In almost any circumstance today, in order to get a good research position at a university, you must teach. Similarly, though to a lesser extent, the better teaching jobs tend to require some sort of research. But why should this be so? The skills of creating new knowledge and of communicating that knowledge to students in a classroom setting are very distinct. Not only might an individual be far better at one than the other, but an individual may also only want to base his career around one or the other. If the two professions of teaching and research weren't so inextricably linked, then we might have teachers who are not dedicated researchers enter the profession and raise standards everywhere, and vice versa for researchers. Dear reader, can you explain this mysterious requirement?
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Lack of Specialization Within Academia
Many people complain that today's higher education is far too overspecialized to make it worthwhile, and in a sense this is true. Take a look at most undergraduate college websites, and you're likely to see a list of extremely specific majors available at the school. In another sense, however, a lack of specialization is greatly crippling today's universities.
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2 comments:
There's a one-word answer: statism.
And the slightly more elaborate explanation is that the idea of "public" education being good has crept so thoroughly into American minds that no one can conceive of true freedom (i.e. market competition) in that industry.
You'll only see better ways of organizing educational institutions when you change the outlook of those who decide what the industry ought to be. Ultimately, that is the voting public.
(What I mean by that is that I don't think it is sufficient to lobby for independance from federal funding at the university level. Because people are saturated in a public education environment and mind-set from the very beginning, the end of the educational system suffers in all sorts of ways. We need to privatize the whole thing in order to achieve true innovation at the uni level.)
I think some of the answer lies in differences between research in various subject areas. In subjects like literature and philosophy, research is about refining ideas and coming up with new ones. Teaching requires professors to rigorously define their ideas. Strategies for teaching like discussion challenge both the students and teachers. The professor may even (gasp!) learn something from a student. In this way, learning and research is a holistic process involving many different perspectives. It stands to reason that this type of intellectual exchange is applicable to other academic subject areas as well.
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