Changing World

Ever wanted to overhaul Academe? Here are all those ideas crammed into one article. It is fascinating just because he hits on all fronts. Overhaul indeed. Thanks to Erin for originally bringing this to my attention.

I plan to eventually go back to grad school myself. Debt is a worry. So is the arcane nature of the hoops through which you jump for a job (this is especially true in the humanities) that will probably have little to nothing to do with the minutiae of your thesis. Unless of course you go into Academe, where your chances of landing a good job are tight. But is graduate education really the Detroit of higher learning? For that you would have to see cratering demand relative to the cost of running it. In fact the article suggests grad programs' problem is over-subscription, ie they are too popular. And do we really want to open up the university job market by abolishing tenure? Perhaps as structured tenure does cause a lack of accountability, but it also fosters intellectual autonomy and free inquiry. And if this cloistered tendency offsets a bias (let's say commercial) in the world of ideas, is it worth the loss of it to abolish tenure? This is what larger (and necessary) reforms would have to beware of, that is losing a system that in its very antiquated structure offers a corrective to other ways of developing and marketing ideas.