From our Note the Question Mark series.
There was an article in the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine about a week ago with the teasing title [our translation] Work Ethics at Universities, Honesty and Honor of Students.
Can you guess what the K-Landnews basement crew did?
We ignored it because of the title, after all, what can you expect, we said. It can't be anything but a good trashing of a generation of youngsters.
Today, in Zeit Online, we came across a response to said article that asked are we seeing the demise of university culture? [our translation, a nice pun in the German title "Uniland"].
We read this one and came out grinning: our judgement based on the title of the "work ethics" piece had been confirmed.
At the end of the response in Zeit Online was link to an apology by the president of the professor's university for the hatchet job. Now, that was interesting. If a German university publishes an apology, you have a story. If the apology qualifies the subject of the apology as "defamation" and adds the institution of higher learning will investigate possible consequences, you can call it a solid scandal around here.
In addition, there was a reference to the professor being U.S. trained, so we had to go and have a closer look.
The professor spent about 15 years in the U.S. studying in Miami, then Harvard, then Berkeley, went on to work at New York State and took his full tenured job at the University of Konstanz, Germany, in 1997, a job he has now held for almost 18 years.
Europe reformed its university education after the so-called Bologna Process was agreed upon some 15 years ago. One purpose of the reform was to unify degrees internationally, so that, for example, a German university "Diplom" would go away and become two degrees, a BA/BS followed by a Masters. In addition, the famously lose organization of courses was tightened into a regime more reminiscent of high school with lots of mandatory classes. Internships, unpaid of course, became mandatory, too, where they previously were nice to have electives without much importance.
Germany also used the occasion to brand some schools "elite universities" in a fit of branding envy. Not having an Oxbridge or famous ivy league schools had bummed out politicians and recognition seeking professors for decades.
So, German politicians and academics set out to label some of the overwhelmingly state funded schools as "elite" schools, directing more funding specifically to these.
Konstanz University was one of the beneficiaries.
And how better to show your new status than by hiring fancy American trained professors.
Which is how the man who now complains so bitterly and without much justification about his students got his job. His article is full of nostalgia for the U.S. system and full of disdain for the German students.
In the best tradition of American academia, he got himself a lab named after himself, with a huge list of academic awards and space for his PhD candidates and postdocs.
Which is a problem, because American academics of stature tend to not do it as in your face as he found fit. Compare the Meyer Lab at UC Berkeley to his web site, you'll understand better.
Now, if you are as great as Mr. M., how do your students and their parents see you?
Not with lots of admiration, as it turns out in some of the reader comments, where former students recount things like this: You had to buy his textbook. He'd tell us we could pass the course without his book but there was no way we'd get an A without it.
Or: There was a lecture series by Prof. M. He showed up for the first one and all subsequent ones were done by his underlings. At the end of the lecture, he would offer a DVD of "his" lecture series for 130 Euros.
Do you really want to hear more?
The blogster has an extremely wide definition of the term "a***hole", so wide in fact that the blogster easily falls into the category himself most of the time. So, the invective cannot be used.
What can be said is that everybody goes through tough times, students as well as professors, but there is one criteria for choosing a school that is never mentioned anywhere.
Except here.
Don't go to a university where you must buy the textbook of the professor.
If you think this is an overreach, think again. In today's world (in yesterday's too, but let's look to the future) there is no single textbook that fits the bill.
And if the person brags with the Google Scholar - h-index, don't go.
One more thing:
Be aware that your results may vary -- there is a reason the blogster is not a professor. Yes, when a total stranger tells you You are awesome, it feels great, big O great. But once it's over, you are still that same little human on that same little planet.
[Update 10/10/2017] Fixed a couple of grammatical issues. Modified two sentences for clarity.
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