Quote Originally Posted by shootingstar View Post
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.