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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Prof here.  In my discipline, I would say quality of instruction has improved at a lot of Top-50 schools.  Tenure requirements used to almost ignore teaching, but in my experience it is now treated as a serious consideration.  In addition, some tenured/tenure track faculty have been replaced by teaching professors-- academics will lament this because it reduces a school's research, but such faculty are hired/evaluated/promoted solely on teaching, so they also take it seriously.  When I started my career, there was literally no training or consideration related to teaching when we taught PhD students, and now we essentially don't let them go on the academic job market until their teaching evaluations have hit a reasonable threshold.  So I think teaching has become significantly stronger over time.[/quote]

Thanks for sharing this. It makes sense. Given the significantly greater rate at which students communicate with one another these days, you can't hide dissatisfaction with teaching quality for long. [b]It behooves colleges to do what they can to make sure their students are happy with their instructors,[/b] lest they get a reputation that will lose them some of the students they want most.[/quote]

A lot of students are just interested in getting good grades easily. I don't think academia should be set up along a customer/service provider model. It's not like going to dinner and ordering a meal. Students do not buy a grade, they earn it.[/quote]

I'm not at all clear as to how you got the idea I was implying any of what you said. It's important for colleges to have professors who students will want to learn from--that's my point.[/quote]

NP here.  Consider the case of Dr. Maitland Jones, Jr, the chem professor at NYU who was fired after students created a petition protesting that his class was too difficult.  This class was a “weed out” course for kids who hoped to eventually enter med school, and the professor has been interviewed saying that in recent years, students expect and demand higher grades for poorer quality work and effort than in the past; this man had published and contributed as an expert in his field and used to be tenured at Princeton for many years.  In the past, the course was understood to be one that separated those capable of the rigors of med school from the rest, but now students seem to feel that because they are paying a lot of tuition money and want to go to med school, it is the prof’s fault if they aren’t given the grades they want.  Universities are very much customer service oriented now, and students continue demanding what their parents demanded for them through high school, I think.

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That's a valid point, of course, but not relevant to what I'm trying to say, which is simply that colleges should be looking for instructors who genuinely love teaching and are good at it.[/quote]

But what YOU don't seem to be connecting is that what students want and what makes a good professor are not perfectly overlapping. In an ideal world, students would want to be challenged academically, and care more about learning than grades/recommendations/career building. But they don't always. Many think that "a good teacher" is one who doesn't give too much work and grades leniently. [/quote]

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