We have the opportunity to create some massive changes in what it means to be involved in obtaining an education. To do this we must change the model of school completely. Many professors in today's universities are not motivated to provide high quality teaching. They know students will not act like consumers despite the fact that they are paying the bills. Rather, since students need the certification and recommendations universities provide, professors are in a power position and not in a service providers position.

Professors understand that they can dominate students and create various hoops for students to jump through in order to get a good grade, but that they don't really have to worry whether anyone has learned anything. In this model it is all too easy to just lecture and test and forget about real education.

This is all okay with students as it turns out. There is an implicit gentlemen's agreement about school. Teachers make demands, students satisfy those demands, and those who play the game by the rules win. "You give me the grade, I'll get the degree, I'm out of here."

JB: What motivates professors? Why do they teach?

SCHANK: There is a certain naivete on the part of students in universities about why the professors who teach them are there. They assume teachers teach because it's their job and that the model that held in high school of the professional teacher applies to the university as well. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Professors at the top universities teach because they have to, or ought to, rarely because they see teaching as fundamental to their life's work. At my university, professors who don't get research grants or contribute to the university in other ways are "punished" by having to teach. A top notch professor, one who is world famous and brings in lots of research dollars, may teach as little as one course every two years. On the other hand, his colleague who has none of these attributes may teach as many as four courses a quarter.

The best professors may or may not be the best teachers. This is actually a complicated idea because the issue of what defines "best" is subject to question and what defines good teaching is a very open issue. In the competitive world of American universities "best" has a clear meaning. Universities vie for the services of professors who have the biggest reputations. Top professors get great deals as they are sought after by the top schools. These deals include higher salaries, but as universities can only go so high, other issues matter as well. One of the biggest is teaching load. As a result, the best professors have teaching loads of nearly zero and sometimes of literally zero. Clearly, in such an environment teaching is not valued, despite what these same universities say to their prospective students.

Nevertheless, these same professors who happily avoid teaching are often the best teachers. The reason why this is so is not obvious to the prospective buyers of these services. Typically, when students attempt to decide between Harvard and Amherst for example, they say in Amherst's defense that the professors there are professional teachers and care more about the students and pay more attention to teaching. Like any generalization this one can be dead wrong, but on the whole it is true. The real question is: of the professors at each institution, who knows more? On the face of it this seems like a silly question. A course in the classics is a course in the classics. The best teacher would teach the best course, and the knowledge of any teacher is likely to be the same.