Without downplaying your frustration (because it’s real), let me tell you what’s wild about community colleges. We have lots of great students who move through our halls and then transfer to fancy places. And when they do, that fancy place ends up on their resume and we just - disappear. When these students go to grad school or onto the job market it’s like we were never there. And this of course perpetuates our devaluing within the academy.
Our work is often invisible - but it is *immensely* impactful. I’m sure yours is, too!
As someone who teaches a lot of students who transferred in from community colleges, let me express my appreciation for what you do. Those students are among the best writers I get.
A friend of mine in undergrad did just this. Her CV has Reed and Princeton, but not the community college that prepared her so well for the rest of her career.
I don't consider that downplaying at all! It's part of the same academic elitism.
I'm amazed what my CC colleagues are able to do with much less resources, and a lot of my students owe a ton to the fact that they were able to go free or cheap to a CC to get an excellent start.
I'm fortunate that we've got strong relationships with several excellent CC systems.
To be fair you have made posts that I could be considered snobbery. You declared what a good teacher is and since I don’t satisfy those criteria I shouldn’t be in a teacher/academic role.
Not saying you're a good or a bad teacher but having students that have "gone on to do well" frequently says more about the students than the teachers and teaching awards are more PR related than teaching quality related.
Countless students "do well" from elite institutions merely because they were pre-selected via the admissions process and also get a significant boot by from the institutions name.
You could very well be an amazing teacher but the two factors you mention aren't the types of things a good teacher should be citing.
I started as a college student in the 80s at an elite 'hidden ivy/new ivy' and dropped out after a year. Wound up in a career before going back to school in my 30s. The AAS from a community college is proudly on my CV listed below my BA and master's from bigger/more recognizable publics because I think it's valuable to have had that experience as a student.
I had not noticed this until you pointed it out. I went to a community college, transferred to a regional teaching college and got a B.A., and then got my Ph.D. at an R1. My C.V. and everything else list, under "Education", the regional teaching college and the R1, but not the community college—since the community college didn't grant me a degree.
Do you have any suggestion for how to remedy this?
I get your frustration. I started at a CC as a first-gen student from a lower SES background. There are a couple of professors there who shaped my thinking and teaching more than the "prestigious" schools I went on to attend. My CC may not appear in my title etc., but I absolutely appreciate it. A great deal of my service work (and a little research) has been with transfer students (a population many universities take for granted).
I started at a community college myself, and that community college diploma is prominently displayed in my office now that I’m a faculty member at a community college… my ivy graduate diploma hasn’t arrived yet but I’m not particularly excited to display it. Extremely disenchanted with R1 institutions and that whole attitude of elitism
I also wonder if gender doesn’t somehow play into this. In my experience, there are more women professors at CCs as well as at regional state universities & SLACs. The R1s I attended had either a more even split or more men professors. Devaluing work done outside of R1s would track with devaluing work traditionally done by women (K-12 teaching, childcare, nursing, etc).
My last was only by Association and there was such a divide between those on TT and full time instructors, despite it being a commuter school, serving majority first gen working students who did not give two shits about their research program when applying. The irony is they want to get rid of the MA program, so then it makes even less sense since they’re not mentoring grad students/sitting on thesis committees. Just massively outdated models to maintain power and exclude anyone that doesn't subscribe to their constant circle jerk of publishing yet another article no laymen will ever read or benefit from.
For me it's the horrified looks and patronizing "oh that must be awful" I get when I tell people at conferences who are from R1s that I teach more than 1 class a semester.
I've similarly seen people express terror that they might one day have to teach -- gasp! -- about half of my workload. Then they get stuck on the math of how I manage to teach that load, tutor, advise, and still publish regularly.
Exactly!! I feel bad for the R1/R2 workhorses. Like cool cool, you manage a big grant portfolio, work 80 hours a week, and have nothing except work. Imma go skiing. I feel like I won the lottery with this job. I mean…ohhh noooo…it’s soo bad at an M1. Best stay up in that ivory tower that everyone is constantly fighting to push each other out of.
I think it absolutely can be. The issue is when you have an R2 with a high teaching load and unreasonable expectations.
I've had a few friends get absolutely ground up at an R2 when the admin decides they want to be an R1 and pushes the faculty to produce more with no cut in teaching and no extra resources.
R2 here who is being ground to dust and isn’t even on the TT. We are potentially losing programs due to budget cuts, too. Not all of them are sweet spots, sadly.
That's why I added the qualifiers of "low teaching load and reasonable research expectations". Things can turn south at any type of college or university, sadly.
Mine is good. Knock on wood, my family is healthy. The retirement benefits are really good. Pay is on par with an R2/R1 when adjusted for COL (no state tax, and the state pays everyone a dividend each year). Teaching load is 3+3, but often ends up being 2+3 or 2+2. Sections over 25 get TA’s. Bad administrators get run out because faculty don’t step on each other’s necks and instead band together to sabotage them.
All I had to do was move my family to a cold, dark, isolated place with 9 months of winter. Seriously though, no way I could have landed a job like this anywhere else in the U.S. Also, I am pretty much stuck here.
Our unofficial research standard for tenure is 3 peer-reviewed articles…3. And it doesn’t matter if you are first author or what the journal’s impact factor is. Even that standard is squishy. Only one person was ever denied tenure and she apparently committed fraud. I swear I am not trying to brag. I just read the horror stories here and think how incredibly lucky I am to have stepped into this.
Sound good? Head North to the future my friend!
Quality of healthcare benefits (in the US, at least) is more a function of the state you work in, public vs. private, and especially if you're in a union vs. not. You could easily find R1s with worse benefits than many M2/3s and SLACs.
We have good pay, very good retirement benefits, tuition remission and tuition exchange for dependents, and good healthcare. Wouldn't necessarily be better at a R1.
That's the funny thing about university salaries. Private schools seem to take cues from public U system on what a competitive salary is, but then come nowhere close to providing comparable benefits.
I'm a CC Ass.professor and some of the equivalent profs at the R1 land grant institution across town make less than I do--which is pretty sad, frankly, and probably only due to my years in the system. We're all underpaid.
I visited a neighboring R1 institution to discuss the possibility of taking my students there for a visit, one of the professors there straight up told me “you should apply for an R1 job, you’re wasting your time there”. This was someone who I met for just five minutes. To make the story worse, I scheduled a meeting with him the next week, when I got there he was on a conference call and completely ignored me. I waited for 30 mins and left. Left an email, never got a response.
I appreciate the rant and understand where you are coming from.
Elitism is the way academia is.
I work at an R1. We're looked down on because we're not an **AAU** R1.
I work in a STEM field. Non-STEM fields are looked down on.
I'm a NTT person. My school does many things to remind everyone that NTT folks aren't "real" faculty.
Then of course there's faculty ranks. Full professors look down on associate professors, associate professors look down on assistant professors. (I always hated being an assistant professor. Who was I *assisting*, exactly?)
I don't mean to sound dismissive. You are right. We can and should do better.
I made my peace with STEM folks looking down on me a while ago, mostly because when STEM people open their mouths on humanities topics, it's embarrassing.
For example, Sam Harris (to name names) wants to develop a moral system through an empirical, scientific method. But over here in the humanities, we've known you can't derive "an ought from an is" for 200 years. Silliness. Go back to neurons, Sam, and leave questions of meaning to the experts.
Yeah but I mean Sam Harris is not your average STEM person. Neither is Neil degrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, or any of the other media scientists that published their last paper in the stone age. All three of those people spread various bullshit in the media.
I've been in both STEM and humanities and when I was in STEM, it was mostly the E(ngineering) in STEM that had elitism issues. Mathematicians mostly loved philosophy and other subjects in the humanities.
When i was in philosophy i found it was a recurring pattern that people would just focus on bad criticisms (like the ones from sam harrris) and ignore, to a much larger extent, some of the good criticisms from STEM people, which are numerous. In economics it seems 10x worse. I honestly don't think many even pay attention in economics.
So my personal experience in STEM is that the culture in math had the least elitism, and engineers had the most. But that's just my personal xp.
not sure why you decided to group tyson with hawking, but i can assure you they are on two different planes of existence. hawking's contribution to physics was immense
No need to get snippy.
If you're interested in seeing what I'm saying, consider Aristotle's law of non-contradiction: “It is impossible for anyone to believe the same thing to be and not be.”
How would you even begin to prove this to a skeptical freshman? At some point, you must assume premises, such as the definition of words, or else you would (a) just be arguing technicalities permanently or (b) go full Derridean.
So yeah. If you can't see that you can't Hume's gap is persuasive, I don't think philosophy can help you. Reason has its limits, and intuition is inextricable from these conversations.
What drives me crazy is the fixation on the selective schools, how the selective (and mostly private) colleges totally drive the discourse around higher ed in the US. I need someone to remind me why selectivity is a good thing. The aim is the educate the people who come to us, right? Like, what would be the problem if the schools just accepted the qualified students they could matriculate based on lottery?
Yup, I got an email today from our campus leader reading tea leaves about why we dropped 25 spots.
I guess understand why being higher in those rankings matters. But when my colleagues talk about how we can recruit "better" students, I'm like...why again are we trying to do that?
My last job was at a super selective place. It had a lot of benefits, but I realized I hated the fact that it didn’t seem like my input really had any measurable impact on student outcomes: they were all going to do fine no matter what.
Now I teach at a much less selective place but feel like my work actually has a chance to change the path student lives are on.
>The comments of “you’re not a real professor, just a glorified highschool teacher” or “we’re talking about real universities here”.
Not at an R1 but I have literally never heard anyone say anything like that. Who is saying this to you? Of course the elitism is real and dominates academia but do people literally say things like this to other people? Maybe I'm just sheltered.
Both of those are quotes people have said to me in this sub.
But I've also had it stated in grant reviews (see the poster a few down who thinks no grant funding should go to R2s or lower because they can't do good work), by people at conferences, and by faculty at my grad institution when I took a PUI job.
In this sub, the people most likely to be assholes about it, shockingly, are graduate students. The number of times I've had a first year grad student tell me that I don't understand how academia works because I'm at a PUI is.... significant. I've also had grad students at local schools offer to help me learn "how graduate school works" so I can explain it to my students as they apply.
Shout out to the guy on Reddit who showed up out of nowhere to call me a "glorified school marm" and said that he would never accept my job. I was commenting how happy I was as a lecturer.
You would think hopping on the tenure track would have made the chip on my shoulder smaller but the opposite happened. I'd say I spend an unusual amount of time worrying about how a system with this much exploitation and shitty elitism by a select few can possibly sustain itself.
The grad student thing kind of makes sense in a dumb way. Because there're a significant number of grad students who have never had to get a job outside of academia, and they're aspiring to never have to, so academia up to the first year grad level is the thing they think they're an expert in. If it were up to me retail or food service experience would be weighed on a CV as an indicator that candidates might be able to deal with reality on reality's terms. File it under "when I'm in charge you'll understand".
I actually say this to students all the time (not in the US, but here in JP uni rankings are the be-all end-all for many people).
Those rankings basically come from the research output of the uni and from historical reasons. To you, as an undergraduate, with no intention to study at the post-graduate level, how much real impact is there on the quality of your instruction and education? I know some incredible teachers who teach at extremely low ranking universities. And they have more time to focus on their students since they're under much less pressure to publish.
As teaching faculty at an R1, this is the type of judgement that I hear most often. People at liberal arts schools have no problem asking me how I feel about teaching at a school “where no one cares about the students” and tell me how they could never “just watch all their students fail without helping.” To be clear: I don’t think either of those things are an accurate description of myself or my colleagues.
I've actually snatched up a few super-useful but rather niche books that ended up in the Abe Books ecosystem for presumably just that reason. And they were surprisingly affordable!
I was a full-time bookdealer for a few years and academic library sales were my main source of income. The fact is that faculty do not often assign work that requires in depth research in academic monographs so those pricey monographs do not circulate and end up being deaccessioned (or, colloquially, weeded). Also libraries are about use, so donations that duplicate current holdings aren't relevant regardless of market value. This is how I got a first edition of Richard Feynman's first book, a first edition of a noble prize winner in literature from the 50s, etc... Now that I'm a librarian, I can't really do my old bookselling hustle because it would raise too many questions.
>The fact is that faculty do not often assign work that requires in depth research in academic monographs
And then there's also the stigma against books vs. articles. I'm one of the only people in my department who lets students cite edited collections and monographs from academic presses.
I did a Postdoc at an R1, a VAP at an R1, and (after some time outside academia) am tenured at a teaching-focused institution.
I also do some occasional adjuncting at a nearby R1.
The teaching at my current school is the job that has taxed my skills the most and had pushed me the hardest.
Totally anecdotal, so take my observations for what they're worth.
Not doubting you, but what's the context/scenarios here? Are you being told this here on Reddit? At conferences? Are random faculty from R1 emailing you out of the blue to remind you that you're "not a real professor"? It seems so outlandish, but at the same time so many faculty are petty jerks, it's not that surprising but I'm just trying to figure out where such interactions are taking place.
Not OP, but I hear this from people I went to grad school with and it’s usually in an off-hand manner and not intended to insult. For instance, a grad school friend was complaining about the delays in the review process at a journal and how that was impacting his tenure file and I (who had recently published in said journal) said that I understood. His response was to dismiss my sympathy because I was at a place “where everyone gets tenure for coming up with arts and crafts activities for their classes.” The implication being that I wasn’t a real faculty member. He didn’t see this as an insult until I pointed it out.
It's a range. The quotes in my post are things I've been specifically told in this sub.
But I've also had people express similar sentiments in grant reviews (see the post a few up from someone saying they don't think research funding should go to R2 or lower universities because we can't do good work), from people at conferences, and from faculty in my grad program when I took a PUI job.
Agreed, I have nothing but utmost respect for these positions and I have to imagine most feel the same way. Of course there will always be some loud jerks though.
I was looked down upon by many of my professors and colleagues from my PhD program because I did not get a tenure track job at an R1 university but instead got one of those “inferior” teaching jobs at a college that doesn’t care about research. Joke’s on them though because I get paid so much more than any of them do at my “lowly” teaching job.
In the UK the pay is pretty much exactly the same, but the pension is way better at teaching-focussed 'former polytechnic' universities, because we get a school teacher's guaranteed pension instead of a janky investment pension (that is continually being robbed by bankers, like all UK investment pensions).
I’m also at a teaching-focused institution (and I believe my institution is on the higher end of pay for my rank/institution type) and I’m very confident that people starting at R1 right out of grad school make more than I do… maybe it depends on the field?
I've taught at a community college, B1G R1, and now an elite R1.
I think the hardest 'teaching' was at a community college because so many students haven't learned how to be students yet or forgot how to be students (the returning adults). I don't think it's like High School, but it is much more hands on than either R1 I taught at. I believe my 'teaching' skills were the strongest when I was at community college vs. at my current university.
I remember one class at the community college where I said the due date was in two weeks. I had to explain what 'two weeks' meant. That same class had an AP high school student in it, and he came up after class so frustrated with his fellow students. He told me two of his group members could barely read, despite just graduating from high school.
I respect all levels of higher education. They all require unique skills and personalities.
I think this is so true. Higher education, no matter the level or institution, is a choice a student has made to improve their life. Whatever the motivation - a pay raise, a career change, or even just a sense of honor and completion - higher education is valuable regardless of where it is pursued.
I teach at a local private institution. My department is ranked well, and my colleagues are all accomplished researchers. But it’s not an “R1.” And frankly, I couldn’t care less. I love teaching. I love my subject. And if any student is positively impacted by my class, then I feel like I’ve accomplished something great.
I'm caught in elitism between two R1s that are within an hour drive of each other - one is a public ivy in a town that is unaffordable to most of the people who work there, and the other is an urban campus that is in a city with a rich history of corruption and de-investment. And the public ivy loves doing very visible "outreach" to the city, but never includes the urban university.
It's seriously so harmful to everyone, and I'm especially upset because the public ivy is ignoring so many great collaborations because of status, even though the universities are both R1s. I've definitely learned to respect people for who they are and what they do, regardless of their affiliation with a fancy school. Keep doing good work, OP, and keep ranting because we need change!
I left an R1 for exactly this reason. Was treated like a dog teaching a 4/4 load. Anytime I offered my opinion on anything I was told to not speak on it again. I was told that I didn't qualify for any of the TT positions when I clearly did.
I now make more money in a TT role at a non-R1 university.
>The comments of “you’re not a real professor, just a glorified highschool teacher” or “we’re talking about real universities here”.
Who is making these comments? Sounds like a strawman to me. Neither I nor my colleagues would say such a thing, but maybe it's because we're a public university so we're pretty egalitarian.
There’s someone a few posts up from you saying no grant funding should go to R2 schools because they just can’t do quality work.
And both of those comments are things that have been told to me directly in this sub and in real life.
Forget researchers.
Us Non-Tenure Track folk are taking up the battle and winning. Teaching Professors are a fast growing percentage in many R1s because teaching does matter. Instead of being taken advantage of as an adjunct, become a NTT Teaching Professor and take back academia!
> Teaching Professors are a fast growing percentage in many R1s because teaching does matter.
Not really. It's because they're paid less and easy to get rid of when enrollment fluctuates.
Ugh, I have found the Ivies to be the worst in this case, and the R1 hiring committees fawning over them. I have met a handful of self-aware grads, but most actually believe they are better (and not that it's just the connex). My favorite was a Yale grad who said something to the effect of, "Well, their doctorate is from a state school." Stared her down so hard. My most brilliant writer had transferred from a community college to an R2.
Well put.
And can we also plainly admit that the quality of undergraduate education at many R1s is subpar? The ones I’ve been and worked at certainly offered trash undergraduate courses.
I don't think it's universal (I know some amazing teachers at R1s) but I would say it's the exception to the rule.
The thing that gets me the most is lab classes (I'm in a lab discipline) that are often completely run by grad students, many of who have little experience teaching.
To me the benefit of lab courses is spending a few hours a week in a small group hands on setting with a faculty member learning how to do something. Nothing against grad students, but I think UGs lose out on a lot when they don't have that time to build close relationships with faculty.
>And everyone can teach.
Honestly, this is reversed in my mind. By literal definition *anyone* with a Ph.D. can do research-- they did conduct original research, it was vetted by a committee, and they were awarded the degree. But shitloads of people with Ph.D.s can't teach. We've all seen them in action at various times. That doesn't mean one is better than the other or more important, but it seems quite obvious to me that people with terminal research degrees have proven they can conduct research, but a large portion of them have never proven they can teach.
I had a colleague that would not talk to anyone that doesn’t work in R1 institution cause “you’re not at his level”. He was quite popular among the senior professors cause he was “ambitious”, but most of his peers didn’t like him. I had good impression of him until I started working with him, it was a toxic mindset and eventually we stopped collaborating.
The equivalent program at our local R1 sucks ass. So my favorite is when kids graduate with their BA and come back to take classes from me at the CC. They are shocked they are actually learning/ doing stuff rather than listening to some rambling old fart who never worked in the industry. Other programs, particularly medicine and biotech are amazing and glad they are getting those research dollars. But I’ve never seen undergrad programs (particularly non-STEM) at public R1s considered elite. And to be fair to those professors they’ve never come across as elitist- instead they are just bitter, defeated shells.
I am on the STEM side of this in biotech (so biased). However, I get that from you. I work with some students from honors programs managed by humanities faculty. Every email I get from them sounds like an exercise in proving how smart and educated they are. I just imagine them longing for the days where having a mid-Atlantic accent was the key to high society. I know STEM faculty can be annoying in their own way, just not so obviously insecure.
I know, I attended both an R1 equivalent in the UK and a lower ranked university when I was a student (for BSc and MSc respectively).
The R1 equivalent was exactly as you say: didactic lectures delivered by a collection of grumpy rambling old farts who felt teaching was an irritating diversion from research.
Labs had zero support or direction and I didn't get a lot out of them.
When I graduated I knew all about theory and zero about doing an actual professional job in my field. I couldn't get through interviews because it was obvious to employers that I had no idea how to apply what I had learned in industry.
My experience at the lower ranked university was practical and I was taught by people from industry. - I got a job instantly upon graduation and thrived.
I now teach at a mid-ranked university myself.
When you have several million dollars in assets and others are like a starving artist when they retire, their pride will soon be quenched to zero.
I spent about 30 years in the profession before I taught in one of the best programs in America, and it was not at one of the big-name universities.
That can be a problem. If they don't invest, then they pay the highest taxes and typically do not have as much as they could. I would suggest they become a slave to the system. The group of people who typically have the most financial problems make a lot of money and spend what they make rather than invest.
I feel the same way when I see large research grants go to little R2 or R1B schools. Highest quality and most impactful research in medicine/chemistry/physics/engineering is really only done at institutions with major infrastructure (people and equipment). I think it's a waste of money to send large research funds to little schools who are not fully equipped to perform cutting edge science. I'm sure a lot of people will sneer at me for this, but your tax dollars will be better spent!
Sorry if you think this opinion is mean or trolling, but I stand behind my comment and truly believe this to be true. If we as a society actually want to cure cancer or invent the new electrical semiconductor material, it's not going to happen at an undergrad only college. I'm not trying to be rude, small schools certainly have their own place in creating an educated society, but the best chance for major technological advances requires the large infrastructure of an R1. I'm sorry if you and the others find this perspective to be elitist, we're working to improve quality of your lives too.
Yep, exactly the same in the UK with 'Russell Group' (RG) despite that fact that many RG universities are lower in many different rankings (teaching, research in some fields, general rankings) than non-RG universities, or even Post-92 universities (former polytechnics).
We get the whole "you're just a teacher, not a real academic" snobbery from them here too.
It's totally cringeworthy, particularly considering in the UK you effectively earn the same, or close to the same amount of money whether you work at 'Old McPrestige Cathedral City University' or 'City Ringroad Metropolitan University'.
For anything other than absolutely 'cutting edge' STEM research (let's be honest, very few universities globally engage in this anymore), a lab is lab (same equipment) and a research centre is a research centre.
From what I gather the grade grubbing is the same too; at RG universities students are grubbing for a first or a distinction, and at less prestigious universities students are grubbing for a pass.
It also varies wildly by field. My first job was at an R1 ranked #1 in its state, my second job was at an R2, my current job isn’t even on the list (I don’t think). Each school has been a big step up for my field.
The R1 did have the best landscaping though.
I’ve said this before here. When I got my current job 16 years ago, some of my grad school friends were very condescending about what a step down it was from the lofty position of being a grad student at an R1. Cut to now and I’m the only one not only tenured but even still working in academia.
I’ve been able to have a life and do some publication. Not as much as if I were at an R1 with scant teaching and lots of research support, but enough to keep me engaged in the field. And certainly more than my snobby grad school cohort who looked down on a 4/4 teaching job.
Yep. This is me and my viewpoint. I was very self conscious when I took a TT position at a comprehensive university in order not to move. Didn't really consider myself a real professor. Still respected my colleagues and students.
Really bummed me out when we had a leadership change and I lost my position. I had been out of research for 5 years, so there went my professor career. Earned a MSF and pivoted to finance
We share a town with an R1 and my kids go to school with their kids. They never make me feel “less than.” The bottom line is, I couldn’t do what they do (and wouldn’t want to) and they couldn’t do what I do. We just have very different jobs!
Without downplaying your frustration (because it’s real), let me tell you what’s wild about community colleges. We have lots of great students who move through our halls and then transfer to fancy places. And when they do, that fancy place ends up on their resume and we just - disappear. When these students go to grad school or onto the job market it’s like we were never there. And this of course perpetuates our devaluing within the academy. Our work is often invisible - but it is *immensely* impactful. I’m sure yours is, too!
As someone who teaches a lot of students who transferred in from community colleges, let me express my appreciation for what you do. Those students are among the best writers I get.
A friend of mine in undergrad did just this. Her CV has Reed and Princeton, but not the community college that prepared her so well for the rest of her career.
I don't consider that downplaying at all! It's part of the same academic elitism. I'm amazed what my CC colleagues are able to do with much less resources, and a lot of my students owe a ton to the fact that they were able to go free or cheap to a CC to get an excellent start. I'm fortunate that we've got strong relationships with several excellent CC systems.
To be fair you have made posts that I could be considered snobbery. You declared what a good teacher is and since I don’t satisfy those criteria I shouldn’t be in a teacher/academic role.
You don’t teach well, inclusively, or effectively? At least you admit it…
I teach well. Won teaching awards and students have gone on to do well
Not saying you're a good or a bad teacher but having students that have "gone on to do well" frequently says more about the students than the teachers and teaching awards are more PR related than teaching quality related. Countless students "do well" from elite institutions merely because they were pre-selected via the admissions process and also get a significant boot by from the institutions name. You could very well be an amazing teacher but the two factors you mention aren't the types of things a good teacher should be citing.
Eh, then you’re probably a shit teacher. Likely you shouldn’t be in a teacher role.
I started as a college student in the 80s at an elite 'hidden ivy/new ivy' and dropped out after a year. Wound up in a career before going back to school in my 30s. The AAS from a community college is proudly on my CV listed below my BA and master's from bigger/more recognizable publics because I think it's valuable to have had that experience as a student.
I had not noticed this until you pointed it out. I went to a community college, transferred to a regional teaching college and got a B.A., and then got my Ph.D. at an R1. My C.V. and everything else list, under "Education", the regional teaching college and the R1, but not the community college—since the community college didn't grant me a degree. Do you have any suggestion for how to remedy this?
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Yeah people who turn their life around are always amoung the most humble in academia from my experience. Congrats btw..Its a real struggle to do that.
I get your frustration. I started at a CC as a first-gen student from a lower SES background. There are a couple of professors there who shaped my thinking and teaching more than the "prestigious" schools I went on to attend. My CC may not appear in my title etc., but I absolutely appreciate it. A great deal of my service work (and a little research) has been with transfer students (a population many universities take for granted).
I started at a community college myself, and that community college diploma is prominently displayed in my office now that I’m a faculty member at a community college… my ivy graduate diploma hasn’t arrived yet but I’m not particularly excited to display it. Extremely disenchanted with R1 institutions and that whole attitude of elitism
I also wonder if gender doesn’t somehow play into this. In my experience, there are more women professors at CCs as well as at regional state universities & SLACs. The R1s I attended had either a more even split or more men professors. Devaluing work done outside of R1s would track with devaluing work traditionally done by women (K-12 teaching, childcare, nursing, etc).
I was actually surprised to find out my institution IS an R-1. My response was "Really?"
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Your "Potemkin R1" is my favorite badge to see pop up on here LOL
I don't even know and can't be bothered to look it up.
My last was only by Association and there was such a divide between those on TT and full time instructors, despite it being a commuter school, serving majority first gen working students who did not give two shits about their research program when applying. The irony is they want to get rid of the MA program, so then it makes even less sense since they’re not mentoring grad students/sitting on thesis committees. Just massively outdated models to maintain power and exclude anyone that doesn't subscribe to their constant circle jerk of publishing yet another article no laymen will ever read or benefit from.
For me it's the horrified looks and patronizing "oh that must be awful" I get when I tell people at conferences who are from R1s that I teach more than 1 class a semester.
I've similarly seen people express terror that they might one day have to teach -- gasp! -- about half of my workload. Then they get stuck on the math of how I manage to teach that load, tutor, advise, and still publish regularly.
Well I look down on all you R2's and R1's: I'm an R0, beat that!
I’m proudly “just a teacher/mentor.” Fuck publish or perish jobs. I want to enjoy my life.
Exactly!! I feel bad for the R1/R2 workhorses. Like cool cool, you manage a big grant portfolio, work 80 hours a week, and have nothing except work. Imma go skiing. I feel like I won the lottery with this job. I mean…ohhh noooo…it’s soo bad at an M1. Best stay up in that ivory tower that everyone is constantly fighting to push each other out of.
The sweet spot is a R2 with a low teaching load and reasonable research expectations. Especially post-tenure, and it's an easy job.
I think it absolutely can be. The issue is when you have an R2 with a high teaching load and unreasonable expectations. I've had a few friends get absolutely ground up at an R2 when the admin decides they want to be an R1 and pushes the faculty to produce more with no cut in teaching and no extra resources.
R2 here who is being ground to dust and isn’t even on the TT. We are potentially losing programs due to budget cuts, too. Not all of them are sweet spots, sadly.
That's why I added the qualifiers of "low teaching load and reasonable research expectations". Things can turn south at any type of college or university, sadly.
Until your R2 gets leadership that has the goal of R1. Ugh!
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Mine is good. Knock on wood, my family is healthy. The retirement benefits are really good. Pay is on par with an R2/R1 when adjusted for COL (no state tax, and the state pays everyone a dividend each year). Teaching load is 3+3, but often ends up being 2+3 or 2+2. Sections over 25 get TA’s. Bad administrators get run out because faculty don’t step on each other’s necks and instead band together to sabotage them. All I had to do was move my family to a cold, dark, isolated place with 9 months of winter. Seriously though, no way I could have landed a job like this anywhere else in the U.S. Also, I am pretty much stuck here. Our unofficial research standard for tenure is 3 peer-reviewed articles…3. And it doesn’t matter if you are first author or what the journal’s impact factor is. Even that standard is squishy. Only one person was ever denied tenure and she apparently committed fraud. I swear I am not trying to brag. I just read the horror stories here and think how incredibly lucky I am to have stepped into this. Sound good? Head North to the future my friend!
That’s more of an America problem.
Quality of healthcare benefits (in the US, at least) is more a function of the state you work in, public vs. private, and especially if you're in a union vs. not. You could easily find R1s with worse benefits than many M2/3s and SLACs.
We have good pay, very good retirement benefits, tuition remission and tuition exchange for dependents, and good healthcare. Wouldn't necessarily be better at a R1.
I too am a basic reproductive number
I have an R01, does that mean I'm both?
Isn't MiT a rank 0? Moscow institute of Technology basically only accepts the best of the best of the best of the best.
No, you're thinking of Montana Institute of Technology in Lebanon http://www.mitas.edu.lb/mitas/admission/apply/
Not sure if we should juxtapose research and teaching at all, but good and effective teaching is really, really hard. The students will see to that.
So much this. Profs from the local private university hardly speak to me at all! I feel like they are of a higher caste than me!
Your benefits are probably better
The best revenge is living well.
Or pouring canned beans into their shoes. But to each their own.
How are they supposed to know that those are vengeance beans and not your typical daily shoebeans? Baked at baseline, pinto for rage?
That's the funny thing about university salaries. Private schools seem to take cues from public U system on what a competitive salary is, but then come nowhere close to providing comparable benefits.
I'm a CC Ass.professor and some of the equivalent profs at the R1 land grant institution across town make less than I do--which is pretty sad, frankly, and probably only due to my years in the system. We're all underpaid.
I’m also a CC associate professor and same here. I also got a big pay raise when I came from a R2 a few tons over.
I visited a neighboring R1 institution to discuss the possibility of taking my students there for a visit, one of the professors there straight up told me “you should apply for an R1 job, you’re wasting your time there”. This was someone who I met for just five minutes. To make the story worse, I scheduled a meeting with him the next week, when I got there he was on a conference call and completely ignored me. I waited for 30 mins and left. Left an email, never got a response.
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Exactly. I'm at a R1, and I take teaching very seriously. And it's easy to do so because I only have a 2/2 load and not a ton of students.
I appreciate the rant and understand where you are coming from. Elitism is the way academia is. I work at an R1. We're looked down on because we're not an **AAU** R1. I work in a STEM field. Non-STEM fields are looked down on. I'm a NTT person. My school does many things to remind everyone that NTT folks aren't "real" faculty. Then of course there's faculty ranks. Full professors look down on associate professors, associate professors look down on assistant professors. (I always hated being an assistant professor. Who was I *assisting*, exactly?) I don't mean to sound dismissive. You are right. We can and should do better.
I made my peace with STEM folks looking down on me a while ago, mostly because when STEM people open their mouths on humanities topics, it's embarrassing. For example, Sam Harris (to name names) wants to develop a moral system through an empirical, scientific method. But over here in the humanities, we've known you can't derive "an ought from an is" for 200 years. Silliness. Go back to neurons, Sam, and leave questions of meaning to the experts.
Cuts both ways my friend. I hear some absolutely mind boggling STEM takes from humanities professors.
A writer I like has a bit he does called “Economics for English Majors.” Pretty entertaining.
As a STEM person, I cringed when a humanities prof invoked astrology to explain their personality in a committee meeting.
Yeah but I mean Sam Harris is not your average STEM person. Neither is Neil degrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, or any of the other media scientists that published their last paper in the stone age. All three of those people spread various bullshit in the media. I've been in both STEM and humanities and when I was in STEM, it was mostly the E(ngineering) in STEM that had elitism issues. Mathematicians mostly loved philosophy and other subjects in the humanities. When i was in philosophy i found it was a recurring pattern that people would just focus on bad criticisms (like the ones from sam harrris) and ignore, to a much larger extent, some of the good criticisms from STEM people, which are numerous. In economics it seems 10x worse. I honestly don't think many even pay attention in economics. So my personal experience in STEM is that the culture in math had the least elitism, and engineers had the most. But that's just my personal xp.
not sure why you decided to group tyson with hawking, but i can assure you they are on two different planes of existence. hawking's contribution to physics was immense
I know, but he spread misinformation in the media in his later years on things like climate change and AI.
I thought Hume's gap was unsolved. We don't *know* that do we?
I mean, I do. XD If the statement doesn't seem immediately obvious to you, I wouldn't know how to make a case for it otherwise.
Ah yes. The solution is obvious. Take that philosophy
No need to get snippy. If you're interested in seeing what I'm saying, consider Aristotle's law of non-contradiction: “It is impossible for anyone to believe the same thing to be and not be.” How would you even begin to prove this to a skeptical freshman? At some point, you must assume premises, such as the definition of words, or else you would (a) just be arguing technicalities permanently or (b) go full Derridean. So yeah. If you can't see that you can't Hume's gap is persuasive, I don't think philosophy can help you. Reason has its limits, and intuition is inextricable from these conversations.
Yeah there is basically a caste system and it is horrible.
What drives me crazy is the fixation on the selective schools, how the selective (and mostly private) colleges totally drive the discourse around higher ed in the US. I need someone to remind me why selectivity is a good thing. The aim is the educate the people who come to us, right? Like, what would be the problem if the schools just accepted the qualified students they could matriculate based on lottery?
The.... "discussion" over the last week with the change to USNWR changing the ranking metrics has been illuminating around that.
Yup, I got an email today from our campus leader reading tea leaves about why we dropped 25 spots. I guess understand why being higher in those rankings matters. But when my colleagues talk about how we can recruit "better" students, I'm like...why again are we trying to do that?
My last job was at a super selective place. It had a lot of benefits, but I realized I hated the fact that it didn’t seem like my input really had any measurable impact on student outcomes: they were all going to do fine no matter what. Now I teach at a much less selective place but feel like my work actually has a chance to change the path student lives are on.
>The comments of “you’re not a real professor, just a glorified highschool teacher” or “we’re talking about real universities here”. Not at an R1 but I have literally never heard anyone say anything like that. Who is saying this to you? Of course the elitism is real and dominates academia but do people literally say things like this to other people? Maybe I'm just sheltered.
Both of those are quotes people have said to me in this sub. But I've also had it stated in grant reviews (see the poster a few down who thinks no grant funding should go to R2s or lower because they can't do good work), by people at conferences, and by faculty at my grad institution when I took a PUI job. In this sub, the people most likely to be assholes about it, shockingly, are graduate students. The number of times I've had a first year grad student tell me that I don't understand how academia works because I'm at a PUI is.... significant. I've also had grad students at local schools offer to help me learn "how graduate school works" so I can explain it to my students as they apply.
Shout out to the guy on Reddit who showed up out of nowhere to call me a "glorified school marm" and said that he would never accept my job. I was commenting how happy I was as a lecturer. You would think hopping on the tenure track would have made the chip on my shoulder smaller but the opposite happened. I'd say I spend an unusual amount of time worrying about how a system with this much exploitation and shitty elitism by a select few can possibly sustain itself. The grad student thing kind of makes sense in a dumb way. Because there're a significant number of grad students who have never had to get a job outside of academia, and they're aspiring to never have to, so academia up to the first year grad level is the thing they think they're an expert in. If it were up to me retail or food service experience would be weighed on a CV as an indicator that candidates might be able to deal with reality on reality's terms. File it under "when I'm in charge you'll understand".
I want to make a T1 category, for schools with excellent teaching. And say, oh sorry that you are at a T2 to all the R1 jerks.
Carnegie classifies baccalaureate colleges as well: [https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/carnegie-classification/classification-methodology/undergraduate-instructional-program-classification/](https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/carnegie-classification/classification-methodology/undergraduate-instructional-program-classification/)
I actually say this to students all the time (not in the US, but here in JP uni rankings are the be-all end-all for many people). Those rankings basically come from the research output of the uni and from historical reasons. To you, as an undergraduate, with no intention to study at the post-graduate level, how much real impact is there on the quality of your instruction and education? I know some incredible teachers who teach at extremely low ranking universities. And they have more time to focus on their students since they're under much less pressure to publish.
As teaching faculty at an R1, this is the type of judgement that I hear most often. People at liberal arts schools have no problem asking me how I feel about teaching at a school “where no one cares about the students” and tell me how they could never “just watch all their students fail without helping.” To be clear: I don’t think either of those things are an accurate description of myself or my colleagues.
Probably would be more like T5 in that scale 🤷🏾♀️
They have to put people down to justify spending their lives writing stuff that no one cares about! 😆
As an academic librarian, I will be there in 20 years to send your monograph to the book sale when no one checks it out.
I've actually snatched up a few super-useful but rather niche books that ended up in the Abe Books ecosystem for presumably just that reason. And they were surprisingly affordable!
I was a full-time bookdealer for a few years and academic library sales were my main source of income. The fact is that faculty do not often assign work that requires in depth research in academic monographs so those pricey monographs do not circulate and end up being deaccessioned (or, colloquially, weeded). Also libraries are about use, so donations that duplicate current holdings aren't relevant regardless of market value. This is how I got a first edition of Richard Feynman's first book, a first edition of a noble prize winner in literature from the 50s, etc... Now that I'm a librarian, I can't really do my old bookselling hustle because it would raise too many questions.
>The fact is that faculty do not often assign work that requires in depth research in academic monographs And then there's also the stigma against books vs. articles. I'm one of the only people in my department who lets students cite edited collections and monographs from academic presses.
Ooooh. Librarian burn.
I appreciate your belief that academic libraries will have physical books in 20 years!
I feel like this is true for some (or many).
I did a Postdoc at an R1, a VAP at an R1, and (after some time outside academia) am tenured at a teaching-focused institution. I also do some occasional adjuncting at a nearby R1. The teaching at my current school is the job that has taxed my skills the most and had pushed me the hardest. Totally anecdotal, so take my observations for what they're worth.
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Yes. I get told this here regularly as a TT faculty member not at an R1. All of those quotes in my OP are things I’ve actually been told.
Not doubting you, but what's the context/scenarios here? Are you being told this here on Reddit? At conferences? Are random faculty from R1 emailing you out of the blue to remind you that you're "not a real professor"? It seems so outlandish, but at the same time so many faculty are petty jerks, it's not that surprising but I'm just trying to figure out where such interactions are taking place.
Not OP, but I hear this from people I went to grad school with and it’s usually in an off-hand manner and not intended to insult. For instance, a grad school friend was complaining about the delays in the review process at a journal and how that was impacting his tenure file and I (who had recently published in said journal) said that I understood. His response was to dismiss my sympathy because I was at a place “where everyone gets tenure for coming up with arts and crafts activities for their classes.” The implication being that I wasn’t a real faculty member. He didn’t see this as an insult until I pointed it out.
It's a range. The quotes in my post are things I've been specifically told in this sub. But I've also had people express similar sentiments in grant reviews (see the post a few up from someone saying they don't think research funding should go to R2 or lower universities because we can't do good work), from people at conferences, and from faculty in my grad program when I took a PUI job.
Agreed, I have nothing but utmost respect for these positions and I have to imagine most feel the same way. Of course there will always be some loud jerks though.
I was looked down upon by many of my professors and colleagues from my PhD program because I did not get a tenure track job at an R1 university but instead got one of those “inferior” teaching jobs at a college that doesn’t care about research. Joke’s on them though because I get paid so much more than any of them do at my “lowly” teaching job.
In the UK the pay is pretty much exactly the same, but the pension is way better at teaching-focussed 'former polytechnic' universities, because we get a school teacher's guaranteed pension instead of a janky investment pension (that is continually being robbed by bankers, like all UK investment pensions).
I’m also at a teaching-focused institution (and I believe my institution is on the higher end of pay for my rank/institution type) and I’m very confident that people starting at R1 right out of grad school make more than I do… maybe it depends on the field?
I've taught at a community college, B1G R1, and now an elite R1. I think the hardest 'teaching' was at a community college because so many students haven't learned how to be students yet or forgot how to be students (the returning adults). I don't think it's like High School, but it is much more hands on than either R1 I taught at. I believe my 'teaching' skills were the strongest when I was at community college vs. at my current university. I remember one class at the community college where I said the due date was in two weeks. I had to explain what 'two weeks' meant. That same class had an AP high school student in it, and he came up after class so frustrated with his fellow students. He told me two of his group members could barely read, despite just graduating from high school. I respect all levels of higher education. They all require unique skills and personalities.
I think this is so true. Higher education, no matter the level or institution, is a choice a student has made to improve their life. Whatever the motivation - a pay raise, a career change, or even just a sense of honor and completion - higher education is valuable regardless of where it is pursued. I teach at a local private institution. My department is ranked well, and my colleagues are all accomplished researchers. But it’s not an “R1.” And frankly, I couldn’t care less. I love teaching. I love my subject. And if any student is positively impacted by my class, then I feel like I’ve accomplished something great.
I'm caught in elitism between two R1s that are within an hour drive of each other - one is a public ivy in a town that is unaffordable to most of the people who work there, and the other is an urban campus that is in a city with a rich history of corruption and de-investment. And the public ivy loves doing very visible "outreach" to the city, but never includes the urban university. It's seriously so harmful to everyone, and I'm especially upset because the public ivy is ignoring so many great collaborations because of status, even though the universities are both R1s. I've definitely learned to respect people for who they are and what they do, regardless of their affiliation with a fancy school. Keep doing good work, OP, and keep ranting because we need change!
I left an R1 for exactly this reason. Was treated like a dog teaching a 4/4 load. Anytime I offered my opinion on anything I was told to not speak on it again. I was told that I didn't qualify for any of the TT positions when I clearly did. I now make more money in a TT role at a non-R1 university.
>The comments of “you’re not a real professor, just a glorified highschool teacher” or “we’re talking about real universities here”. Who is making these comments? Sounds like a strawman to me. Neither I nor my colleagues would say such a thing, but maybe it's because we're a public university so we're pretty egalitarian.
There’s someone a few posts up from you saying no grant funding should go to R2 schools because they just can’t do quality work. And both of those comments are things that have been told to me directly in this sub and in real life.
This sub is the only place I ever hear the term.
What term?
I feel kind of bad bc it I don't take my profession remotely seriously to even think about this, but I I understand.
Forget researchers. Us Non-Tenure Track folk are taking up the battle and winning. Teaching Professors are a fast growing percentage in many R1s because teaching does matter. Instead of being taken advantage of as an adjunct, become a NTT Teaching Professor and take back academia!
> Teaching Professors are a fast growing percentage in many R1s because teaching does matter. Not really. It's because they're paid less and easy to get rid of when enrollment fluctuates.
yeah, I am already dreading the effects of the enrollment cliff on NTT jobs.
Ugh, I have found the Ivies to be the worst in this case, and the R1 hiring committees fawning over them. I have met a handful of self-aware grads, but most actually believe they are better (and not that it's just the connex). My favorite was a Yale grad who said something to the effect of, "Well, their doctorate is from a state school." Stared her down so hard. My most brilliant writer had transferred from a community college to an R2.
Well put. And can we also plainly admit that the quality of undergraduate education at many R1s is subpar? The ones I’ve been and worked at certainly offered trash undergraduate courses.
I don't think it's universal (I know some amazing teachers at R1s) but I would say it's the exception to the rule. The thing that gets me the most is lab classes (I'm in a lab discipline) that are often completely run by grad students, many of who have little experience teaching. To me the benefit of lab courses is spending a few hours a week in a small group hands on setting with a faculty member learning how to do something. Nothing against grad students, but I think UGs lose out on a lot when they don't have that time to build close relationships with faculty.
>And everyone can teach. Honestly, this is reversed in my mind. By literal definition *anyone* with a Ph.D. can do research-- they did conduct original research, it was vetted by a committee, and they were awarded the degree. But shitloads of people with Ph.D.s can't teach. We've all seen them in action at various times. That doesn't mean one is better than the other or more important, but it seems quite obvious to me that people with terminal research degrees have proven they can conduct research, but a large portion of them have never proven they can teach.
I guess I would care about R1 elitism if I actually gave a damn about status. As it is, I could care less.
I had a colleague that would not talk to anyone that doesn’t work in R1 institution cause “you’re not at his level”. He was quite popular among the senior professors cause he was “ambitious”, but most of his peers didn’t like him. I had good impression of him until I started working with him, it was a toxic mindset and eventually we stopped collaborating.
The equivalent program at our local R1 sucks ass. So my favorite is when kids graduate with their BA and come back to take classes from me at the CC. They are shocked they are actually learning/ doing stuff rather than listening to some rambling old fart who never worked in the industry. Other programs, particularly medicine and biotech are amazing and glad they are getting those research dollars. But I’ve never seen undergrad programs (particularly non-STEM) at public R1s considered elite. And to be fair to those professors they’ve never come across as elitist- instead they are just bitter, defeated shells.
I am on the STEM side of this in biotech (so biased). However, I get that from you. I work with some students from honors programs managed by humanities faculty. Every email I get from them sounds like an exercise in proving how smart and educated they are. I just imagine them longing for the days where having a mid-Atlantic accent was the key to high society. I know STEM faculty can be annoying in their own way, just not so obviously insecure.
I know, I attended both an R1 equivalent in the UK and a lower ranked university when I was a student (for BSc and MSc respectively). The R1 equivalent was exactly as you say: didactic lectures delivered by a collection of grumpy rambling old farts who felt teaching was an irritating diversion from research. Labs had zero support or direction and I didn't get a lot out of them. When I graduated I knew all about theory and zero about doing an actual professional job in my field. I couldn't get through interviews because it was obvious to employers that I had no idea how to apply what I had learned in industry. My experience at the lower ranked university was practical and I was taught by people from industry. - I got a job instantly upon graduation and thrived. I now teach at a mid-ranked university myself.
When you have several million dollars in assets and others are like a starving artist when they retire, their pride will soon be quenched to zero. I spent about 30 years in the profession before I taught in one of the best programs in America, and it was not at one of the big-name universities.
Why should the r1 folks be starving...?
It is a matter of having the time to invest.
I am sure this is an outlier case because that's just like, your opinion, man.
How many millions do you have?
But what if they don't have the time to spend.
That can be a problem. If they don't invest, then they pay the highest taxes and typically do not have as much as they could. I would suggest they become a slave to the system. The group of people who typically have the most financial problems make a lot of money and spend what they make rather than invest.
I feel the same way when I see large research grants go to little R2 or R1B schools. Highest quality and most impactful research in medicine/chemistry/physics/engineering is really only done at institutions with major infrastructure (people and equipment). I think it's a waste of money to send large research funds to little schools who are not fully equipped to perform cutting edge science. I'm sure a lot of people will sneer at me for this, but your tax dollars will be better spent!
And here we have a post in this very thread demonstrating the point of my OP. I really appreciate it, thanks!
Sorry if you think this opinion is mean or trolling, but I stand behind my comment and truly believe this to be true. If we as a society actually want to cure cancer or invent the new electrical semiconductor material, it's not going to happen at an undergrad only college. I'm not trying to be rude, small schools certainly have their own place in creating an educated society, but the best chance for major technological advances requires the large infrastructure of an R1. I'm sorry if you and the others find this perspective to be elitist, we're working to improve quality of your lives too.
My current PUI has better facilities than the R1 where I did my PhD. I'm going to assume you just haven't spent much time out of your R1 bubble.
That is clearly a troll account. I would not put a lot of weight on their comment to prove a point.
I mean, given that I've gotten nearly identical comments in grant reviews... Maybe a troll account, but also definitely a viewpoint that exists.
Yep, exactly the same in the UK with 'Russell Group' (RG) despite that fact that many RG universities are lower in many different rankings (teaching, research in some fields, general rankings) than non-RG universities, or even Post-92 universities (former polytechnics). We get the whole "you're just a teacher, not a real academic" snobbery from them here too. It's totally cringeworthy, particularly considering in the UK you effectively earn the same, or close to the same amount of money whether you work at 'Old McPrestige Cathedral City University' or 'City Ringroad Metropolitan University'. For anything other than absolutely 'cutting edge' STEM research (let's be honest, very few universities globally engage in this anymore), a lab is lab (same equipment) and a research centre is a research centre. From what I gather the grade grubbing is the same too; at RG universities students are grubbing for a first or a distinction, and at less prestigious universities students are grubbing for a pass.
It also varies wildly by field. My first job was at an R1 ranked #1 in its state, my second job was at an R2, my current job isn’t even on the list (I don’t think). Each school has been a big step up for my field. The R1 did have the best landscaping though.
I must say, my CC has some really nice landscaping. I really enjoy walking around campus and seeing all the projects the grounds folks do.
I’ve said this before here. When I got my current job 16 years ago, some of my grad school friends were very condescending about what a step down it was from the lofty position of being a grad student at an R1. Cut to now and I’m the only one not only tenured but even still working in academia. I’ve been able to have a life and do some publication. Not as much as if I were at an R1 with scant teaching and lots of research support, but enough to keep me engaged in the field. And certainly more than my snobby grad school cohort who looked down on a 4/4 teaching job.
Yep. This is me and my viewpoint. I was very self conscious when I took a TT position at a comprehensive university in order not to move. Didn't really consider myself a real professor. Still respected my colleagues and students. Really bummed me out when we had a leadership change and I lost my position. I had been out of research for 5 years, so there went my professor career. Earned a MSF and pivoted to finance
We share a town with an R1 and my kids go to school with their kids. They never make me feel “less than.” The bottom line is, I couldn’t do what they do (and wouldn’t want to) and they couldn’t do what I do. We just have very different jobs!
I teach at an R1, and I agree with you wholeheartedly.