End the University as We Know It

The New York Times ^ | 4/27/09 | By MARK C. TAYLOR

[lewisglad]

Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities.

In my own religion department, for example, we have 10 faculty members, working in eight subfields, with little overlap. And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less. Each academic becomes the trustee not of a branch of the sciences, but of limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems. A colleague recently boasted to me that his best student was doing his dissertation on how the medieval theologian Duns Scotus used citations.

The emphasis on narrow scholarship also encourages an educational system that has become a process of cloning. Faculty members cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors.

The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors.

In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"In my own religion department, for example, we have 10 faculty members, working in eight subfields, with little overlap. And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less. Each academic becomes the trustee not of a branch of the sciences, but of limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems. A colleague recently boasted to me that his best student was doing his dissertation on how the medieval theologian Duns Scotus used citations."

Sounds like left-brained overload, but there may actually be a point to studying the sources of Duns Scotus. Particularly if it involves a comparison with the sources of Aquinas and Anselm. Although, hopefully Eliade, William James, Rudolf Otto , and van der Leeuw, will figure in here somewhere. They might want to add Newman's Idea of a University to the departmental discussions at Columbia. Read as a group in a seminar for the whole department. Just try to get ten eggheads to agree on anything.

The internet is making wasting time listening to liberal professors somewhat irrelevant and outdated now. I'd be more worried about the Columbia graduate following Richard Hofstadter, Fanon, Gramsci, Alinsky, Adorno, and the Fabians in the White House. Along with the model UN Dag Hammarskjöld/Hans Kelsen neo-Kantian theories of international cooperation.

Robert Pirsig/Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Alert

[decimon]

...colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured.

No thanks.

[Carry_Okie]

There are akready lots of courses online - free - to anyone who want to do the work.

My kids are using them now for preparation for the AP.

The underlying problem or relevancy is tenure-

Actually, I disagree there. IMO, the underlying problem is accreditation. As to dead wood, besides useless professors, the administrative hierarchy is even worse, especially in public universities.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"and I've seen faculty scream at administrators, blow off classes, block technology improvements, etc., and nothing can be done to them."
16 posted on Monday, April 27, 2009 12:31:53 PM by aegiscg47

Scream? Really? Do tell.

[STONEWALLS]

...most markets in the United States respond to the law of supply and demand....not the Academy!...it cranks out 40,000 PhDs a year despite the fact that there’s no demand for them all...a collegue of my wife told his class of doctoral candidates “look, out of the 30 of you only 2 will get jobs teaching....if anybody wants to quit, now’s the time”.....nobody quit, because each one thought they would be one of the lucky two that gets hired.

[ishmac]

The university model seems to be pretty well suited for things like hard sciences, research, perhaps engineering. Areas where having a body of knowledge is important, but skills are less so.

Yes, I think the author should have specified that he was speaking about HUMANITIES depts, not hard science, engineering, etc.

[eleni121]

faculty scream at administrators, blow off classes, block technology improvements, etc

---

Wow - I've experienced that...over and over.

The IT folks shudder at faculty who refuse to become come to terms with change. Or how about those who teach online courses and never “show up” —seen that too. The publisher creates a course and the prof simply monitors if that — no interaction whatsoever.

The institution has to be able to fire them. Period.

[This Just In]

Our eldest had been attending a number of online college classes in order to earn his prereq. requirements for his major. He has also attended several on campus courses.

The online classes are ideal for a number of reasons. The students do not have to deal with activist hostile profs. face to face.

For example, a number of our friends children attend a CC. They have been insulted and berated by their profs. in front of the class simply because they are Christians.

[John Will]

What were you doing paying for a Doctoral program?

[goodnesswins]

iTunesU??? Tell me more....I may have to get an IPOD now....

[Cheetahcat]

“For a liberal arts major, you learn less and less about more and more until you know nothing about everything. So go figure.”

Thats it!! Has been a while.

[aegiscg47]

Yes, Apple has a program called iTunes U where universities can post classes, seminars, performances and more. The good part is that most of it is public content(some of the actual classes need log ins) and there are a lot of universities participating in the program. There was an article in USA today awhile back where truckers, moms, and many others were downloading lectures, seminars, and some class materials.

[RJR_fan]

The IT folks shudder at faculty who refuse to become come to terms with change

The example I heard was professors who are addicted to the feel of chalk between their fingers. Even though a chalkboard, and chalk dust, literally cuts the lifespan of hard drives in the room in half.

[LS]

I can tell you precisely why it hasn't happened, because I was a part of such a "university," yorktownuniversity.com

The problem, pure and simple, is accreditation. For a "degree" to be worth anything, it has to be accepted in the work community; and that means accreditation; and that means that the ESTABLISHED system has to approve the new competitor.

I worked for ten years with YU trying to get a BA program accredited. I quit, and it was another five before they finally got a degree in government approved. I can't tell you how much BS was involved in class revisions, "behavioral objectives," writing this plan and that plan . . . ALL WITHOUT A DIME OF INCOME. At some point, profs like me give up. It's not worth the possible future payout.

So, no you wouldn't just "rent lab space" and make multimillionaires out of professors. The accreditation community will not permit it. And if you just put it out there, you won't have any takers because the knowledge without the sheepskin is useless to most would-be employees.

[Carry_Okie]

The problem, pure and simple, is accreditation.

Precisely what I said on post 23.

And if you just put it out there, you won't have any takers because the knowledge without the sheepskin is useless to most would-be employees.

If the professors were indeed the top of their field, and the grading standards exacting, do you really mean to tell me that employers wouldn't hire? I agree with you about the structural restraint of trade, but it would seem the customer base could do something about it.

[redpoll]

>>>I work for a major university IT department and I’ve seen faculty scream at administrators, blow off classes, block technology improvements, etc., and nothing can be done to them. We are involved in a lot of the online training programs and iTunes U, which has been a big success, but a lot of the older faculty want to go back to the 60s and 70s, so they try to block it at every chance.<<<

I’m in the belly of the beast at the secondary level, and the story is the same at this level. The school wanted me to create a web page back in November - something that should have taken me about six weeks, considering the small size of the school and my own background in basic web page design. Here we are, more than six months later, and at every step, someone in the school district heirarchy has blocked, stopped, confounded, or confused something in the development of that web page. I could go into details, but those details are petty beyond imagining.

A private business would have had this project done long ago.

Yes, get rid of tenure, certainly. Then get rid of government-operated schools. The situation I find myself resembles the old television program “The Prisoner.” Since I often have contact with universities, your story doesn’t surprise me, either. And there’s more to come from our new president! *sigh*

[eleni121]

...how much BS was involved in class revisions, “behavioral objectives,” writing this plan and that plan ...

---

Agreed. Been there done that. There is lots of BS associated with the educationist establishment-—schools of teacher ed which need to become relevant in order to survive and massive bureaucracies at the state and federal levels which would make Stalin's SU proud.

OTOH - the proliferation of majors/programs/courses is astounding. These often needed new programs etc are added to instead of replacing what irrelevant stuff already exists.

[Yaelle]

bump for a great topic

[LS]

That's exactly what I mean. I don't care who you have teaching, requirements for jobs thanks to affirmative action are such that it is the accreditation that is important, NOT the education.

No non-accredited school will attract anyone, even if Milton Friedman returned from the dead to head the econ dept.

Yorktown U. had TOP people, people whose classes pack out in accredited universities, but who have zero activity.

[Carry_Okie]

That's exactly what I mean. I don't care who you have teaching, requirements for jobs thanks to affirmative action are such that it is the accreditation that is important, NOT the education.

DOE and the courts, again.

It will happen eventually. At that point, I wouldn't want to be a JC professor. The College Board has made effective inroads with the AP and the universities are taking it.

My guess is that it may happen abroad first. At that point, we'll be screwed, glued, and tatooed unless we follow suit. It's inevitable.