How to Punish a Professor

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Make her teach! The Valley News has the story of Dartmouth Professor Mara Sabinson who “alleges that after she refused to quit, college administrators punished her by assigning her to teach freshman writing seminars.” When I toured Dartmouth, their big selling point was that the professors are really engaged in teaching, not “I’ll teach the postdocs and have grad students teach the undergrads,” so this is exactly the wrong kind of press for the Marketing Department.

The attitude that teaching freshmen is punishment is hardly hidden by these professors, and the students aren’t so dumb as to not understand what’s going on.   Those who would take a professorship and not love teaching should go out and get a job in industry.  Those who would eschew the industry route in favor of the safety of the tenure track while still despising teaching have no place in higher education, and are a threat to the competitiveness of the U.S. .