I don't know about all of that. I'll tell you what i think about those three things, but I'm only speaking for myself.

Teachers at public schools and professors at colleges are basically part-time employees who (as a group and also many individuals)routinely make a whole lot of noise about being underpaid, despite research showing that they don't take work home any more often than their middle management private sector counterparts. And the high school and lower teachers get what? 16 weeks of vacation a year? What other employee who is considered full time gets that?

As for college professors, I'll tell you my wife's experience. When she went from the private sector to the university setting the first week she was at her new job she called me and asked, "What do I do?"

"What do you mean, what do you do?"

"I have to be here for 8 hours every day but there's only about 4-5 hours of work to do. What do I do the rest of the time?"

"What does everybody else do?"

"Get coffee a lot, walk around campus, take 2 hour liunches, etc., etc."

"Well, then that's what you should do too."

Maybe you have a different experience, but that's mine. Now, it bears mentioning that my wife is not in a department in which anyone is expected to do research. But we aren't talking about the research aspect of colleges, we're talking about teaching, right?

Public schools. Do I really need to post statistics? Do I need to tell you that according to the DOE's own numbers, almost 1/5 of high school GRADUATES can't read, as in, are functionally illiterate? That (again, according to the DOE) over HALF of the adult population of the country reads below a sixth grade level?

We're not talking about how we stack up on standardized tests against China or Japan in advanced math, we're talking about being able to read and understand The Outsiders.

What should my opinion be of public schooling in America?

Universities and colleges—My wife works in a clinical field and was (she refused to do it anymore after this) the HIPPA compliance officer for the school clinic. Several of the supervising professors refused to follow HIPPA guidelines in the clinic. They didn't believe that the government would punish them for violating HIPPA guidelines because—and I am not kidding—because the clinic was associated with a major university and because it is a "teaching facility."

Literally the school's clinic is on the line here.

So my obvious question was, "Why doesn't whoever is in charge just tell those idiots that they will follow HIPPA guidelines or they won't be teaching at the university any more?"

The answer: "No one is in charge."

"What the hell do you mean, 'No one is in charge?'"

"Just what I say. There is no one person with the authority to tell those professors that. That would violate the culture of "egalitarianism" that universities are so proud of. The dean can make recommendations, but she's not going to force anyone to do anything. They want the departments to figure it out collectively and democratically. Plus, those professors all have tenure."

"Even if it means the government fines the university millions of dollars and you guys lose the clinic and possibly the entire department?"

"Apparently."

So she resigned as the HIPPA compliance officer so that if/when the worst case scenario happened her name wouldn't be listed as the person responsible, but that is when I learned how idiotic and backward the culture at universities is.

Someone will claim that I am making the above up, but I can assure you that I am not. And the university that I am referring to is represented by the logo on several posters' avatars here on this board. I won't say which one.

Someone posted that the university culture is not about what you know but what you seek to know, and that's probably true so far as that goes, but that's not the whole story. What degree you have, how many degrees you have, and from what institutions is the primary currency in academia. It is quite true that no one cares what you know, how well you can actually do your job, or (especially) whether you can teach what you may know to tuition-paying students. That's why those ninnies didn't believe the government would crush them for HIPPA violations. "But we're a major teaching university."

I only have time for one story this morning, but rest assured that there are many more I could tell regarding the culture of academia.

I will say that, to address the poster to whom I am now replying's fallacious red herring, I din't have pre-conceived notions about academia before my wife got her current job and I started employing medical physicians.

I quickly realized, however, that at least according to my own experience, every stereotype I had ever heard about the Ivory Towers and those who inhabit them were pretty much true. Not for every person involved, but the vast majority.

This post was edited on 11/7/23 at 9:14 am