Comment by bonoboTP
2 days ago
There's an argument to be made that at least the bachelor's level should be taught by specialist lecturers who focus on improving didactics and teaching. On the other hand, interacting with someone who is working at the forefront of the field can be helpful when you have a question where a cookie-cutter answer doesn't suffice and expert thought is needed. But it's indeed peculiar that profs are mostly hired based on their research not on their teaching ability (though it is also considered).
But either way, since you mention the US, it's a very common experience for American exchange students in European universities that in America they learned to expect much more handholding and pampering than it's provided in Europe. In the US, there is more individual attention from faculty to students, there are all kinds of counseling and guidance services that basically nudge them through the whole thing, reminding them of deadlines, explaining processes etc. In the US, college students ("college kids") are not seen as self-reliant adults. So depending on what kind of "support" you mean, it might be already too much for their own good instead of little.
My ideal system involves teaching professors who work at a university, and state run research labs ran by PhDs that collaborate closely with universities, but remain distinct. Argentina has a similar system with CONICET and their public university system.
The support you are talking about with American students I think is a symptom of the cost of higher education in the US. If you are paying $50,000 a year, you're going to expect that the university will do most of the work for you, and honestly, I think that's fair.
Many American students have the attitude of "I paid for the degree, so give it to me", which I cannot fault them for, due to the ridiculous price tag and societal demand to get a bachelors.
In Argentina, on the other hand, where education is free, the attitude among the professors is "if you don't learn this material, you won't pass". I find that very refreshing and more of how an institution of education should actually operate.
Indeed, and that can be tied back to the original article. Even if the American system was originally modeled after the German one back then, the two have significantly diverged due to the high tuition fees and downstream "consumer" or "customer" mentality both in students and in administration. It's interesting that outside the Anglo countries, education is mostly free for students, so yeah the attitude is more that the tax payer is giving money for your education, now it's your duty to either take it seriously or go somewhere else. It doesn't mean that everyone is so self-motivated, but a student can't say "I'm paying you, professor, so now dance to my tune".
In the US the students (or their parents or grants) are usually paying several orders of magnitude more money to attend University than in Europe, so it makes sense that the expect more support and services.