I
don't understand how the cost of education can be so high to begin
with. I got a degree from UCSD, and frankly, I had adjunct, newly hired,
or post-docs as my instructors and graders. None of those positions pay
well with staring salaries lower than senior high school teachers. This
amount of talent had amassed some great ABD's who should have been
hired, but my university didn't have an open positions to promote to.
Instead, those waiting turned to other schools (Columbia, U. Michigan,
etc) to become associate professors. The tenured professors were the
ones to half ass lectures and recycles exams, then shames students for
not putting in their share of effort. Then there's that tenured
professor who basically gave up on research because his original Ph.D.
has been outdated by modern technology by 30 years. It's something I
don't get. Lecturing and teaching has very little correlation to quality
academic research produced. Why does the university system still
operate on this premise where those who deserve to teach, cannot do,
whereas those who cannot teach, must do?
This is the impairment in education I faced in my university. I just can't seem to reckon how the university system can get away compromising so much of the faculty, and then turn around and ask students and/or the state government to cough up more. This sort of a university education, and even rumors of inflation of non-necessary administrative staff drive me nuts.
In the ideal system, courses should be taught by specialized lecturers who know how to run a classroom. They would not be required to be active researchers which can cut significant costs. Researchers, in turn, wouldn't have to waste their time teaching undergraduates, and publish in name of the university. This means cutting down on the research, yes. Laying off research severely hurts the prestige and academic rankings. The question we should ask is, does the value of those academic rankings merit the incredible tuition fees? In Continental Europe, I suspect the answer is no. People still graduate from those institutions, are respected, and eventually find a job (well, ignoring PIIGS). The value in academic rankings I suppose matters most for those hoping for future post-graduate education, and marginal at best. The interview is done with a candidate, and not with the candidate's institution.
What's in the cost of a research university anyways?
I suppose there's an implicit agreement the UC system to cost so much more is due to the research funding of professor projects. In turn, students have the opportunity to participate in such research, which looks great. Yeah, I understand that, but I'd say there's at most a 10-15% student participation in those sorts of research positions. For the rest of the students, the majority, what are the students paying so much more for? The prestige?
Don't get me wrong. I went to UCSD, which is good but not great. Other institutions in the UC system haven't compromised in education. Berkeley tries very hard to make sure students have GSI's/graders/TA's who have doctorate degrees, and Berkeley has done a much better job at retaining talented faculty. Berkeley just happens to be the best run school in the UC system, whereas the other schools I suspect were closer to what I experienced.
This is the impairment in education I faced in my university. I just can't seem to reckon how the university system can get away compromising so much of the faculty, and then turn around and ask students and/or the state government to cough up more. This sort of a university education, and even rumors of inflation of non-necessary administrative staff drive me nuts.
In the ideal system, courses should be taught by specialized lecturers who know how to run a classroom. They would not be required to be active researchers which can cut significant costs. Researchers, in turn, wouldn't have to waste their time teaching undergraduates, and publish in name of the university. This means cutting down on the research, yes. Laying off research severely hurts the prestige and academic rankings. The question we should ask is, does the value of those academic rankings merit the incredible tuition fees? In Continental Europe, I suspect the answer is no. People still graduate from those institutions, are respected, and eventually find a job (well, ignoring PIIGS). The value in academic rankings I suppose matters most for those hoping for future post-graduate education, and marginal at best. The interview is done with a candidate, and not with the candidate's institution.
What's in the cost of a research university anyways?
I suppose there's an implicit agreement the UC system to cost so much more is due to the research funding of professor projects. In turn, students have the opportunity to participate in such research, which looks great. Yeah, I understand that, but I'd say there's at most a 10-15% student participation in those sorts of research positions. For the rest of the students, the majority, what are the students paying so much more for? The prestige?
Don't get me wrong. I went to UCSD, which is good but not great. Other institutions in the UC system haven't compromised in education. Berkeley tries very hard to make sure students have GSI's/graders/TA's who have doctorate degrees, and Berkeley has done a much better job at retaining talented faculty. Berkeley just happens to be the best run school in the UC system, whereas the other schools I suspect were closer to what I experienced.
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UC schools not named UC Berkeley or UCLA need to find ways to cut down on spending. Force less merited professors to retire (student evaluations mean something after 4-5 quarters), hire new masters students to teach general education courses. Move out of the quarter system because 1) it's not conducive for learning in STEM 2) it has higher administrative costs. It makes no sense when the trend is schools moving away (CSU schools, Ohio State), instead of schools moving towards a quarter calendar. Worse case scenario, flip the bottom 5 UC's into CSU's to cut back on their research spending, and that students at the flipped CSU Riverside/Merced wouldn't have to pay as much tuition as UC Berkeley. As for revenue streams, hire a patent clerk for each research building to file patents because the new patent system is first-to-file, and the university system is not conducive to writing patents.
UC schools need to bring their focus back to teaching. Hell, link up more UC programs with technical education like a RN program because there's only two which do it right now (LA and Irvine). Put a cap on general education courses as well; there's no reason for some UC schools to burden students with nearly 2 years of general ed courses (I'm looking at my alma mater UCSD, smh).
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