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USM Forum -- Message Board -> AAUP-USM MESSAGE BOARD -> The Truth, As I See It
Post Info TOPIC: The Truth, As I See It
View from a Distance

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RE: The Truth, As I See It
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Jesse's Girl,

A major research university absolutely gives up some important things along the way. Unless carefully controlled, undergraduate classes become gigantic. Top level research professors buy themselves out of most of their teaching. Classes taught by international graduate students become the norm.

The costs are high, and research $ really contribute little to academic mission. The gains? Your professor might be one of the top researchers in the world in your specific area. Theinformation in technical areas tends to be very up-to-date. To the extent it has value, areas like regulatory compliance and accounting regulations are well represented on campus. You have a good chance of working in a hands-on research lab toward the latter part of your degree.

I think there is a very comfortable middle zone where USM now rests and at which it can be excellent. You have had, and now have top-level academicians in what may be called "basic research" if basic research means you can't start a company with it. A "world-class" historian needs a limited amount of funding, very little regulatory compliance input, and can be very productive. A "world-class" medical researcher, on the other hand, would need a tremendous amount of material, technical support, and regulatory compliance infrastructure (IRB, IACUC, Biohaz, etc.).

Saying you should be a teaching university and not a research university at USM's level is a travesty. When you have excellent minds at work, they owe it to the world not to let those ideas, words, and insights be lost when they retire.



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Cossack

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I wish I could add something worth while to the post of View from a Distance
but I think she/he just about covers it.

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Practical Guy

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quote:
Originally posted by: Albert
" And just why do students need to know this? Just how will that benefit them? Just how will knowing about tenure and faculty governance make the students' lives better? Just how will this knowledge help students get a job, which is what most students are in school for. You are a very petty person to call someone ignorant just because they do not know something you don't, especially when they have no practical use for knowing it. ..."

You asked some good questions, Albert.  Students need to understand the difference between truth (facts based on evidence and logical reasoning) and opinion. One difference is the test knowledge must go through.   If the university didn't have shared governance there would be no checks and balances that make the "test" valid. An administrator could take anyone off of the street to teach 500 students on-line and make money giving the customer err... student what they want--a piece of paper saying they have a college degree.  Without tenure the student would never know if what was taught was just the effect of political pressure or material that passed through the "test".


"Ignorant" is not a negative word.  We are all ignorant of various things.  Pointing out the truth is not a bad thing.  You can't reason logically just by using "word association" and being against "negative" words.  And you err when you said, "...especially when they have no practical use for knowing it".  Just because an ignorant person is not aware of the "practical use" of the knowledge they are receiving doesn't mean the knowledge is not very important and useful after they are educated.  You are telling the patients to heal themselves if you expect otherwise.


 



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Return Service Requested

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I think Jesse's Girl's post has been viewed as if a stranger has criticised a child of ours. When a stranger criticises our children, we posture defensively, because we are invested emotionally in that child. The stranger says, "That boy has absolutely no singing talent" and we become instantly defensive and angry. The truth may be that the child has no singing talent, though we are too close to the situation to admit that.

JG has suggested that maybe our child should try another musical pursuit, like piano, because there are several children in our child's grade who can sing well, and nobody in the child's class is learning the piano. We may say, "But our child wants to sing!" Let them sing. In a choir. Or in the shower. On stage, they need to be the pianist.

Often times, when criticism hits too close, we react with a defensive posture rather than with the open minds we say we have.

Jesse's Girl posed some questions that need to be answered, and most of what she or he got was venom. I think most of the previous posts could have been more thoughtful.

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LVN

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quote:
Originally posted by: Return Service Requested
"

Jesse's Girl posed some questions that need to be answered, and most of what she or he got was venom. I think most of the previous posts could have been more thoughtful."


I read back through the whole thread, and I do not see "most" of the replies as "venom" -- in fact, I see a great deal of thoughtful discussion. Some folks forget that argument is part of what academics do.

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