6 ms·

The Slow Death of the University (2015)

47 points by jimsojim 11y ago

rpdubose 11y ago
Couldn't agree more. I got my BS in Comp Sci from a traditional university. Got out, got a job, did okay, got promoted out of day-to-day development & eventually lost my ability to dev. Now, in my 40s I've decided to get back to my tech roots. With all the great free resources & contributors online, as well as shops like Udemny (& others) I am getting better & more practical instruction than I originally received at a university.
- jhbadger 11y ago
  That's not Eagleton's point. The guy's a literary critic and is upset that STEM fields have taken the prestige position in universities, which to him means universities are "dying". While I have probably more respect for the humanities than most people with a scientific background, Eagleton makes the error that a lot of people with his background do, which is to assume that only people trained in the humanities are capable of critical thinking and that STEM fields generate robots with no interests outside their technical fields.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - analog31 11y ago
    I wonder what people with scientific backgrounds actually think about humanities. I live in a town where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a scientist. Just a couple of anecdotes: 1) My kids participate in a youth music program, and several of the most prominent donors who support the program are retired scientists. 2) The parents who clamor for more liberal K-12 education, with arts, humanities, and even gym, are the scientists. 3) My parents, both scientists, have always been interested in the humanities.
    - Fomite 11y ago
      I have a science-field PhD, and am about to start an assistant professorship in a STEM field. This pretty much echoes my feelings on the humanities - that they're a worthwhile thing that people should absolutely be exposed to. And also, that playing the "Whose field is more important" game is a losing one for all involved.
    - haliax 11y ago
      What town?
  - epalmer 11y ago
    A little background. I work as a dev/mgr at a Liberal Arts university and my oldest graduated from the same one in 2015. I graduated from an Engineering school with a Chemistry BS and Environmental Systems Engineering MS. We were discussing the criticisms of late about STEM schools don't teach you critical thinking and Liberal Arts does. From our limited and admittedly biased standpoint is that there is an arrogance about how good liberals arts is relative to STEM that is unwarranted. Her experience is that she was not encouraged to think but to parrot back the biased opinions of her faculty. Failure to conform your thinking to their ideas was met with public criticism in the classroom and a lower grade.
lambdasquirrel 11y ago
The counterpoint is that at no other point in history has it been that (1) having a higher education was crucial to success and (2) the middle class (or what used to be the middle class) had access to higher education. That having been said, most people in the broader economy still need to fill roles with practical value as opposed to e.g. working at a think-tank. The critical skills the author describes are nonetheless important, and one of the terrifying things about this whole education business is that large parts of the middle and upper classes lack this, in spite of said higher education. But I digress. The point is that we have more people going to university. So you put that together with the needs of the students and of course there will be an overall de-emphasis on ivory-tower activities. But I wonder if the total amount of such activities hasn't changed much, with regards to the size of the country or economy. That said, we still need a place for those sorts of things to happen. And it does feel like it's been pushed off into "grad school," whereas undergrad has become a career mill much like how high school has become a college mill. What I'll give the author credit for is the value of the mill. He's right that there isn't that critical thinking, and isn't that what we needed to begin with in the creative economy? And I do remember what that was like in school, and even today. People like the idea of creativity and critical thinking until you make them do it.
- CM30 11y ago
  The first point kind of is the biggest issue with modern universities and education. Not all jobs should require a degree, and people shouldn't be forced to get one in order to get a decent job. The fact so many do is why a lot of students only attend university for a piece of paper rather than an interest in actually learning anything, and why universities don't want to really challenge people any more. If the first point wasn't true and the second point was, the world would be much better, since everyone who wanted to go to university could do so and everyone who didn't wouldn't be forced to.
zepto 11y ago
http://edge.org/conversation/geoffrey_west-why-cities-keep-growing-corporations-and-people-always-die-and-life-gets http://edge.org/conversation/geoffrey_west-why-cities-keep-g... Tldr; Universities used to be structured like cities, or be an extension of a city. Cities are so far essentially immortal. In keeping with modern doctrine, universities have been transformed into commercial corporations. We know that as a form, corporations have a limited lifespan. The average lifespan of a company in the s&p 500 has decreased over the last century from 67 years to around 15. If you turn a university into a corporation, you limit its lifespan and should expect it to die after a few decades. The evidence is clear.
- TheCowboy 11y ago
  I don't think the lifespan figure usually accounts for mergers and acquisitions. It is not always clear that a company "died" if it still continues under a different corporate brand. I haven't found any articles that try to sift the data based on this, so it's possible that it isn't a significant factor. It might be interesting to compare this recent period of consolidation with the turn of the century when Pres. Theodore Roosevelt became known as a "trust-buster".
  - cafard 11y ago
    Interesting point. I remember that the University of Denver ended up with the physical plant of Colorado Women's College, but to what extent it assimilated it otherwise--faculty, staff, students, programs--I don't think I ever heard. Apparently Yale once had the notion that absorbing Vassar would be a quick way to go coeducational. I can't offhand think of other consolidations or proposed consolidations of colleges, though.
  - zepto 11y ago
    Given how many corporations do dwindle and fail, it's hard for me to believe that the lifespan would be categorically different. Even if it were doubled because of mergers, that wouldn't change the logic.
return0 11y ago
The UK universities are considered by many others in europe as degree factories; i think they're the ones who invented the business. Universities were once respected as the bastions keeping humanity's precious knowledge. There is no reason for that anymore, we need more online and freely accessible courses, data corpuses, libraries, and education material, funded by national governments. Education should be a fundamental human right, and it is not up to some startup or non-profit to fix that.
jackcosgrove 11y ago
Eagleton used the same exact phrase twice about teaching and research. So much for his great writing skills. I stopped reading after that. This rant is like anything else that could be posted to Crooked Timber. "Oh no! Humanities professors have to work like anyone else, with measurable results. The university is dying!" I do respect the humanities, but there's only so much you can do with them. Whereas the knowledge, technology, wealth, and all-around good stuff gained from electrical engineering, astrophysics, materials science, etc. is as limitless as the universe.
- alberte 11y ago
  >I do respect the humanities, but there's only so much you can do with them. I believe someone from the humanities would have trouble with this statement. Of what use is all the techno gadgets if we lose what makes us human? I'm a techie, but I've also studied some humanities, and delve into some in my spare time, things like communication, psychology, arts these all make life a lot richer, even if they do have less flashing lights. Humanities professors on the other hand have had it pretty easy, and that seems to be coming to an end, the same for universities in general. It's something I'm torn about, I always loved my time at university, but the reason I went there was for the knowledge, because that was where it was stored. Now universities are in many ways obsolete - all the knowledge is in the cloud. If you need to ask an expert then just ask online, so we still need experts, just the renumeration model is being disrupted - like everyone elses pretty well. What we do need is critical thinking, and traditionally this was what was taught in an arts degree. In many ways the academics have done this to themselves, by dumbing down degrees and focusing more on 'business' outcomes they've eliminated what was the defining characteristic of a degree and it is now just a set of check boxes, which of course you don't need a uni for. I blame the MBA's - the cultureless hoards of middle management that suck the life out of everything that's not quantifiable and can be entered on a spread sheet.
  - jackcosgrove 11y ago
    I got a degree in the social sciences and most of the stuff they talk about is just made up. As in, psychology studies cannot be replicated, literature criticism is all just opinion, political science insights are just common sense with weasel words. It's fine as a dalliance or avocation, but there's no there there, intellectually. Science and engineering are so much more honest about the truth and what constitutes knowledge than the humanities and social sciences. The latter two nowadays are mostly rhetoric with a political slant, anyways.
cs2818 11y ago
While I think that many of the world's higher education systems are moving towards optimizing throughput rather than focusing on truly engaging with students, it is wrong to assume that this trend only affects the humanities. As a researcher in a STEM field (at US university) for only ~7 years I have often posited that many of the ideas which appeal to administrators result in a degraded academic experience for students. In turn, this can negatively impact research efforts. I understand that this must be more frustrating to those in the humanities, as funding is more abundant in STEM, but my guess is that these same trends are harming the quality of research in all fields.
- epalmer 11y ago
  > As a researcher in a STEM field (at US university) for only ~7 years I have often posited that many of the ideas which appeal to administrators result in a degraded academic experience for students. In turn, this can negatively impact research efforts. Just wondering if you can give some examples. I work at a Liberal Arts University.

47 points by jimsojim 11y ago

Couldn't agree more. I got my BS in Comp Sci from a traditional university. Got out, got a job, did okay, got promoted out of day-to-day development & eventually lost my ability to dev. Now, in my 40s I've decided to get back to my tech roots. With all the great free resources & contributors online, as well as shops like Udemny (& others) I am getting better & more practical instruction than I originally received at a university.

jhbadger 11y ago
That's not Eagleton's point. The guy's a literary critic and is upset that STEM fields have taken the prestige position in universities, which to him means universities are "dying". While I have probably more respect for the humanities than most people with a scientific background, Eagleton makes the error that a lot of people with his background do, which is to assume that only people trained in the humanities are capable of critical thinking and that STEM fields generate robots with no interests outside their technical fields.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- analog31 11y ago
  I wonder what people with scientific backgrounds actually think about humanities. I live in a town where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a scientist. Just a couple of anecdotes: 1) My kids participate in a youth music program, and several of the most prominent donors who support the program are retired scientists. 2) The parents who clamor for more liberal K-12 education, with arts, humanities, and even gym, are the scientists. 3) My parents, both scientists, have always been interested in the humanities.
  - Fomite 11y ago
    I have a science-field PhD, and am about to start an assistant professorship in a STEM field. This pretty much echoes my feelings on the humanities - that they're a worthwhile thing that people should absolutely be exposed to. And also, that playing the "Whose field is more important" game is a losing one for all involved.
  - haliax 11y ago
    What town?
- epalmer 11y ago
  A little background. I work as a dev/mgr at a Liberal Arts university and my oldest graduated from the same one in 2015. I graduated from an Engineering school with a Chemistry BS and Environmental Systems Engineering MS. We were discussing the criticisms of late about STEM schools don't teach you critical thinking and Liberal Arts does. From our limited and admittedly biased standpoint is that there is an arrogance about how good liberals arts is relative to STEM that is unwarranted. Her experience is that she was not encouraged to think but to parrot back the biased opinions of her faculty. Failure to conform your thinking to their ideas was met with public criticism in the classroom and a lower grade.

lambdasquirrel 11y ago

The counterpoint is that at no other point in history has it been that (1) having a higher education was crucial to success and (2) the middle class (or what used to be the middle class) had access to higher education. That having been said, most people in the broader economy still need to fill roles with practical value as opposed to e.g. working at a think-tank. The critical skills the author describes are nonetheless important, and one of the terrifying things about this whole education business is that large parts of the middle and upper classes lack this, in spite of said higher education. But I digress. The point is that we have more people going to university. So you put that together with the needs of the students and of course there will be an overall de-emphasis on ivory-tower activities. But I wonder if the total amount of such activities hasn't changed much, with regards to the size of the country or economy. That said, we still need a place for those sorts of things to happen. And it does feel like it's been pushed off into "grad school," whereas undergrad has become a career mill much like how high school has become a college mill. What I'll give the author credit for is the value of the mill. He's right that there isn't that critical thinking, and isn't that what we needed to begin with in the creative economy? And I do remember what that was like in school, and even today. People like the idea of creativity and critical thinking until you make them do it.

CM30 11y ago
The first point kind of is the biggest issue with modern universities and education. Not all jobs should require a degree, and people shouldn't be forced to get one in order to get a decent job. The fact so many do is why a lot of students only attend university for a piece of paper rather than an interest in actually learning anything, and why universities don't want to really challenge people any more. If the first point wasn't true and the second point was, the world would be much better, since everyone who wanted to go to university could do so and everyone who didn't wouldn't be forced to.

zepto 11y ago

http://edge.org/conversation/geoffrey_west-why-cities-keep-growing-corporations-and-people-always-die-and-life-gets http://edge.org/conversation/geoffrey_west-why-cities-keep-g... Tldr; Universities used to be structured like cities, or be an extension of a city. Cities are so far essentially immortal. In keeping with modern doctrine, universities have been transformed into commercial corporations. We know that as a form, corporations have a limited lifespan. The average lifespan of a company in the s&p 500 has decreased over the last century from 67 years to around 15. If you turn a university into a corporation, you limit its lifespan and should expect it to die after a few decades. The evidence is clear.

TheCowboy 11y ago
I don't think the lifespan figure usually accounts for mergers and acquisitions. It is not always clear that a company "died" if it still continues under a different corporate brand. I haven't found any articles that try to sift the data based on this, so it's possible that it isn't a significant factor. It might be interesting to compare this recent period of consolidation with the turn of the century when Pres. Theodore Roosevelt became known as a "trust-buster".
- cafard 11y ago
  Interesting point. I remember that the University of Denver ended up with the physical plant of Colorado Women's College, but to what extent it assimilated it otherwise--faculty, staff, students, programs--I don't think I ever heard. Apparently Yale once had the notion that absorbing Vassar would be a quick way to go coeducational. I can't offhand think of other consolidations or proposed consolidations of colleges, though.
- zepto 11y ago
  Given how many corporations do dwindle and fail, it's hard for me to believe that the lifespan would be categorically different. Even if it were doubled because of mergers, that wouldn't change the logic.

return0 11y ago

The UK universities are considered by many others in europe as degree factories; i think they're the ones who invented the business. Universities were once respected as the bastions keeping humanity's precious knowledge. There is no reason for that anymore, we need more online and freely accessible courses, data corpuses, libraries, and education material, funded by national governments. Education should be a fundamental human right, and it is not up to some startup or non-profit to fix that.

jackcosgrove 11y ago

Eagleton used the same exact phrase twice about teaching and research. So much for his great writing skills. I stopped reading after that. This rant is like anything else that could be posted to Crooked Timber. "Oh no! Humanities professors have to work like anyone else, with measurable results. The university is dying!" I do respect the humanities, but there's only so much you can do with them. Whereas the knowledge, technology, wealth, and all-around good stuff gained from electrical engineering, astrophysics, materials science, etc. is as limitless as the universe.

alberte 11y ago
>I do respect the humanities, but there's only so much you can do with them. I believe someone from the humanities would have trouble with this statement. Of what use is all the techno gadgets if we lose what makes us human? I'm a techie, but I've also studied some humanities, and delve into some in my spare time, things like communication, psychology, arts these all make life a lot richer, even if they do have less flashing lights. Humanities professors on the other hand have had it pretty easy, and that seems to be coming to an end, the same for universities in general. It's something I'm torn about, I always loved my time at university, but the reason I went there was for the knowledge, because that was where it was stored. Now universities are in many ways obsolete - all the knowledge is in the cloud. If you need to ask an expert then just ask online, so we still need experts, just the renumeration model is being disrupted - like everyone elses pretty well. What we do need is critical thinking, and traditionally this was what was taught in an arts degree. In many ways the academics have done this to themselves, by dumbing down degrees and focusing more on 'business' outcomes they've eliminated what was the defining characteristic of a degree and it is now just a set of check boxes, which of course you don't need a uni for. I blame the MBA's - the cultureless hoards of middle management that suck the life out of everything that's not quantifiable and can be entered on a spread sheet.
- jackcosgrove 11y ago
  I got a degree in the social sciences and most of the stuff they talk about is just made up. As in, psychology studies cannot be replicated, literature criticism is all just opinion, political science insights are just common sense with weasel words. It's fine as a dalliance or avocation, but there's no there there, intellectually. Science and engineering are so much more honest about the truth and what constitutes knowledge than the humanities and social sciences. The latter two nowadays are mostly rhetoric with a political slant, anyways.

cs2818 11y ago

While I think that many of the world's higher education systems are moving towards optimizing throughput rather than focusing on truly engaging with students, it is wrong to assume that this trend only affects the humanities. As a researcher in a STEM field (at US university) for only ~7 years I have often posited that many of the ideas which appeal to administrators result in a degraded academic experience for students. In turn, this can negatively impact research efforts. I understand that this must be more frustrating to those in the humanities, as funding is more abundant in STEM, but my guess is that these same trends are harming the quality of research in all fields.

epalmer 11y ago
> As a researcher in a STEM field (at US university) for only ~7 years I have often posited that many of the ideas which appeal to administrators result in a degraded academic experience for students. In turn, this can negatively impact research efforts. Just wondering if you can give some examples. I work at a Liberal Arts University.