[M.D. Holloway]

Todd – being involved on more of a tertiary level with future aspirations of going full bore academia, I have gained a new perspective on the problems facing universities and colleges.

One thing that I have a tough time with is subject relevancy. I am not sure that the basics are taught with any thought about real world applications. For instance, you want to teach kid percentages, have him understand batting averages or bets. Of course some kids do not give a hoot about their batting average because they don’t play ball – it is just an example. It is incumbent upon instructors and professors to explain and instruct real world concepts and problems intertwined with the basic knowledge that is required to understand and just maybe master the subject someday.

The second thing that I have a tough time with is the accreditation board. Every course that is taught has to be taught the same way by each professor for that class. There is no room to deviate or apply a different teaching style or example. This may be a State U thing but it comes down to their definition of “consistency of education”. This well meaning approach stifles the creative instructors and boilerplates it for the lazy ones.

As far as text books are concerned, I think the Profs should author their textbooks. When I was in grad school I taught at a community technical college. I couldn’t find the text book that I thought was any good so I wrote my own on my Mac laptop and printed and bound it at Kinko’s. It cost $20 in materials which I charged the students. I did that for 3 different classes. The dean was cool with it. Some subject matter has been explored further so some of the content is out of date but that is what X’th editions are for. In my opinion, Profs should be experts in the field they are going to teach.

Tenure is a tricky thing. I don’t see that going away anytime soon – why? Because in a few short years there is going to be a very large chasm of able bodied professors – a glut so to speak. Universities are going to scramble hard and fast to get capable instructors. The lure of tenure has got me very interested in U gig as does the free time.

The kids for the most part will do most of what you ask of them. They won’t know any different so way not push them and challenge them and make it a quest instead of a task?