In engineering/math, I've seen it swing both ways. Some professors couldn't be bothered to teach, because are so busy w/ their research and/or jaded w/ the University: implicit assumption is to baby the undergrads and shepherd them along the system. In regards to funding in relation to teaching ability, one way to look at it is that a PI is in essence a salesman, you have to sell your vision to get funding/appointments, sell your lab to get good phd candidates, and sell the subject to undergrad as something that is interesting and worthy of learning.
Think of a research group like any other business. You have to create a product and sell it, except the product is publications and publicity.
Related, university presidents are fundraisers first, ie selling their nonprofit to donors, in exchange for buildings, chairs, spots on committees (for poors), fuzzie-wuzzies, etc.
Also anecdata, but I've observed no such correlation. In the sciences I've seen the opposite - that Nobel prize winners (or similar) can be terrible at teaching undergraduates, and even poor mentors for grad students. Some faculty even seem to resent teaching introductory or undergraduate courses. In contrast, I've found many graduate students still remember what it was like to be a beginner trying to learn and understand the material for the first time. (Though not all of them are great lecturers.)
That being said, in CS I've found many Turing award type faculty to be fantastic lecturers (and occasionally acceptable graduate advisors.)
Overall, I'd put my money behind the incentives: at a large research university, tenure is based on 1) research grants, 2) research productivity, publication, and reputation. The university will pay lip service to teaching (both mentoring graduate students and teaching undergraduates) but it is usually a distant third if it is actually considered at all.
It's not a coincidence that the university and faculty will talk about a "teaching load" - i.e. a burden that one is supposed to endure that distracts from the primary goals of fundraising and research.
I suspect that's because these students are really buying prestige and a classics degree is the easiest option.
> Something I've noticed and take this with a grain of salt as this is a sample=1 observation is that the better researchers (more publications, better funded labs) were generally also better teachers.
This isn't a huge surprise to me since it's crazy competitive so the better funded labs are likely outliers in a bunch of ways (including social skills/teaching). Not all researchers teach much though and being good is more of a side-effect than a goal for Universities.
I'm not sure I'd agree with that assertion.
It's almost like a shibboleth: only those who actually went to the school will recognize the prestige.
Probably. But the value falls dramatically once you get to tier two schools, and becomes almost worthless for tier 3.
When the thing being sold is prestige, lower tier colleges don't actually have the product that's in demand. So they can charge basically nothing since they're selling nothing of value. That's not viable as a business (unless they lie to students who don't know better and pretend that they're selling prestige they don't have, "a degree will improve your life"). A lot of lower tier colleges fit this kind of con, the for-profit ones are explicitly this.
If they actually provided valuable education that'd be different, but they largely don't.
I think Lambda School style ISAs are the way for all but the top tier colleges. It means they have to actually be good at education.
Imagine the opportunity of actually being good at education and doing ISAs. It would mean your institution could do what Universities largely just pretend to do. You could make money from ISAs and aligned incentives/student success. You could also make money from companies as a recruiting agency if your students were actually guaranteed to be good. Your curriculum would be closely tied to what's needed and what's relevant.
You don't even have to give up the classics if you don't want to, they can just exist along side the other stuff (as they should). You just don't pretend they're hard or economically viable on their own.
Actual education is super powerful, it's just a diminutive part of what Universities have become and they're not very good at it.
Actually, the top schools would benefit from these the most. With close to 100% employment rates and better median salaries than anyone else.
> Imagine the opportunity of actually being good at education and doing ISAs. It would mean your institution could do what Universities largely just pretend to do. You could make money from ISAs and aligned incentives/student success. You could also make money from companies as a recruiting agency if your students were actually guaranteed to be good. Your curriculum would be closely tied to what's needed and what's relevant.
I wonder how much income stream is coming from underperforming programs at modern Universities. For some of them it must be substantial. And I'm also wondering if some of them also redirect the income toward more useful programs or research.
The top schools don't need ISAs because they're selling prestige they can charge a lot more for. Since they're so highly selective they can admit only students who will succeed anyway.
Maybe over time that prestige will change, but I don't see that as near-term. I think it'd be better if they did ISAs, I just don't think they'll want to (or their ISAs will be worse for students than Lambda School's).
Right now top schools can charge up front and it doesn't really matter what they provide.
You have clearly never studied Ancient Greek.
In a sense, studying Ancient Greek in depth is impossible as many ideas are lost in the modern cultural decline.
I've had the opposite experience.
I suspect a lot of this is because of enormous amounts of risk-free (to the schools) money from the government.
Also, different degrees definitely cost different prices - the cost of an MBA is far higher than the cost of a masters in history, for example.
Because it has a large numbers of applicants. It's offer and demand.
> Universities also get a lot of their prestige from research and the majority of their effort is typically not spent on undergraduate education. This means professors are not typically rewarded for being (or even expected to be) excellent teachers.
Something I've noticed and take this with a grain of salt as this is a sample=1 observation is that the better researchers (more publications, better funded labs) were generally also better teachers.