My published comment (#253) in response to this article on an apparent spate of suicides at Cornell is attached as a Comment. Many of the other comments related to the rigor of academic programs and the time that faculty spend with students. My response to this is as follows:<\/p>\n
No one is super-human; we all face limits on our time and abilities. Research requires a lot of faculty time, and where universities particularly reward research, there will be reduced time for personal contact with the typical student. When you hear otherwise, you are hearing self-serving hype. This is partially resolved by insuring that researchers have few and small classes, but this generates financial issues if your institution is primarily tuition supported.<\/p>\n
There is a wide range of academic challenge among various programs at any institution. Generally, the degree of academic rigor corresponds to who has the power and also whether the discipline has a clearly defined and measurable corpus. \u00a0If you are faculty in a program with measurable content and more than enough students, you can afford rigor. If you have very few students and you keep with rigor, you will soon have almost no students, and soon no courses and no job.<\/p>\n