• jungle@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There’s an alternative system where this doesn’t happen: pay university professors less than a living wage.

    You do that, and you’ll get professors who work in the industry (they have to) and who love teaching (why else would they teach).

    I studied CS in country where public university is free and the state doesn’t fund it appropriately. Which obviously isn’t great, but I got amazing teachers with real world experience.

    My son just finished CS in a country with paid and well funded university, and some of the professors were terrible teachers (I watched some of his remote classes during covid) and completely out of touch with the industry. His course on AI was all about Prolog. Not even a mention of neural networks, even while GPT3 was all the rage.

    • rbhfd@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      who love teaching (why else would they teach)

      Professors love doing academic research. Teaching is a requirement for them, not a passion they pursue (at least not for most of them).

      • jungle@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, that makes it even worse.

        To be clear, I’m not advocating for not paying living wages to professors, I’m just describing the two systems I know and the results.

        I don’t know how to get teachers who are up to date with industry and love teaching. You get that when teaching doesn’t pay, but it’d be nice if there was a better way.