Hacker News Reader

Universities today have become a text book example of bureaucracy at its finest. Not to say bureaucracy in itself is good or bad, but I think John Stuart Mill was spot on in his remarks upon them: "A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy". Which I guess in the context of most universities today (at least in the united states from my experience), seem to have become hollow shells of their former selves, or at least towards what most claim to be advocating.

At least that's what came to mind when reading the statement from the university and the students hand-waving remarks that smelled like the typical PR speak we hear in the news (the brown nose kind) upon their reflection on the situation. I can sympathize with the students though, the university threatened to take disciplinary action (whether that means not allowing them to receive a piece of paper from them, or some kind of suspension, who knows) for their efforts in recognizing a problem and applying their knowledge for the betterment of their student body, and maybe with the university staff that had to come to the consensus to do what they did for whatever reasons (maybe ones listed in this thread, but we'll probably never hear a straight answer from them either way). Though this will probably be all forgotten in the upcoming weeks and complacency once more will return to it's familiar home. Rules need to be followed, boots need to be licked, and so it goes on… :S

I think universities have always been this way. It's ironic because they are places of learning and exploring. But only when the topics do not concern the running of the institution itself.

I think so too, but from thinking about independent researchers and organizations throughout history who have kept academia at arms length (maybe to limit their exposure to the downside that is the importance of following rules and procedures as to how to go about things and everything else be damned in its wake) when learning and exploring the frontier of their fields (after all, why would such bureaucratic systems work well on a frontier of knowledge [or frontier of anything for that matter] when one is practically facing existential questions of whatever their muse happens to be, first and foremost [for better or for worse]), I think it's becoming more generally accepted by the masses (or at least exposed) that universities aren't the only places where such things can happen or be pursued.

And the ever increasing stories (maybe unique to our times in how fast we can be informed and opine on such) we hear about academia whether they are about they increasing tuition prices for questionable returns (outside of the unquantifiable "great experience" [which seems like from my conversations with people, it is so great, that people don't even try to experience it again, just merely telling others that it was so seems to suffice]), toxic environments that lead to students and profs alike making blog posts and leaving for other opportunities that pop up on hn, or students or profs having to erect time old facades also littered in pamphlets to high schools across the world in response to such events (don't forget they also include how well their best sports team did with a full page layout of their stars and the newest buildings on campus), they don't seem to do themselves any more favors (which makes me have a laugh from time to time to see that MOOC's seem to be trying to live up to hollowed shell of university existence, but at a lower price point, with information that can more or less has been able to be found online for years [It's amazing to type into ddg on some obscure subject and find a mass of pdfs going into detail about such produced from some of those same universities decades ago, maybe to the point it really isn't that amazing anymore since it has been this way for years]).

I am fairly convinced that Yale would absolutely love to know which staff fits your description, and have detailed and convincing argument to let them improve their teaching style — or gladly defer that burden to more competent TAs. With increasing competition between universities, details like “accent too strong, can’t understand what professor says” become a million-dollar problem, with a solution that is actually cheaper.

Yale understandably knew that such platforms can be useful, but need some tweaking: anonymous reviews tend to aggregate YouTube-grade insults — and people who dedicated decades to their expertise do not react well to being openly and repeatedly described as “sucks ASS and Booawles!!!!!” by entitled students who failed after submitting their papers a month late.

“Open” and teenagers with social bias don’t mix nearly as well as one would love.

Your penultimate sentence contains some sweeping generalizations. Not everyone who submits a review for a class is motivated by spite. Of course, as with any voluntary review system, participation will come from those who are strongly opinionated. But that goes both ways (Also, I could be wrong, but I believe that the site only included numeric reviews...leaving no room for reviews such as “sucks ASS and Booawles!!!!!”, or whatever that means).

Some teachers ARE lousy. And some teachers present the course material in an engaging, captivating manner.

And yes, some students are lazy. But others want to learn, preferably from the latter type of professor. Labeling any student who forms an opinion about a professor as an "entitled [student] who failed after submitting a paper a month late" reveals a lack of faith in the ability of a young adult to take a genuine interest in his educational experience.

No sweeping generalisation: I simply wrote that academic executives react badly (all of them) to senior teachers (some of them) having a break-down after reading poorly written and spiteful reviews (no matter how few of them there are, and there always are some in a campus the size of Yale).

> Some teachers ARE lousy.

Very much so — I am one, and I’ve always told that most of my teachers at my school were criminally bad. (I did take steps to have some of them sent to jail.) I do not remember arguing the opposite.

> and people who dedicated decades to their expertise do not react well to being openly and repeatedly described as “sucks ASS and Booawles!!!!!” by entitled students who failed after submitting their papers a month late.

> “Open” and teenagers with social bias don’t mix nearly as well as one would love.

Who cares about that level of reviews? The validity is weighted by the source and level of discourse.

Many such websites don't really expect that, and present teachers by averages of all grades, unweighted by how articulate the review actually was.

I have seen such websites rare last (and publicly shame) very demanding, very good at that level of teaching, socially awkward teachers — in a way so aggressive that can only de described as late-in-life bullying. I was part of a group of students who personally intervened to avoid a suicide.

A study showed that 90% of professors rate themselves as good or excellent at teaching. My experience from 18 years in college is that about 2% are excellent and about 20% are good.

This is now my second favorite self-rating statistic, after "50% of males rank themselves in the top 10% in athletic ability".

If you read my comment slowly, you'll notice that I do not rate teachers in absolute terms, or on a scale at all — I actually hate that (and, yes, I have grave concerns with your “2%” or “90%” because of that). What I did write was that some teachers, no matter how great, come with details (unmeasurable in most cases) that are problematic: their accent is the most common one; details that can be easily fixed (ask Pigmalion), but that rely on intelligent feedback. No numbers. I don't like numbers.

At my previous university (University of Warsaw) there was an anonymous wiki for opinions on courses and teachers. And it was useful, and people were civil (insults, which were rare, were being removed by community).

So I don't see why anonymous reviews should fail in a similar case.

My girlfriend studied in Poland. Her experience describes the polar opposite of all the anecdotes I heard from most American universities: extremely strict teachers, highly hierarchical relations, vastly more demanding personal work. In such a context, especially if it's espoused by students, I’m assuming that such a feedback community could work with minimal external control.

I strongly doubt that with the ratio of entitled students in the US, and the authority they wage over other students, this would be nearly as functional there.

One of Yale's peer institutions has an anonymous review site [0] that has been working well for several years now. It doesn't have any YouTube-style vitriol that I can find, though it's possibly aggressively moderated.

[0] http://www.culpa.info/

Great example, and I’m assuming that “aggressive moderation” was something that guaranteed its existence, and was what Yale wanted to see confirmed before letting another similar effort grow.

The professors I had at Yale were all pretty good. Of course, I was a grad student, so I didn't take all that many classes.

Start up idea: Glassdoor for universities. It's a worldwide problem and choosing the wrong class can harm your curriculum, you may play of fer to make sales.

... And local universities won't shut it down. Unless, of course, it's filtered by UK's pornitical filter.

Ratemyprofessor.com already does this. My local community college actually advertised that they have "Great Ratemyprofessor.com scores!!".

I am confused to why Yale behaved this way. It is a big organization so one part may not behave consistently with the rest. From my experience at Yale, I would disagree with the notion that Yale professors are brilliant researchers and lousy teachers. I've had 1 of those out of almost 50 professors in my 4 years there. I don't know why they made this terrible decision but I don't think teacher quality is the reason.

The concept of tenure is definitely somewhat controversial, but it is incredibly difficult and rare to fire tenured professors. I doubt you could cite many if any examples of professors losing tenure because they're not publishing. (Although sure professors who don't publish probably won't receive tenure in the first place)

I assume that OP meant:

> If a professor doesn't publish, he/she can lose [a chance to gain] tenure

There are all manner of things a department can do to make a tenured, non-productive faculty member's life harder. The sudden loss of lab space is a particularly common one.

Also, keep in mind that a good many tenured professors are still in "soft money" positions, and have to bring in grant support for parts of their salary.