Speaker: Harry Brighouse

There's a lot of bad teaching, and not a lot of good mentoring, of undergraduates in research universities. The consequences are bad for the students, bad for society, and constitute the most significant, and most neglected, equity issue in selective higher education. Harry Brighouse, the director of the Center for Ethics & Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, makes the case that the suboptimality of teaching and mentoring reflects the background incentive structure for faculty members, but also results from choices they freely make within the incentive structure. He also argues that teaching and mentoring can be, and should be, improved, at an institutional and an individual level without large increases in resources.

Sponsor: Department of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership at College of Education