I'm a little surprised to see the negative reaction to this article. I've asked many people the question "do great researchers make the best teachers?", and the answers form a strong dichotomy: undergrads and people who completed their college education at the bachelor's level universally 100% respond "no." People who went to grad school, and especially those who continued on to be professors, mostly either answer "yes" or waffle, with only a very small number answering "no."
If the purpose of the college/university system is to conduct research, that would be one thing, but there is at least a wide belief that the purpose of the university is to educate; and my read of the original article, with which I largely agree, is that Hacker wants to raise awareness that our "higher education" system is not well-geared toward actual undergraduate education. At most highly-ranked universities, teaching ability and interest are fairly actively selected against: the retention decision is made almost entirely based on research, and while they would love the professors to be good teachers too, they can't evaluate that and have no incentives to promote it (and PhD students aren't taught anything about it anyway), so it is purely by luck that they manage to retain good teachers.
I guess I'd like to hear from the commenters who disagree with the article about what made their researcher-professors better teachers, particularly at the lower levels where the only things that might be cutting-edge are the teaching techniques. (I'm not that interested in hearing about the professors bringing you in on their research, which is valuable but necessarily not available to every undergraduate student.)
Disclaimer: I am a college professor, I value (and am good at) teaching, and was denied tenure (at a liberal arts college, even) apparently because my publications were in CS education rather than in something more "researchy". Even the liberal arts colleges are not immune to the movement placing research above teaching as retention criterion for their teachers.
If the purpose of the college/university system is to conduct research, that would be one thing, but there is at least a wide belief that the purpose of the university is to educate; and my read of the original article, with which I largely agree, is that Hacker wants to raise awareness that our "higher education" system is not well-geared toward actual undergraduate education. At most highly-ranked universities, teaching ability and interest are fairly actively selected against: the retention decision is made almost entirely based on research, and while they would love the professors to be good teachers too, they can't evaluate that and have no incentives to promote it (and PhD students aren't taught anything about it anyway), so it is purely by luck that they manage to retain good teachers.
I guess I'd like to hear from the commenters who disagree with the article about what made their researcher-professors better teachers, particularly at the lower levels where the only things that might be cutting-edge are the teaching techniques. (I'm not that interested in hearing about the professors bringing you in on their research, which is valuable but necessarily not available to every undergraduate student.)
Disclaimer: I am a college professor, I value (and am good at) teaching, and was denied tenure (at a liberal arts college, even) apparently because my publications were in CS education rather than in something more "researchy". Even the liberal arts colleges are not immune to the movement placing research above teaching as retention criterion for their teachers.