Don't become a professor unless you want to teach

Research universities are referred to as such because they prioritize research. That's good, that great. Fundamental research has been the fuel for progress in the United States. I have no beef with universities that prioritize research.

But also, it turns out that these same universities are also enrolling a ton of undergraduate students, some of whom are expecting to get an actual education while they are in college. Their business model transparently uses undergraduate enrollment to subsidize the research mission. The butts-in-seats financial approach. Why is it that these universities have lectures with several hundred students in them? Because they need to take all those tuition dollars to pay for things unrelated to teaching. But those students still deserve an education.

There must be so many high school students planning to go to R1s who might have been misled into thinking that their professors will be invested in classroom teaching. Yes, when they graduate they'll inherit the social capital associated with a more exclusionary university, but everybody deserves a quality education, even those who go to universities with professors who aren't there to teach.

(Yeah, yeah, #notallR1profs, okay, sure, but you've got to own this and check your colleagues.)

So, what's the latest news item prompting a flare-up of my perennial ire on this issue? What brings me to write this missive?

Last month, more than 1,600 STEM faculty in the University of California have signed a letter calling for a reinstatement of the SAT/ACT testing requirement for the admissions to STEM majors. A week after this effort got some press, the UC announced they were considering the move quite seriously.

Now before I fly off in a huff, let's hear these folks out, right? Now that we've gone without the testing requirement for the past five years or so, a lot has happened, lessons have been learned, and they must have some good reasons.

[I go back and re-read their letter.]

Nope, no good reasons.

Feel free to read the it, but here's the upshot or the TL;DR or whatnot: These professors are concerned that students are arriving underprepared in math, and they think that by imposing a testing requirement, then they'll be enrolling students who are better prepared in math. They also say that it's a lot harder to teach when when there's a broad range of levels of preparation in the classroom, and these underprepared students are dragging down the quality of education for everybody. They say that the UC's finite resources can't support providing education for the underprepared students to get back up to speed.

(There are arguments to be made that test requirement is good for equitable admissions because of all of the students who test well but are living in circumstances that prevent them from volunteering in animal shelters, doing varsity sports, and earning stratospheric GPAs. But that's definitely not the argument these folks have made.)

What do I have to say to this? First of all, to every single one of you who signed that letter, you need to do better. I know some folks on this list, one of whom is a professor of teaching! This whole episode is so damn disappointing.

Here's why this position of UC faculty sucks:

1. It's elitist gatekeeping. It is literally gatekeeping, working to filter people out of the UC who have been gaining access. You don't have to be a sociologist to know why some people are coming into college more prepared in math than others. It has to do with whether they're first-gen college students, how much money their parents earn, and this is also connected to immigration status, ethnicity, and all that. By taking this position, UC faculty are asking the UC to exclude people because they were born into this world with less privilege.
2. If you're concerned about the education of your students, you know what you're supposed to do? TEACH THEM. Teach the students in front of you as they are, not as how you wish they are. I am ever so sorry that you've never been trained at differentiating instruction to students with different preparation levels, but teaching is literally the job. If you don't want to teach, then don't become a professor, even at a research university.
3. Faculty aren't hired to set admissions policy or to engineer the economic future of California. We are hired for research, for teaching, and to run the university. But is this request about improving university operations or supporting student success, or fulfilling the mission of the UC? These folks claim that they're about "student success" lol that's the name of their website, but success of whom? Of the select few who had the advantage of getting strong math preparation in middle and high school?
4. By writing this letter, you're publicly announcing that you think that your students aren't good enough for you. That you think time and effort teaching is better invested in people who test better at math. Pearls before swine, amirite?
5. Do they realize that if they are concerned about student preparation and math literacy, that changing this policy won't actually change math literacy? It won't make a darn difference in the lives of these students. The same underpreparedness will continue to happen. It's just that these professors won't have to sully their own universities with these unwashed hordes of mathematically illiterate students. The rarified air of the UC will be pure once again. You know what's worse? If there is an effect of this move on middle school and high school math to prepare for students for the UCs, this will make it worse because it will simply make schools double down on training students to excel at standardized tests rather than teaching them effectively. We've been down that road before, and you want to go back there? Man, y'all really don't give a damn about the math education. You just don't want to be bothered with math education. Make it someone else's problem. Hey, you are living in a place with a math literacy crisis. Maybe that's not the job you wanted but if you're teaching STEM in a university in the US, with or without a test-optional admissions policy, that's your problem if you're in the education business.

I realize that I'm teaching in a university system that is designed to provide opportunity to those who otherwise would not be provided opportunities. My campus has consistently fought against the pressure to declare impaction because we believe that we are here to serve our community and believe that everybody deserves an education. I get that the UC an exclusionary admissions framework, because that's the way that universities build the aura of prestige associated with academic exclusivity, and I get that it's always been that way, unless you're drinking the juice they're serving at ASU.

As a guy who knows to teach, appreciate, and accept the whole human beings in the classroom as they are, I wanted to make a bigger stink than just give my UC colleagues some side eye. Stink accomplished.

Hope you're enjoying the World Cup! Amazingly enough the 0-0 games have been some of the most entertaining ones.