Johns Hopkins University is not a university. Many other "Universities" are not universities either.
"Johns Hopkins Labs" would be a more accurate name as less than 10% of revenue is tuition related.
I'm not sure why folks including professors continue to view these places as primarily about teaching students or academics. These $100-$250 million building projects are pretty inconsequential when research grants and contracts bring in more than $4.5 billion per year.
The "deal" often being made with academia is "we'll give you a place to do research, and even fund your research, but you have to teach the next generation." This isn't a bad deal, and is the reason many scientists give up MUCH larger paychecks that they'd get from the private sector to be a professor. These people would rather do research than have a more directed engineering (or engineering research) role that the private sector would give them.
But that deal has also shifted. Duties have changed and often many of the academics do not get to do much research, instead being managers of grad students who do the research. Being a professor is a lot of work and it is a lot of bureaucratic work.
I'm not sure why you're complaining about researchers. Think about the system for a second. We've trained people for years to be researchers and then... make them managers. Imagine teaching people to program, then once you've decided they're fully trained and good programmers we say "you're free to do all the programming you want! But you have to also teach more programmers, grade their work, create their assignments and tests, mentor the advanced programmers, help them write papers, help them navigate the university system, write grants to ensure you have money for those advanced programmers, help manage your department's organization, and much more." This is even more true for early career academics who don't have tenure[0]. For the majority of professors the time they have to continue doing research (the thing which they elected to train to do! That they spent years honing! That they paid and/or gave up lots of money for!) is nights and weekends. And that's a maybe since the above tasks usually don't fit in a 40hr work week. My manager at a big tech company gets more time to do real programming work than my advisor did during my PhD.
I'd also mention that research has a lot of monetary value. I'm not sure why this is even questioned by some people. Research lays the foundation for all the rest. Sure, a lot of it fails, but is that surprising when you're trying to push the bounds of human knowledge? Yet it is far worth it because there are singular discoveries/inventions that create more economic value than decades worth of the current global economy. It's not hard to recognize that since basically the entire economy is standing on that foundation...
[0] Just because you have tenure doesn't mean you don't have a lab full of graduate students who need to graduate.
>>> The "deal" often being made with academia is "we'll give you a place to do research, and even fund your research, but you have to teach the next generation." This isn't a bad deal, and is the reason many scientists give up MUCH larger paychecks that they'd get from the private sector to be a professor. These people would rather do research than have a more directed engineering (or engineering research) role that the private sector would give them.
Teaching graduate students. Most undergraduate teaching is done by "adjuncts" who do not do research.
Salaries are a mixed bag. Scientists who want to continue doing research in the private sector also give up much larger paychecks. Many work in facilities that are barely nicer than sweatshops.
Disclosure: Adjunct for one semester, 30 years ago.
I think that's the whole point. Many university's very nature has shifted significantly and lots of people don't like it and lament the change.
i think the only people that realize this are people that are actively doing research in academia. not even the undergrads at the school realize that teaching undergrads is at best a side-hustle for the institution.
i've seen so many "our tuition pays your salary so you you need to XXX" type rants I've seen from disgruntled students/parents over the years and i've always bit my tongue when it comes to setting the record straight.
R1 Research University.
Teaching mostly by TA, not Faculty.
Not a "college".
Are you a professor at a R1 school? All the faculty I know at R1s (see CMU, MIT, etc) are doing quite a lot of teaching in addition to their research.
I think he is mostly explaining the experience of many a student, which finds themselves, especially in the first few years, with very large class sizes and minimal interactions with professors. It's not that the professors don't do any teaching, but that your first two years probably feel like a scam, especially if there are many general requirements not tied to your major.
TAs soon to be replaced by AI.
Professors at schools like this do not view these places as about teaching students. Academics, to include performing research in their field and publishing the results, yes, and the students get in the way of that.
Yes. If you want a really high quality education, you don't go to a big research school. You go to a small school, like a liberal arts school, where the teachers are both highly trained and really passionate about teaching.
I went to a small liberal arts school for an undergrad degree in STEM, and to a R1 research university for graduate work.
The absolute best classes at the big-name research university were about as good as the average class at my small undergrad. The classes at the small school were of distinctly better quality: more engaged teachers, more engaging work, and simply higher quality teaching.
Did you go to an elite (or close to it) liberal arts school? I have gone to only R1 schools myself, but my exposure to liberal arts schools would indicate they are a mixed bag, especially in the sciences (not disagreeing with you or saying that R1 schools aren't also a mixed bag in some/many senses).
Most undergraduates don't realize it, but the purpose of going to an R1 is access to an alumni network and (for the small percentage that are interested) access to people performing cutting edge research in a discipline and their physical resources.
I suspect that honesty in their marketing materials would not increase applications though.
Not the poster you asked, but I think their point stands for (at least many) non-elite liberal arts schools. (Heck, I think it stands for some community colleges, too.) Teachers at those institutions have often attended elite programs, and in any case have self-selected into (primarily) teaching roles, and you'll get a lot of their individual attention, which you wouldn't at a big school.
(For the benefit of students reading this: go to office hours, especially early in the term, even if it's just to shoot the breeze. If you don't, you're cheating yourself out of the main advantage of that institutional model.)
Where your take is correct, and even demands greater emphasis, is the value of the alumni network, and the "name recognition" of a degree from somewhere people, well, recognize. As someone who deeply believes in the value of education for its own sake it pains me to be this cynical, but those are the only things that matter in the world at large.
That's the honest take, which, indeed, no one in higher education will ever put so baldly.
Disclosure: graduated from, and also spent five years teaching at a (very) non-elite liberal arts college. The education was good - even great, in some programs / by some professors - but the professional advantages absolutely nil. I will council my own son not to attend a similar school (should any of them even survive by the time he gets there - they're by and large on life-support right now); even tuition-free it wouldn't be (economically) worth it, and at the actual price it's the worst life decision many of those students will ever make.
This is probably true since at least WW2 but isn't the central idea that Professors closest to cutting edge research can do the most interesting teaching?
If you want the best teachers you can always go to Liberal Arts Colleges where this isn't really an issue.
Johns Hopkins gets a lot of money from vested interests to push whatever suits them.
The early nod to Agora Institute mission of “building stronger global democracy” Followed by bemoaning USAID cuts makes me wonder if the author is deliberately missing one of the most glaring examples of this.
Exactly.
The author's electricity bill went up and his cat got stolen in part because his colleagues working under the university incentive systems (i.e. don't publish stuff that pisses off the interests that fund your lab) created work that legitimized those policy decisions so that those decisions could be made and the funding interests, whatever they may be, could benefit from them.
One wonders if there are similar incentives in the university ranking, administration and consulting that legitimize the university's otherwise questionable decision to engage in these seemingly irresponsible ventures.
s/gets/accepts
Nobody is waterboarding the money down their throat. They can say no. The actual question is: why don't they?
"Nobody is waterboarding the money down their throat. They can say no. The actual question is: why don't they?"
Leaving aside that metaphor, the obvious answer is that they either like or need it. Most likely the former, because many of these well known universities are swimming in money already.
Why would they not accept money to do something they are interested in doing?
What is the downside to the school of a nicer student union or a public policy/international relations campus in the nation's capital?
Because that's not what the GP was talking about. For example, say there is some controversial economic policy passed by one of the parties. Then a researcher goes out to research if the policy is working or not. But when they do the research, they find out that the policy doesn't work and has bad side effects too. However, the majority of the university votes and supports the party that passed the policy.
So the researcher intentionally changes some of the ways the data is collected and poof, it looks like the policy works. Extra funding comes your way but now you have committed academic fraud. Not that anything will happen to you for this, but still, you know you did it. That's what the GP is talking about and it happens quite a bit in the humanities and economics. Its why private economists and public economists almost seem like different species.
The GP invented some sort of conspiracy theory that doesn't really seem like it's worth discussing, whether it happens a lot or not in reality.
Whether you believe what he said or not, my questions remain.
They are interested in doing some of these things precisely because they are being paid to.