"H Duffy" <hester_duffy DeleteThis @nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4t35vfF124qqmU1@mid.individual.net...
>
> "whisky-dave" <whisky-dave DeleteThis @final.front.ear> wrote in message
> news:ekhdbr$er4$1@qmul...
>> and do the accessors really look at the research students
>> to evaluate good teachers.
>
> I'm not just a research student, I'm a graduate teaching assistant; they
> look at a range of different teachers, from senior lecturers to GTAs.
So they look at the 'quality of staff' so you employ clever people
to them to do research and generally speaking pass the job of teaching down
to researchers. Yes we do that too it mean we can employ high grade
lecturers
that spend a few hours a week standing in front of 100 students while
scribbling
on the whiteboard with their backs to them. When the students arrive in the
lab
they can't even understand the very basics so I'm not sure what they are
taught
in lectures but these highly qualified people but some certainly don't seem
to
teach the students much.
>>> Academics have two main purposes; to teach,a dn to research. Some do
>>> more research adn less teaching, some do more teaching and less
>>> research. Do you have a point here?
>> Yes that ours at least have been told to do more and more research as
>> that's
>> what brings money in, so we get the research students to help out with
>> teaching
>> including marking and assisting in teaching even though they have NO
>> teaching experience, I have far more teaching experience than they do.
>
> Well, all teachers have to start somewhere, but here, GTAs have to do a
> PGCHE.
That's the qualification you need to teach in primary/secondary schools
isn't it.
don't you think univ. students should have higher grade teachers to take
them
beyond the level of what they were taught at school.
>>> No, they get funding for being good at research, on the whole.
>>
>> So those employed by taxpayers money get used to do research rather than
>> teach students.
>
> No, those paid for from taxes tend to teach; research tends to be paid for
> by grants.
So you've seen your dept. budget have you.
Didn't think so.
>>> You mean UEL? Because it's a new University, and is not particularly
>>> great at the moment;
>> So just increase the standard of student but not accepting the lower
>> ability ones,
>> you know the same way Oxford does.
>
> *heh* We don't get enough top quality applications at this point; our
> reputation isn't good enough.
So change the reputation easy isn't it.
But as you imply you are looking for another job at a 'better' univ.
If you were good at teaching then why not stay and increase UEL reputation
rather than
run to another univ. ?
>> I would have thought such serious issue would be quite easy to deal with
>> by employing
>> those clever enough to sort them out. perhaps insist on beter staff or
>> more closely
>> inspect their CVs before employing them.
>
> Well, you'd be wrong.
No, I've been doing this longer than you. You're relatively new
to the world of univ.
>>> York doesn't take bad students, and does compete with Oxford and
>>> Cambridge, and indeed Harvard and MIT.
>>
>> http://ri.epfl.ch/webdav/site/ri/shared/Rankings.pdf
>>
>> Oxfor 5th
>> QMUL 100th
>> York 137th
>> UEL doesn't apear in the top 200
>
> That's a rather bizarre rating; they appear to give points for having a
> lot of international students (which is presumably why QMUL get a decent
> score); there's no external or independent rating of the quality of either
> the teaching or the research
See what I mean you can get almost any result depending on the data you
choose.
Are you saying it's easier to teach foreign students when English
is their 2nd language ? I aslo though york took on quite a lot
of foreign students according to their website that is.
>>> Yes, but they're not actually checking the quality of the students'
>>> work, they're checking the quality of the marking; that is, they're
>>> checking that the work has been given an appropriate grade, and that the
>>> feedback which has been given is appropriate. Formative and summative
>>> feedback on assessed work is a part of teaching, which is why they check
>>> it. Again, they're not looking at the students' achievements, but at the
>>> quality of the teaching.
>>
>> Is this work selected at random ?
>
> Yes, in theory at least.
So that's NO then.
And I shoudl know I'm the one that gets told what students we've selected
for this random selection and then I go and colelct their work.
So I KNOW it's not random.
>>> Well, certainly a lot of academics would rather go for a less senior
>>> position in a better university than a higher position in a less
>>> well-respected institution.
>>> Which, in effect, means exactly the opposite of what you've suggested;
>>> far from meaning that the top universities pay more, it means they can
>>> get away with paying less and getting more for their money.
>> That isn't true because when leaving I've never know anyone to take a pay
>> cut.
>
> You may not personally know anyone who has done so, but I do; in fact, I
> _have_ done so.
So that's what you'll be doing when going from UEL looking for a pay cut
will you.
Is that they way 'better' universities attract better staff, by paying lower
saleries.
>> Are you saying that going from one univ. to a 'better' one then that
>> means
>> the person takes a cut in salary I think not.
>
> Sometimes, yes.
Rarely yes, normally NO.
>> If you went from your curretn job to a similar one at York or Oxford are
>> you
>> saying you'd expect a pay cut ?
>
> It depends what the job was; given my current job, it would be quite hard
> to find a worse-apid job. But, for example, I recently applied to do a
> funded PhD at Newcastle (a good department); if I'd got it (which sadly I
> didn't),
well I'm sorry to here that (and I mean that).
And I know you've said your present job wasn't what you expected perhaps
you should read the post your applying for more carefully in future
(that's a piss take) but anyway do you know why you failed to get the job,
that could be very important when applying for another.
> I'd have taken a pay cut in order to take it.
So are you saying that better univ. pay less now rather than more and have
still have better 'teachers'.
>>> Um... so the department was funding itself,
>> yes basically, we were about £2M in profit at one point.
>>
>>> and then the University stopped funding it, whereupon the department
>>> lost money?
>> Started to lose money.
>
> How did it manage that?
Well when it had to pay for rent of the building via volume.
They then seemed to have this top slicing where they took.
The as we took on so many students they changed the funding rules
regarding student numbers. There were many strange financial calculations
that not even our academics could understand the workings of.
Which included predictions of coming years.
Could be similar to the way the government calculated the cost of the
Olympics.
So basically just a stats juggling exercise, until you prove what you want.
>>> In which case it wasn't actually funding itself, was it?
>> It was funding itself, but they changed the rules.
>> we started to have to pay for everything including space by volume
>> rather than area. When you have a lab with an 80ft ceiling that costs,
>> and the money to heat it too isn't cheap.
>
> Ah, so actually, it wasn't paying for itself, it just looked as if it was,
> because the costs weren't being calculated in an appropriate way?
They had been for years since the college was built.
we offered to give the areas to another dept., but they didn't want
it either because of the, so even though we couldn't use it
we still had to pay for an area we couldn't and didn't use.
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