What did you teach? It's very unusual for you to not have a PhD and teach undergrads at a RG/1994 in the core academic subjects. If you taught something involving technical/vocational skill, then really you're on the fringes of the universities traditional departments. You wouldn't get a non post-doc teaching a literature/classics, say, or maths/science class. Of course the traditional core university subjects are the ones with curricula designed around proper ivory-tower research.
Do you really need a degree?
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What did you teach? It's very unusual for you to not have a PhD and teach undergrads at a RG/1994 in the core academic subjects. If you taught something involving technical/vocational skill, then really you're on the fringes of the universities traditional departments. You wouldn't get a non post-doc teaching a literature/classics, say, or maths/science class. Of course the traditional core university subjects are the ones with curricula designed around proper ivory-tower research.
I didn't teach as a lecturer, I was a postgrad TA. I'm a computer Scientist. CS is not proper research is it?
All the academia types have to study classics to considered a true academic?
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A teaching-assistant? Were you given any modules to teach yourself, i.e. total control over seminar rooms? I'm unfamiliar with the TA role because you don't need them in the Humanities. And computer science doesn't really exist in the traditional academic circles, no... it's technical. Does it even have the same elitist pecking order in university of attendance and whatnot? I don't even know. My alma mater has a pretty prestigious information security group but I don't know anything about the academic culture there. It exists in its own bubble.
Oh I know about different groupings, I was just saying that York are joining the RG very, very soon.
Being a pedant's never cool.
I don't think York will, actually. The principal seems opposed to the RG's outlook. Same with places like Bath and RHUL that have turned down a place. The RG isn't well-suited to every institution. The danger is that - because of press-reporting, mainly - the RG will become a lazy shorthand for the 'elite', when it really isn't necessarily. Over half the RG institutions routinely rank lower on research assessments than the smaller, specialised 94 group. I guess it's too much effort for journalists and news-reporters to mention 2 university groups instead of one
Oh right. Computer Science is not academic, I think we will just ignore Don Knuth, Dijkstra, turing, and John McCarthy and all those academics. Damn all these mathmatical proofs and lemma's are apprantly not academic.
And no, assistants do not teach whole modules.
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Ah that's strange, I stand corrected. The initial news-report of that shift didn't include York - I was aware of Durham, Exeter and QMUL. All of those shifts aroused some curiosity in the academic community I think. In higher-education I think the view is that the constant news-trumpeting of the RG (and the RG's cosying up to the current Con-Lib government) is forcing some of the more concerned 94 group institutions to jump ship. Seems some universities' tactic of dealing with drying-up funding is to try and bunch together all in one big group, instead of two groups asking for the same slice of pie.
Exeter and QMUL are two places with inflated reputations, too. The worst of the lot is St. Andrews. Thank God St. Andrews didn't join the RG
Exeter and QMUL are two places with inflated reputations, too. The worst of the lot is St. Andrews. Thank God St. Andrews didn't join the RG
Aren't all of those people educated in Maths/Physics? I'm sure they are brilliant minds working within CompSci but my point was that the old elitist ivory-tower system doesn't recognise CompSci as a 'core' academic subject. A lot of its content is technical - the learning of programming languages and so on. It's not all purely theoretical and abstract like most of the 'core' academic subjects are. That was my only point. I already said I know nothing of its academic culture.
edit: yep, all of the above-named went to top-end RG/94 type research institutions and did theoretical core academic subjects. No CompSci polytech graduates.
Some are, some arn't. The problem is computer science is relativly new, so the oldies come from an era where cs did not exist.
Computer Science is basically branch of mathmatics. We do teach programming, but that is so we can implement algrothims and such. At which point cs grads need to understand mathmatical proofs, Big O and stuff like that.
CS is probably the most abstract thing you can do apart from mathmatics.
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AKA the places rahs go?!
By 'teaching' do you mean supervising labs? I have postgrad friends (traditional sciences, rather than comp sci) who have to supervise labs, sometimes... but I don't think they consider that teaching.
No I did not supervise labs. The lecturer splits classes into seperate tutor groups, I was one of those. If they have trouble understanding some maths, or an algorthim I did a one to one thing.
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AKA the places rahs go?!
Haha, I think that describes most of the small collegiate-atmosphere RG/94 unis. You can blame our primary/secondary education system for that, which stratifies academic talent between crappy state-schools and expensive fee-paying schools. Rahs fly to the top and the rest sink towards the average bell-curve institutions. Sad but true.
And yes, St. Andrews is by far the worst for it. St. Andrews historically has been the snivelling little brother of Edinburgh, which is a world-leading institution. All of a sudden a few members of royalty go to St. Andrews and it's being ranked as highly as the UK top 5. Load of bull. St. Andrews has never surpassed Edinburgh - or rarely Glasgow - in terms of research, and they barely make UK top 20 lists.
Newspaper rankings really are a danger to higher-education. Buckets of salt, etc.
I don't agree. As abstract as philosophy? As abstract as theoretical physics? CS is a discipline firmly rooted in the real world, isn't it? I hear what you mean about it striving for recognition, though... there's a push in the top-levels of CS research for a prize from the Nobel family, I believe. At the moment you make do with a 'Turing award' or something, don't you? Which the CS establishment pretty much awards itself in lieu of any outside recognition. I don't doubt it's difficult, my point was just a minor tangential one re: you being able to supervise a lab without a PhD. I was suggesting maybe it is more lenient and less traditional than the core academic disciplines.
Acutally cs and philosophy has much in common. In fact oxford does a joint degree in cs and philosophy http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/admissions/ugrad/Computer_Science_and_Philosophy
It's as jointed into the real world as mathmatics is. You have mathmatics and applied mathmatics. Cs is the same.
Depends on what you think teaching is, if you mean standing in front of lecturer hall and talking then no. If you mean, doing one to one with students and acutally getting them understand it then yes.
I used the socratic method the majority of the time.
Authority and seniority really are a matter of how much responsibility you wield, not what methods you used. You basically weren't given anywhere near as much responsibility as a post-doc but made out you were given tasks. I'm sure I could help out in many first- and second- year seminars with my knowledge and familiarity with research now, but I wouldn't quite deem myself a post-doc with my own module to teach. I can't even remember why we're discussing this to be honest, haha. There is a divide between the RG/94 group and polys in terms of academic focus and candidate quality. I can't see how it can be refuted when the entry standards and research assessments put it so bluntly. A 2:1 from a mid-rank Poly may be equal to a 2:1 from a top-ranking RG in the eyes of an undiscerning graduate employer, but in the world of academia (which is what the university grading is really for) they are miles apart.
I never said I was post-doc, however I said worked there and saw behind the scenes and how they graded students. Plus just generally being courted for a Ph.D and hanging around with post-grads + researchers(I was a post-grad).
I came from ex-poly and had no problems finding someone supervise my Ph.D if that's what I wanted.
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I agree newspaper rankings can be ridiculous (I would say that... given I study at Sheffield!
Anyway, why are they 'a danger to higher education'? Because they'll affect the perception of universities, and lead to funding being taken from universities which are better in terms of RAE rankings, and given to universities who perform better in the high profile newspaper ones? Or, because they lead to universities focussing on things which'll improve their ranking, instead of focussing on things which actually raise academic standards (as people say the school league tables have done). Or something else?
All of these things, really. They go hand-in-hand with the marketisation of education: as courses get more expensive, prospective students begin to approach the university more as a customer would a transaction: "what will I get for my money?" And the newspaper rankings show an easy index of supposed 'reputation' (despite them being 5 years old, compared to institutions whose reputation extends into the centuries...). Same with graduate employers: of course they're not that interested in research quality (though it is the best indicator of overall university level) - they'll just reach for the Sunday Times instead. Even though it's based on **** like student satisfaction, which fluctuates year on year so much. The Guardian's league table, which is highly respected, doesn't actually have any statistical field given to academic research or quality. It's all subjective and meaningless fields. Mental.
Teaching Assisistent. That's the job title. Probably has the word teaching in, because it involves teaching...
In fact it is how oxford is structured, they have very small tutor groups of 1 or 2 people with staff. Real teaching is like old philosophers used to do, is probably more like teaching than standing in front of a lecture hall. However oxford tutors tend to be post-docs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial_system
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It does seem mental. But hey, Sheffield are the Times Higher Education University of the Year... so obviously they're correct with this ranking malarkey, sometimes ;D.
Teaching assisistent is fairly ironic, but hey-ho!
Anyway, titles can be pretty meaningless! My mother's a teaching assistant - she wouldn't say she teaches... she merely assists the teacher. I think we're into The Office territory, here, ha.
I understand the Oxbridge way... but it read(s) to me as though what you did was different/that you had a far less significant impact on the teaching itself, and you're bigging yourself up
I don't see how could assist the teacher really, since i'm not even in the same room... My job was an after lecturer thing. They come in, I ask them questions, and work through their understanding. It was for the students who were having trouble though.
I'm not bigging my self up, but you seem to be implying that tutoring small groups, is somehow not teaching? When the best universities in country teach by small tutorial groups? That was my defense.
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Oh by the way inKursion, stuff like english literature requires people to obtain masters degrees because the government designates such little funding towards it. Thus it is highly competitive for Ph.D programs.
Do an engineering degree, maths degree, cs degree and you don't need to, even at universities like cambridge and oxford. Masters degree is an option.
That's why.
Such a shame because I like philosophy, and classics. I would study philosophy because it underpins mathematics and logic(One of my favourite subjects) thus most technical subjects rely on it in someway because of their use of logic and maths. English lit not so much.
I've even become quite good at latin, and ancient greek just to read non-translations.
Do an engineering degree, maths degree, cs degree and you don't need to, even at universities like cambridge and oxford. Masters degree is an option.
That's why.
Such a shame because I like philosophy, and classics. I would study philosophy because it underpins mathematics and logic(One of my favourite subjects) thus most technical subjects rely on it in someway because of their use of logic and maths. English lit not so much.
I've even become quite good at latin, and ancient greek just to read non-translations.
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Before I start I will point out I made the mistake of starting in the middle of this thread so if this has been covered, or I have misunderstood then...
Depends, if it's an accredited course (and if it's not then I would suggest not doing it) then there should be little difference as the accreditation sets minimum and to a lesser extent maximum standards. If you don't do certain things or stay within those bounds you can lose accreditation. Those things involve reducing the difficulty of exams and increasing coursework grades if they are seen as being too stringent alongside covering certain things on the course.
So yes while there can be some variation it's not as clear cut as you seem to think.
On the other side of the coin I did a very competitive masters course, two of the best students were from Kingston and Portsmouth uni, with the highest mars going to the guy from Kingston. There was little correlation between those that went to Russell's group unis and those that went to others.
I also stand by the question, that has never really been answered satisfactorily, why would a large research intensive university be better at teaching than another university that specialises in teaching rather than research, or a smaller research intensive university? Just because you can research doesn't mean you can teach. A prime example is Cardiff uni, a Russell group uni that is fairly mediocre in the university lists, surrounded by ex Polys and regularly beaten by 1994 group universities.
Luckily I think this hanger on from the past is disappearing as more and the proportion of recruiters coming from Russell group unis are reducing and the number coming from other universities increasing, reducing the bias in selection.
EDIT: As for the actual thread topic:
Depends what you want to do. I needed my (two) degrees to get a job in the industry and position I am now. I would not have got it otherwise and would have hit a glass ceiling with just an Undergrad in a lot of my profession. There are plenty of professions on the other hand that either don't need one or just jump you up a few rungs. I would recommend if you want to do something remotely technical to make sure you join a reputable accredited course.
Depends, if it's an accredited course (and if it's not then I would suggest not doing it) then there should be little difference as the accreditation sets minimum and to a lesser extent maximum standards. If you don't do certain things or stay within those bounds you can lose accreditation. Those things involve reducing the difficulty of exams and increasing coursework grades if they are seen as being too stringent alongside covering certain things on the course.
So yes while there can be some variation it's not as clear cut as you seem to think.
On the other side of the coin I did a very competitive masters course, two of the best students were from Kingston and Portsmouth uni, with the highest mars going to the guy from Kingston. There was little correlation between those that went to Russell's group unis and those that went to others.
I also stand by the question, that has never really been answered satisfactorily, why would a large research intensive university be better at teaching than another university that specialises in teaching rather than research, or a smaller research intensive university? Just because you can research doesn't mean you can teach. A prime example is Cardiff uni, a Russell group uni that is fairly mediocre in the university lists, surrounded by ex Polys and regularly beaten by 1994 group universities.
Luckily I think this hanger on from the past is disappearing as more and the proportion of recruiters coming from Russell group unis are reducing and the number coming from other universities increasing, reducing the bias in selection.
EDIT: As for the actual thread topic:
Depends what you want to do. I needed my (two) degrees to get a job in the industry and position I am now. I would not have got it otherwise and would have hit a glass ceiling with just an Undergrad in a lot of my profession. There are plenty of professions on the other hand that either don't need one or just jump you up a few rungs. I would recommend if you want to do something remotely technical to make sure you join a reputable accredited course.
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