some professors feel like once they have tenure they don’t need to pay attention to how well they teach.
I imagine that if they taught well before, they would still teach well by the sheer force of habit. Maybe slightly worse because they no longer bother to do it perfectly, but not “consistently present things in unclear or inconsistent ways”.
Those who are good teachers will continue to be good teachers. Example of this from a prof I know who won teaching awards and continues to teach basically the same way now that she’s gotten tenure. She likes teaching, that’s a big part of why she’s good at it, she’s not about to phone it in. I think what’s slipped a bit post-tenure is the amount of resources she devotes to publishing her research. I don’t think her actual research has slowed down any, because she also likes that part, she’s just not focused on getting papers out the door ASAP because her continued employment no longer depends on it.
There are universities with better teachers, but they tend to be those that focus on their undergrad programs, and not the big prestigious ones with massive endowments. They’ll hire people who aren’t as prestigious in their fields but are good at teaching (and get a nice discount on staffing costs). The prof above works at such a university; part of her job interview was giving a lecture to a room of students and faculty, and how well she did was IIRC part of the reason why she was hired in the first place. The same tiny university was a pioneer for major chunks of the current paradigm for undergrad engineering programs, and the program director spent a sabbatical at the University of Waterloo improving its undergrad engineering program. That being said, even at a more teaching-focused university like that one, there were still some real bad profs (and not necessarily people with tenure or who did a lot of good research, just inexplicably bad teachers).
I imagine that if they taught well before, they would still teach well by the sheer force of habit. Maybe slightly worse because they no longer bother to do it perfectly, but not “consistently present things in unclear or inconsistent ways”.
Those who are good teachers will continue to be good teachers. Example of this from a prof I know who won teaching awards and continues to teach basically the same way now that she’s gotten tenure. She likes teaching, that’s a big part of why she’s good at it, she’s not about to phone it in. I think what’s slipped a bit post-tenure is the amount of resources she devotes to publishing her research. I don’t think her actual research has slowed down any, because she also likes that part, she’s just not focused on getting papers out the door ASAP because her continued employment no longer depends on it.
There are universities with better teachers, but they tend to be those that focus on their undergrad programs, and not the big prestigious ones with massive endowments. They’ll hire people who aren’t as prestigious in their fields but are good at teaching (and get a nice discount on staffing costs). The prof above works at such a university; part of her job interview was giving a lecture to a room of students and faculty, and how well she did was IIRC part of the reason why she was hired in the first place. The same tiny university was a pioneer for major chunks of the current paradigm for undergrad engineering programs, and the program director spent a sabbatical at the University of Waterloo improving its undergrad engineering program. That being said, even at a more teaching-focused university like that one, there were still some real bad profs (and not necessarily people with tenure or who did a lot of good research, just inexplicably bad teachers).
That’s fair, most of them were probably never great teachers.