young PhDs in the workplace

Earlier in this thread, there were some comments abut university ranking. The criteria used for such ranking are pretty vague. One criterion that I suspect is not considered directly is the opportunity for direct professor-student contact. I don't mean contact between TA's and students. I mean contact between senior professors (Associate Professor and above) and students. Student-faculty ratio may be considered an indirect measure, but it is not accurate in my experience. Another criterion should be resources, such as libraries. Those gaps are reasons I don't put a lot of weight in published ranking and think visits by prospective students can be valuable. I am amazed when students present their problems on ETO and say, in effect, that the professor is not available to answer questions.

John

jpanhalt said:

I am amazed when students present their problems on ETO and say, in effect, that the professor is not available to answer questions.
John

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That is not surprising considering that many professors focus purely on research - or more precisely, publishing as many research papers as possible - nowadays, and not on teaching. In some of the universities that I know of in Singapore, annual review of professors is usually based on criteria such as how many research papers published, how many conferences (IEEE, etc.) attended, and not how good the teaching skills are or how much time spending on attending to students' queries. Some of those foreign professors, for example those from China (I am not being racist here, just quoting a fact) have very poor English pronunciation and could hardly make themselves understood in English, let alone teaching a subject or helping students with their problems effectively. There is sometimes a feedback system which student can use to submit feedback regarding their professors at the end of the semester and give them a ranking on several criteria (communication, helpfulness, student attentiveness, etc). However, my guess is that those figures are only used on a aggregate basis and nobody in the management ever spends time actually reading the comments and takes action.

Years ago I have a friend who scored only 10/100 for his final exam paper in one of the programming module. He requested for a remark, for which he received a letter which basically says "Your scores remain unchanged.". Because he did well for his projects and mid-term tests, he only got a D and still did not fail the module. The university policy is that, if you did not fail the module you will not be allowed to see your exam paper or have a chance to discuss it with the professor and have to accept the appeal results as final. My friend was quite sure that he had done well and definitely could not get 10/100. He wrote to the department head and requested to see his paper. The request was accepted. Guess what, his score was input wrongly into the system while the actual score was much higher and he got an A for the module. No apology was ever given. I wonder if the professor really spent time to recheck the exam paper and how many more remark requests were never attended to.

mdanh2002 said:

That is not surprising considering that many professors focus purely on research - or more precisely, publishing as many research papers as possible - nowadays, and not on teaching. In some of the universities that I know of in Singapore, annual review of professors is usually based on criteria such as how many research papers published, how many conferences (IEEE, etc.) attended, and not how good the teaching skills are or how much time spending on attending to students' queries. Some of those foreign professors, for example those from China (I am not being racist here, just quoting a fact) have very poor English pronunciation and could hardly make themselves understood in English, let alone teaching a subject or helping students with their problems effectively. There is sometimes a feedback system which student can use to submit feedback regarding their professors at the end of the semester and give them a ranking on several criteria (communication, helpfulness, student attentiveness, etc). However, my guess is that those figures are only used on a aggregate basis and nobody in the management ever spends time actually reading the comments and takes action.

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This is common in universities in other countries too. I understand most of these problems as research papers are nowadays a measuring stick for every academic staff/lecturer's performance. So many have focused too deeply into research, they have forgotten the most basic things for the students - which are good communication and motivation.

I dealt with a professor from China too. She was really good in doing her stuff but still struggled with English. Luckily, I helped her a bit by communicating regularly. I have known a few from India and Pakistan too - they do speak okay and I understand most of what they are saying.

mdanh2002 said:

Years ago I have a friend who scored only 10/100 for his final exam paper in one of the programming module. He requested for a remark, for which he received a letter which basically says "Your scores remain unchanged.". Because he did well for his projects and mid-term tests, he only got a D and still did not fail the module. The university policy is that, if you did not fail the module you will not be allowed to see your exam paper or have a chance to discuss it with the professor and have to accept the appeal results as final. My friend was quite sure that he had done well and definitely could not get 10/100. He wrote to the department head and requested to see his paper. The request was accepted. Guess what, his score was input wrongly into the system while the actual score was much higher and he got an A for the module. No apology was ever given. I wonder if the professor really spent time to recheck the exam paper and how many more remark requests were never attended to.

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Once I heard a scenario where a lecturer performed below average in his teaching skills, 80% of the students in the entire campus (he was lecturing a common Mathematics subject) failed miserably. Guess what? He was not going to admit that it was his performance problem. The office had to retransfer him out to a different department for a few semesters. It was a difficult situation and that was only for a semester, luckily.

The art about lecturing and teaching is more towards motivating and inspiring the students, and not about how many people cited the article one has written. This is a really difficult thing to do, and once if done properly, it is a rewarding task.

It is incredibly important that professors at the universities do their own research, have their own way of thinking, their own theories. Then they can teach their students their own theories, teach them to think critically. It used to be that professors in different universities could teach completely different approaches to the subject. And that was good. Because this tought students to observe, to dream, and to think, which is the most important goal of the education.

Now you get standartized tests. To pass the exams you do not need vision and understanding. You do not even need a professor - you'll be better off with encyclopedia or Internet search. Preparing students to written tests is hardly any teaching, and it is very hard to make talented people to do such job. Judging professor's performance by the results of such tests is also incredibly stupid. This completely strips out all the creativity and individuality out of teaching. Education turns into training, and, in this form, it is better done by online courses than by universities.

If a school has professors that typically cannot be approached, why go to that school? There are all matter of related things that should be considered in school rankings that are not. That is why I think rankings are relatively unimportant. Now, of course, all schools have some poor faculty. But if you are at a school where most or all of the faculty impress you as being like that, you should be mature enough to accept some of the blame for your decision to go to that school.

NorthGuy, I had the questionable fortune to grow up in Southern California in the 1950's and have been subjected to standardized testing from early elementary school on. I never had a professor in college or university that "taught to the test." In fact, our faculty considered schools that did that as second rate, and among my classmates, we felt the same way. In all my years, I never knew a single classmate who took a preparatory course (e.g., a Kaplan course) for one of those standardized examinations. There was only one standardized examination -- a certification examination at the end of our studies -- for which we even studied. Again, why pick a university that assesses its professors' performance on how students do on such tests?

John

NorthGuy said:

It is incredibly important that professors at the universities do their own research, have their own way of thinking, their own theories. Then they can teach their students their own theories, teach them to think critically. It used to be that professors in different universities could teach completely different approaches to the subject. And that was good. Because this tought students to observe, to dream, and to think, which is the most important goal of the education.

Now you get standartized tests. To pass the exams you do not need vision and understanding. You do not even need a professor - you'll be better off with encyclopedia or Internet search. Preparing students to written tests is hardly any teaching, and it is very hard to make talented people to do such job. Judging professor's performance by the results of such tests is also incredibly stupid. This completely strips out all the creativity and individuality out of teaching. Education turns into training, and, in this form, it is better done by online courses than by universities.

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That's not how it's done in the UK, there's a continual series of exams, tests, course work marking, and a final series of exams - ALL of which go towards your degree.

Due to the continual marking you can keep track of how you're doing, and it allows the University (if you're doing a four year masters degree) to 'bump you down' to a Bsc if you're not performing well enough to complete your Masters.

Incidentally, my daughter (who's just come home for Christmas) went to Glasgow to a series of lectures on Monday/Tuesday with her entire department, one of the guest lecturers was her supervisor from York, Prof Dave - she was very pleased to get the chance to meet up with him again.

In the Netherlands apparently there's only final exams, and that's it - and you can simply keep retaking them until you pass

The Dutch professor she worked with did say they prefer taking British interns to Dutch ones, as they are far better educated - and he's a top professor at a Dutch University

Nigel Goodwin said:

The Dutch professor she worked with did say they prefer taking British interns to Dutch ones, as they are far better educated - and he's a top professor at a Dutch University

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This also could be because the students willing to go to other country to get a better education are more dedicated

In theory you don't 'earn' a PhD without talent. Unfortunately the talent is often learning to work problems without any real understanding. Another one is a talent for taking tests.

Unfortunately with fed mandated testing teachers are now teaching to test. In other words they are teaching kids to pass the test rather than teaching the subject material in general. As these kids hit the workforce it will get worse.

When I was doing my MS we had to take comprehensive exams. You could only take them twice. To graduate a MS you needed a given percentage, to continue on to a PhD you needed a slightly higher score. The comprehensive scores did not play any part in you GPA but if you failed to pass them you did not get a degree. We also had to complete orignal research, submit a substantial paper on it to our committee, and defend it at orals.

I do not know if any of that has changed.

Standardize Testing. Interesting topic. You want to contrast and compare schools, and grade them, to see which are educating and which are not.

By what metric do you propose to hold the teachers accountable? I can tell you my wife was going to take a statistics course, signed up for it, and attended the first class. She dropped it immediately. The course title was Statistics using Excel. The professor stated "they won't be using excel in the course." It turns out the interim Dept Head hired this teacher and tried to convince my wife that excel would indeed be used in the class even if she had to teach that portion herself.

I love the Educate -vs- Training argument. Looking at the Merriam-Websters definitions they are intertwined and the only place I've seen a definitive discrimination between the two is in a military manual.

As a transitive verb, educate states "to train by formal instruction and supervised practice especially in a skill, trade, or profession" which is definition two and what we are actually discussing.

Also a transitive verb, train states "to teach so as to make fit, qualified, or proficient", and the one people hang their hat on the most in this argument, a newer "definition of train" ... "to make prepared (as by exercise) for a test of skill." People playing loose with the language because it fits their agenda.

Let's look at tests. Tests are "something (as a series of questions or exercises) for measuring the skill, knowledge, intelligence, capacities, or aptitudes of an individual or group." Standardize tests only compare the institutions and/or teachers. The objectives of each "standardize test" is available online for the teachers to develop their lesson plans to ensure compliance with the objectives of the test. Are they "teaching the test", yes and no. They are teaching the test with respect to covering the objectives. They are not teaching the test unless they have access to the question pool. In the latter case, the cheating teacher should not be employed.

On the topic of professors ... you get what you paid for. You can bet if the students were paying for their education out of their pocket, the inadequate professor would be run out of town. Since it's typically government funds (scholarships and grants), the poorly prepared professor escapes detection.

After all, the professors, and teachers, are suppose to teach ... "to provide instruction" ... "to impart the knowledge of " ... "to accustom to some action or attitude."

All material in quotes are the respective definitions found at Merriam-Webster's online dictionary.

JoeJester said:

By what metric do you propose to hold the teachers accountable? I can tell you my wife was going to take a statistics course, signed up for it, and attended the first class. She dropped it immediately. The course title was Statistics using Excel. The professor stated "they won't be using excel in the course."

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That is an excellent example. I'll use to illustrate the concept.

First of all, you need to trust your teacher. The very reason we would want to hire a teacher is because he knows more than we do. There's no way for us to tell if he is a good teacher or not, we can only trust him. If he thinks that Excel is not important for his Statistics course, then he might be right. If we don't trust him on that, we will end up with a teacher who knows less than we do, and then he will teach us something we already knew. And since this will be easy to learn, we'll be happy with the learning process and will recommend the teacher to others.

If we do trust the teacher, we may get into very unconfortable territory where we will have to do some Wax-On/Wax-Off stuff before we gain enough knowledge to see where it's going. Without deep trust to the teacher, this uncomfortable feelings will lead us to belive that the teacher is bad, his teachings are hard, and we better quit and will never recommend this teacher to others.

Statistics is all about understanding data collection, probabilities, distribution etc. Without such understanding, statistic formulae will lead us to all wrong conclusions. Ability to enter few statistical formulae into Excel is nothing compare to the amount of effort that is necessary to gain such unerstanding.

I knew one doctor, who was hired by a city. They had a terrible situation. The number of birth defects was steadily increasing over the years. The city wanted to make a case for air pollution endangering its population. The doctor understood statistics. Instead of jumping to conclusions, he looked at the data collection practices and original cases. Turned out that there was no problem at all. The living standards were rising and what was considered normal 30 years before was now considered a birth defect. He collected his own statistics and came to an opposite conclusion that birth deffect rate are actually decreasing.

Doing calculation wasn't important part of his job, but he really had to spend lots of time putting together numbers and calculating statistics. This took most of his time. There was no Excel back then, but let's assume for a moment that it was. You would've been able to see him spending hours doing statistics in Excel.

If you wanted to replicate his success, you would look at this and said: "That's what it is. That is his skill. I want to learn that and be like him". And you would sign up for the "Statistics with Excel" course. Imagine that at the first day the teacher says that he doesn't really care about Excel, but rather wants to explain the basics of statistics, so that you could understand the concepts. But you don't agree. You've seen doctor using Excel, and that's what you want. That is the skill to learn. So, you go to a different course, and the "bad" teacher gets fired.

I certainly don't know if the situation with your wife was somehow similar to that or not. I've just used it as an example as teaching concepts (such as basics of statistics) gets successfully replaced with teaching skills (using Excel). It actually went so far that there's even no distinction in the dictionary definition.

Not only didn't he say they weren't going to use Excel, he also stated he didn't know anything about Excel.

That is false advertising ... Claiming a course titled Statistics using Excel ... and then not wanting to use the program.

My wife was correct in dropping that course and getting her money back. How many of the other students in the class just rolled with the punches and took the course? I don't know. But if I were an employer and seen in someone's C:V that they had Statistics using Excel, I would expect them to know Excel. So, because they had a teacher who "couldn't deliver the expected course" that student didn't get their money's worth in that course. I don't care if the professor was the greatest professor in the world, if they couldn't deliver what was advertised, they didn't need to teach the course.

I would expect a Statistics course with or without Excel to cover statistics. They emphasized the use of Excel in their curriculum. I highly doubt any statistics course would be just plugging in formulae.

The theory behind stats is extremely important because they are dangerous in the hands of people who do not really understand them. I once was in a session put on by marketing where the presenter showed a slide with us ahead of our competition by less then the LSD (least significant difference) , yet he claimed the survey showed us to be the best! For stats to be useful you need to know more then how to punch numbers into a spread sheet.

People who really know stats can be quite passionate about the subject. I expect the prof might say that once you know theory it is but a small step to use it in Excel or whatever you choose. I image he viewed teaching Excel as a waste of class time. And to a large degree he was right, but the admin billed the class as using Excel so I can see why people would expect it.

I image he viewed teaching Excel as a waste of class time. And to a large degree he was right, but the admin billed the class as using Excel so I can see why people would expect it.

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That wasn't his choice to make. He hired on to teach the class, not reinvent the wheel to his liking. Do you "re-invent" the specifications of a client? Do you charge more for those additions or do you keep the price at the agreed upon value? If you want to charge more, and the client refuses, do you complete the job with the original specifications? Your choice.

This professor didn't inform the Chair of his intention to change things as the Chair was quite surprised when my wife called to complain.
If he didn't like Excel, for whatever reason, it was his choice to not accept the teaching assignment.

JoeJester said:

I don't care if the professor was the greatest professor in the world, if they couldn't deliver what was advertised, they didn't need to teach the course.

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That is absolutely true. You practically made my point. People do not want great professors. Therefore, great professors, slowly but surely, get replaced by the people who deliver what was advertised.

There is clearly a difference depending on rank of what a "professor" can do. Senior professors can teach what they want. They design the course. A hired-gun professor does not have that liberty. At the top extreme, Robert B. Woodward (chemist) at Harvard not only decided what he would teach, he decided how much time he would take. He was a guest in our department and was asked "how much time?" His response, "As much as it takes." For most of us, his lecture was over too soon. He was captivating.

I do agree that the course title should reflect what is going to be taught. But if there is a disagreement, is it the professor's fault or or some functionary's fault in administration? The person who actually compiled the course descriptions may have thought "Excel" meant "accelerated."

John

JoeJester said:

That wasn't his choice to make.

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What John said. I think you are so upset at the switch that you fail to see that it made sense.

Had the prof stuck to teaching spread a spread sheet in this class the students would have come away with much less knowledge of stats.

Had the prof stuck to teaching spread a spread sheet in this class the students would have come away with much less knowledge of stats.

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We will never know that because my wife didn't attend that course. The hired gun wasn't hired to design or modify the course, they were hired to teach it. If he could not combine all the elements required into the course, he should not have accepted the assignment. The fault lies with the professor and the interim Chair that hired him, pure and simple.

This was a statistics course at a community college.

The students have some expectations when they read the syllabus. If the school can't deliver on that, shame on them. Your hung up on thinking the professor would only concentrate on the rote method of inputting data and formulae's in the spreadsheet and no theory behind it, Well, if that was happening, I would have recommended to my wife she needed to drop the course as well, as it was falsely advertised.

My wife taped all the lectures in her courses and I converted them to mp3 files for her to review. This allowed her to skip around faster using windows media player than the cassette. It also gave me a chance to notch out the ELF hum in the room acoustics from fans ... etc.

Would you attend a digital course if the professor decided to use beam switching tubes as a divider? Hell no, you would be upset and expect something a little more current. I see people on these forums who get upset when some student in the homework section selects the '741 for the op amp in their project.

What John said. I think you are so upset at the switch that you fail to see that it made sense.

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It wasn't the professors call to make. He didn't design the course, he wasn't part of the permanent staff at that community college. He was just a substitute teacher ... who didn't know or like an essential part of the course. He should have not been hired by the interim Chair. Would you hire someone whose recent experience with electronics was 40 years ago technology?

That is absolutely true. You practically made my point. People do not want great professors. Therefore, great professors, slowly but surely, get replaced by the people who deliver what was advertised.

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And engineers get replaced when they can't deliver on the clients expectations.

People want great professors/teachers executing great plans resulting in great results. Of course, everyone is working under time constraints and the standardize test ends up being the metric used by governments ... ultimately ending with the funding received. A classical catch-22.

I do agree that the course title should reflect what is going to be taught. But if there is a disagreement, is it the professor's fault or or some functionary's fault in administration? The person who actually compiled the course descriptions may have thought "Excel" meant "accelerated."

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Had the interim chair acknowledge there was an error, that would have been different. She has no idea the person she hired to teach the course didn't know anything about Excel.

JoeJester said:

Had the interim chair acknowledge there was an error, that would have been different. She has no idea the person she hired to teach the course didn't know anything about Excel.

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Some people like getting the position and title but don't realize there is a job attached.

It was that chair's responsibility, interim or not, to know what was going on in the educational programs of her department. Did she not interview all members the department upon taking her position? Didn't she discuss teaching obligations with each one, particularly new ones (i.e., anyone she was not familiar with)? Didn't she meet with department members on a regular basis, like at least weekly, to discuss what was going on in the department?

I wonder if that interim chair was promoted after that incident?

John