Cross-posted from Latimes.com
Crisis on Campus
A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities
Mark C. Taylor
Alfred A. Knopf: 256 pp., $24
In the spring of 2009, Mark C. Taylor published an op-ed in the New York Times titled "End the University as We Know It." The intensity of the response surprised him, with hundreds of comments offered in magazines and on websites and blogs around the world. Chair of the religion department at Columbia University, Taylor had often focused his scholarly work on esoteric subjects ranging from postmodern theology to Derrida on counterfeiting. But in the Times article, he called for doing away with academic departments and abolishing tenure. Was he really surprised by such strong reactions?
Crisis on Campus is an expanded version of that op-ed piece, and this is both its strength and its weakness. The book is provocative, to be sure, but the arguments are thin, and Taylor seems to have made no effort to back up his observations with research (that is, beyond some casual reading). For example, instead of presenting data about the difficulties of interdisciplinary research for graduate students, he cites e-mails he's received. Instead of presenting an analysis of the growth of online education, he tells us about the difficulties of a digital education company he started with the help of a wealthy alumnus from the college where he taught. The reliance on anecdote weakens Taylor's book and may lead some to dismiss his observations on higher education.
This would be a shame: Taylor has in fact identified some major problems facing higher education. Noting how the focus on research has driven a wedge between faculty and student interests, he cogently refers to "the identification of specialization with expertise." Narrow specialization should be the great enemy of educators because it leads to silos of inquiry with little opportunity for surprising intellectual exchange. But specialization has gone hand in hand with professional prestige, something that schools have been chasing for decades.
Taylor's main argument is that our overspecialized colleges and universities are increasingly divorced from the hyper-connected world defined by "webs, not walls." Networks of interconnectivity rather than isolated expertise are defining our world, and higher education will become obsolete if it doesn't plug into these new forms of knowledge creation.
Why haven't universities adapted? "There can be no meaningful reform of higher education," Taylor writes, "without redesigning departments in ways that will support more extensive collaboration among faculty members and students working in different fields." He powerfully shows that the self-satisfied cultivation of specializations is a disservice to students because it "inhibits communication across departmental and disciplinary boundaries, the university dissolving into an assemblage of isolated silos."
What kinds of reforms would reconnect universities to the rapidly changing world? Taylor suggests an academic division labeled "Emerging Zones," which would cultivate work linking the humanities, social sciences and the sciences. This sounds like a division for interdisciplinary work, which many schools already have. Taylor adds that it should also have "practical relevance and prepare students to become responsible citizens who are capable of pursuing creative and productive careers." Of course, nobody will be against that -- but how he envisions vocational collaboration among well-educated professors remains obscure.
Taylor calls for abolishing tenure, saying that it stymies innovation. But he doesn't discuss what would happen if professors were routinely fired to make way for younger, cheaper employees, nor how the ethos of long-term, fundamental study could survive when faculty could be dismissed because their research didn't suit reigning tastes. Tenure might not be a great system for producing innovators, but the pressure of losing one's job might create an even stronger spirit of conformism than already infects many campuses. Calling for tenure's abolition will surely get attention (again), but it would have been helpful to think through the consequences of giving universities the same "flexibility" with their workforce that Walmart has.
But perhaps it's wrong to ask Crisis on Campus for data or for more extensive analysis. It's probably better to think of the book as a long op-ed piece by a gifted teacher and scholar. He identifies core challenges facing American universities, shows how these have evolved and how deep-seated facets of even our best institutions have become increasingly dysfunctional. Taylor has written a manifesto informed by his experience and dedication to innovative higher education, and he has pointed us to fundamental problems that must be addressed. We should be grateful for that.
There are simply not that many jobs out there for such people.
Beyond that many of the graduates they send forth are woefully unprepared for any kind of job outside of the state which it is in.
Considering the national obsession with the game, it would probably take and entire book to develop a good discussion on the problem and would meet with major objection anyway.
Regardless of peoples love of the sport, high school and college football have taken the focus off of education in many places and put it squarely on a child's game. If America is ever to compete with the rest of the world again, we need to forget about sports and give academics everything we have. Scientists and engineers routinely give gifts of all kinds to the world.
Sports stars and their supporter give little besides a cheer and a big ego.
We need many more of the former and many fewer of the latter.
You mean like the rest of us? -AJB
Thus we get the Rachel Maddows, Bill Mahers, Tim Geithners, and Barack Obamas of the world, who are virtually ignorant of the subjects which they allegedly are experts in, but really are just mindless echoes of the socialist and marxist mentors who programmed their thought processes with rubbish instead of teaching them practical real world analytical skills.
Atlas is about to shrug the progressive and liberal flotsam and jetsam off his shoulder. This opportunity comes but once in every generation, and an awakened citizenry recognizes that the moment is now, because to failure to seize the opportunity at this moment, like during Reagan's defeat of Carter or the Republican takeover of Congress for Clinton's 2nd term, the alternative would be a much darker, dismal, new world order in which the forces of evil under the guise of progressivism would have or will now lead the world down a path from which no recovery could be possible.
And they support your premise entirely.
Sheesh -AJB
You left out incapable of logical thought. I mention this because you demonstrate it brilliantly. "Socialist and marxist mentors?" That and the Atlas Shrugs reference are more glaring examples of fact-deprived, empty intellectual rhetoric than anything coming out of Maddow, Maher or even Obama. Reminds me of Beck's railing against the evils of progressivism, followed by his explanation of how he discovered the evil: "I educated myself. I went to the library. Books are free!"
Robert Maynard Hutchins, Higher Learning in America
In fact, reflecting on my recent studies, what is clear is that faculty members of the same department do not much talk to one another about their work. Yet my impression also is that departmental meetings of one sort or another take up a lot of faculty time and energy. If there is a better way, let's hear about it.