On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 09:03:42 -0500, Swingman wrote:

On 8/14/2011 10:44 PM, zzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Sun, 14 Aug 2011 22:47:08 -0400, wrote:

zzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Sat, 13 Aug 2011 13:13:58 -0500, wrote:

On 8/13/2011 9:40 AM, Leon wrote:

Totally agree with that article you posted the link to, especially the
Honors College comments, The students get first pick at the professors
and have much smaller more personal classes.

It's hard to believe that 70% of the undergraduate classes at most
universities are now taught by outsourced, "paid-by-the-course", adjunct
professors!

A sad state of affairs ... this corporate model of teaching was unheard
of in my day.

It's not new. I taught a senior level CS course and a graduate level MIS
course 30 years ago. At one point I asked the dean if I taught all the
required courses, if I got my masters (I only have a BS). He didn't like the
question.

Sounds like you got in on the beginning of the end ... ;0

No, my father was a prof and I have three brothers who are a decade older than
I. This is nothing new. Slave labor has always been cheap.

You know who taught the two undergraduate physics courses I took in college?

Clarence Zener, the Dean of the College of Science at that time at Texas
A&M University ... he personally taught both those undergraduate
courses, as did the department heads in Chemistry and Mathematics.

We had bigs in the Chemistry and Physics departments teach the 10x level
courses, too. 500 students in a lecture hall at a time. What a disaster.

DAGS Dr Zener ...

Know the name.

Apparently students today have no chance of deriving the benefit from
having a physicist of that eminence teach undergraduate classes. At one
time it was an accepted practice.

The 499 other seats canceled any possible benefit of the eminence of the prof.
My second semester of Chemistry (organic) I chose a section with no lecture,
rather four quiz sections with an instructor; a *far* better solution.

Sorry, but IMO it's just more of the same with regard to the systematic
slide into mediocrity that is creeping into all levels of education in
this country.

If it's a slide, nothing has changed for over 50 years.