[ExI] jarring change

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 8:02 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> Just a thought:  at the expensive universities it would be worth it a lot more if the world's greatest professors would actually teach classes, even at the intro level.  But no, TAs do all that or Assistant Profs.  Are the greatest teachers at Cal Tech or Yale etc.?  Very likely yes - but they don't teach - just a few, very few grad students, and those mostly because they help with the big prof's research program.

I've heard that idea many times before. (In fact, I was a TA in
school.:) Since the students are mostly there, if Caplan is right, for
status reasons, maybe it wouldn't. If most are mainly getting a degree
to improve their salary or status in society, then the content kind of
becomes secondary and attempts to change this miss the mark. So maybe
it's best that professors stick to research and a small body of really
interested students/academics and let others do the actual teaching of
the rest, no? (Actually, Caplan seems to want to move away from having
the degree used as a signaling device, since it's a huge waste of time
and effort. What jobs and careers actually require a Masters or
Bachelors -- as opposed to someone getting them because it's
expected?)

Regards,

Dan