I don't teach for Harvard (obviously)

Harvard obviously thinks the degree is more valuable than the instruction to receive it. https://t.co/0Jwx3LdlXC

— James Oliphant (@jamesoliphant) July 6, 2020

But if you think my teaching (such as it is) is worth less because you read my words on a screen rather than hear me say them (or I could record them and you play the video), you're going to have to explain what the fundamental difference is to me.

I've been lecturing for 20 years now.  By and large, my students react to my lectures like bumps on a log, or toads on a stump: i.e., not at all.  Occassionally (so occassionally I can remember all 5 instances), a student tells me how much the class meant to them, how interesting I made it, etc.  Most of them are just there because they feel obliged to be.

Again, I know it's not Harvard, but still; I don't think all Harvard students are hightly motivated super-achievers.  There are still George W. Bushes in the Ivy Leagues.

Tuition pays for access to the teachers, and to their knowledge.  I actually work harder right now, because what I would be doing daily (walking into a classroom, talking about British literature, going home, doing it again the next day) I have to do weeks in advance (so its ready when the time comes) and I have to type it out.  I have to consider that the students are reading, what my words will mean in print (as opposed to coming out of my mouth; I can modulate tone and pause for emphasis or go back over a point in the classroom; I have to think differently about that on-line), and in general I do more work (by now; my lectures have been given multiple times in 20 years, it's almost rote to me.  I could walk into a classroom tomorrow morning and lecture on a topic from composition and rhetoric to world, English or American literature, to philosophy.  Prick me, I bleed words.  It ain't always pretty, but I could do it.) preparing an on-line class than I do for a face-to-face class.

And I've taught on-line for many years, too.

Is my instruction worth less because I type out my lectures (I have neither the facilities nor the abilities to record and edit lectures for viewing.  Then again, I'm not paid like a Harvard professor, either), and I do all the typing myself (something tells me Harvard professors have people for that).  Is my instruction somehow how worth less to the student because of how that instruction is delivered?

I mean, I get the issue:  the college experience is rather hard to get off a computer screen.  I don't recommend "on-line universities" as a substitute for Harvard, although the former is far more affordable than the latter.  But pray, enlighten me:  tuition is paid for access to professors.  Why are they worth less, or the education worth less, if those professors are in videos, or just typing their notes into an on-line platform for you to download and keep?  Seems to me the latter is actually a better deal.  And yes, if the class is small enough, I don't see why you can't do it like a Zoom call, where everyone can participate (if they do.  As I said:  toads on a stump.  Lord, watching their blank faces on a computer screen would be simply too much to bear.)

What do you think college tuition pays for?  Especially a Harvard degree?  Aren't most people paying for that name?

"These things that pass for knowledge I don't understand."  I really need to create a false university crest with that motto on it in Latin.  The motto for Faber College is so clearly out of date.  Knowledge is not good anymore, only money is.  What you think you're getting for it, is the only question people ask.