The state of education:

[shootingstar]

Perhaps Dogmama might be referring to the tendency of the tenure system where for some faculties at many universities, there is greater emphasis on continuous research.

Certainly in the Masters and PhD programs for alot of disciplines, there are no mandatory courses for Masters and PhD candidates as well as professiors, to take courses on cognitive and learning theory of adult learners.

HOWEVER ongoing improvement in teaching skills, is often greatly encouraged whereby internal courses are offered by some universities /colleges to existing university / college instructors to improve their teaching and facilitation skills when they are "hired' or on staff.

I guess I've heard this about teaching quality, from dearie's daughter who taught several lst year undergraduate university English literature courses when she was pursuing her Masters.

And also from a brother-in-law who does not have full professor nor associate professor status but he did his PhD, has been a researcher and instructor with faculty of Engineering (at Canada's largest university) for over past 25 years and still is. He usually carries a teaching load per semester of 2-3 courses for 2nd to 4th year undergraduate engineering courses. However recently in past 2 years, he carried a load of 4 courses for some semesters. That is tremendous because he still must do his own research work, still publishing and presenting internationally. I don't know about his teaching competency but he is by nature, a patient person who would be conscientous enough to teach something in a logical manner.

My initial earlier comments on increased student class size at the colleges and universities are more from the student's perspective, who have paid for their education with the expectation of instructional quality and attention.

Of course things get messy, when some of the lower ranked instructors go on strike. They did for several months at York University in Toronto. It really messed up many students in terms of educational quality and financially when it's expensive to extend accommodation and living expenses. In the end, their semester this year was compressed and shortened by several weeks or alot more. Students were also forced to remain in the city until June instead of April this year to complete their courses in order to get their credits counted towards their degrees. This happened to a nephew.