I don't think your parallels work in this case.
Clinton was impeached by the House, but wasn't convicted by the Senate, so why would he have spent any jail time or been removed from office? Libby was indicted and then actually convicted. For the situations to be parallel, Clinton would have needed to have been convicted or Libby to have not been convicted.
BUT, if a room is overcrowded, they are not going to let you sit in since the seats are for registered students.
Well, in that case, you won't be able to buy your way in either --- the class will be closed.
This is one of the reasons students are asked to audit courses as opposed to just walk in. The administration has to figure out which rooms to give to which courses. That's difficult if they can't tell how many folks are really in each course. Of course if almost everyone is playing by the rules, there will be enough slack to let a small number ignore them.
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then it's just fun.
More and more, however, I see professors "selling" their services.
Do you? Do you have any examples of this?
Maybe I'm just old fashioned. I still hold to the notion that professor, is at the university to teach first.
I don't see why this is old-fashioned. It might turn out to be incorrect, but I don't see it as old-fashioned.
BTW, even if we grant the premise that the purpose is to teach first, it doesn't follow from there that the professor must do things like make lectures available.
most of the time the lecture was directly from the content of the textbook. If I read the chapter(s) the previous night, I probably could have given the same lectures.
Do you really think this? And answered questions, and all that? Either you're very good or they're very bad.:)
In the general case, you don't pay him, and he doesn't work for you. You really should stop thinking of your relationship that way. It leads to consternation and doesn't actually reflect the reality.
Also, he isn't charging extra for something he's obligated to give you, he's charging you for something he isn't obligated to give you.
One can argue that this is a bad idea, but I think your particular position rests on invalid premises.
One view of this effort is that he thinks such things should be available to students who need it, but has no support from the university to do so. As such, he has tried to make the service available himself. Despite his feelings on the matter, he doesn't think HE should be paying for it himself, so he's trying to recoup his cost (and to avoid creating the incentive for students to skip class and pay the price often associated with that). Note the "free" examples thrown around this thread typically involve university and/or department support (in the form of servers, recording equipment and IT support), as opposed to work on the part of the individual faculty member or instructor.
I have found that many of these sorts of complaints go away IF STUDENTS READ MATERIAL BEFORE CLASS.
But, of course, almost no one does.
The error I think many of the posters here are making is that they are treating students as if they are customers buying a product, and that professors are, say, cashiers who are paid to help them. That isn't really the right analogy, especially at large research universities.
Personally, I don't use slides when I lecture (to quote someone I know, "no one can learn any faster than I can write") so I don't make them available. If I were going to make audio recordings of myself available I don't think I would charge for them, but that's a huge if: I wouldn't go through the trouble this guy is going through in the first place. How does he even have the time? Even if every student in his class donated a dollar to him, it wouldn't be worth his time to do it. Profit surely isn't the motive.
Students should come to class. Students who don't come to class aren't holding up their end of the bargain, and they typically pay for it. Anything anyone does to help them out, in general, is providing gravy. I appreciate the effort to maintain balance between giving them gravy while not encouraging them to screw themselves over by having an excuse to not come to class.
You know what students have a really hard time getting?
Pointers.
Actually, indirection is a fairly deep concept, so it's not that surprising.
Computing is about understanding that MODELS == LANGUAGES == MACHINES, among other things.
I take the position that understanding grungy details of how languages work, how machines must be implemented and how that connects to models of computing is crucial to getting computing, or even just becoming a very good technician (i.e., programmer). I tend to think of those who want to skip all that because languages hide so much of it from us nowadays as making the same kind of fundamental mistake as folks who want first year programmers to be able to "collaborate" because collaborations happens in the "real world"; it's about internalizing fundamentals, not about, well, whatever else it might be about.
Get the professors off of the soapboxes and back to teaching. That's what we pay them for.
Not really... certainly not at large research I universities. And, BTW, it isn't clear to me that one should want it any other way.
Students should not be failed for disagreeing with a professor; however, in a humanities/social sciences course students very much should suffer for not being able to argue for their own political or literary positions when the class calls for it.
Actually, it isn't clear to me that this is even an issue. So far, all I've read are assertions that this sort of thing happens... and typically done in a style that lacks any kind of rigor of argument (not that this is a forum for that sort of thing, I'm just saying). I'm not even reading anecdotes.
He's not a professor, college or otherwise, so I you should resubmit your rant.
His history with MIT, living space, showering, and groupies is legendary and when I was a grad student there, it came up quite often. Now that Tech Square and the AI Lab are gone and they're in that, um, interesting new building and have merged with LCS to make CSAIL, I wonder where he spends his time. I could find out I suppose, but I'm too lazy.
He also beat me at a staring contest once, if that helps.
Peace.
I have no idea. All I know is that I type and the image disappears. It is nowhere to be found. If I erase the text I typed the image comes back, this time perhaps in a different place behind text. It appears to be random. I suspect aliens.
But I only have to deal with this rarely. Normally I use latex for real papers and I make my students do the same. I have no opinion about OpenOffice. I've played with it, but not enough to have anything deep to say.
Moving to Microsoft Office won't make writing your thesis any easier. Word and its cousins just aren't designed for large, structured documents. Framemaker would be a better choice. If it's math heavy, I'd take latex and use your favorite wysiwyg interface (including emacs).
Recently, I've been forced to use Office for a couple of scientific papers (don't ask me why) and it is truly a painful and insane experience. Of the many things that don't make sense, my favorite is how figures will sometimes simply disappear when you add text. They just... disappear. WTF?
Actually, sometimes it is. Old voter registration cards pointing to the wrong place, etc. Here in GA (as I'm sure you're aware) several thousand folks who registered when they got driver's licenses never got voter registration cards (and some of us--for reasons no one can explain--weren't even registered).
Personally, I think one should be able to vote wherever in one's state. We have the technology to make this possible. I suspect many would find it much easier to vote where they work instead of where they live, for example. So... why not?
[private schools] have the agenda that their customers demand
It is not clear to me that this is true, but if I grant that it is, it is even less clear that their agenda happens to be "education." It doubt most folks are even sure what that would mean. Watching the kids come through my university I would guess that it means "get my kid into a school so s/he can get a good job".
It is a good thing that life isn't fair. Imagine how horrible it would be if you knew that you deserved every thing that ever happened to you.
The problem with many of these arguments is that they seem to assume an otherwise reasonable and rational process. Without a more nuanced argument a, say, White male who didn't get into, say, MIT would have to be willing to admit that every other White male who did get in is better and more qualified. It's kind of goofy all around giving just how random the world actually is.
Peace.
At least in my university, if an advisor wishes to fund a graduate student, not only does he have to pay his wages, but his tuition fee. Given that I'm an out-of-state student, that amounts to about $35,000 to $40,000 a year. Considering I officially work only 20 hours a week - he's spending quite a bit of money.
You haven't even counted it all: He's also paying any benefits, overhead, computer charges and who knows what else, depending upon the university (not to mention your machines and other equipment). Students are the most expensive thing a faculty member has to pay for, at least in areas like CS, and in all honesty provide the least tangible return on the investment (sort of like raising children).
There is also a myth that students do all the "real" work. The truth is the faculty do all the hard work--including most of the real thinking--though it's the sort of thing that one doesn't appreciate until one has graduated and then has to supervise graduate students. Wait until the first time you hear one of your students talk about "his" idea and how he came up with it, and you have decide whether to smack him with a stick because it was your idea or whether to just let it go and invoke the one-day-you'll-have-a-student-just-like-you curse.
Peace.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think your parallels work in this case. Clinton was impeached by the House, but wasn't convicted by the Senate, so why would he have spent any jail time or been removed from office? Libby was indicted and then actually convicted. For the situations to be parallel, Clinton would have needed to have been convicted or Libby to have not been convicted.
This is one of the reasons students are asked to audit courses as opposed to just walk in. The administration has to figure out which rooms to give to which courses. That's difficult if they can't tell how many folks are really in each course. Of course if almost everyone is playing by the rules, there will be enough slack to let a small number ignore them.
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then it's just fun.
Peace.
Do you? Do you have any examples of this?
I don't see why this is old-fashioned. It might turn out to be incorrect, but I don't see it as old-fashioned.
BTW, even if we grant the premise that the purpose is to teach first, it doesn't follow from there that the professor must do things like make lectures available.
Peace.
Do you really think this? And answered questions, and all that? Either you're very good or they're very bad. :)
Peace.
If a student thinks s/he can come to my office hours and ask me to redo an entire lecture, then s/he is wrong.
In fact, the student couldn't pay me to do it. $250 wouldn't be enough to do it, much less $2.50.
Peace.
Also, he isn't charging extra for something he's obligated to give you, he's charging you for something he isn't obligated to give you.
One can argue that this is a bad idea, but I think your particular position rests on invalid premises.
One view of this effort is that he thinks such things should be available to students who need it, but has no support from the university to do so. As such, he has tried to make the service available himself. Despite his feelings on the matter, he doesn't think HE should be paying for it himself, so he's trying to recoup his cost (and to avoid creating the incentive for students to skip class and pay the price often associated with that). Note the "free" examples thrown around this thread typically involve university and/or department support (in the form of servers, recording equipment and IT support), as opposed to work on the part of the individual faculty member or instructor.
Peace.
Peace.
But, of course, almost no one does.
The error I think many of the posters here are making is that they are treating students as if they are customers buying a product, and that professors are, say, cashiers who are paid to help them. That isn't really the right analogy, especially at large research universities.
Personally, I don't use slides when I lecture (to quote someone I know, "no one can learn any faster than I can write") so I don't make them available. If I were going to make audio recordings of myself available I don't think I would charge for them, but that's a huge if: I wouldn't go through the trouble this guy is going through in the first place. How does he even have the time? Even if every student in his class donated a dollar to him, it wouldn't be worth his time to do it. Profit surely isn't the motive.
Students should come to class. Students who don't come to class aren't holding up their end of the bargain, and they typically pay for it. Anything anyone does to help them out, in general, is providing gravy. I appreciate the effort to maintain balance between giving them gravy while not encouraging them to screw themselves over by having an excuse to not come to class.
Peace.
The earlier poster's comment is like saying "Would you teach someone English by first teaching them Spanish?"
Peace.
Pointers.
Actually, indirection is a fairly deep concept, so it's not that surprising.
Computing is about understanding that MODELS == LANGUAGES == MACHINES, among other things.
I take the position that understanding grungy details of how languages work, how machines must be implemented and how that connects to models of computing is crucial to getting computing, or even just becoming a very good technician (i.e., programmer). I tend to think of those who want to skip all that because languages hide so much of it from us nowadays as making the same kind of fundamental mistake as folks who want first year programmers to be able to "collaborate" because collaborations happens in the "real world"; it's about internalizing fundamentals, not about, well, whatever else it might be about.
Peace.
Not really... certainly not at large research I universities. And, BTW, it isn't clear to me that one should want it any other way.
Students should not be failed for disagreeing with a professor; however, in a humanities/social sciences course students very much should suffer for not being able to argue for their own political or literary positions when the class calls for it.
Actually, it isn't clear to me that this is even an issue. So far, all I've read are assertions that this sort of thing happens... and typically done in a style that lacks any kind of rigor of argument (not that this is a forum for that sort of thing, I'm just saying). I'm not even reading anecdotes.
Do we have any good examples?
Peace.
He's not a professor, college or otherwise, so I you should resubmit your rant. His history with MIT, living space, showering, and groupies is legendary and when I was a grad student there, it came up quite often. Now that Tech Square and the AI Lab are gone and they're in that, um, interesting new building and have merged with LCS to make CSAIL, I wonder where he spends his time. I could find out I suppose, but I'm too lazy. He also beat me at a staring contest once, if that helps. Peace.
But I only have to deal with this rarely. Normally I use latex for real papers and I make my students do the same. I have no opinion about OpenOffice. I've played with it, but not enough to have anything deep to say.
Peace.
Recently, I've been forced to use Office for a couple of scientific papers (don't ask me why) and it is truly a painful and insane experience. Of the many things that don't make sense, my favorite is how figures will sometimes simply disappear when you add text. They just... disappear. WTF?
Peace.
Personally, I think one should be able to vote wherever in one's state. We have the technology to make this possible. I suspect many would find it much easier to vote where they work instead of where they live, for example. So... why not?
Peace.
It is not clear to me that this is true, but if I grant that it is, it is even less clear that their agenda happens to be "education." It doubt most folks are even sure what that would mean. Watching the kids come through my university I would guess that it means "get my kid into a school so s/he can get a good job".
Peace.
It is a good thing that life isn't fair. Imagine how horrible it would be if you knew that you deserved every thing that ever happened to you. The problem with many of these arguments is that they seem to assume an otherwise reasonable and rational process. Without a more nuanced argument a, say, White male who didn't get into, say, MIT would have to be willing to admit that every other White male who did get in is better and more qualified. It's kind of goofy all around giving just how random the world actually is. Peace.
Actually, they sort of are. For most PhDs, especially in things like CS, work is one of their hobbies. One of the reasons to do that PhD thing.
Peace.
At least in my university, if an advisor wishes to fund a graduate student, not only does he have to pay his wages, but his tuition fee. Given that I'm an out-of-state student, that amounts to about $35,000 to $40,000 a year. Considering I officially work only 20 hours a week - he's spending quite a bit of money. You haven't even counted it all: He's also paying any benefits, overhead, computer charges and who knows what else, depending upon the university (not to mention your machines and other equipment). Students are the most expensive thing a faculty member has to pay for, at least in areas like CS, and in all honesty provide the least tangible return on the investment (sort of like raising children). There is also a myth that students do all the "real" work. The truth is the faculty do all the hard work--including most of the real thinking--though it's the sort of thing that one doesn't appreciate until one has graduated and then has to supervise graduate students. Wait until the first time you hear one of your students talk about "his" idea and how he came up with it, and you have decide whether to smack him with a stick because it was your idea or whether to just let it go and invoke the one-day-you'll-have-a-student-just-like-you curse. Peace.