Here’s an interesting op-ed in the NYT discussing ways to reform the university system in America.
GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
The author, a professor of religion at Columbia, goes on to make a number of specific recommendations, including cross-disciplinary instruction at the undergraduate level, the elimination of departmental stovepipes that – at the graduate level, certainly – tend to seek academic excellence in increasingly narrow, exotic and essentially useless arcana (e.g., a “dissertation on how the medieval theologian Duns Scotus used citations”), the use of distance learning techniques for inter-university collaboration, a transformation of the doctoral dissertation, “job training” for graduate students who will probably never use what they’ve been taught at university and the adoption of mandatory retirement with the abolishment of tenure.
It’s interesting for a number of reasons. For one thing, it reveals a seeming bias in the humanities professoriate, namely that the purpose of pursuing a graduate education is to become an educator. Maybe it’s just me being all practical, but this seems like some weird matrix of a self-licking ice cream cone – the academy existing to replicate itself – with an academic Ponzi scheme. Since there will always be more students than teaching positions, many of these graduate students are kept at the university as low-wage teaching assistants hoping to somehow break through on the tenure track, while the others are – after years of expensive education, and often under the burden of crushing student loan debt – required to go out and throw themselves on the tender mercies of a market system that cannot easily value their skills.
Which I imagine is immensely frustrating all the way around.
Wouldn’t it be useful if there were programs offering blended humanities and technical educations? Schools that teach people how to read, write, reason and cypher? Schools that taught students the rigorous mathematical constructs that underlie the universe’s physical existence, and which would allow them to pursue graduate educations in science, engineering and yes, business, so that they could create real value accessible on a massive scale? Schools that would create graduates for whose skills the market howls?
Wait – those schools already exist.
So, em: Never mind.
And at the graduate level, we have NPS, for example.
When I was in the National Security Affairs (Soviet Studies) program, I took all my electives over in the hard sciences arena and sought out classes that focused on the intersection of the technical with policy — like nuclear weapons, where one needs to understand the science and engineering involved and how that influences and directs policy (consider the current debate over reliable nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapons infrastructure).
Still helps today when talking about ballistic versus orbital trajectories, covariances, staging, down-range guidance, link architectures and the like while dealing with the policy wonks from down the hill or across the river…
- SJS
SJS/
The only problem with all this is that the general level of math and science instruction is so miserable
K-12 that no amount of re-arranging the structure of college/univ level undergraduate instruction is going to help worth a tinker’s damn.
Just like the joke about the fact that most law schools are populated by people whose grades weren’t good enough to get them into med school,
most–as in the vast majority–of undergraduates drift to the humanities PRECISELY because they are incapable of handling the math and science.
Wanna bet? Let’s test out every college student in the nation whose major is journalism, sociology, fine arts, history, english, education, political science or anthropology, speech, theatre and drama. On a simple pass/fail exam with the number to make a 450 on the SAT re-test. I’m takin’ bets on the over-under….
Virgil,
Have a little faith. Some of us have a degree in the finer arts and got through Nuke Power School.
I’m just saying.
FastNav/
As a Poli-Sci major whose consistent and ready ability to successfully solve differential equations was, well, “differential,” I hear ya.
SJS,
With all do respect you are considerably more self disciplined than your average JO decompressing at NPS. Especially if he liked to play golf.
I have been a card-carrying member of the academy for nearly 30 years. This religion professor’s claims say more about the world he lives and works in than about the academy. I don’t recognize these problems as real problems. Sounds much more to me like someone complaining that they aren’t relevant, paid enough, and are bored by their chosen discipline. We just don’t have these ‘issues.’
The prescription for control and regulation is patently stupid. We organize centers, study teams, and the like where I am quite spontaneously. There is no need to have them mandated. Where they are forced, they fail.
I also thought that the description of graduate students, actual and prospective, was insulting and condescending. Just the usual sort of foolishness that comes from parts of the academy which have only a fleeting familiarity with real life, real choices, and real consequences.
“Self licking ice cream cone”. How apt. Having been an undergraduate (history) and a graduate (information systems) Your point about graduate students becoming the next professors is probably on target.
What I have noticed is that the proliferiation of colleges and universities after WWII basically created an education industry of sorts. Where as today what’s needed mostly isn’t more educators but more skilled workers for whatever. (I include ‘professional’ types like doctors and engineers in this for convienence). What we don’t really need is more “studies” majors.
I’ve asked a couple of times on left-wing blogs for information on what, exactly, one does with a degree in “womyns’ studies”. So far no one has deigned to explain it.
RonF/
Yes, I’d forgotten to list all the “minority”/”ethnic” special studies programs/depts. –ESPECIALLY those groups. GOT to have all that “consciousness raising.”
VX,
heh,
Some years back, I got into quite a bit of PC trouble with the gals who ran the Wombyns Studies department at USM.
I attended a seminar being given by them about removing stereotypes from the Campus Curriculum.
When th questions from the audience part started, I asked a straightforward question. “If the goal is to remove all stereotypes and to celebrate the diversity of the Wombyns Studies department, then why are all of your flyers, handouts, syllabii, posters, and other paper products all printed on pink paper?
Long pregnant pause followed, by the refusal to address the question, and my being invited to leave and not partake of the post-conference refreshments.
Apparently truth was not in fashion even then.
AW1Tim/
LOL “Pregnant pause?” Are you sure any one hosting that meeting had anything like even a nodding acquaintance with even the mere concept of the term, let alone actually having had or have the prospects of having, the experience? Unless they had laid in a supply of turkey-basters, of course….
Heh. One reason I went into Geography for an undergrad major vice geology was because my advisors were advising me to specialize at the atomic level, all the “high level” stuff had been done.
Perhaps.
So, I went with Geography, which was far more useful in my subsequent life and career.
And got a Masters in Public Administration.
Hey, that was just smart – that’s where the job growth is, right?
JofA/
I guess you’re right about that–it’s all going to be one big Obama-land Big Brother from sea-to-shining sea Govt. deal now anyway, right?
Lex … You ask above “wouldn’t it be useful if there were programs offering blended humanities and technical educations?” There used to be. That’s what old-style high schools used to offer — rather than today’s indoctrination on the current politically correct grievances.
On ‘Betsy’s Page,’ a website I often enjoy run by the talented Betsy Newmark, she posits the idea that charter schools like the one at which she teaches are the “new colleges,” offering far more practical and useful grounding in basic sciences, economics, history [both American history and world history] and English lit. and grammar and usage. Many of today’s colleges and universities are offering detailed material in increasingly abstruse and un-useful information areas, plus a series of “studies” courses. The “studies” courses generally involve a series of lectures given by professors with a fashionable ‘grievance list’ with which to indoctrinate the unwary students who take these courses hoping for real factual information.
The courses are easy to pass if you parrot back to the professor the list of grievances he gave to you. But students get little of real value to arm them in the struggle to make a living in a harsh world.
Note: I’m exempting the service academies [and M.I.T.] from this commentary above. They actually seem to know what they’re doing.
Marianne
Thomas Ricks now has USNA prof’s supporting his position…
So much for staying on message……….
I knew before I even clicked the link it would be Professor Fleming. Great professor, not particularly popular among mids who never bothered to actually read his articles or take a class from him. Pretty critical of certain aspects of teh Academy, often rightfully so. I don’t really agree with him 100% here, but he has some solid points.
Main reason why I did not stick around to get my Masters in Engineering. I don’t like research into a subfield of a subfield.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s valuable, but let these guys build something from time to time, applied sciences and such.
To the “Humanities” types they are the University. Science and Engineering is engaged in only by boorish ignoramuses who are suited only for minimal vocational training.
We won’t go into who the really ignorant boors are, but, just a hint, they aren’t the ones in Science and Engineering who are by far the most important to society, especially since those “Humanities” types are generally barely educated, or educable.
The problem with the education industry was solidified by the so called Duke decision in the early 80s. Companies used to give aptitude and IQ tests to judge if a person was trainable in the area they needed someone. Some Blacks took Duke to court because their testing was racially discriminatory, and Duke Power lost the decision. As a result, the requirement for a College degree became derriguer if you wanted to avoid a lawsuit. That may be challenged in the future as the outcome is still racially discriminatory since not enough of the right color skin is showing up in the right places.
Liberals never have a solution to anything, nor will they. If they did, who would need liberals and who would pay for their unemployment “compensation.” Personally, I’d be glad for the Uncle Sam to spring for a rubber lined room so they wouldn’t hurt themselves while preventing them from hurting us at the same time.
The ignorant boors are anyone who thinks the other is completely useless, be it humanities students who have no use for science or engineers who consider the humanities worthless.
“…Don’t get me wrong, it’s valuable, but let these guys build something from time to time, applied sciences and such.”
You mean like “Mech Engs build weapons systems. Civil Engs build targets?”
“Self licking ice cream cone”.
I thought this was post about colleges-not Hornet tankers!
I thought this mixture of curriculum, in the style of a Renaissance Man-style polymath, was the purpose of minor programs (and core curriculum) whilst attending a university; in order to create a well-rounded individual.
Case in point: a certain Southern school of colors orange and blue in lower Alabama has a specific business minor for engineering students wherein they study under the tutelage of the business department and work on projects with business students.
Lex–
Yes, grad students are cheap academic labor, but that doesn’t end with graduation. The major divide is between tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty–on a cost-per-course-taught basis, adjunct (“adjunked”) professors are markedly cheaper than full-timers. (For a hilariously bitter take on adjuncting, the “Screw-U.” skit at http://www.campusequityweek.org/2001/Screw%20U.Skit.html )
I finished the post-Naval doctorate and decided that there was no room for an almost-dead, male, military historian in today’s academy–that’s three-and-a-half strikes out of four.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e39ea696-5c3c-4622-8b85-2d9183b4b7e9
Late to this party, but David Bell in the New Republic apparently has more time to respond to silly NYT edtorials than I do this time of the year…