Two Russian-born sisters are due to become assistant professors of finance in New York state later this year, even though they are only 19 and 21, university officials said Wednesday.
Angela Kniazeva and her younger sister Diana were due to take up their new positions in September at the University of Rochester, where half of their students will likely be older than them.
The pair, who already have masters degrees in international policy from Stanford University in California, were picking up their doctorates from New York University's Stern business school on Wednesday after five years of study....
The duo were home-schooled by their parents and earned the equivalent of their US high-school diploma at the ages of 10 and 11 before graduating college in Russia at the ages of 13 and 14....
UPDATE: Added the photo; thanks to reader Colin for the pointer. For more on the Kniazevas, see this article, from which I copied the picture (something I think is fair use under the circumstances, given that it has no effect on the value of the photograph -- if I hadn't copied the picture, I would have done a direct IMG SRC= to that site, which wouldn't have given the copyright owner any extra money but would have created untoward traffic for the NYU servers).
I tried google, but my search for 'teenage russian schoolteacher sisters' didn't find it. It was educational, though...
You'd think AFP would know English grammar... geez.
It would kind of be cool to take the same programs with your sibling.
= response of everyone who hears about anyone being homeschooled. Yeah. I bet these girls are real backwards.
So, uh, do you actually have to have managed any international finance before you can teach international financial management? My guess would be no. Though for a fact, a 30-year-old brand-new PhD in international financial management would be equally unlikely ever to have managed any international finance as these two.
I think they should get real jobs for a while and then come back to academia, comfortable though the ivory tower is.
(Yes, I did take my first college courses at eight.)
Based on what? Your visceral distrust? Regardless of whether U. Rochester thinks these women understand the subject matter well enough to teach it, regardless of their accomplishments, etc., they should quit their job because you think "it just ain't right"?
Based on my personal knowledge of a great many 19 and 21 year olds, bub.
That's great. You should write to them and to U. Rochester. I'm sure they'd appreciate the advice. I'm going to write to Theo Epstein and tell him to spend a bit more time in the trenches.
(Godwins rule be damned)
I think we should be having children learn from people in the real world, sort of like the apprenticeships of old. Learning from books, especially when the teachers have no more experience than the students is just wasting time.
Anti-liberal-arts runs amok even at VC. Gyeesh. "Abandon the collective experience of 5,000 years of Western civilization! Get your own experience! It's the only thing that matters!" Nietzsche, anyone? Of course, if you recognize Nietzsche in the sentiment, you've probably had a liberal arts education...
As a product of homeschooling (closest I came to prodigy was an "A" in a college class in 10th grade... not very close) my lack of social interaction definitely gave me some trouble in a college world populated with the products of a fairly homogenous diet of the same TV shows and curricula. The advantages outweighed the disads, though--I was way more ready for the college part of college than they were. And now I'm socially recovered enough to be engaged to a real hot girl...
Props to these girls. Wish I'd been a true genius homeschooled poster child.
I think we should be having children learn from people in the real world, sort of like the apprenticeships of old. Learning from books, especially when the teachers have no more experience than the students is just wasting time.
People age 18-22 are callow, sophomoric, jejune. It is always amusing to see their reactions to their first real job ("what... you mean I don't get a summer vacation???"). Only someone who has never had a real job (e.g., an academic) could insist that having a real job is not fundamentally transformative and important for personal development.
How anyone could insist that something as nebulous as a "liberal arts education" - which these days could mean anything, since there is no longer an agreed canon - is superior preparation for real life to actual experience is beyond me. In fact, the "liberal arts education" today is little more than a money-making scam. It has no intrinsic value or utility, but nonetheless the middle class agrees (incomprehensibly) to beggar itself to purchase this credential for their children so they can have office jobs intead of (horrors!) being plumbers or electricians. Why should lawyers learn from books in undergrad and then law school, rather than on the job as clerks or paralegals? No reason. You'd be a better lawyer if you spent seven years as a paralegal rather than getting a BA in English or History and then attending law school. But, so sorry, we have all agreed you should be $100,000+ in debt for your "liberal arts education" rather than having a sensible apprenticeship where you'd actually make some money as well as gaining relevant experience.
So yes, they would be far better professors of international financial management if they'd actually had a real job - even for a short period of time - in international financial management.
I have seen the two extremes in CS. Some CS profs have never written code for functional use and its pretty funny what they think would work in a work environment - their theories can be quite absurd - while some of the best design has come from those inventing by necessity on the job; and the fresh graduate trying to apply what he learned at his first job is always a laugh. At the other extreme you have those of us who never got a CS degree and I must admit that it can be quite a disadvantage in terms of designing scalable code and thinking about and tackling more complex concepts -- yes you can learn it through apprenticeship, but if nobody wrote this stuff down in books, much would get lost and anyone who didn't have a great mentor would lose out. Book learning/teaching provides those at the start of their careers with the tools to advance regardless of their apprenticeship and so that they may utilize this advanced knowledge from the start and the wisdom will accumulate and increase rather than getting lost. Going back to the days of oral story stelling doesn't make any sense.
So, I think both are important. I do think that professors should be expected to get real world experience, but I don't think we can just toss the whole concept of academia and go back to apprentice only. And I know, I would not want to hire a lawyer who had only been a paralegal and never had to study through all the heavy coursework of law school. Thats where you get gaping holes in knowledge, and incompetance.
However, I think the issue here was with teachers at the professional schools that have never practiced or been through OJT. That sounds like a poor practice to me. Such professors are quite likely to be divorced from the realities of the profession. Where I went to engineering school, it was fairly easy to tell the professors that had experience in engineering or were still keeping their hand in (through corporate research grants, or in one case by serving as an expert witness in liability suits), from the ones that knew engineering only in theory.
I feel that most of my education was wasted time. Anything I needed for a job or a hobby required a kernel of abstract book knowledge combined with probably 80 to 90% context and application. The huge problem (not benefit as some have claimed) with the liberal arts system is that the knowledge is all contained in books! The professor teaching from the book and making you take a closed book exam at the end is unnecessary. Real life is open book. The book is something you consult for a few minutes before begning the drudgery that consists of doing the job.
Repeatedly applying a certain set of book knowledge to the real world repeatedly builds up a repository of experience and skill. You know how long it will take to do X, Y and Z. The books are always there in the background if you need them. The value in this is that you can tell a client the chances of project A succceeding, how much it can cost, how long it will take, why you can't have it for him next thursday. This is what employers are paying for. Book knowledge alone will get you an interview for an entry level position.
It is my belief that anyone teaching should have some experience working in the area they are teaching. That is not the norm but it should be a minimum standard. Of course, it would be even better if a few years of domain specific work experience was required before entering graduate school.
Certainly one learns a lot in the application of that theory that wasn't covered in their college courses, but that's true for most all college education. If these two go into the classroom and teach all those non-academic, practical things they learned on their first job about how the business or industry works in the real world, they'll only be teaching their students how to have that job. A different job at a different company or firm would have its own set of real world realities to deal with.
Is that really what we want college to be about, or do we want college to be about the rigorous explainations of the theoretical underpinnings of these industries? Before one can learn how to apply a theory one must first know the theory.
Many of my professors at Chicago did outside work. In particular, we were jealous of Harry Kalvan who represented the Playboy Foundation.
No. As you advance in the field, your experience will naturally broaden.
The college education presents the accumulated theory of the broad field and, ideally, gives one a basis for competence in any part of the broad field.
College education in the US today does not do this. Professional schools, to some extent, do this.
If these two go into the classroom and teach all those non-academic, practical things they learned on their first job about how the business or industry works in the real world, they'll only be teaching their students how to have that job.
Even if that were true, the students would be better off than if these two profs simply spoon-fed them pure theory, as is now the case. But it's not true. Practical experience gives a much broader perspective than "just that one job", and would enable them to teach the students much more than just "what I did all day at the one job I had."
Is that really what we want college to be about, or do we want college to be about the rigorous explainations of the theoretical underpinnings of these industries? Before one can learn how to apply a theory one must first know the theory.
College right now - and especially a "liberal arts education" - does not provide a "rigorous explanation of the theoretical underpinnings" of any industry. Would that it did.
Also, you are mistaken in assuming that one can only learn "theory" in an academic setting.
I suspect you are falling for a fallacy here. Yes, MOST people of that age are callow, sophomoric, jejune. The fact that these particular women are already so accomplished suggests that they don't neatly fall in to that generalization.
The better reservation is about their real-world experience in finance. I tend to agree with the objection. But that is an objection against much of the way we run the academic world in general. It isn't any stronger against these professors than it would be against most others.
Boris -- Translation?
" At once I shall make a reservation, that all mentioned below concerns to leading American universities and colleges. Others, on my belief, do not cost(stand) that money and forces, which should be put both to parents, and children successfully to finish the program and to receive a degree. "
Now how do we convince them to stay?
Oh, that's right, educational institutions are measured on prestige, not quality of education, so it doesn't really matter if the teachers can teach.
Fie, you are the one who is falling for a fallacy. Have you ever met one of these Doogie Howser prodigies? They are even more likely to be callow, sophomoric, and jejune than their less-accomplished peers. That they are even better at school than their peers does not mean they have had any greater scope for the life experiences that gets rid of the callowness. You can't get life experience from a book, no matter how smart you are - you have to live it.
You just share America's fundamental misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of a liberal arts education. It is not to increase earning power or knowledge in any particular discipline. It is based on the belief that there is more to people than earning power and more to the mind than economic utility. Its purpose is to expand a student's spectrum of knowledge, his ability to process, appreciate, and communicate insight from any discipline. The point of a liberal arts education is to expand someone's mind, not his earning power.
Using a liberal arts degree's lack of economic utility as an argument against it just reflects a misperception of what a liberal arts degree is supposed to be. If people want to go to vocational school or get an apprenticeship, that's fine, but don't pretend that they have the same purpose as liberal arts universities and just fulfill it better. I agree that a lot of American "liberal arts" schools fail in their purpose, but that purpose isn't vocational training. Their problems stem from the problems Henry Adams addressed with his own education--they've accepted a worldview without a philosophical foundation, and can't figure out a value for a liberal arts education, so they try to create some hybrid John Dewey model short of simple vocational training. They don't see a reason for an education that includes Plato and Aquinas because they don't see any value in Plato and Aquinas; everything of value, in their eyes, has come along in the last 150 years.
Far be it from me to attribute your close-minded stereotyping to the failure of your liberal arts education.
However, I recommend St. Johns College, which I did not attend, to anyone who sees value in the liberal arts.
Failing to accept your anecdotal evidence as experimental proof of the inherent nature of a class of people is not a fallacy. Generalizing from your own experiences is. SH is correct. It's called an "inductive fallacy."
Actually, it proves none of these things. These kids are outliers, and outliers are a really lousy basis for any inductive conclusions.
Jeek, in my experience people who use pseudonyms in blog comments are MORE LIKELY to offer bad arguments than those who use their real names, but that doesn't specifically say anything about your arguments, they can be judged for themselves.
Even if it were true that prodigies are even more likely to be callow, sophomoric, and jejune than their less-accomplished peers, that says nothing whatsoever about these women. It isn't proper to assign variable characteristics of a group to its individual members unless those characteristics define the group or are always found in members of the group. The traits you describe are common in people of all ages, and are not found in all (or even nearly all) of the group of "really intelligent youths". These particular women don't seem to have the problems you describe any more than a vast majority of older people in similar teaching positions.
I suspect that you believe many teachers have insufficient real-world experience. I tend to agree. But that is not a problem specific to these women. You would have been better off describing your objections to them as being typical of professors rather than typcial of intelligent youths.