Why I’m No Longer a Professor

This is, in fact, happening when the stakes are much higher - in hospitals.<p>The UT Southwestern Medical Center is driven by residents&#x27; evaluations of their supervisors, and routinely operate on patients with absolutely no supervision present. The actual doctors are afraid of getting poor reviews and killing their chances for advancement, as has happened to their peers. So the residents do as they wish, often at great risk and harm to the patient.<p>I unfortunately have experience with this facility. My brother-in-law was operated on by their residents for a routine removal of a skin graft. Their supervisor (one of the faculty members mentioned in the article linked below) was not present. My brother-in-law received 5 holes in his intestines and was unable to eat for 12 months, surviving on TPN alone. The Mayo Clinic finally resected his bowels, leaving him questionably enough intestines for a normal life. Sadly, for state-affiliated medical facilities in Texas, there is little recourse after the fact. The state has limited damages in such a way that no attorney was interested in the case.<p>More details here: <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/dallas/headlines/20100801-ut-southwestern-faculty-let-unsupervised-resident-doctors-operate-at-parkland-.ece" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dallasnews.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;community-news&#x2F;dallas&#x2F;headlin...</a>

I&#x27;m 27 years old, I have a high income and I really enjoy higher education. At this point I don&#x27;t care about getting my MA. I just really enjoy education for educations sake.<p>But I don&#x27;t feel like there are many places for me to go- auditing courses is the best I&#x27;ve come up with.<p>I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;m not the only person who has this &quot;demand&quot; ... I just wish there was a way to connect the supply and demand in a better way :)

&quot;When I joined another institution that emphasized course evaluations, I saw that as an excellent sign of a more student-focused organization. Promotion and pay were based on achieving the highest student satisfaction ratings. But, I soon learned that statistically insignificant differences in evaluation scores determined wildly divergent financial remuneration. Savvy colleagues whispered that the quickest path to money was to never give students frank feedback: “flatter and never find fault.” Or, better yet, don’t give any feedback at all until the student evaluations are turned in: “entertain them, then give one big final exam or final paper.” &quot;<p>I am a teacher in Higher Education in India and this is what I am experiencing now. If I give good grades to students and entertain them they will give good feedback and that will in turn fetch me more incentives. No need to teach students anything.<p>Teaching is something that can be enjoyed but if it get worse, you cant find a job worst than this.

Interesting to read this piece[1] by the same author.<p><i>For the first time in my career, I understand why I’m so nervous and irritable every time I walk into a classroom. In my own small way—in the only way I personally will ever be able to comprehend it—I am feeling the burden of preparing the next generation of humans to be more humane and better individuals. It is an awesome responsibility. But it is also why I’m a teacher.</i><p>1. <a href="http://www.hult.edu/ja-jp/news/blogs/2012/july/why-im-a-teacher-by-john-c-beck/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hult.edu&#x2F;ja-jp&#x2F;news&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;2012&#x2F;july&#x2F;why-im-a-teac...</a>

Whenever I think about teaching I generally assume I&#x27;ll run into similar problems. Teaching apparently has tons of politics and strict rules.<p>The only thing I could think of is starting my own school but I haven&#x27;t gotten myself to make that jump yet.

I guess I&#x27;ve been fortunate to have not encountered these particular pathologies. Certainly student evaluations are important, but every chair&#x2F;dean I&#x27;ve dealt with has known enough to know how to read evaluations to weed out the honest feedback from the merely disgruntled or those just happy to not have to work too hard.<p>My complaints are generally that teaching evaluations don&#x27;t matter enough. I like teaching, and I&#x27;m good at it, but you can only afford to be as good as you can be in the 20% of your time you can carve out of the grant-writing budget to devote to students. Spend too much time teaching and it won&#x27;t matter how much the students learn.

<p><pre><code> I saw a news article about suicides among 50-something men in the US going up by 50%. </code></pre> I&#x27;m curious, is this statistically significant? I&#x27;m having trouble finding information about the variance of suicide rates.

In CS, I loved most of the practical assignments&#x2F;projects. Especially those where students had some freedom to come up with creative solutions. Even having things go wrong was fun now and then when it ended up teaching me that I could think on my feet and come up with a solution on the spot.<p>Sitting in a huge room, copying things off of a blackboard or simply trying to stay awake watching one slide after the other (usually stuffed with text so that you had to choose between listening to the professor or reading the slide) wasn&#x27;t fun at all.<p>I can program just for the fun of it, but I have a hard time learning just to learn something new. Wish it wasn&#x27;t like that, but it is. So when I learn it&#x27;s more like this:<p>1. I learn about new tools that I can use to make things<p>2. I pick one or two and try to do something<p>3. I get stuck, but I have a much better understanding of the problems involved now<p>Now that&#x27;s the point at which I&#x27;d like to be able to talk to a teacher and get back to #1, but this time on a higher level. I need to &quot;play&quot; with knowledge in order to understand it.

I got to the part of &quot;It wasn&#x27;t giving me joy anymore&quot; and, well... that accounts for a large portion of why anybody is no longer [fill_in_blank]. I believe circumstances make up most of the rest.

Good education is politically discouraged.<p>That is my impression, too. It is very very disappointing, as I am at the beginning of the trajectory John C. Beck just ended. His decision and words do not surprise me a bit...<p>I didn&#x27;t find out why, yet. The gist of my current theory is, that this crumbles down from old minds in politics getting more and more detached from what is actually happening in and around the {academe&#x2F;increasingly digital} world.

Disengaging from yesteryear&#x27;s institutions is not going to help them.<p>Best way is to force them to adapt. MOOCs seem to be the thing that will make education assess its business practices.<p>I wish I didn&#x27;t have to refer to education as a business, but alas, the idea that you can fine-tune any organization through business cases has been perpetuated.

As someone who just got my phd I haven&#x27;t experienced any of this kind of stuff. I think it has a lot to do with his field or that he has been away from the US system for a while.

Education is essentially a business.<p>You seem to think it&#x27;s a broken one (so do I).<p>You&#x27;re a savvy business man.<p>Change it!