I also agree with your perspective of free speech and profiling sometimes colliding. Although I most certainly support our right to free speech, I sincerely wish that people didn’t choose to interpret that a right to act ignorant and intolerant. It is truly sad that folks in higher education, of all places, don’t seem to be able to consistently figure this out.

I wholeheartedly agree! For that matter, I really wish that I could find positive headlines in any context on a regular basis. Although I love technology as much as the next person, I wonder if it hasn’t overly enabled us to harp on EVERYthing that happens…ALL the time.

I also agree with your comments regarding online and in-person course formats. However, I thought your comment regarding summary courses for graduate students is interesting. How do you think this could benefit or detract from the lived experiences gained by those professionals returning to graduate school? What about individuals who choose to enter graduate degrees for a new area or inter-disciplinary program?

I agree with you 100% – and am also glad to be associated with a university that has been proactive in this regard. That being said, I also agree that these types of efforts often fall short in truly facilitating the shifts that are needed. How else do you think this can feasibly be accomplished?

Hi Mohammad, I agree with both of your points of view. Starting from your second thought, I consider publishing might be the result expected from research; however, I criticize the fact that due to deadlines professors as well as students, wrap up the content of papers, as well as experiments and conclusions. Then I criticize the fact that publishing is all what it matters. I agree with your thought that we (professors and students) might need a different perspective about the meaning of publishing, and maybe a paper should have a dynamic rating evaluated on the basis of its contributions to society.

On your first thought, I think GPA is a good measure to evaluate academic performance, and I agree with you that it is not possible to use that tool to compare two students from different schools because the same program might have been tougher in one of the universities, and that would be reflected most likely in a lower GPA. However, I am sure sometimes we are at one side of the balance, and sometimes on the other side, so maybe we just don’t have control of that, and the effects of this on the job search are maybe in control of the companies rather than in the universities. Adrian

This is a great point. I’m a huge fan of taking time off to work in industry before going back to grad school. I took three years off, and I think it was one of the best. I’m not sure about differences in teaching, but I do feel as if working gave me a perspective that I don’t think I had coming out of undergrad. Not only does it contribute to the application of my research (and works to bridge the research-practitioner gap), I feel I matured in that I am better able to situate graduate studies and academia in society. Kudos to those who go straight, though. That’s a lot of school without a break!
As for teaching, I know in my previous position I was able to practice speaking in front of large groups of people, including big dogs in the company, so it improved my public speaking skills. I think that certainly helped.

I had the same situation to you. I worked for one and half years before entering to VT. I believe practical ways to teach the students are more effective. I think the students should know about the impacts of their knowledge on the world. It helps them to be more interested in their career in the future.

Agreed. I think mid term evaluations are more effective than final evaluations. I think that the instructors should get feedback during the course and update him/her based on the feedbacks for current semester. Because, some courses present biyearly , and it is not logical to use final evaluations for two years later.

I would love to see that happen. As a society, I don’t understand how we can place so little value on the people we’re trusting to teach (and, in some cases, practically raise) our next generation. Teachers have an enormous responsibility, not just to teach the alphabet and addition, but to teach the children to enjoy learning and inspire them to learn more so that, some day, we have doctors and lawyers and engineers. How can we give them this responsibility and not value the work they do?

This is a great post! It hit home as I read much of this through the lens of a grad student dad. Being a husband and dad while working my PhD can be so much more stressful than my master’s experience as a single man, but most of the time, the requirement to drop my work in lieu of family time make me more productive, more ambitious and forces me to relax at times.

Such a good perspective. Thanks for sharing!