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Epictetus comments on LW should go into mainstream academia ? - Less Wrong
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Comments (49)
It comes down to funding and prestige. Publishing research in high-profile journals makes the department look good and keeps the grant money flowing. The concern is that an academic who spends time popularizing is wasting time he could have spent doing research. A few decades ago, some departments had a culture where young academics could be looked down upon for being too good at teaching for precisely this reason.
Curious about the downvote.
Is it or isn't it true generally in academia that good teaching is considered lower status than good research?
In the US academia it is definitely true. Especially teaching undergrads which is often enough just relegated to TAs.
At least nowadays many places bother to train TAs. My understanding is that not too long ago, the TA was just handed a syllabus and told to teach a class. Some schools had a reputation for admitting excess graduate students just to serve as TAs for a bit before being shown the door.
However, there are some universities that focus on quality undergraduate education. In those places, teaching ability is a big part of the hiring process and people have been denied tenure over poor teaching. It's the big research universities that have historically been lax in their teaching standards.
Yep. This is a good case to apply the standard heuristic: Look at incentives.