Essay on University Culture and Student Expectations

How the Best Universities Inadvertently Ruin Our Schools 197 hire folks who can contribute. I was trying to build educational soft- ware but the principle was the same. I hired programmers, researchers, assistants to do lower level work, video staff, artists, and, of course, graduate students. And, now you know what I did all day. I managed this enterprise. Eventually my institute had 200 people working in it. I did what any person in charge of 200 people does. I set the direction and checked on progress. Also, I wrote books and thought deep thoughts. This is what any professor does who brings in grant money. I was just doing it on a larger scale than most. All of this is about winning the prestige game. Any university wants pre-eminent professors. Universities want the best faculty so their name is mentioned a lot, so they get applications from students, attention from the media, and more grant money. That is what uni- versities do. Teaching? Well, how exactly does teaching fit in with all that? It really doesn’t. Most professors agree that the university is a lot nicer place when there aren’t all those undergraduates around. From May to September New Haven was an idyllic place. Smart people, good weather, interesting conversation. Then in September, thousands of young people, making a racket and expecting to be taught. But, there- in lies the problem. Are students really expecting to be taught? It doesn’t take very long for a professor to learn that those brilliant Yale students, the ones who killed themselves to get into the place, may not be there solely to enter into the life of the mind. While everyone is thinking great thoughts and doing great research over the summer, professors manage to get themselves believing that the job of a profes- sor at a great university is to be an intellectual. What they forget easily enough is who is paying the bills. And, they forget the real agenda of those who are paying the bills. They are reminded soon enough. Students want courses to be easy, not bother them too much with work outside the classroom, and help them get a good job. Of course, I am oversimplifying here. Many students attend Yale to learn what it is that you, the professor, really know and want to teach. In 15 years at Yale I met a number of them. I remember their names because there weren't that many. We can hope that all professors have met their share of that type of student. Most college students are 18-year-olds who are on their own for the first time. They are more interested in exploring themselves and their new freedoms than they are in working hard at intellectual HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023937