There would be a lot more academic jobs for Ph.D.s if colleges and universities hired as many professors as undergrads need. Unfortunately, this would cost a lot of money, so we're left with undergrads suffering gigantic classes and doctorates suffering joblessness.
How many professors do undergrads "need"? I think we need to revamp the system to focus more on self-learning, and decrease the emphasis on lectures.
No point in having a super expert physics researcher tenured professor who hates teaching and can't teach worth shit teaching a bunch of students, when he could be doing his research and the students could be watching a recorded lecture of the same material from someone who likes teaching, over the internet (e.g. MIT's online course offerings).
But then how could the students watching the recorded video ask questions of the lecturer? There are many problems with the way higher education is delivered, but i doubt video is the answer. There needs to be some sort of recognition and employment position created within academic institutions that doesn't punish academics because they enjoy teaching. Video lessons are not really that solution when you consider that this issue (lack of effective teachers at tertiary level and lack of encouragement for academic staff to be good teachers) is one primarily born out of the greed of academic institutions.
This could vary by institution, but at my former school (and the ones on MIT open courseware), students rarely ask questions. There's some embarrassment factor, but I suspect it's mostly because it takes time to formulate your confusion into a question AND there's simply not enough time for everybody's questions, and every student feels that.
I guess I was less addressing the issue of asking questions in class (which you're right, did not happen a lot in the bigger lectures at my university - though it still did - but was super important once you were at 300 level and above and the classes we're a lot smaller with a lot more dialogue between lecturer and student) than the fact that this sort of policy gives academic institutions (that charge students thousands of dollars to attend) even less incentive to provide students with quality education from enthusiastic teachers.
No point in having a super expert physics researcher tenured professor who hates teaching and can't teach worth shit teaching a bunch of students
Some of the best physics professors I ever had were super expert physics researcher tenured professors who hated teaching. They weren't quite as good as the super experts who liked teaching, but they were better than the ones loved teaching but didn't have nearly enough knowledge to go far beyond the coursework. And certainly a lot better than a video of the same material.
Even if you're into self-learning, having more professors to give one-on-one time with students that need help/questions answered could be a good thing.
A lot of the questions students have could be answered by fellow peers. I know blackboard is a well hated program but (at least at my university) it has a forum for each course that students often use to ask questions or exercise their knowledge for their peer's benefit. Maybe we don't need to get more lecturers so much as encourage students to ask each other questions.
This was a good thing my university did in first-year physics -- we had one hour a week of problem sessions where we were forced to work through a bunch of questions in groups of four. This made sure everybody was basically on the same page vis a vis the basics.
I don't know if it would work once you got beyond first year and into the more difficult material.
