Texas students should not take back seat to Research

In this editorial, http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/7498493.html, the author is formulating an apparent attempt to inform university students’ that they are not getting the education that they are paying for. In the mean time, he is also warning educational institutions and professors about misallocating students and regular taxpayers’ money by purely making research the priority

In this particular piece, Ronald L. Trowbridge explores the mere possibility of universities’ undivided focus on research and how that dwarf students’ educational development. Trowbridge claims that “singular quest for research can by itself be counterproductive to the education of students.”  He basically states that universities have shown a vehemently shift in prioritizing research over teaching, and teaching should be the first precedence.        

Trowbridge evidently believes the fact that “only 57 percent of those entering college actually achieving a degree” is because institutions are abandoning teaching in lieu of research. Universities are shying away from providing their customers with the best means and methods to enhance the excellence in student education. Quality teaching has rather been plummeting because research is competitively drifting away scholars’ and experienced faculty members from classroom time.    

Trowbridge lists five “problematic areas” that result from prioritizing research. This particular list is supposed to draw a logical conclusion as to how pure focus on research is vehemently hurting the quality of education.       

Trowbridge’s revelation of five main predicaments does attempt to shade a light on the mistakes that the universities are committing by prioritizing research. Though the few problematic citations do seem to have some type of correlation, the reasoning purely lucks solid rationality. It is a wild attempt to showcase the cause and effect of research and luck of quality teachings in universities.  The author simply presented collection prestigious university personnel’s quotes to support his mere argument. The author’s perspective lucks any statistical evidence to indicate correlation of research and decreasing in quality student teachings. It’s clearly an overstretched connection. The article also includes an outrageous generalization that research does not have any societal values. Though it depict the benefits of research for private corporations and suggests that universities get the funds from these privatized entities, it fails to recognize that professors still have to utilize classroom time to conduct these privately funded researches. In this sense, the author’s claim seems to be in conflict.