Criticism On “Putting a Price on Professors”
Mr. Reddy,
If you read the article, you’ll note that, as Dr. Criscione is currently goal setting theory up a lab, he is teaching PhD students, not undergrads. As a PhD student, I can tell you that, just to do the pre-reading and writing for a typical PhD class at a competitive university, you need to spend about 12-16 hours per class getting ready. The professor, however, must: (a) carefully read and analyze the student submissions (including researching claims within the submissions that seem either particularly good or particularly suspect — these are, after all, PhD students, so they receive rigorous scrutiny); (b) at least skim all the readings for the week, in order to be fully familiar with them; and (c) do a great deal of background research beyond the readings, in order to be able to answer questions about how these readings have influenced the current state of the field, what critiques might exist, what research has built on them, etc.
Now, if Dr. Criscione had been teaching this seminar for many years, then he wouldn’t need as much prep time; he would both be extremely familiar with all the relevant literature (from having been in the field for years, and having taught the field for years), and he would quickly know how to critique the student papers. So, for a professor with, say, 10-15 years experience teaching this seminar, it might only take 1 to 1.5 days to prepare.
But Dr. Criscione isn’t an established faculty member; he’s a new faculty member. Your expectation of him being able to do this faster than two days (which, btw, would include the grading) would be like expecting a newly-minted MD who’s doing her residency to be as efficient and knowledgeable as the head of the clinical oncology department.
I hope that, for your sake, whoever hired you for one of your early positions did not have the expectation that you would be able to perform at the level of a veteran 10 to 15 years your senior, even though you seem to expect that out of Dr. Criscione.
Read more: promotion strategy, language skills.
