SticksAndShadows.com

Advice to Potential (Science) Students

1. Beware of institutions that are under AAUP censure. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) periodically censures institutions that violate principles of academic freedom, free speech, and due process for faculty. While AAUP censure does not affect accreditation (although in my opinion, it should), I would not attend an institution that is under censure because it may indicate that faculty are being professionally abused. Talk to faculty. If an institution is under AAUP censure, insist upon knowing why and what, if anything has been done to correct the situation and avoid institutions that have ignore AAUP input.

2. Beware of research institutions. You must understand that at such institutions, undergraduate instruction is a very low priority. Despite marketing claims to the contrary, the emphasis is on faculty and graduate student research. Research faculty, especially senior research faculty, often feel that it is beneath them to teach undergraduate courses, especially introductory undergraduate courses, and frequently openly express their disdain for such courses. These courses often have very inexperienced instructors who will likely propagate traditional and inferior instructional methods. Consider small liberal arts colleges or community colleges where faculty are more enthusiastic about teaching and are not hampered by research responsibilities.

3. Beware of large lecture courses, especially at the introductory level. Research has shown that lecturing is an effective way of conveying information but an inferior way of teaching and an inferior way of learning. I will never completely understand why schools that claim excellence in instruction use the large lecture model as it is totally inconsistent with excellence. Look for institutions where introductory courses have fewer than a hundred students (the fewer the better) and require students to be interactive rather than passive.

4. Beware of courses taught by graduate students. Most large institutions require their incoming graduate students to work as teaching assistants for one or two years, sometimes more. Most of the time, this amounts to either helping grade course assignments or presiding over laboratory sections. Such duties are considered important for graduate students who are pursuing research careers. You must understand, however, that the vast majority of these graduate students have no real interest in providing quality instruction. Most are merely one or two steps ahead of the students they are supposedly teaching. The vast majority look forward to the day when they no longer have to worry about teaching and they can concentrate full time on their research, which is why they got the teaching assistantship in the first place. Students who want to concentrate on teaching are rarely even admitted to doctoral programs at all and thus have no opportunity to propagate better classroom instruction. I have observed that in laboratory sections, graduate student teaching usually amounts to supervising cookbook style lab activities that have very little relevance to anything else in the course. None of this is even an approximation to the quality required of full time classroom instruction as it should be practiced and to think otherwise is preposterous. Why should you pay to have a student teach you? That is the faculty's job! Look for institutions where course sections, including labs, are taught by full time faculty members.

5. Beware of courses taught by adjunct or part time faculty. Large institutions employ adjunct or part time faculty because such faculty do not have to be paid as much as full time faculty and they usually do not receive employment benefits either. Adjuncts are also usually overloaded with too many courses so the institution's full time faculty can concentrate on research. Again, this is in direct contradiction to any of the institution's claims of excellence. Look for institutions where course sections, including labs, are taught by full time faculty members.

6. Beware of any faculty member who comes from a research background. Despite claims to the contrary, large research programs do not prepare faculty to deliver quality science instruction. They prepare faculty to perform research. There is nothing wrong with doing research, but the qualifications for research do not necessarily overlap those for instruction. Those who tell you otherwise are doing so for political correctness. You can almost always find faculty credentials on a school's website. Look for institutions that actively seek and hire non-research faculty members, especially for teaching introductory courses.

7. Beware of a department that will not guarantee your acceptance into their graduate program, should you apply, after graduating from their undergraduate program. If you successfully complete an undergraduate science degree and you do not meet admission requirements for your department's own graduate program, then that department has failed in preparing you. Most institutions encourage their graduates to attend graduate school elsewhere and that is fine. However, if you still decide to apply to your department's graduate program and you are deemed unqualified for admission requirements, then you have been cheated out of four years of instruction and lots of money. Any university science department that claims to provide quality instruction but cannot admit you to its graduate program has no interest in preparing its own undergraduate students. Look for institutions where departments can and will guarantee in writing that you will qualify for their own graduate programs upon completion of an undergraduate major.

8. Beware of a department populated with more graduate students from foreign countries than from this country. This sounds discriminatory, but that is not how I mean it. Think about the situation though. If a department in this country will not accept American students, then I take that to mean that American students are not adequately prepared for graduate study by our own university systems, which in turn is indicative of systemic failure. Universities know that better prepared graduate students will bring in more money in research grants, and that in turn means more positive political publicity. Look for institutions that have a significantly higher proportion of American graduate students than foreign students.

9. Beware of institutions that boast of meeting various accreditation standards. I have yet to meet a faculty member at any institution who did not agree that accreditation is a sham. As evidence, I offer the simple fact that the criteria of the various regional accreditation agencies in this country are not the same! If the intent were truly to set positive standards for instruction then all institutions would have to meet the same standards; in practice they do not. Interestingly enough the regional accreditation agencies apparently answer to no higher authority and they make up the "standards" as they go along. Furthermore, you should know that the larger institutions, the ones with huge research budgets, are not held to the same level of enforcement to accreditation standards as much smaller institutions, particularly community colleges, are. By virtue of their financial status, the larger institutions can and do get away with interpretations of supposed "standards" that smaller schools cannot get away with. Many administrators will openly say that accreditation is a requirement for an institution to open its doors. This is patently false. What administrators will not say in public, but will readily admit in private, is that unaccredited institutions do not get federal funding. It all comes down to money. Institutions play the accreditation game merely to get federal money. No one involved in this game will tell you differently. Being unaccredited does not mean that an institution does not provide high quality instruction. Look for institutions that do not boast about being accredited.

10. Beware of departments that offer "distance education" courses or Internet-based courses. "Distance education" is a farce. There is no way for a "distance education" science course to be equivalent to its traditional classroom counterpart. Not a single faculty member I have talked to at any institution anywhere has disagreed with this statement. In some disciplines, perhaps the humanities, it may be possible to make a "distance education" course more nearly equivalent to its traditional counterpart, but sc/ " format. If you corner an administrator on this, he or she will likely disagree and cite examples of such courses at other institutions. This is the fallacy of "well they're doing it so it can be done," which does not address the issue of quality. Administrators will also claim that "distance education" course and degree programs allow students who would not normally be able to take a course or earn a degree to do so. Behind closed doors, administrators will tell you that "distance education" courses serve only to bring in tuition dollars without using up physical resources on campus. Faculty can be overloaded with the nonsense of developing and "teaching" online courses and distance courses while sacrificing true classroom quality needed by their legitimate students. If you were an employer, would YOU hire someone with a degree that included no actual classroom instruction? I would not. If you were a faculty member, would YOU admit a first year graduate student whose undergraduate degree included online or "distance education" science courses? I would not. If your potential school or department offers these silly courses, ask to see grade distributions for these course and traditional courses. You will likely be denied because there is likely a huge discrepancy between the two distributions. The "distance education" courses will likely have a higher proportion of high grades than the traditional courses. If so, then the "distance education" courses are too watered down and are not rigorous enough. The "distance education" courses could also have a significantly higher proportion of failing grades than the traditional courses. If so, then the students are obviously not adequately prepared for the responsibilities of independent learning and would be better served by traditional classroom courses. You should also know that many colleges will not accept "distance education" science courses for credit in science major programs despite offering such courses themselves! They will not even let their own science majors take such courses. What does that tell you? Some students can thrive in an independent learning environment, but the overwhelming majority cannot. In all my years of teaching, the number of students I have seen who can succeed in "distance education" courses can be counted on one hand. If your institution offers them, avoid them and take traditional courses. Look for institutions that offer very few or no "distance education" science courses.

11. Beware of institutions with boards of trustees populated by business people. These people are unquestionably unqualified to make decisions about education and teaching. They see the world through budgets and profits and as such, have no genuine concern for students or faculty. They frequently have personal motives for being on the board, including padding their own resumes and potential future political ambitions. They are also very likely on boards of multiple related or unrelated organizations, which is an obvious conflict of interest. Like senior administrators, they are so detached from the classroom that they really have no clue about teaching at all. Ask for the names of trustees at your institution and then, if possible, talk to the trustees. Ask them why they are on the board and whether they have political ambitions. You will very likely be told that it is against some regulation to approach board members, especially at private institutions. As a tax paying citizen, you have every right to approach the people who are supposedly charged with looking after publicly funded schools and colleges. Look for institutions with boards of trustees populated by former faculty members.

12. Beware of institutions affiliated with organized religion. While some of these institutions maintain acedemic integrity, most do not. The vast majority of them, especially those affiliated with evangelicals and fundamentalists, boast about offering courses "with a Christian perspective." There is no such thing. What they really mean to say, and will admit in private, is that they pretend to offer academic courses but ultimately everything is tied to their own religion's world view. This is especially true of their science courses. Many of these institutions tell students that everything in the textbooks is "just wrong" because it doesn't allow for their irrational supernatural beliefs. They promote dogmatic thinking and dismiss anything that goes against their religious dogma. I know from personal experience that these institutions also go out of their way to hire faculty who also promote dogma rather than actual science. Look for institutions that are not affiliated with organized religion.

13. Beware of various university rankings, especially those in popular newspapers and magazines. These rankings have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of instruction at the various institutions. More often than not, these rankings are related to the institutions' research budgets and how much grant money each institution generated in the recent past. Rankings also reflect average SAT scores of incoming freshmen, another rather meaningless item. I saw a news story recently describing how one school decided to no longer require SAT scores for applicants, and U.S. News and World Report deliberately gave the school a very low ranking by assuming an average SAT score below a certain level. USNWR refused to acknowledge that the school didn't need or use SAT scores any more and arrogantly and arbitrarily gave the school an artificial ranking. A high ranking does not mean high instructional quality. A low ranking does not mean low instructional quality. Undergraduate university instruction is overwhelmingly uniformly poor with few, but certainly some, exceptions. Fortunately, some schools are beginning to see these rankings for what they really are, marketing, and are opting out of the process. It's about time. Do not let these rankings affect your choice of institution. Better still, look for instituions that do not appear in rankings.

14. Beware of institutions that boast of admitting elite students. I only recently figured out why some institutions appear highly selective about whom they admit. Elite institutions want students who can teach themselves. This allows the institution's elite faculty to pretend to be involved in undergraduate instruction while still devoting most of their time to their first obligation, research. The more time students require of faculty, the less time faculty can spend doing research. You must understand that research always takes priority over classroom instruction. The university system of education is built upon that premise, even at the undergraduate level. Look for institutions that do not boast about having elite students.

15. Accept responsibility for your learning. When you enroll in a (college) course, you are obligating and committing yourself to learning the material presented in that course regardless of what the instructor does. This amazes students, especially students fresh out of high school. Ideally, the instructor should play a significant role in helping you learn but in the real world, that does not always happen. By "significant role," I mean that the instructor should explain the basic concepts and applications and provide you with resources to help you expand upon the basics. If you choose not to make use of the resources provided, and that includes simple advice from your instructor, then you are not meeting your obligation. If you expect the instructor to give you answers to every question, then you are probably not mature enough to learn independently and you probably have little chance of succeeding in college. Take the initiative to make use of all available resources and do not expect to be given all the answers.

16. Forget about credit and concentrate on learning. In high school, almost every piece of work you were assigned was taken up and somehow counted toward your grade. For various reasons, this simply isn't feasible in college. The primary reason is that your instructor expects you to do all assigned work with very little regard for the credit. The purpose is to learn. Another reason is that at larger institutions, your instructor's primary responsibility is not teaching; it is research. There simply is not sufficient time to take up every scrap of paper for a grade. In college, you are expected to do whatever is necessary to learn without obsessing over getting credit. If you obsess over credit, then you are probably not taking the course for the right reason. Do not obsess over getting credit and do the work that is expected of you.

17. Do not put up barriers to learning. I am constantly amazed at how students immediately begin putting up barriers to their learning on the first day of class. The barriers are almost always the same: work conflicts, family conflicts, lack of Internet access, lack of transportation, lack of time. Students put up barriers in the classroom too: distractions from mobile phones and pagers, poor attendance, refusal to participate, immaturity. Some of these are the result of poor organization. Some are the result of incompetent parenting. Some are the result of low self esteem. All are used to attract attention to the student. All are correctable by the student. Students are usually surprised when instructors move to remove these barriers. Students tend to think that they must have their phones with them all the time, even in class. Some students pretend to be offended as another way of attracting attention to themselves. Do not put up barriers to learning.

18. Education must be your priority. To be most successful, your education must be your highest priority. Too many students do silly things like planning family vacations, weddings, and non-emergency medical procedures at times that conflict with classes. Some of these same students later complain later about not knowing something that was discussed in their absence and blame the instructor. Of course they fail to realize that this is not the instructor's problem to deal with. Making one's education a priority is not always easy, but it is certainly necessary. If you cannot make your education your priority, and there are certainly instances when it is not possible or advisable, then you should wait until you can. Make your education your highest priority.

19. You are not entitled to a high grade. A grade should be a reflection of a student's work quality and level of mastery of course material. It is not a reflection of the student as a person, although too many students think of it as such. For some reason unknown to me, too many students enter college courses expecting an A but unwilling to earn it. I may be wrong, but I have a feeling this sense of entitlement comes from the public schools, where too many students may be rewarded to boost their self esteem rather than for high quality work. Students are not used to being held accountable for their own success or failure and they feign offense when actually held accountable for the first few times. If you are indeed entitled to anything, it is the opportunity to earn a high grade, but not the high grade itself.

20. Be careful when you ask an instructor for a reference. Since I began teaching, I have sometimes been asked to give students either written references and telephone references (interview style). I have never given a student a negative written reference. If I cannot give a positive written reference, I will not give a reference at all. If I am giving a reference over the telephone, I have no way of knowing what I will be asked about a student. I have no choice but to answer every question asked of me honestly. If a student has a poor attendance record and I am asked about attendance, I will note the poor attendance record. If a student disrupts my class and I am asked about behavior, I will note the disruptive behavior. If a student refuses to participate in class activities and I am asked about participation, I will note the refusal to participate. If a student consistently whines about not being allowed to use a cell phone during class and I am asked anything to which this is relevant, I will note this behavior. If a student mentions smoking marijuana and I am asked about drug use, I will note the marijuana use. I recently had to give a reference for a former student for a job that required a security clearance. I had to speak with a federal agent who asked me some very surprising and personal questions about the student, including questions about drug use, association with terrorists, and personal relationships. I will not lie for any student under any circumstances. My references will always reflect what students choose to show me in terms of behavior, attitude, performance, and competence. Do not ask me for a reference unless you are completely comfortable with an honest reference.