Ending the University as We Know It

The most pop­u­lar arti­cle in yes­ter­day’s New York Times was an Op-Ed call­ing for a thor­ough­go­ing over­haul of the tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty. For Mark Tay­lor (chair­man of the reli­gion depart­ment at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty), it’s time to get rid of the mass-pro­duc­tion uni­ver­si­ty mod­el — the uni­ver­si­ty that builds walls between dis­ci­plines, encour­ages aca­d­e­mics to work on often irrel­e­vant top­ics, and pro­duces an ongo­ing glut of grad­u­ate stu­dents, who work as cheap labor­ers, then have dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing full-time teach­ing jobs. So what’s the solu­tion? Tay­lor pro­pos­es six ideas: 1) Get­ting rid of free-stand­ing aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ments and mak­ing aca­d­e­m­ic work cross-dis­ci­pli­nary, 2) devel­op­ing mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary pro­grams that focus on “real” prob­lems, 3) increas­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion among insti­tu­tions, part­ly with the help of the inter­net, so that uni­ver­si­ties don’t have to devel­op redun­dant strengths, 4) mov­ing away from tra­di­tion­al, cita­tion-packed dis­ser­ta­tions and instead hav­ing grad stu­dents com­mu­ni­cate their research in more con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal for­mats, 5) help­ing grad stu­dents plan for a life beyond schol­ar­ship itself, and 6) impos­ing manda­to­ry retire­ment and abol­ish­ing tenure, essen­tial­ly in order to keep fac­ul­ty respon­sive and pro­duc­tive.

What Tay­lor is sug­gest­ing is not entire­ly new. These ideas have been float­ing around for some time. But they’re pack­aged well, and they dri­ve home the point that uni­ver­si­ties, like so many oth­er tra­di­tion­al insti­tu­tions (news­pa­pers, book pub­lish­ers, fos­sil fuel-based ener­gy sys­tems, Gen­er­al Motors, etc), are increas­ing­ly feel­ing out­dat­ed. Or, put dif­fer­ent­ly, they’re not respond­ing to rapid changes in tech­nol­o­gy and the glob­al econ­o­my. There’s an old­er gen­er­a­tion that likes these insti­tu­tions pret­ty much as they are. And that gen­er­a­tion now runs them. Then, there’s a younger gen­er­a­tion learn­ing to do things in dif­fer­ent ways. And we’re left to won­der: How long will it take for these insti­tu­tions to catch up? Or will they sim­ply get out­flanked by some­thing new? As always, love to hear your thoughts.