Re:Screwed up incentives in higher education
by wnoise on Friday November 26, 2010 @11:45PM
(#1944311)
> You're calling out the system for being outdated and broken. Just because you don't explicitly say that "most professors are lazy and incompetent (except for the ones I like)"
The system can be broken without attaching any blame to the workers in the system.
The real problem is of course the high-up administrators and board. The purpose of a university is not education. The purpose is to funnel money via inflated salaries and unneeded construction jobs to those that are politically well-connected.
About five paragraphs in, by my count:
"what do students actually get for their money? They get herded in like cattle into 500 person classrooms to have someone read the textbook to them with the help of a powerpoint slide deck. The classroom environment hasn't changed in nearly a century. If you brought someone from 1940 into today's classroom they'd hardly notice a difference, except perhaps for the fancier projector and massively increased class size. This is not due to lack of technology or lack of tools being available."
You're calling out the system for being outdated and broken. Just because you don't explicitly say that "most professors are lazy and incompetent (except for the ones I like)" doesn't mean that you can fling these sorts of casual, rhetorical stones without having to embrace the conclusion.