The state of education:

[Crankin]

Very true, Malkin. My DIL doesn't understand this yet, as she has only been there 4 years. My son, on the other hand, has seen what's happened to AZ and it isn't pretty.
Re: the student loan issue. It's just a whole different ball game now. I had 3 loans that were totally cancelled because I went into a field that needed people (special ed). But, they didn't total that much. My older son's girlfriend is a perfect example of what happens today. She has a degree in interior architecture from RISD (supposedly the premier art school in the country). Her parents gave her no help and in fact, didn't even encourage her to go to college (they are both drop outs from BU). She is incredibly talented. She got beat up in the Boston Public Schools and got herself scholarships to a private HS. But, she has not been able to get a decent job in her field. She is turning 30 in a couple of months and owes about 60K. She lived in NYC for 2 years, to get experience in her field, where she was barely paid above minimum wage and treated like a slave. She is now working as a trainee at a locally owned, very socially conscious BBQ place that actually is a huge supporter of the local cycling community. They are going to open another place and hopefully, she will get to design it and manage it. She does some graphic design freelancing on the side, but there are no jobs in her field. She is not lazy by any means. But, that 60K is hanging over her head. It's been deferred a lot. My son is afraid her credit will not allow them to buy a house if they get married. It really sucks! Most of this is because her parents gave her no financial education and the fact that she could have gone to MA College of Art and had the same education for a fraction of the cost.
I am not sure what the answer to all of these problems are, but I don't think we're going to see educational equity in the US in my life time. It takes money and commitment, both of which are lacking.

[Atlas]

In Norway university tuition is free (well, apart from books). You get a student loan and a stipend, which together is enough to live on, frugally. Most students hold a part-time job to have a bit more than that. But the loan has very good terms, so a lot of people choose to take up the full loan. New mothers get a stipend about the size of 6 months loan, if I remember correctly, to be able to stay home with the baby. If you hold a fulltime job when you give birth you're allotted almost a year's paid leave.

Don't shoot me, I just live here.

Oh, and we also have taxes that a lot of Americans would find horrendous. I don't, I pay them willingly.

I tried to see if I could still claim Norwegian citizenship but I think I was one generation too many in the United States

Concerning college, there are so many angles to it. I graduate in December and I'm really happy. Tuition and books keep going up and I and I'm really anxious and nervous to find a job in this market. On the class level, there are a quite a few people who are in college because thats what their parents told them they were doing, or they didn't want to start working full time. I listen to them talk about football scores in class or how drunk they're getting that night. But there are a lot of people who are there for an education, it just took me a while to get to the upper level classes to find them. The saddest part for me is watching professors get budgets slashed and still try to maintain the same level of education. I have a class right now that we didn't get a syllabus in class because the department didn't have enough paper and we had to print it ourselves. Maybe if they cut the football coach's salary we'd be able to afford supplies where they are needed.

[shootingstar]

I have a class right now that we didn't get a syllabus in class because the department didn't have enough paper and we had to print it ourselves. Maybe if they cut the football coach's salary we'd be able to afford supplies where they are needed.

Amazing, a shortage of photocopying paper.
Canadian universities don't have much on the collegiate sports team funding side anyway compared to the US. Community colleges in Canada support their teams (if some have any) even less.

My second university that I went, hugely supported its football team at the time. And annual fall homecoming game, parade, etc. was celebrated by the university and city. Very unusual for a Canadian university football team to have that level of high local support. Even so, at that time, there wasn't much money spent on the football team, etc. Judging from all the alumni propaganda that I get, probably hasn't change much. All the major Canadian universities have been aggressively fundraising by beefing up their full-time prospect research funding team members, renaming their university libraries to mirror the big benefactors, etc.

[Crankin]

You still get a syllabus on paper??
Everything we get is on line, through Blackboard. That way, the onus of printing is on the student. All of the required articles are there, too. I print everything out at home, but some students have to print their stuff at the university and now they have to pay for that (it was free until last year). There is almost no paper handed out by the professors.

[Dogmama]

The saddest part for me is watching professors get budgets slashed and still try to maintain the same level of education. I have a class right now that we didn't get a syllabus in class because the department didn't have enough paper and we had to print it ourselves. Maybe if they cut the football coach's salary we'd be able to afford supplies where they are needed.

Sorry, I have problems feeling sorry for most professors. They b*tch & moan if they have to teach over three classes/year and please, don't ask them to teach any class over 30 students without a teaching assistant to do the grunt work. And, they get tenure which means "job for life." I saw very few professors who really gave a damn about the students.

Collegiate athletics are often supported through donations by big money people. That's how they excuse giving themselves big salaries because the color of money is different. However, recently an ex-college athlete "hero" was vacillating between giving $2M+ to the athletic department or to the department of his major. Since he didn't graduate, it didn't take long for him to quit vacillating and the athletic department is getting a state-of-the-art training facility.

Meanwhile you, dear student, are printing out your own syllabi.

[MartianDestiny]

Sorry, I have problems feeling sorry for most professors. They b*tch & moan if they have to teach over three classes/year and please, don't ask them to teach any class over 30 students without a teaching assistant to do the grunt work. And, they get tenure which means "job for life." I saw very few professors who really gave a damn about the students.

Clearly you've never taught a class and have very little idea of the effort (and time) it takes to do so well. You also clearly have very little understanding of EVERYTHING that is expected of a Professor....here's a hint: teaching classes is less than 1/3 of the responsibility.

I've never seen a professor moan about 2-3 classes a semester (that's 4-6 a year...not 3 a year...) for starters.

Here's an estimate of the time involved: 2-3hrs to prepare a lecture X twice a week, per class. Maybe you've already taught it before, that's still 1-2hrs to go over your notes and recall/update, per lecture, per class. So, if you are teaching 3 classes a semester that's 6-18hrs per week just in preparing lectures. Then there's grading. A 5-10 question multiple choice quiz will take 5 minutes per student to grade; 3 classes at 30 students a piece (forget the large lecture first year/non-major courses that can easily have 50-200 students...) that's 450 minutes or 7.5 hrs. A mathematical or scientific problem set homework of 5-10 questions...easily 30 to 45 minutes per student to grade. 5-10 page essays, an hour per student. Tests, midterms, finals, 45min-1hr per student. You'll have at least one of those a week. Then there's office hours: 3-5 hrs per class per week where you may or may not have time to do something else. O, and you'll be all but expected to hold review sessions as well.

That is a full time job, but remember it's 1/3 of the expected responsibilities. Maybe you have graduate assistants to help with grading, review sessions, office hours, but it's still a significant number of hours.

Then there is research. They want you to publish 1-3 meaningful articles per year in peer reviewed journals (or be writing a book). I can assure you that is a full time job as well, even if you have students doing some of the research.

Then there are committees, admissions boards, new faculty interviews, community service, conferences (which you had BETTER present at...), etc.

If you can't keep up with that FORGET getting Tenure, and MANY MANY professors DO NOT HAVE IT. "Associate" "Assistant" = NON-TENURED.

I've come across a few professors that "didn't care" about students (ONLY a few). Most cared and would do anything in their power if they actually knew you (yea, that meant actually talking with them, showing up at office hours, etc). Most were also completely frazzled. Trying to keep up with all the expectations at work, trying to get tenure (because if you don't within an alloted period you are GONE, not because they wanted a "job for life"), trying to raise a family, trying to actually get home before midnight, dealing with the ridiculous "we don't have enough paper for you to print that test" crap, etc, etc.

Despite that a lot of them actually enjoy their jobs, kudos to them!

And no, I am not a professor and do not want to be.

[Owlie]

You still get a syllabus on paper??
Everything we get is on line, through Blackboard. That way, the onus of printing is on the student. All of the required articles are there, too. I print everything out at home, but some students have to print their stuff at the university and now they have to pay for that (it was free until last year). There is almost no paper handed out by the professors.

Most of my profs have handed one out at the beginning of the semester, and then anything else is online. The older professors don't use Blackboard, so they print copies of everything. Of course, it helps that in my major departments, no one's really hurting for money. We pay for about $25 worth of printing per semester, but I've never used it. The "print to here" system is too unreliable for me to rely on.

Dogmama, there's an interesting split here about professors' attitudes. There are the ones who really like to teach, who generally get the intro classes and have no research responsibility (and no, they aren't tenured). The ones who don't like teaching classes, I've found, really don't want to teach intro courses (which are full of whining pre-meds in my major) and are actually enthusiastic about teaching upper-level courses. My research advisor used to teach introductory organic chemistry. He didn't like it, and he just wasn't good at communicating it. I took his class on biochemistry, however, and he was excited about it and willing to go over everything with students on a one-on-one basis.
I've had one prof who out and out said that he doesn't care, he's got tenure, and he pretty much doesn't care about anything but his research.
I can't really comment on the TA business--I've had classes with 300+ people (a TA or two, I think, is necessary there!), and I've had classes with 15-30 people. The profs, for the most part, write and grade their own tests, unless it's a 300-person introductory chem course. The TAs have really only been a major factor in lab classes and the introductory history class.
I don't think my experience is typical, though: I go to a private university with a relatively small undergraduate population (4,300 out of about 10,000 total students).
For some fun numbers: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1086

[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.

[Owlie]

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.

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.

My experience does come from a research university. A small research university, but a research university nonetheless. My research advisor teaches two lecture courses a year now that he's not teaching o-chem, but he also acts as a research advisor to undergrads like me. The profs who don't teach undergrad courses often have to teach grad courses in addition to their research, academic advising, and research.

[OakLeaf]

I never had a professor who really seemed not to care.

Teachers in elementary and high school, definitely. Never in college or law school. There was definitely variation in their ability to make the material (1) clear and (2) interesting, but never a lack of commitment.

From the opposite perspective - I taught one course at a technical college. I know I didn't do a very good job of it - I appear to be the only one in my family who didn't get the teaching gene - but it wasn't for lack of trying. Still, for the $3.00 an hour it worked out to, I could've worked at McDonald's and gotten something to eat, too. Whatever amount of homework students do for each class, multiply that by about five for the professor.

And from a third perspective - my sister, the tenured professor, is lucky to have a stay-at-home husband, otherwise she'd never have been able to raise her daughter. Her work is every bit as demanding as mine ever was. Sure she complains about her undergrads sometimes - just as all the teachers here vent about their students, and just as I had some problem clients - but she loves what she does. Once every few years she has a semester when she doesn't have any classes, but that doesn't mean she isn't extremely busy with her research, only that she has a bit more flexibility with her time.

C'mon, we need a professor here to defend her profession with the same teeth and claws V. has for hers.

[Grog]

Oh, and we also have taxes that a lot of Americans would find horrendous. I don't, I pay them willingly.

I wish I could say the same. I am appalled at how the Canadian government has been cutting taxes continuously for the past 10 years, while cutting the services that the most needy among us can't live without.

I used to actively fight against this, now I just don't know what to do anymore.

[Crankin]

I don't mind printing my syllabus. I bought a laser printer, just to print the large number of articles I need to read. Much better than spending hundreds on xerox machines, as I did last time I was in grad school in the eighties.
My school is a very small university that used to be a women's college for educators. The grad school has been coed and has other had other majors for many years, but the undergraduate college just went coed a few years ago. There's a few sports teams, but, that is definitely not the focus.
Like Oakleaf, I don't think I've ever had a professor who didn't care. I've had a few who were horrible instructors and I agree with Shooting Star that they need some basic lessons on instructional strategies. I actually did that for my pyschopathology prof last year. He's interesting and I'm sure, a great therapist, but very disorganized and unclear in his written directions/expectations. I showed him how to write a rubric for assessing group projects and he was rather surprised at the whole thing. It made him think, at least.

[Dogmama]

I apologize for painting all professors with a broad brush. I am very aware that there are excellent professors who do cutting edge research and deeply care for their students.

I spent 30 years as a business manager in a research university & I'm very aware of what professor do and don't do.

During budget cuts, my staff was let go. Tenured professors stayed. They didn't demand a less amount of work from my staff; indeed, as budgets were cut, audits were heightened, professors tried to stretch their dollars (and the rules) and we had more work. When I retired, I worked 70 hours/week. So did my (remaining) staff. And that just allowed us to keep up.

This could get into a real P*ssing match and frankly, I don't want to dredge up those memories.

Let me just say that I apologize if I offended anybody. Enough said.

[Aquila]

Well, erm, I'm a professor at a mid-size comprehensive (that is, not a Research I) university.

I'm sorry to hear you've had bad experiences with professors. As with other professions, sometimes people are jerks and sometimes they tire out. And certainly, none of us is perfect.

I think most professors work pretty hard, but much of our work is invisible to the public and maybe doesn't seem important. And we don't do a very good job explaining what we do.

When I was a student, in the late 70s, the taxpayers of the state of California provided about 70% of the cost of my education at a UC school. Now, I'm guessing the state contributes something more like 25-30% of the cost of a student's education at a UC school. Some of the rest is made up by corporate stuff, but mostly the difference is paid by students. When I was a student, people who needed financial aid often got grants; now students with the same level of need get loans so they're starting out with serious debt. The same trend has happened in a lot of states.

The public used to perceive universities and colleges as a public good, the idea being that a well educated citizenry would contribute more to the economy and so forth. Think about the growth of public education in the GI bill era after WWII, and how significantly that growth was echoed in economic prosperity in the 50s and 60s.

That perception started changing in the 80s; now the public perceives higher education as a private good, and wants individuals to pay for it. To me that seems a huge mistake. And the unwillingness to pay for education is echoed at the elementary and secondary levels; our schools are badly strapped for cash.

In the state where I work now (Wisconsin), the prison system has grown in state funding while the university budget has shrunk. If you chart the money out for both institutions, the graphs are heartbreaking. We're willing to pay for jails, but not for education and programs that will help people contribute to their communities and not end up in jails. When you think about the 80s, the whole "tough on crime" movement paralleled the move away from funding education well. Now our prisons are more and more crowded, and our students are hurting. Personally, I'd rather put my tax money towards school funding at all levels, and I vote accordingly, but there are a lot of people who think differently and vote accordingly.

Wisconsin state employees have taken a 3.06 or so percent pay cut this year (called "furloughs" in hopes that it won't be permanent). But we have it good compared to California employees, who are looking at 6% plus. On the other hand, we're among the lowest paid faculty in the upper midwest, and we haven't had a raise in like 5 years (our promised raise last year, 2%, was cut in addition to the 3% cut).

Education is expensive and you can't really outsource it. Even if you pay instructors modest wages, you're still paying ever increasing health and benefits costs. It's hard to make educational productivity grow in the same way that industries have made productivity increase through greater automation and such. Students aren't widgets. (Our cost increases are somewhat similar to those in medicine and for some of the same reasons, though their salaries tend to be a whole lot better.)

And now, I have to get back to grading. Sorry for writing such a long response.

[eofelis]

I feel like I graduated just in time. Well, just in time for an employment bust, but also before it all hits the fan here in Colorado in terms of higher education.

I was a very non-trad student (41, 42 in a few days!) and I just got a BS in geology, minor in GIS from a small, cheap, kind-of-mediocre state college.

I breathe a sigh of relief everyday that I was able to get enough "free" money every semester that I didn't have to take out any loans. Every year I applied for every grant and scholarship that I could. I kept my GPA (3.8) up to get the good scholarships. I got enough money most every semester to pay f/t tuition ($2000-2500) and some living expenses. I usually worked p/t on campus.

The Boy graduated with the same degrees from the same college in 2006. His 4.0 GPA helped get him plenty of scholarships also.

We have been working as sub-contractors lately, kind of p/t. We continue to live cheap and we won't starve.

We are starting to consider grad school. We'd like to go somewhere where can both go and coordinate our schedules.