Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A WASP? Really? You’re insufferable.

It’s an acronym that’s been deployed for decades. No one calls HPYSM parents snobs. It’s just a classification.

Sounds like s BACKronym, a random collection of schools thrown together to make up a clever sounding word.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's a wasp in this context?

Not OP but Williams/Amherst/Swathmore/Pomona

And OP is missing the point, which is that students aren’t being taught by 25-year-old grad students.

Never heard of that acronym

OP made it up for this thread, in an attempt at cleverness.

Are "visiting professors" on loan from another institution/college/university to which he/she will return ? Or are visiting profs essentially doing a long interview in order to be considered by the college or university as a new hire ?

Sometimes a visiting professor is tenured at another institution and they are truly just visiting’ the area to do research with another faculty member for a few years and then will go back to their original school. Sometimes the visiting professor came to the school because they were following their spouse’s job to that area. I don’t know why you are so hard-pressed against a visiting professor. They could be outstanding and your DC was lucky to have met them.

A visiting professor is different (and superior to) an adjunct faculty member.

I don’t mean superior in terms of quality, but better for the dept.

Adjuncts often do but get an office are only on campus to teach their classes. They may not get benefits . It is like a part time job, with limited investment on both parts.

A visiting professor is usually a full time (tenured) faculty member at another university. They are there to bring fresh input and get new ideas from the new environment. They usually have offices, give lectures and were sought because they have knowledge or skills the new school seeks.

I think OP is not well informed about academia.

Before your kid chooses a college, make sure they have a critical mass of permanent faculty in the subject they hope to study. That should be part of the family’s research upfront.

Anonymous wrote:A WASP? Really? You’re insufferable.

Exactly, it is like parents got together to make up a name so their kid would sound special.

Literally no one has heard of that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's a wasp in this context?

Not OP but Williams/Amherst/Swathmore/Pomona

And OP is missing the point, which is that students aren’t being taught by 25-year-old grad students.

Never heard of that acronym

Umm. It’s pretty universally know in college admissions.

What do the schools have in common that groups them together? SLACs

Anonymous wrote:DD is at a WASP, and it is ridiculous how this is sold to students when so many of the faculty are Visiting professors on their way out. I'd rather my kid be taught by a grad student who will be with them for 2-6 years versus a visiting professor who needs to spend their contract worrying about their next job and who'll be no help when it comes time for rec letters and grad school. Colleges should be hiring full-time faculty, not wasting my nearly $90,000 a year on "visiting" professors.

Why would you prefer a grad student over a visiting professor? That is an odd and unusual preference.

My thoughts: No reason whatsoever to think grad student will be teaching 2-6 years - very few teach that long while getting a PhD and their focus should be on getting their own degree. Visiting professors on average will be infinitely more qualified in the field. Visiting professors on average will be much more experienced. And to the main point: the reality of higher education is that it is cheaper for colleges and universities to use visiting and adjunct professors or grad students rather than tenure track so they do.

Anonymous wrote:If your kiddo is spending 6 yrs at a slac you’ve got more to worry about that the visiting prof thing!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are college students reading - and posting! - on DCUM?!

It's funnier than CollegeConfidential and ApplyingToCollege because you're allowed to be mean.

Thank you for being truthful, young whippersnapper!

Anonymous wrote:Why are college students reading - and posting! - on DCUM?!

It's funnier than CollegeConfidential and ApplyingToCollege because you're allowed to be mean.

Anonymous wrote:Why are college students reading - and posting! - on DCUM?!

summer. it's the internet.

Why are college students reading - and posting! - on DCUM?!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, visiting professors are a good thing. Are you just upset cause you’re paying $90k?

I’m frustrated, because a college that gets 90k per full pay parent and has billions should be able to staff 6-10 faculty per department. My DC having 3 out of her 5 classes with visiting professors is an issue. She wanted to do a fellowship opportunity conducting research with an amazing professor but whoops- they’re visiting and leaving next year. She also needs rec letters from her department but the intro is left to the visiting staff so she has to wait for the appropriate faculty member to start opportunities. That is an issue.

I went to two state flagships that are acceptable to DCUM.

As far as I can recall, I did have two 3 credit classes taught by TAs in undergrad. One just as good as any other professor (Accounting 101) and the other only ok but friendly (Business Statistics 101). Those two classes aren't the kind where it matters whether the teacher does cool independent research, is a celebrity, or anything. The Accounting 101 TA was one of the only teachers I had in college who talked about anything related to working/career advice/getting a job. So I appreciated her.

I had only two visiting professors across undergrad and MBA. Both were experienced senior professors on sabbatical from their home institutions. Their classes were kind of meh, actually.

All my other profs were some literal type of professor. There was no correlation between teaching quality and title.

I'm a university department chair. I'd love an entire department made up of tenured and tenure-track faculty at a variety of ages and stages, supported by a strong cohort of carefully mentored and decently supported PhD students, along with a few highly qualified and highly paid long-term adjuncts offering immensely popular courses, plus some research-oriented postdoc positions and some visiting professorships. And basic medical insurance coverage for everyone.

My colleagues at my own school and elsewhere would all laugh (and then cry) at this absurdist fantasy, which only exists at a stunningly small number of institutions nationwide. The reality is that even with modest middle-class salaries this costs much more than the market will bear. And it also costs much, much more than any readers here ( = college-oriented families and their students) should ever be asked to pay. There are serious issues of justice and equity on both sides of the proverbial desk.

When costs are too high at an academic institution, the only real way to make a sizable dent in expenses is to cut salaries. This is most often accomplished by not replacing tenured faculty when they retire, and by hiring part-time faculty in return so that the courses can still be taught. But then you need coverage for administrative duties, so you create full-time contract positions for people who teach a lot and also do some administrating. Since there is no tenure involved, you can be ready to move this contract salary around from one department to another as student interests, public tastes, and industry needs shift over time. Market response, nimbleness, and cost savings can coincide when you just discontinue one contract position and create a new one in a different field. Unfortunately, this also leaves a contract holder out of a job.

You can also bolster any given field or department on short notice by hiring visiting assistant professors who will likely maintain their research interests during the short time they are working for you. These positions tend to be even more temporary than the contract ones: contract holders ideally build relationships with the institution and can even be repeatedly renewed over quite a long time. Visiting assistant professors, however, tend to be term-limited, usually no more than three years before they are required to move on.

In a perfect world students should feel very little of all of this: our primary job is, after all, to educate them, not to bemoan the terms of our own employment. Many of us, even those of us who are convinced of the value and satisfaction of our careers, could reasonably find some other way to make a living if this one became too precarious for comfort. Tenured faculty provide stability, prestige, leadership, published research, and work contributions that often go far beyond salary expectations. But at the same time by their very existence they limit the economic ability of academic institutions to deal with change. That is why even my fantasy department contains a mix of different kinds of positions. We need that flexibility in order to be able to adapt our staff to the needs and interests of our students.