[anindyabd]

Instead of teaching at a large research school which cares more about professors obtaining grants, he should teach at a small liberal-artsy school where the professors are expected to spend more of their time actually teaching students.

[kzh_]

Having done one part of undergrad at a "liberal-artsy school" and another part at a larger tech school, I couldn't agree more.

If you were a lecturer at a research-focused institution, in which the quality of your teaching is a minor factor in your "success", and the social norm is mediocre teaching, would you teach at a high level?

[dwaxe]

He'll have more students (and therefore more total impact) at a large public school.

Also, maybe the goal is to change the expectation that research universities lack good teachers? Public colleges educate many times more students than private ones, let alone small liberal arts schools.

[bpicolo]

UC Berkeley IS a large, public school.

[narsil]

Seems like dwaxe knows that and was suggesting why the OP would prefer Berkeley over a smaller school.

[syllogism]

That's kind of sad though, isn't it?

Sometimes I ask the question, "What would I want if I were God of Everything?"

It makes sense to have elite universities, where the people who society will shove millions of dollars in grant money all go to get educated. And if I were God of Everything, I'd want them taught by excellent, dedicated educators. Right?

[PhasmaFelis]

If you care deeply about educating students, and you are able to do a good job of that with large lecture groups, then choosing to move to a position that slashes your class size by 75%+ would be shooting yourself in the foot, wouldn't it?

[ldwcal]

fwiw, there's a tenure track for lecturers at UCs

[jnpatel]

but as the post notes, it's underutilized in Berkeley's Mathematics Department

> "We explained to you before you accepted the position that the idea of employing a full-time lecturer is controversial in our department."

[ldwcal]

yeah, quite unfortunate

[hugh4]

Most mathematicians prefer research to teaching. Some absolutely detest teaching and hate the fact that they're forced to do it, while some rather like teaching and just wish it didn't take up so much time, but pretty much all of them would rather be doing research.

So the idea of employing a full-time lecturer seems quite appealing -- let the lecturers take care of all the boring crap like teaching freshmen how to integrate, and leave the research to the professors.

But wait! What if the university starts to figure out that they can get all their teaching done waaay more cheaply just by employing full-time lecturers? Professors have been doing well for the past few centuries by selling the idea that only a researcher is qualified to teach at the highest levels, and hence that they should be allowed to spend most of their time thinking about mathematics and only be obliged to teach a couple of classes a year. Full-time lecturers threaten not just the jobs of mathematics professors, but the entire future of global mathematics

So I can definitely sympathise with this view.