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This past weekend, I considered a critique of universities as abusive employers and suggested that American universities are, in some ways, profoundly broken. Mark Taylor, chair of the religious studies department at Columbia University, takes this critique to its (il)logical conclusion, calling for us to "End the University as We Know It." He begins with this analogy:
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).
Taylor is a fan of interdisciplinarity. He calls for universities to
Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.
Among his other recommendations:
- Restructure the curriculum, beginning with graduate programs and proceeding as quickly as possible to undergraduate programs.
- Increase collaboration among institutions.
- Transform the traditional dissertation.
- Expand the range of professional options for graduate students.
- Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure.
Click through to the article to read the reasons behind his recommendations, which attracted 437 comments before the editors closed the comment thread. Some comments were appreciative, while others--not so much. Quipped one reader, "Go abolish your own department."
A discussion broke out among readers as to the extent universities should be responsive to market forces, and particularly those of industries that want undergraduates prepared with the skills necessary to join their particular workforces. In my view, universities are where undergraduates develop their critical and creative thinking skills. Undergraduates may enter college thinking they're training for a particular industry, but universities must prepare them instead for work in any industry. Universities should be treating graduate students much the same way; all too often, graduate students, especially in the humanities and social sciences, are trained to be faculty. They hone their skills for a job market that is beyond competitive--it is brutal, with hundreds of applicants sometimes jockeying for the same position.
Bloggers of course have had plenty to say. (As do I, but I'm going to let a round-up stand in for my own still-garbled thinking on Taylor's suggestions.)
Marc Bousquet offers perhaps the most searing critique of the op-ed:
The piece is hilariously out of touch — noting the rise of adjunct labor, the Columbia philosopher of religion and author of 20 books wrings his hands that per-course pay is “as low as” $5,000 dollars a class.
BWAAA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
Reality? Annual income for many adjuncts is about $5,000 dollars a year. On pay that can be lower than a grand per class.
They’re on food stamps.
But sure, you’re right. The problem is that we need to end tenure. When we end tenure, the market will insure that these folks are paid fairly, that persons with Ph.D.’s will be able to work for those wages.
Oh, crap, wait. As anyone actually paying attention has observed, we’ve ALREADY ended tenure. With the overwhelming majority of faculty off the tenure track, and most of teaching work being done by them, by students, and professional staff, tenured appointments are basically the privilege of a) a retiring generation b) grant-getters and c) the candidate pool for administration.
Dean Dad brings an administrator's perspective to the article:
Yes, the existing structures are clunky and overtaxed and frequently asinine. They survive because they address certain problems. The way around them is not to wish those problems away or to postulate a world in which every college is modeled on a graduate seminar at Columbia. It's to come up with alternatives that solve those problems better. Prof. Taylor's model could be a lot of fun on a very small scale, like a think tank. But as a blueprint for higher ed across America, it's a farce.
The reality of higher ed in America is mobility. People move from one institution to another all the time. We've developed an admittedly frustrating common language to make that kind of movement possible. Replacing that common language with a babel of tongues is not a serious answer, and replacing
