximum profit from each individual customer in exchange for a largely meaningless paper that HR departments around the country still have a fetishistic devotion to.

pirateking• 13 years ago

We pretend to publish, they pretend to pay.

- The Wall Street Wall

im3w1l• 13 years ago

What would make you pay to read this article?

Is it the price? The effort of typing in all your details? Would you be willing to one-click purchase it for $1 ? $0.1 ?

Scienz4• 13 years ago

I wanted to read it, and considered paying since it claimed to be a mere $1, then realized my main interest in reading it was simply that it confirmed my prejudices about the (non-)educational system. Kind of silly to pay for an op-ed just to reinforce stuff you already think to be true, as opposed to paying for new information or debunking your false beliefs, so I think I'll save that dollar. Plus there's the google cache link below.

dredmorbius• 13 years ago

And this is the key reason why micropayment schemes don't work.

If they were effectively priced, the decision cost of trying to figure out if an item was worth purchasing or not would exceed the value of virtually all content.

It's why bundled subscriptions became popular, at a time when these were tied to a service (delivery by the publisher) and a set of enabling technologies (low-cost printing, paper, and ink). Even if a given article within the magazine, or a given issue in the year, left you wanting, the gross price was about right. And the result was achieved: people could share and commonly discuss ideas.

With Web-based publishing, the tollgate which postal delivery afforded is gone, and an alternative business model is wanted. And the result is that we're not discussing the content of the article (pretty light, BTW, from Google cache), but of the publishing model itself.

Twist: Though that topic is HN-worthy in its own right.

abrahamsen• 13 years ago

It is an opinion piece, and marked as such. I can't imagine being willing to pay for an opinion, certainly not from an author I don't know.

But people will donate to an author or organization that consistently publish (freely) arguments for opinions they happen to agree with.

NRA or ACLU would be examples of such organizations.

6d0debc071• 13 years ago

What would make you pay to read this article?

I'd have to expect the article to be reasonably capable of surprising me with well researched, well formulated arguments that change how I think about the issue. I don't think a paper that provides such a promise exists.

Being in the position of not having read the article my only information on it is it's an opinion piece about education and it's in the WSJ.

So I don't expect it to be well researched, well formulated, or surprising. "Oh, well, it's an opinion" -well, look: opinions are cheap enough that excellent opinions on the subject, from very intelligent people, are just given away:

http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/decline.htm

And I don't consider all opinions equal in the first place, there are various degrees of being informed, various degrees of bias.

I could write an opinion piece about how gutted I was to go to university and realise that by and large I'd already surpassed the curriculum in my own studies. How I went to university to be asked questions and go and find the answers, not to sit in a lecture hall listening to some toff read their powerpoint stack at us while we tried not to fall asleep. How even if you wanted to try something hard and new, (and could find something,) the fact is that university is competitive vs your other classmates, and if you try something hard and none of your classmates do - given that the courses will offer equal points (points only being given on time in the lectures and not on 'hardness' - all course being scored out of 20 - thus better to take multiple easy courses and score well in them than a few hard courses and score mediocre, even if you've learned a lot more in the latter) then you'll get worse grades than them.

... But, really, would you pay to hear me say that? I hope not.

As long as most papers are written for most people, and most people don't put much study in to events that don't directly impact their lives, the value of such is going to be low to me. Reducible almost entirely to the headline that an event took place - commentary as something skimmed over if bothered with at all.

Dirlewanger• 13 years ago

Yeah, the system's fucked up on many facets. Government handing out no-strings-attached-until-it-matters monies by the bucketfuls, your average high school counselor drilling into student's heads to "Apply, apply, apply! You better be applying to colleges and working on those college essays!", colleges more bloated than your uncle after Thanksgiving with bureaucratic puss, disillusioned professors whose wages stagnate while the football and basketball programs get new buckets of cash...

We can go on and on with the external reasons. They're all valid. But could we spare some blame for lazy-as-fuck kids who go to class drunk (if at all) and waste their time playing the new Call of Duty? What about their listless parents who barely ever stuck their nose in their kids' high school lives? You know how at every college orientation they rattle off to you everything that goes on there and all the different clubs, all that shit they shove in kid's faces? They want them to become engaged and take advantage of what the school has to offer. Networking. I despise that word but the more connections one gets and the more they get involved in is how the job's are going to be landed. It's not about what one knows anymore.

That, and being prudent about your program choice helps too. We know art history is cool...but cmon.

j2kun6• 13 years ago

The article gives plenty of blame to students.

widdershins• 13 years ago

There was a time when studying at university was about more than simply preparing young people for employment. It was about studying something in depth, at a high level. And actually, I don't happen to think it's a waste of time to study art, or history, or literature.

Now that university has become simply about getting a qualification that looks good on your resume, is it any wonder that people don't take it seriously, especially when the jobs market looks mostly hopeless for young people?

mathgladiator2• 13 years ago

And actually, I don't happen to think it's a waste of time to study art, or history, or literature.

It's not a waste, but it's a waste on many. Basically, there are two core questions we have a species: how we live and why we live. art, history, and literature help answer the why and the how is very clearly answered by the sciences/engineering.

Honestly, people just going to college for a future job is a waste of their time, the professor's time, and college resources.

If I had the time, I would enjoy taking a literature or art class these days.

nicholas73• 13 years ago

One of the classes that had impact on me at college was "Sources of Social Order." I was a very socially awkward and defensive kid, and it was a beginning for me to understand people better. Of course, it would have been better for me to learn organically on the playground instead of like an anthropologist watching apes, but then we can blame high school instead of university :)

j2kun6• 13 years ago

I think the problem is that students aren't even thinking about the job market (or at least the kind of student the OP refers to in the article). They assume it as a given that they will get a job. All the children are above average, and that sort of thing.

BrandonMarc• 13 years ago

There was a time when studying at university was about more than simply preparing young people for employment. It was about studying something in depth, at a high level.

This. When I was in high school, and college, I assumed this was the reason they taught math as heavily as they did. Kids would whine "but I won't ever need to know calculus" (or, worse, algebra) ... but I figured being able to learn something that deeply, consistently, from many different professors over many years is proof (to future employers, for example) that you can learn something you will need.

wonderzombie3• 13 years ago

Did you read the same article I did? There was plenty of blame to heap on the kids, though it's rational (ctrl-F for mini-max).

The problem is that the article just isn't particularly useful. It's an editorial, so fine, whatever. But it's long on anecdata and short on anything concrete. I'm hesitant to blame students for a system they didn't invent, don't run, and have approximately zero responsibility for. You just aren't thinking on this level at age 18.

Also, if people chose to occupy themselves only with what's "useful" (e.g. not art history), it would impoverish our culture. But I agree that kids need to be realistic about the relationship between their choice and their later prospects-- I agree it is a trade-off.

spiritplumber• 13 years ago

The root problem is simple to define -- The assumption that professors have been able to make, historically, is that university students are there because they are motivated. With everyone going to college, that is no longer the case.

orclev2• 13 years ago

Students are there because society at large has demanded that they be there. A college degree has transformed from a certificate of achievement into a proof of purchase that HR departments must validate in exchange for an offer of employment. The Universities are only too happy to play along with the charade as they hoover up increasingly absurd tuitions. The increase in tuition is yet another bubble being driven by "too big to fail" banks, this time saddling what are for all intents and purposes children with crippling lifelong debt which is conveniently immune from bankruptcy protection. Sometime soon the music will stop and all that's left is to find out who's going to be left without a chair. One thing that the previous bubble should have taught us is that it won't be the banks who are left holding the bag, which means it's between the universities and the students.

If I was running a University right now, I'd be very worried. The many and sundry administrators in particular should be asking themselves what's going to happen when universities suddenly find themselves in the position of having to cut their budgets by 50% or more of their current levels due to the sudden lack student financing options and the inability of students to pay even a fraction of current tuition levels. For that matter the worth or need of a degree in a great many fields will likely be called into question quite soon.

theorique• 13 years ago

The universities are top heavy with "Associate Vice Provost of Faculty Diversity" and other such bullshit admin pukes pulling down $300K per year for made up jobs, while the actual teaching is done by adjuncts who get literally raped by the universities who pay them a couple thousand dollars a course and cobble together a handful of courses to teach to break into the five figure salary range without health insurance or benefits. It's a travesty.

al2o3cr2• 13 years ago

Shorter WSJ: "We've been saying for years that those commies in the universities should 'run their schools like a business', but now that they're doing it OMG IT'S BAD!"

endtime• 13 years ago

Dr. Collier is a psychology professor at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, S.C.

I don't mean to sound elitist, but it's not like he's teaching math at Courant or CS at MIT. What does he expect from students with the "default" major at a school which accepts 91% of applicants [1]?

[1] http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/...

mercer• 13 years ago

Good point. I studied social psychology and communications, and in both fields I found the difficulty, and motivation/engagement levels shockingly low. Observing friends of mine who studied philosophy, engineering or physics painted a completely different story.

We Pretend to Teach, They Pretend to Learn

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