A modest proposal to reform universities

By Jordan Paper. Research vs. teaching institutions? Here’s a better idea. The debate over the relationship between research and teaching in the contemporary university exists within the larger framework of late 20th-century understandings. These understanding include the belief that everyone should have a “higher” education, rendering the concept meaningless; and that funding is based on the number of students, leading legislators to measure productivity quantitatively and universities to try to expand enrolment and avoid failing students. The 20th-century understandings also permit the encroachment of pedagogy into higher education, which unnaturally shifts the burden of learning from the student to the teacher and places priority on self-esteem over learning. Thus, the debate over research and teaching reflects the loss of meaning of “the university,” now far removed from its original concept.
Once upon a time, the university was a place where professors professed (“declared publicly”); they professed original understandings of ideas fundamental to the societies of their times; they professed through lectures because printing was late in developing in Europe – the lectures were in lieu of books which students could not afford. Now, it has been suggested that professors no longer profess what they have learned to be passed on to the next generation. Instead, they are to digest and regurgitate what others have learned and published, and pass that along through now counter-productive lectures. Those who advance knowledge and understanding are expected not to profess those understandings but rather to leave it to others to relate their findings to students. Read more...