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).
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.
He gives in particular one example:
The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network. Responsible teaching and scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural.
Just a few weeks ago, I attended a meeting of political scientists who had gathered to discuss why international relations theory had never considered the role of religion in society. Given the state of the world today, this is a significant oversight.
Read the whole column here.
1 comment:
It's hard to understate how badly Taylor misrepresents the true state of graduate education in the U.S. or how dangerous (and foolish) his proposals for reforming it are. I'm sure Taylor's calls to eliminate the tenure system will be welcomed by the (anti) "academic freedom" crowd that claims it's responsible for allegedly entrenched liberalism in the academy. But eliminating tenure is the surest and quickest way to destroy the last vestiges of a system intended to seek the truth for its own sake, even if unpopular or heterodoxical. Of course, Taylor's in a nice position to call for the abolition of tenure, being a tenured professor and all. His job is in no danger. I'd like to see a little leading by example here. Let professor Taylor demonstrate the wisdom of his proposals by relinquishing his own tenure first.
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