[derangedHorse]

1. Research is part of the pedagogy. Getting involved in a research lab as an undergraduate is a great way to land in the top 5-10 percentile.

5-10 percentile in what? Grades? Amount of papers? Grades generally don't speak to someone's practical ability on whatever job they choose after college. For example, one's ability to learn stoichiometry in a time-constrained environment hardly implies they'll be a great chemist.

Papers also come cheap and there are already enough out there of insignificant value or dubious quality (a good indicator might be the journal/conferences most undergraduate papers are submitted and accepted to).

As others have said, just because a teacher is skilled doesn't mean they are skilled at teaching. To your second point, I've once had professors who had significant achievements on their resume not be able to explain the basics of their field in a coherent way. In a case like that, those professors are equivalent to lecturers who have 0 days of "work experience" (which seems like a weird term to use for what I read from your comment as "research")

[throwawaygh]

First Outcomes. So, either total comp or other relevant metric. Feel free to disagree, but I have tons of data so I’m not even going to debate.

You seem to simply not understand the rest of the comment. The “or” is a branch with qualified professors of the practice on one side. It’s ok to not have any research experience as a professor, but then you better have a strong track record in industry. Having no relevant research AND no relevant industry expertise is the problem. One or the other usually suffices. Yes, usually. Spare me your anecdata about that one professor you still hate.

High quality researchers almost by definition do have several years of experience — “research scientist” is a job. One that pays better than most, even. 200K total comp starting in CS - CMU and Mit publish data. Just because you’re not building crud apps or cleaning up PDFs all day doesn’t mean you don’t have experience in a marketable skill.

I know a lot of cs phds. 100% who are current faculty either spent time in industry or had mid 6 figure offers they turned down for professorships.

[derangedHorse]

"Feel free to disagree, but I have tons of data so I’m not even going to debate."

Why say you have tons of data and not just post it? If there's tons of it, it should be easy to find and post one link showing direct correlations between undergrads in research earning in the 5-10 percentile.

It's funny how you can say "One or the other usually suffices. Yes, usually. Spare me your anecdata about that one professor you still hate." when whatever evidence you have to support your "Yes, usually" is probably exactly that. When I was referring to "work experience" I was emphasizing the point that there's the "work experience" being referred to still doesn't factor in teaching which is a large part of what the job should entail.

And a 200k starting salary isn't too impressive when the time taken to get a PhD can be used to get that salary in the industry. 5+ year senior engineers can be seen getting 200+ total compensation on levels.fyi and I personally know people who make beyond that with even less experience than that.

What I'm saying is that the school system is broken and isn't structured to incentivize good teaching. Some hiring processes for university staffs don't even take it into account even when some of their salaries and facilities are paid by students. If you want your kid to actually learn something then I'd suggest vetting colleges by other metrics that actually indicate something about the quality of education he'll be receiving and not the quality of education his lecturers received.

[throwawaygh]

> Why say you have tons of data and not just post it?

For the same reason you don't you dump your employer's IP whenever some internet rando asks for proof: it's not mine to give.

There are many paths to a happy early career. Getting involved in undergraduate research is one of them. There are other paths too.

tbh I'm not even sure what your point is anymore. You clearly have some sort of weird chip on your shoulder re: undergrad research. Sorry for your bad experience or whatever.