The problem with Universities

Universities are often not the havens of academia that they are portrayed to be in movies and literature. There is a very profound problem with many of them.

A University may be of two kinds, in the pure sense: a teaching University and a research University. From what I have seen, it is often the latter kind of University that wins attention and praise and fame, and for which students all over the world compete for admission. I went to Cambridge University - a great research University. However, all research Universities suffer from a very human problem. The staff are researchers, not teachers.

At a research University, it is usual for the staff to have mixed duties: they have their research and they have their teaching duties. You might think that this could create a situation in which students benefit from "cutting-edge" thinking from their famous researcher/Professor. This is usually not the case. What is more common is that the famous researcher type is really only engaged by his research work and couldn't care less about his - or her - students. That was most certainly the impression left on me by my University. The research staff really were only concerned about their research: students were in most cases seemingly regarded as an inconvenience - a distraction from the purity of their research.

Thus, what is a student to do? Well, I would, if I had my life again, ignore all famous research Universities for an Undergraduate or First Degree. I would go somewhere that had, at its heart, a love of teaching (if such a University could be found). I would not even be tempted to attend somewhere famous for its research - for such a place would tend to ignore its student base, for its own inward looking research work.

Perhaps a new norm should be established. Students should attend specialized teaching Universities for their first degrees - and only later, should they go to a research University - when they are doing a research degree. No-one should have to suffer the experience of being ignored by research staff intent on their personal research, at the expense of their teaching duties. That is a terrible experience that usually destroys the student's love of learning. So many people that I know who went to famous research Universities were very disappointed with the experience. It often destroyed the lives they had planned, in a very profound way.

So, if you have a bright child, I would suggest that you look beyond the famed Universities. Sometimes the less famous, more teaching based institution may be a far more welcoming place, than a place that has built its reputation on research, but not on teaching.

In many ways, this is one of my more important posts.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and no months, or Tiarnan, seventeen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)