Comment on I'm a Tenured College Professor. I'm Quitting. Here's Why.

• Fedop@slrpnk.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  My experience from an R1 university (research focused) is that most of the professors didn’t primarily want to teach, but instead to focus on research, while teaching was what they did to make their salary. They were usually happy to teach a few courses, and especially upper level courses focused on their area of expertise, but the main goal was getting funding to pursue research, and that usually comes from (or is distributed through) some public institution.

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• FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It wasn’t so much about the money so much as the enshitification of the services we provided. They basically treated people like cattle, and I didn’t like it. They often cut programs that actually taught meaningful technical knowledge and skills. The tipping point was how my last Uni dealt with the pandemic. The bare minimum quality of online courses was one issue, but a bigger issue is that most courses were still required in person. I did the math and figured that by opening at full capacity that some students would die as a statistical probability based on age demographics and trends in outbreaks for the area at that time, and it was a special kind of soul-shredding to participate in a system that indirectly murders the youth who would lead us to a better future.

  But maybe I’m just a wuss, idk.

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  • Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Thanks for the reply I dont really know much about accreditation so that is a new thing to think about.

    I was asking about pay not as an insinuation(¿?) that had anything to do with why you left, i was just curious what you feel is an appropriate wage for teaching in your opinion.

    I wonder what it would take, probably some kind of administered association. Like if someone formed an independent educators union that could then detail what a member must do to prove they qualify for teaching. Then charge what you want for running your own classes as you see fit without the need for a campus. Like i love learning but cant do online or self directed learning. Ive only ever been in classes with 30+ kids so i figure there are other models to try.

    Once upon a time people had teachers brought to them and formal schooling wasnt much of a thing outside military institutions or great empires (though many exceptions did exist im sure)

    Im not sure what an ideal class size is, but if you can cut down the hours needed to pass a course, people would probably be willing to pay per course directly to the person teaching and everyone would have a better experience

    And in this modern world, being able to retrain to new things seems really important given expecting to work a job for 25 years then retire from it seems like something that is getting almost impossible to find if it isnt already

    To me, and my rose coloured glasses it seems like an obvious choice if the institutions of learning stopped actually caring about the learning

    And things like uber show us we can massively reorganize how we spend time on both sides of supply and demand

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    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Uber is incredibly unethical with how they treat their “contractors” as well as their customers, and that sort of thing is exactly my concern relating to my previous position. An ethical upright institution would be ideal, but decentralizing it might not be any better or worse.

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      • Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Um. Okay.

        Im really confused why you are focusing on that part of it. It doesnt need to be unethical, its just profitable and lacks a lot of oversight.

        But even if you want to nitpick, uber is still better than the system it has disrupted. Do you to derail this to go on an adventure in the moral and ethical bankruptcy that is the taxi industry???

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