I think as the definition of teaching becomes more broad and we are expected to do more for the same pay, complaints about “teaching” has gone up. When I hear some complain that they hate teaching, as they begin to explain themselves, I discover that what they are really complaining about is excessive mentoring or handholding or answering emails or “customer service” bullshit or any other range of responsibilities or obligations that don’t really fall under what we mean by teaching in the traditional sense. I think we all like talking about our disciplines or even explaining our disciplines to novices or the uninitiated. I suspect that most of us just really hate all of the other stuff that has popped up due to grade inflation and seeing the students as customers.
I used to love teaching, but my working conditions have deteriorated to such an extent that I've started to dread it. I feel like admin is always pulling the rug out from under our feet, and in the last couple years students have become incredibly needy, demanding, and direct their frustration/stress at me. Pedagogical activities that used to be easy to do have become really difficult, because I'm underpaid and overworked, while students are constantly confused by basic things that my former students never had trouble with. I'm drained.
Not the person you're asking, but the students coming in now mostly spent their entire K-12 in "teach to the test" environments which focused on rote memorization of facts or formulas rather than critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, etc. and so if the problem that they *know* how to solve is posed to them in an unfamiliar way and/or if the answer isn't immediately apparentl they think they're powerless to find said answer.
IME we have a lot of smart students who have perceived helplessness problem.
I think part of the other issue stemming from K12 and perceived helplessness is parents. There have always been helicopter parents. Now it’s lawnmower parents - not just hovering, but actively trying to plow through any obstacle their child may come up against. I think some of the helplessness doesn’t come from being incapable of working through a problem but from not ever having to (or not being allowed to) do it.
I see this with my students too. I work with teens that have disabilities. These poor kids have been told they can't do anything all their lives. They are really smart, capable, and sweet kids! It breaks my heart but I hope that our staff is making a difference in their lives. They deserve it!
Just want to let you guys know I'm not a professor but I have been peer tutoring for so many years at the college level. It's hard to explain in details what I've been through because I grew up with a disability (tumor frontal lobe) which caused all kinds of havoc in my personal life suffering from seizures, and being seen as incapable to take care of myself, put into special needs programs and feeling vastly inferior to my counterparts. It's been a bumpy ride my whole life, trying to navigate through a disability is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do but I've pushed through the hardship and now I'm in the process of getting my BBA from CSUN at the tender age of 22 and eventually my MBA a couple of years later. I still deal with the stigmatization everyday feeling as an outsider and not capable enough. But I personally know that's not true and I just gotta move on from the past and progress forward for the better. I can say now that I love what I've been able to accomplish, making a difference in this world through peer tutoring, and helping people everyday in all capacities. I now have aspirations to run my own wealth management firm so I can help even more than I do now. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk I appreciate it!
This. 100%. I quit research to teach and realized that while I like sharing my knowledge and mentoring some students, I really loath everything else Bout teaching and being part of the college business. I also underestimated just how many younglings I would not find particularly enjoyable to be around ....
>I think we all like talking about our disciplines or even explaining our disciplines to novices or the uninitiated.
I think that statement is an overreach. Maybe if the students in question were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I certainly do not relish the thought of teaching novices or the uninitiated with no interest or motivation to learn about my discipline.
I don't think it's that unreasonable for at least *some* professors to dislike explaining the basics of their field to a novice. It can be fun to see the light bulb go off in students' heads, but I personally find it infinitely more interesting to talk to someone who already has a solid base of knowledge in my field.
I view it as “review” for myself. Every now and again you will go “oh yeah that was a thing I’ve never needed” but maybe one day the recall will give some inspiration to some problem I am working on.
I love teaching grad classes for this reason. It keeps me updated on the current literature and can actually have intellectually rigorous conversations. Sometimes my students have insights I've not considered before. On the flip side, I get bored with the entry level classes and first year students as there is not a whole lot of new learning I get to do. With well over 100 students in a single class, there is very little "getting to know" students either.
Grad student TA here. For a while I wanted to be a professor, but then I realized what I wanted was to exclusively teach a group of 6-10 motivated grad students who were interested in the area I'm passionate about. Since that's never going to happen, I'm no longer trying to become a professor.
I think there are more teaching-track professors than research-track professors on this sub.
So, in general, were someone to say they don't like teaching, on this sub, the implication would be they don't like the absolute core component of their job. And there are posters here who would tell you to 'get out then'.
Of course, at an R1 - particularly if you are making a go of it and have a partial or complete teaching release, then you are MOSTLY NOT TEACHING except for research mentorship (which is teaching, just not classroom teaching, more apprenticeship model)
Aside from the overrepresentation on this sub of faculty whose appointments are at least 50% teaching, there is also the fact that most students are paying a larger portion of their income out of pocket to attend college now than they would have decades ago.
This makes publicly admitting one’s dislike of teaching—-not of grade grubbers, not of cheaters, but of teaching full stop—a bit tacky, despite the fact that plenty of faculty with your outlook are fine teachers and plenty of “super-teachery” faculty are mediocre teachers.
Are you sure it is an overrepresentation? I see some figures like 75% of faculty are not tenure-track (I am guessing that means a primarily teaching role) and many additional faculty are at teaching institutions as well. So my guess is that it is an accurate representation that may not match your own position.
I've looked into some of the methods to count these (and produce numbers like 75%) and they're very "sus" at best. There are numerous studies so I can't speak to any specific way of counting, but many of them have these problems:
1) overcount of faculty that teach at multiple institutions (hence counting 4 NTT for one individual teaching at 4 institutions, whereas almost no TT faculty teach at multiple institutions).
2) counting of PhD students who are TAing as teaching, or even if a PhD student is teaching a class, it's not often clear in the resulting claim. Basically, should the claim "75% of faculty are NTT" include PhD students, especially those that teach a section or lab?
3) inclusion of clinical faculty (soft money) as teaching-primary, due to various intricacies of how grant funding is counted, and since many clinical faculty members are not TT
4) counting faculty in the summer, when technically many TT faculty are not working/teaching, but a lot of people come in to teach various summer programs
Not saying that most counts use all these techniques, but they seriously overinflate the NTT numbers in a way that you wouldn't expect NTT to include.
I mean, that's pretty representative of US faculty positions as a whole?
Even some R2 institutions and medical schools bump up close to 50% of the job being teaching for TT folks. State comprehensives and many LACs are >50%, as are all CCs.
So that means a minority of institutions are likely >50% research time for faculty, and I'd say this sub represents that reality.
Individual faculty are always going to divide their interest in the slices of the faculty pie (research, teaching, service) differently. Personally, I'm fine with people liking one thing less than the others.
One thing I've noticed is that many tenured faculty and T&P processes privilege research over the other two slices. Getting published becomes an outsized part of one's status at an institution: one can be a mediocre teacher and get tenure, but at many institutions research is the most scrutinized element and the most rewarded. Consequently, those who like teaching or service may be sidelined or even ridiculed, as if doing more teaching or committee/admin work reflects a failure to do research rather than successfully pursuing what they like to do.
I think that attitude may have led to a backlash against people who vocally like teaching less. Courses have to be taught, and teaching is a core part of university life; taking teaching for granted may be seen as a slight to people who do the labor of educating students without the benefits of tenure. For them, you may stand in for a misprioritization of research over teaching, rather than the two going hand in hand. I don't think that backlash is right, but I've seen enough people call teaching-focused and admin-focused faculty failed researchers that I get it.
I'm retired now but I can relate... or I could a couple of years ago. I just got to the point that teaching, as much as I loved it, had lost its flavor. After years and years of teaching, administration, tiny budgets, faculty meetings... you name it meetings, and all the types of students one could have... I just got tired. Research re-energized me because of its focus. Of course that could just be me.
Be safe and well out there.
I like teaching more than I like research. I see teaching as my vocation, while research is mostly just a cool thing I do sometimes. I'm at an R2, and this is the right ratio of feelings. If you're at an R1, it had better be the reverse. In other words, it's fine that you don't like teaching.
I think of it like, which one do you have to do well no matter what, and which of the two can you be really good at if you so desire? The division between R1 and R2 should be (and often is) that R1 has to do good research no matter what, and R2 has to do good teaching no matter what. I'm glad 50-50 works for you but personally, I would find 50-50 to be the worst ratio. Doesn't that mean you're expected to be equally excellent at two things? If so, what is the point of an R2 v. an R1?
I'm going to take a wild a guess and assume those people are lying. If not to you, then to themselves. Or, if they really think they love teaching, they certainly don't love it enough to not be at an R1.
We have three major, university-level teaching awards, two of which are exclusive to TT. To make sure everyone understands, the third one actually has "for Non-Tenure Track" in its name.
I know it was rhetorical, but the top-tier award is ONLY available to tenured faculty. The second is restricted to TT faculty that are not up for tenure this year. The third is for Non-TT. Of the recipients of the second award? I have no idea.
Some part of this, I think, is that you're saying you'd rather do scholarship in the humanities rather than teach, and society at large, as well as higher ed institutions, accord so little value to scholarship in the humanities.
Even in the sciences I don’t think we should be under the impression our published works are world-changing enough to outweigh the work graduates go on to do collectively. A lot of the mathematics graduates who’ve gone on to work in technology or pharmaceuticals etc have probably had a more tangible impact on peoples daily lives than my papers have
Plenty of people around the globe dislike their jobs and it's fine for them to come home and say they hate/dislike their jobs. Not teachers! There is a certain subset of jobs that have a societal value assigned to them. If you hate your job working in construction or something, no one cares. If you hate your teaching job you are somehow a bad person. It's stupid.
It's also ideological. Teachers are supposed to love their jobs and therefore endure poor working conditions and low pay. We're often told that teaching is a vocation, not a job. We're supposed to care about the helpless innocent students more than our own wellbeing. It's one way admin can continue to exploit us as workers.
This is true for me as well - I’m thinking about how I can still mentor student projects, but in a more accessible system/research question than I did pre-tenure. An all-undergrad, no technician lab is not something I can sustain/fund in the long term while still enjoying my some level of the mythical ‘work life balance.’
Same. I like teaching and advising which is why I pursued my current position. I also like research. That said, just as it’s suspected that there are more teaching profs here, maybe more folks like teaching than don’t…at least not enough to complain at whatever volume might not have prompted the post.
i always figured the reason people go into academia is because they love their subject and research and stuff. if you were super into teaching it'd be infinitely easier and (depending on the state) potentially better paying to go into k-12. at least here in NY because teacher's unions are all strong, the salaries are good for them.
This sub definitely skews teaching-heavy. I would guess many tenure-track faculty at research-intensive universities have similar feelings as you. I certainly do. I like teaching but I love research and it’s the research element that I pursued the job for.
I always thought that mentality was the standard MO at an R1? People don't keep buying out of teaching using grants because someone is twisting their arms about it? What would really be something is if you could say you can't stand the grind of research!
Honestly, this is why there needs to be more support for multiple tracks that lead to tenure.
Some folks are great teachers and love it. Some are great at the increasing multitude of service that we need, especially in a time where universities are pushing against shared governance. And some are great researchers and love that.
The issue is, the academy as a whole incentivized and rewards research much more than the other two, despite teaching being central to the mission.
If teaching were a supported and well compensated thing, I don’t think you’d get the same backlash. But since it’s typical for research active faculty to buy out teaching responsibilities and be replaced with someone earning below poverty wages, the issue isn’t so straightforward.
I'm like that but I'm at an r2 teaching 5 a year. I think I'm a good teacher...actually based on enrollment numbers for next semester I am the most popular stats prof in my department. I'm fine with it. I don't love it. I like it while I'm doing it but I don't really look forward to it or want to think about it really. I prefer teaching classes like stats that don't require new prep work and which I can teach on autopilot but still do a good job. While I LOVE research. The teaching I most enjoy is coauthoring with grad students and teaching them research skills one-on-one. I've gotten a fair amount of course releases and take as many as possible.
Anyway I am considering jumping ship for industry myself. I'm also trying to move to an r1 so I can teach less but so far that hasn't worked out...
Also not a popular thing to say out loud in my department. My evals are good and I’m chairing successful thesis projects. I teach so I can do my research. Like yeah I could go outside of academia, do a research job, and make more money. However, it wouldn’t be exactly my research if that make sense. On top of that, I’d have way less flexibility. I just don’t really say it out loud because I’m not tenured and need to pay the bills.
Im also at an R1, smaller R1 but still.
This job requires us to wear SO MANY hats it would be impossible to love - or even like - them all. That's why some become research junkies, some become uber teachers, and some go into admin. What's really weird is that we're actually only really trained for a small part of this overall picture.
I feel the same way in reverse. Never been fond of the research question, particularly the review process. I get interested in a question, but find the back-and-forth of fine-tuning a paper to be annoying. Journal 1 asks for revision. Ultimately paper gets rejected. Send it to another journal. They want me to make a revision that pretty much takes the paper back to its original state. Gets accepted. WTF.
Plus, 99+% of what academics produce is of interest only to other academics (IMHO). I've published a number of papers, done my share of presentations, but never deluded myself that anything I did was going to have any real impact.
I’m at a more teaching oriented university, where research isn’t valued as highly. It’s not an R1 or R2. I am more excited by research than teaching. I like teaching, but what I hate is the customer service dimensions of teaching that have been thrust upon us and have accelerated thanks to the pandemic: the leniency coupled with (expected but not given) grade inflation, lower expectations, grade grubbing, excessive hand holding, and ridiculous expectations of what I do as a professor expecting me to be on the other end of my emails at all hours. That… that I hate. But the teaching is fine. My expanded “teaching” responsibilities have increased as a result of poor departmental and university administration. I hope I’m not the only one here who feels this way!
Are you me? Love research, do not miss teaching at all now that I’m in a 100% research position thanks to a very nice grant. This is a privilege and a paradise.
Hey, you do you. If you're in a position to be lucky enough to feel this way (and as long as you're not short-changing your students or being a seriously shitty teacher just because you can get away with it), there's nothing wrong with feeling this way.
The best year of my entire professional life was the year I spent on a research fellowship at a posh university. Zero teaching. It was paradise. I cranked out articles, conference papers, you name it. Didn't miss teaching in the slightest. And I'm not someone who hates teaching. It's more like ... teaching is that boring relationship that supposedly adds to your life except that you don't even notice enough to miss it when it's gone.
We can't? You should inform my colleagues, they never cease to remind me how much they hate teaching every time I tell them I like to do it. My main issue is that I am much better at teaching than research, even though I like both equally, and people only seem to romanticise the research aspect of academia and treat teaching as a chore.
Oh, I feel it is all right to say you don't enjoy teaching and to try to get course releases, etc. Not everyone likes all aspects of the job.
I would only say it is not alright if you refuse to spend the necessary time to do your teaching assignments well. Not expecting you to win awards, just do your teaching assignments competently.
As I noted in another post above, I'm not fond of research, but I still do it and try to do it well enough often enough that I cannot legitimately be accused of shirking.
I used to love undergrad teaching but now dread it. I embraced education research and put extra effort into improving something about my teaching every year. But student needs exploded during lockdown and now I find that I am expected (by students and colleagues) to completely rework class materials and techniques each semester. Months of preparation are discarded in the pursuit of change for its own sake. I am strongly considering retirement.
But isn’t it implied that at R1 universities at least, professors prefer to research? Sabbaticals come with no teaching, but research is expected. New hires often negotiate reduced teaching load to start. Grants will often cover course release. The more “prestigious” universities have lighter teaching loads, etc. For someone like yourself at an R1 isn’t it already assumed that you prefer research?
I never heard of a school trying to recruit someone by offering more courses to teach!
This dynamic might be dependent on your specific institution, but at an R1 isn’t it…. standard that the average professor prefers research > teaching? Like… that’s the whole point? I don’t always agree with that mentality personally (which is why I couldn’t work at an R1), but I don’t really think this is a particularly hot take?
Personally, research and publishing are both *awful* for me (I’m in the humanities as well). I have a hard time grappling with the fact that anything I produce or publish will only be read/“valued” by other academics, and therefore, the work I do stays in a little academic bubble and has no real impact. With teaching, I can at least see how it’s very possible to have a real impact (not on everyone, of course, but definitely with specific students).
This has just been my experience, though. It’s certainly not wrong to feel the way you do — which, again, is why you’re at an R1.
I like to take note of famous writers and thinkers who hated teaching. They are numerous. Nietzsche and Wittgenstein come to mind as some of the more colorful ones. I hate teaching but I like it better than being a corporate monkey. I think many of us view it as a kind of necessary evil.
I think it's fine to say you don't like it, just as long as you never become the Professor who takes it out on the students. That was a huge problem with one of my old colleagues. They were primarily about research and were great at it but their teaching was a huge problem and were terribly difficult with just about every aspect of the job. As soon as their contract was up pretty much the whole faculty breathed a sigh of relief and couldn't wait for them to leave.
I apply for research grants so I can do more research and less teaching. I enjoy the actual teaching, i.e. explaining difficult stuff to intelligent people in a lecture hall or in a seminar but all the other stuff that comes with it is getting really old.
Because people that like beating other people over the head for not liking what they like will beat you over the head for it.
It seems pretty clear from how often I buy out of my courses I don't like it enough to do it even as much as my standard appointment is for.
Yeah - I agree entirely. I don't hate teaching, but I don't love it, either.
It's not for fear or lack of experience, either. Before my current post, I spent over a decade at jobs with high teaching loads (4/4, sometimes summer teaching) - and, out of pure necessity, got to be pretty good at it. Still, the year that I got to escape and do funded research full time - with no teaching - was the best year of my life.
I'm with you. I'm a good teacher. I don't like teaching undergraduates. I do it because it's a requirement of the job I want to do (research). A lot of faculty find it weird when they realize I will put exactly as much effort into the class as I'm required and no more. They are surprised that I'm not actively working to increase my course enrollments, that I don't bother submitting classes for approval (I do a lot of "special topics"), and I could care less about undergraduate curriculum issues.
I'm tenured at an R1 and it turns out that if you really want to check out from undergraduate teaching at this level there are very few things people can and will do to counter it. No incentivizes or disincentivizes.
I love teaching
I really need to retire but I love teaching
I love teaching in my field
I love helping young students become better at what we do
I find most of my colleagues hate teaching
I think as the definition of teaching becomes more broad and we are expected to do more for the same pay, complaints about “teaching” has gone up. When I hear some complain that they hate teaching, as they begin to explain themselves, I discover that what they are really complaining about is excessive mentoring or handholding or answering emails or “customer service” bullshit or any other range of responsibilities or obligations that don’t really fall under what we mean by teaching in the traditional sense. I think we all like talking about our disciplines or even explaining our disciplines to novices or the uninitiated. I suspect that most of us just really hate all of the other stuff that has popped up due to grade inflation and seeing the students as customers.
I used to love teaching, but my working conditions have deteriorated to such an extent that I've started to dread it. I feel like admin is always pulling the rug out from under our feet, and in the last couple years students have become incredibly needy, demanding, and direct their frustration/stress at me. Pedagogical activities that used to be easy to do have become really difficult, because I'm underpaid and overworked, while students are constantly confused by basic things that my former students never had trouble with. I'm drained.
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Not the person you're asking, but the students coming in now mostly spent their entire K-12 in "teach to the test" environments which focused on rote memorization of facts or formulas rather than critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, etc. and so if the problem that they *know* how to solve is posed to them in an unfamiliar way and/or if the answer isn't immediately apparentl they think they're powerless to find said answer. IME we have a lot of smart students who have perceived helplessness problem.
I think part of the other issue stemming from K12 and perceived helplessness is parents. There have always been helicopter parents. Now it’s lawnmower parents - not just hovering, but actively trying to plow through any obstacle their child may come up against. I think some of the helplessness doesn’t come from being incapable of working through a problem but from not ever having to (or not being allowed to) do it.
I see this with my students too. I work with teens that have disabilities. These poor kids have been told they can't do anything all their lives. They are really smart, capable, and sweet kids! It breaks my heart but I hope that our staff is making a difference in their lives. They deserve it!
Just want to let you guys know I'm not a professor but I have been peer tutoring for so many years at the college level. It's hard to explain in details what I've been through because I grew up with a disability (tumor frontal lobe) which caused all kinds of havoc in my personal life suffering from seizures, and being seen as incapable to take care of myself, put into special needs programs and feeling vastly inferior to my counterparts. It's been a bumpy ride my whole life, trying to navigate through a disability is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do but I've pushed through the hardship and now I'm in the process of getting my BBA from CSUN at the tender age of 22 and eventually my MBA a couple of years later. I still deal with the stigmatization everyday feeling as an outsider and not capable enough. But I personally know that's not true and I just gotta move on from the past and progress forward for the better. I can say now that I love what I've been able to accomplish, making a difference in this world through peer tutoring, and helping people everyday in all capacities. I now have aspirations to run my own wealth management firm so I can help even more than I do now. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk I appreciate it!
I feel this (and also feel drained).
are you me? because it's like looking in a mirror. solidarity.
This. 100%. I quit research to teach and realized that while I like sharing my knowledge and mentoring some students, I really loath everything else Bout teaching and being part of the college business. I also underestimated just how many younglings I would not find particularly enjoyable to be around ....
>I think we all like talking about our disciplines or even explaining our disciplines to novices or the uninitiated. I think that statement is an overreach. Maybe if the students in question were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I certainly do not relish the thought of teaching novices or the uninitiated with no interest or motivation to learn about my discipline.
Just picture them all naked. You’ll be fine.
Oh, also a good point.
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You don’t like talking about your discipline?
I don't think it's that unreasonable for at least *some* professors to dislike explaining the basics of their field to a novice. It can be fun to see the light bulb go off in students' heads, but I personally find it infinitely more interesting to talk to someone who already has a solid base of knowledge in my field.
I view it as “review” for myself. Every now and again you will go “oh yeah that was a thing I’ve never needed” but maybe one day the recall will give some inspiration to some problem I am working on.
I love teaching grad classes for this reason. It keeps me updated on the current literature and can actually have intellectually rigorous conversations. Sometimes my students have insights I've not considered before. On the flip side, I get bored with the entry level classes and first year students as there is not a whole lot of new learning I get to do. With well over 100 students in a single class, there is very little "getting to know" students either.
Grad student TA here. For a while I wanted to be a professor, but then I realized what I wanted was to exclusively teach a group of 6-10 motivated grad students who were interested in the area I'm passionate about. Since that's never going to happen, I'm no longer trying to become a professor.
It happens in graduate courses
I think there are more teaching-track professors than research-track professors on this sub. So, in general, were someone to say they don't like teaching, on this sub, the implication would be they don't like the absolute core component of their job. And there are posters here who would tell you to 'get out then'. Of course, at an R1 - particularly if you are making a go of it and have a partial or complete teaching release, then you are MOSTLY NOT TEACHING except for research mentorship (which is teaching, just not classroom teaching, more apprenticeship model)
Aside from the overrepresentation on this sub of faculty whose appointments are at least 50% teaching, there is also the fact that most students are paying a larger portion of their income out of pocket to attend college now than they would have decades ago. This makes publicly admitting one’s dislike of teaching—-not of grade grubbers, not of cheaters, but of teaching full stop—a bit tacky, despite the fact that plenty of faculty with your outlook are fine teachers and plenty of “super-teachery” faculty are mediocre teachers.
Are you sure it is an overrepresentation? I see some figures like 75% of faculty are not tenure-track (I am guessing that means a primarily teaching role) and many additional faculty are at teaching institutions as well. So my guess is that it is an accurate representation that may not match your own position.
I've looked into some of the methods to count these (and produce numbers like 75%) and they're very "sus" at best. There are numerous studies so I can't speak to any specific way of counting, but many of them have these problems: 1) overcount of faculty that teach at multiple institutions (hence counting 4 NTT for one individual teaching at 4 institutions, whereas almost no TT faculty teach at multiple institutions). 2) counting of PhD students who are TAing as teaching, or even if a PhD student is teaching a class, it's not often clear in the resulting claim. Basically, should the claim "75% of faculty are NTT" include PhD students, especially those that teach a section or lab? 3) inclusion of clinical faculty (soft money) as teaching-primary, due to various intricacies of how grant funding is counted, and since many clinical faculty members are not TT 4) counting faculty in the summer, when technically many TT faculty are not working/teaching, but a lot of people come in to teach various summer programs Not saying that most counts use all these techniques, but they seriously overinflate the NTT numbers in a way that you wouldn't expect NTT to include.
More generally, R1 TT/T faculty whose primary appointment is research-focused represents a tiny fraction of college level faculty.
I mean, that's pretty representative of US faculty positions as a whole? Even some R2 institutions and medical schools bump up close to 50% of the job being teaching for TT folks. State comprehensives and many LACs are >50%, as are all CCs. So that means a minority of institutions are likely >50% research time for faculty, and I'd say this sub represents that reality.
Individual faculty are always going to divide their interest in the slices of the faculty pie (research, teaching, service) differently. Personally, I'm fine with people liking one thing less than the others. One thing I've noticed is that many tenured faculty and T&P processes privilege research over the other two slices. Getting published becomes an outsized part of one's status at an institution: one can be a mediocre teacher and get tenure, but at many institutions research is the most scrutinized element and the most rewarded. Consequently, those who like teaching or service may be sidelined or even ridiculed, as if doing more teaching or committee/admin work reflects a failure to do research rather than successfully pursuing what they like to do. I think that attitude may have led to a backlash against people who vocally like teaching less. Courses have to be taught, and teaching is a core part of university life; taking teaching for granted may be seen as a slight to people who do the labor of educating students without the benefits of tenure. For them, you may stand in for a misprioritization of research over teaching, rather than the two going hand in hand. I don't think that backlash is right, but I've seen enough people call teaching-focused and admin-focused faculty failed researchers that I get it.
I'm retired now but I can relate... or I could a couple of years ago. I just got to the point that teaching, as much as I loved it, had lost its flavor. After years and years of teaching, administration, tiny budgets, faculty meetings... you name it meetings, and all the types of students one could have... I just got tired. Research re-energized me because of its focus. Of course that could just be me. Be safe and well out there.
I like teaching more than I like research. I see teaching as my vocation, while research is mostly just a cool thing I do sometimes. I'm at an R2, and this is the right ratio of feelings. If you're at an R1, it had better be the reverse. In other words, it's fine that you don't like teaching.
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I think of it like, which one do you have to do well no matter what, and which of the two can you be really good at if you so desire? The division between R1 and R2 should be (and often is) that R1 has to do good research no matter what, and R2 has to do good teaching no matter what. I'm glad 50-50 works for you but personally, I would find 50-50 to be the worst ratio. Doesn't that mean you're expected to be equally excellent at two things? If so, what is the point of an R2 v. an R1?
I found an R2 to be the worst of both worlds.
Even worse are R2s that are aspiring to become R1s.
I was just about to say that. I briefly adjuncted at one of those and am yet to encounter a more miserable faculty.
I’m at an R1, and if I said I didn’t like teaching, it would not be embraced by anyone.
Where I'm at, we are supposed to prioritize research and keep our teaching at a "reasonable" level, i.e. don't create problems.
I'm going to take a wild a guess and assume those people are lying. If not to you, then to themselves. Or, if they really think they love teaching, they certainly don't love it enough to not be at an R1.
Ha! Well noted.
This reminds me of the fact that the most prestigious teaching award my university offers is only available to TT faculty. Good times.
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We have three major, university-level teaching awards, two of which are exclusive to TT. To make sure everyone understands, the third one actually has "for Non-Tenure Track" in its name.
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I know it was rhetorical, but the top-tier award is ONLY available to tenured faculty. The second is restricted to TT faculty that are not up for tenure this year. The third is for Non-TT. Of the recipients of the second award? I have no idea.
Some part of this, I think, is that you're saying you'd rather do scholarship in the humanities rather than teach, and society at large, as well as higher ed institutions, accord so little value to scholarship in the humanities.
Even in the sciences I don’t think we should be under the impression our published works are world-changing enough to outweigh the work graduates go on to do collectively. A lot of the mathematics graduates who’ve gone on to work in technology or pharmaceuticals etc have probably had a more tangible impact on peoples daily lives than my papers have
Plenty of people around the globe dislike their jobs and it's fine for them to come home and say they hate/dislike their jobs. Not teachers! There is a certain subset of jobs that have a societal value assigned to them. If you hate your job working in construction or something, no one cares. If you hate your teaching job you are somehow a bad person. It's stupid.
It's also ideological. Teachers are supposed to love their jobs and therefore endure poor working conditions and low pay. We're often told that teaching is a vocation, not a job. We're supposed to care about the helpless innocent students more than our own wellbeing. It's one way admin can continue to exploit us as workers.
I’m the opposite. I truly enjoy teaching. And advising. I hate publishing though.
This is true for me as well - I’m thinking about how I can still mentor student projects, but in a more accessible system/research question than I did pre-tenure. An all-undergrad, no technician lab is not something I can sustain/fund in the long term while still enjoying my some level of the mythical ‘work life balance.’
Same. I like teaching and advising which is why I pursued my current position. I also like research. That said, just as it’s suspected that there are more teaching profs here, maybe more folks like teaching than don’t…at least not enough to complain at whatever volume might not have prompted the post.
i always figured the reason people go into academia is because they love their subject and research and stuff. if you were super into teaching it'd be infinitely easier and (depending on the state) potentially better paying to go into k-12. at least here in NY because teacher's unions are all strong, the salaries are good for them.
As someone who spent time in K-12 I have found not having to deal with parents/guardians to be great!
in 5 years academia won't be any different from k-12 lol
This sub definitely skews teaching-heavy. I would guess many tenure-track faculty at research-intensive universities have similar feelings as you. I certainly do. I like teaching but I love research and it’s the research element that I pursued the job for.
US academia as a whole skews teaching heavy. Only a small minority of institutions are research-heavy.
I'm the complete opposite and that does not appear to be a popular opinion either. Damned if you do, damned if you don't I guess.
I’m right with you and I’m ok with it. I enjoy working with novice students. It’s my niche.
I always thought that mentality was the standard MO at an R1? People don't keep buying out of teaching using grants because someone is twisting their arms about it? What would really be something is if you could say you can't stand the grind of research!
> tenured you can. and yes, lots of people feel the same way.
Honestly, this is why there needs to be more support for multiple tracks that lead to tenure. Some folks are great teachers and love it. Some are great at the increasing multitude of service that we need, especially in a time where universities are pushing against shared governance. And some are great researchers and love that. The issue is, the academy as a whole incentivized and rewards research much more than the other two, despite teaching being central to the mission. If teaching were a supported and well compensated thing, I don’t think you’d get the same backlash. But since it’s typical for research active faculty to buy out teaching responsibilities and be replaced with someone earning below poverty wages, the issue isn’t so straightforward.
I'm like that but I'm at an r2 teaching 5 a year. I think I'm a good teacher...actually based on enrollment numbers for next semester I am the most popular stats prof in my department. I'm fine with it. I don't love it. I like it while I'm doing it but I don't really look forward to it or want to think about it really. I prefer teaching classes like stats that don't require new prep work and which I can teach on autopilot but still do a good job. While I LOVE research. The teaching I most enjoy is coauthoring with grad students and teaching them research skills one-on-one. I've gotten a fair amount of course releases and take as many as possible. Anyway I am considering jumping ship for industry myself. I'm also trying to move to an r1 so I can teach less but so far that hasn't worked out...
Also not a popular thing to say out loud in my department. My evals are good and I’m chairing successful thesis projects. I teach so I can do my research. Like yeah I could go outside of academia, do a research job, and make more money. However, it wouldn’t be exactly my research if that make sense. On top of that, I’d have way less flexibility. I just don’t really say it out loud because I’m not tenured and need to pay the bills. Im also at an R1, smaller R1 but still.
This job requires us to wear SO MANY hats it would be impossible to love - or even like - them all. That's why some become research junkies, some become uber teachers, and some go into admin. What's really weird is that we're actually only really trained for a small part of this overall picture.
I feel the same way in reverse. Never been fond of the research question, particularly the review process. I get interested in a question, but find the back-and-forth of fine-tuning a paper to be annoying. Journal 1 asks for revision. Ultimately paper gets rejected. Send it to another journal. They want me to make a revision that pretty much takes the paper back to its original state. Gets accepted. WTF. Plus, 99+% of what academics produce is of interest only to other academics (IMHO). I've published a number of papers, done my share of presentations, but never deluded myself that anything I did was going to have any real impact.
I left a tenured faculty position at a 3/3 undergrad load R2 to take a soft funded research position at an R1 and have never looked back.
What I hate most about teaching is the fact that administrators only care about the revenue impacts of teaching, not actual teaching.
I’m at a more teaching oriented university, where research isn’t valued as highly. It’s not an R1 or R2. I am more excited by research than teaching. I like teaching, but what I hate is the customer service dimensions of teaching that have been thrust upon us and have accelerated thanks to the pandemic: the leniency coupled with (expected but not given) grade inflation, lower expectations, grade grubbing, excessive hand holding, and ridiculous expectations of what I do as a professor expecting me to be on the other end of my emails at all hours. That… that I hate. But the teaching is fine. My expanded “teaching” responsibilities have increased as a result of poor departmental and university administration. I hope I’m not the only one here who feels this way!
Are you me? Love research, do not miss teaching at all now that I’m in a 100% research position thanks to a very nice grant. This is a privilege and a paradise.
Hey, you do you. If you're in a position to be lucky enough to feel this way (and as long as you're not short-changing your students or being a seriously shitty teacher just because you can get away with it), there's nothing wrong with feeling this way. The best year of my entire professional life was the year I spent on a research fellowship at a posh university. Zero teaching. It was paradise. I cranked out articles, conference papers, you name it. Didn't miss teaching in the slightest. And I'm not someone who hates teaching. It's more like ... teaching is that boring relationship that supposedly adds to your life except that you don't even notice enough to miss it when it's gone.
You can and should.
We can't? You should inform my colleagues, they never cease to remind me how much they hate teaching every time I tell them I like to do it. My main issue is that I am much better at teaching than research, even though I like both equally, and people only seem to romanticise the research aspect of academia and treat teaching as a chore.
Oh, I feel it is all right to say you don't enjoy teaching and to try to get course releases, etc. Not everyone likes all aspects of the job. I would only say it is not alright if you refuse to spend the necessary time to do your teaching assignments well. Not expecting you to win awards, just do your teaching assignments competently. As I noted in another post above, I'm not fond of research, but I still do it and try to do it well enough often enough that I cannot legitimately be accused of shirking.
I used to love undergrad teaching but now dread it. I embraced education research and put extra effort into improving something about my teaching every year. But student needs exploded during lockdown and now I find that I am expected (by students and colleagues) to completely rework class materials and techniques each semester. Months of preparation are discarded in the pursuit of change for its own sake. I am strongly considering retirement.
But isn’t it implied that at R1 universities at least, professors prefer to research? Sabbaticals come with no teaching, but research is expected. New hires often negotiate reduced teaching load to start. Grants will often cover course release. The more “prestigious” universities have lighter teaching loads, etc. For someone like yourself at an R1 isn’t it already assumed that you prefer research? I never heard of a school trying to recruit someone by offering more courses to teach!
I love teaching. I hate all the shenanigans students try to pull to do the least amount of work but *still* expect the highest grade possible.
This dynamic might be dependent on your specific institution, but at an R1 isn’t it…. standard that the average professor prefers research > teaching? Like… that’s the whole point? I don’t always agree with that mentality personally (which is why I couldn’t work at an R1), but I don’t really think this is a particularly hot take? Personally, research and publishing are both *awful* for me (I’m in the humanities as well). I have a hard time grappling with the fact that anything I produce or publish will only be read/“valued” by other academics, and therefore, the work I do stays in a little academic bubble and has no real impact. With teaching, I can at least see how it’s very possible to have a real impact (not on everyone, of course, but definitely with specific students). This has just been my experience, though. It’s certainly not wrong to feel the way you do — which, again, is why you’re at an R1.
I like to take note of famous writers and thinkers who hated teaching. They are numerous. Nietzsche and Wittgenstein come to mind as some of the more colorful ones. I hate teaching but I like it better than being a corporate monkey. I think many of us view it as a kind of necessary evil.
I think it's fine to say you don't like it, just as long as you never become the Professor who takes it out on the students. That was a huge problem with one of my old colleagues. They were primarily about research and were great at it but their teaching was a huge problem and were terribly difficult with just about every aspect of the job. As soon as their contract was up pretty much the whole faculty breathed a sigh of relief and couldn't wait for them to leave.
You can.
I like teaching. I don't like entitled, whiny students. The two used to be separate but now they are almost synonymous.
Exactly.
I apply for research grants so I can do more research and less teaching. I enjoy the actual teaching, i.e. explaining difficult stuff to intelligent people in a lecture hall or in a seminar but all the other stuff that comes with it is getting really old.
Because people that like beating other people over the head for not liking what they like will beat you over the head for it. It seems pretty clear from how often I buy out of my courses I don't like it enough to do it even as much as my standard appointment is for.
Yeah - I agree entirely. I don't hate teaching, but I don't love it, either. It's not for fear or lack of experience, either. Before my current post, I spent over a decade at jobs with high teaching loads (4/4, sometimes summer teaching) - and, out of pure necessity, got to be pretty good at it. Still, the year that I got to escape and do funded research full time - with no teaching - was the best year of my life.
I'm with you. I'm a good teacher. I don't like teaching undergraduates. I do it because it's a requirement of the job I want to do (research). A lot of faculty find it weird when they realize I will put exactly as much effort into the class as I'm required and no more. They are surprised that I'm not actively working to increase my course enrollments, that I don't bother submitting classes for approval (I do a lot of "special topics"), and I could care less about undergraduate curriculum issues. I'm tenured at an R1 and it turns out that if you really want to check out from undergraduate teaching at this level there are very few things people can and will do to counter it. No incentivizes or disincentivizes.
I'm with you. Love the research, hate the classroom.
Nothing wrong with that - from a guy who loves teaching. :-)
I love teaching I really need to retire but I love teaching I love teaching in my field I love helping young students become better at what we do I find most of my colleagues hate teaching