Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University | Hacker News Reader

Why I am Not a Professor, or The Decline and Fall of the British University

lambdassociates.org

30 pointsamichail17 comments

I would agree about the quality of publications and the pin heads who evaluate us simply by the number. It's really very stupid.

On the point of teaching however I am a bit more optimistic ... in Sweden at least. I am fairly impressed with most of my students. They are for the most part curious, hard working and smart. So far the elements that have tried to dumb everything down have failed. Although they do keep trying...

In the long run education is probably in trouble. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccYoVnBc_fk

Counting papers is dumbing things down -- initially for academics. This in turn may result in dumbing things down for students as mediocre academics (who would not get tenure without counting papers) may then teach at an easier level.

I know, I know. And the mediocre academics take mediocre graduate students and the whole thing repeats... thank god a lot of the undergraduate students are wise enough to recognize lame professors. The best students have fun making these frauds look stupid in front of the class. BTW students need to be encouraged to act in such ways.

I have been fighting my private battle to get evaluators to actually read 1-3 papers of those they evaluate. Usually if someone is working on pointless stuff, you can see it pretty clearly when you read their stuff.

Whatever the case, the simple counting technique must stop. BTW some consistent universally accepted impact factor rating might help in computer science. I don't know.

The Erdos Number is a good attempt.

Huh? I don't see how having a lower Erdos number indicates that your work is better. The Erdos number has nothing to do with publication quality nor citations.

It was joke. More seriously, the Erdos number is indeed far better indicator than the number of publications.

Number of citations is not as good as it seems, because not all citations are created equal.

I believe that, if we are talking about the details here, the best system should be similar to the Page Rank. Citations from important works are more valuable. Awarded papers, like Nobel or Fields Medal, could get the highest rank.

The only problem with this system, which I see, is its mix of dynamic and static nature. The paper's rank can be dramatically changed literally overnight. On the other hand, it takes ages to get the Nobel prize. Not that good when your career depends on your rating.

However, it should be quite obvious that brilliant work is not appreciated immediately. So, very likely that the problem lies in the educational system, that requires fast and pretty objective, not necessary reliable, method of rating.

Furthermore, I don't know whether there's a correlation between educational successes, and research abilities. I bet there is no. Perhaps it does not really make any difference whether a guy got a Nobel, or two.

You can combine PageRank with a prediction market. People would make bets on the (perhaps relative) PageRank of papers at some future date.

"the best system should be similar to the Page Rank."

It's been suggested, but I don't know how popular such index is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor#Other_measures_of...

Looks approximately correct. http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~guofei/CS_ConfRank.htm

The YouTube video has been taken down. What was it about?

The ennui which pervades universities has only one beneficial (and pernicious) effect.

Those students who are ahead enough in their understanding to not need the education, will do fine . Those students who rely on the system to educate them will sink into the muck of mundane reality. So the system will cause a stratification of the students, into high-fliers and ordinary joes.

The only way to come out ahead in the university system is to reach a point where you do not need it.

>Those students who are ahead enough in their understanding to not need the education, will do fine . Those students who rely on the system to educate them will sink into the muck of mundane reality.

You are forgetting the third category - those who _think_ that don't need the education.

Actually, in High school, my entire grade level/class of 2009 uses a forum board I made. We trade study guides and by the time the test comes, everyone answers the same things. If the class average is low, we get a curve. Otherwise, we're all happy. The internet is indeed revolutionizing things. Of course, then theres always that class geek who kills the curve, but its not that often.

And yeah I totally agree with this post. My father is a Computer Science professor and he's friggin pissed with the corruption of the entire school system. He got rated down for failing a student and a lot of crap...a lot of undo stress

reading this paper makes me think society's (British at least) emphasis on consumer culture has serious flaws. however, it seems the government is more to blame through using this ideology to avoid paying for education.

it may be a nice way of saving money (from the government's perspective) but the dumbing-down of universities and consequentially the higher of degree owning citizens serves to vindicate the real problem, the pre-university education system in the UK.

Funny, this is happening in the states, too. I could copy-paste this paper and call it "Why I Am Not In School".

At UCLA, students are graded with a bell curve. They have become masters at figuring out exactly how much should they study, relative to their peers, to fall within the right tail of the curve. Students no longer share notes, neither talk to each other beyond superficial matters. They find their college party and romance partners in other disciplines, unsurprisingly.

And as a T.A., don't even _dare_ to not give an A to a student. He'll grade _you_ down, and your chances as a T.A. (that is, the means to get a salary or an extra as a PhD student) will vanish.

The paradox here is: how can everyone get an A and still be graded on a Bell curve? To this day, I don't quite get it. In any case: students get A, but they all need one or two years of lab internship before they can do else other than harm themselves in the lab.

The author of the text is totally right. And there are no politically correct solutions. None at all. We all expect the system to somehow collapse at some point, and then restart.

Sounds like lake woebegone, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

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