In the WSJ yesterday. Will have to send this to some of my professor friends - see what they think.
Academia's Crisis of Irrelevance
'Crisis of Confidence Threatens College." So went a headline in the Chronicle of Higher Education this spring, describing a recent survey of the American public. "Public anxiety over college costs is at an all-time high," the report concluded. "And low-income college graduates or those burdened by student-loan debt are questioning the value of their degrees."
In the face of such anxiety, one might expect college faculty to re-examine the financial priorities of universities, or at least put up a reasonable front of listening and responding to their critics. Instead, academics have circled the wagons, viciously attacking any outsider who dares to disagree with them, and insisting that reformers are not sophisticated enough to understand the system.
In a book published last month, "The Faculty Lounges . . . And Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Paid For," I argue that our system of higher education is focused too much on research and not enough on teaching. In fact, one 2005 study in the Journal of Higher Education suggests an inverse relationship between the amount of time spent in the classroom and a professor's salary. It would seem that professors who spend their time writing are the ones most valued by our universities.
College teachers have responded as one might expect to a publishing-pays, teaching-does-not incentive. As a 2009 report from the American Enterprise Institute pointed out, over the past five decades the number of language and literature academic monographs has risen to 72,000 from 13,000 while the audience for such scholarship "has diminished, with unit sales for books now hovering around 300."
Average sales of 300? and how many of them go to university libraries, where they gather dust? Or the author buys them him(her)self and gives to friends?
Of course the defensive argument is that while 98% of the stuff written/research done may be useless, there's no way to tell in advance which will be the useful/brilliant/insightful 2%.
This is an excellent opinion piece, so hit the link above.
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