Mark Taylor's call to radically restructure the contemporary university (abolishing traditional department divisions & tenure, etc.) generated impassioned and not-entirely-self-interested comment in yesterday's Times letters section.
Tenure does offer protection for free thinkers, though I'm not sure how many of my colleagues actually take advantage of that freedom. And indeed, it's too easy for Know-Nothings to poke ignorant fun at obscure-sounding research that they don't understand. Above all: the bottom line should be driven by intellectual, not financial, considerations. Most of the "reforms" currently sweeping campuses like mine clearly are not.
Monday, May 4, 2009
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I don't know much, but I don't know nothing except that what alarms me in higher education lately - aside from the fact that "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" is considered a suitable reading level for high school students - is the trend away from the teacher/student classroom dynamic in favor of "distance learning" and on-line graduate programs with precious, if any, personal interaction between the teacher and the pupil.
Amen! And yet our overseers, the state Board of Regents, have been pushhing the "RODP" (Regents' Online Distance-Learning Program) just as hard as they've been pulling away support for traditional classroom learning. I'll grant, "distance" education is better than none at all. And it's a lot cheaper. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that it can replace "brick-&-mortar" higher education. (Where would I hang my "Life of Brian" and "Manhattan" posters, if they took my office away?!)
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