首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
End the University as We Know It Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no mar
End the University as We Know It Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no mar
admin
2013-08-22
22
问题
End the University as We Know It
Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand, all at a rapidly rising cost.
Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades.and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities. Kant, in his 1798 work The Conflict of the Faculties, wrote that universities should "handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee(理事)."
Unfortunately this mass-product ion university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization. In my own religion department, for example, we have 10 faculty members, working in eight subfields.with little overlap. And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less. Each academic becomes the trustee not of a branch of the sciences, but of limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems.
The emphasis on narrow scholarship also encourages an educational system that has become a process of cloning. Faculty members cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors.
The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest salaries and adjuncts(助理)with as little as $ 5, 000 a course—with no benefits—than it is to hire full-time professors.
The other obstacle to change is that colleges and universities are self-regulating or, in academic parlance(说法), governed by peer review. While trustees and administrations theoretically have some oversight responsibility, in practice, departments operate independently. To complicate matters further, once a faculty member has been granted tenure he is functionally autonomous. Many academics who cry out for the regulation of financial markets fiercely oppose it in their own departments.
If American higher education is to thrive in the 21st century, colleges and universities, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured. The long process to make higher learning more agile(灵活的), adaptive and imaginative can begin with six major steps:
1. Restructure the curriculum, beginning with graduate programs and proceeding as quickly as possible to undergraduate programs.
The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network. Responsible teaching and scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural.
It would be far more effective to bring together people working on questions of religion, politics, history, economics, anthropology, sociology, literature, art, religion and philosophy to engage in comparative analysis of common problems. As the curriculum is restructured, fields of inquiry and methods of investigation will be transformed.
2. Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs.
These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.
Consider, for example, a Water program. In the coming decades, water will become a more pressing problem than oil, and the quantity, quality and distribution of water will pose significant scientific, technological and ecological difficulties as well as serious political and economic challenges. These vexing practical problems can not be adequately addressed without also considering important philosophical, religious and ethical issues. After all.beliefs shape practices as much as practices shape beliefs.
A Water program would bring together people in the humanities, arts, social and natural sciences with representatives from professional schools like medicine, law, business, engineering, social work, theology and architecture. Through the intersection of multiple perspectives and approaches, new theoretical insights will develop and unexpected practical solutions will emerge.
3. Increase collaboration among institutions.
All institutions do not need to do all things and technology makes it possible for schools to form partnerships to share students and faculty. Institutions will be able to expand while contracting. Let one college have a strong department in French.for example, and the other a strong department in German; through teleconferencing and the Internet both subjects can be taught at both places with half the staff.
4. Transform the traditional dissertation.
In the arts and humanities, where looming cutbacks will be most devastating, there is no longer a market for books modeled on the medieval dissertation.with more footnotes than text. As financial pressures on university presses continue to mount, publication of dissertations, and with it scholarly certification? is almost impossible.(The average university press print run of a dissertation that has been converted into a book is less than 500, and sales are usually considerably lower.)For many years. I have taught undergraduate courses in which students do not write traditional papers but develop analytic treatments in formats from hypertext and Web sites to films and video games. Graduate students should likewise be encouraged to produce "theses" in alternative formats.
5. Expand the range of professional options for graduate students.
Most graduate students will never hold the kind of job for which they are being trained. It is, therefore, necessary to help them prepare for work in fields other than higher education. The exposure to new approaches and different cultures and the consideration of real-life issues will prepare students for jobs at businesses and nonprofit organizations. Moreover, the knowledge and skills they will cultivate in the new universities will enable them to adapt to a constantly changing world.
6. Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure.
Initially intended to protect academic freedom, tenure has resulted in institutions with little turnover and professors free from change. After all.once tenure has been granted, there is no leverage to encourage a professor to continue to develop professionally or to require him or her to assume responsibilities like administration and student advising. Tenure should be replaced with seven-year contracts, which, like the programs in which faculty teach, can be terminated or renewed. This policy would enable colleges and universities to reward researchers, scholars and teachers who continue to evolve and remain productive while also making room for young people with new ideas and skills.
My hope is that colleges and universities will be shaken out of their complacency(自满)and will open academia to a future we can not conceive.
Although originally designed to protect academic freedom, tenure has made professors ______ change, and universities with little turnover.
选项
答案
free from
解析
由题干中的protect academic freedom,tenure可以定位到文章第六个小标题下第一段第二句: Initially intended toprotect academic freedom,tenure has resulted in institutions with little turnover and professors impervious to change.就是说,最初旨在保护学术自由,终身制导致了各院校流动性低、教授不愿接受变化这样的结果。因此,本题答案为free from。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/JM07777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Mostworthwhilecareersrequiresomekindofspecializedtraining.Ideally,therefore,thechoiceofan【C1】______shouldbemade
A、Calculators.B、Microwaves.C、Computers.D、Electroscopes(doctor’sinstrument).C
Withasharpincreaseinthenumberofcollegegraduates,____________(就业市场上出现了剧烈的竞争)
WindEnergyWindenergydevelopmenthasbeenthrivingbothintheUnitedStatesandaroundtheworld.Thisreflectsnotonly
SincetheUSAgencyforInternationalDevelopment(USAID)beganitsfirstHIV/AIDSpreventioneffortseightyearsago,theepide
Themen’sWorldCupisconsideredthemostpopularsportingeventintheworldandisfollowedwith【S1】______interestaroundthe
A、Useoflibraryfacilities.B、Libraryregulations.C、Librarypersonnel.D、Locationofthelibrary.A
A、Writeapaperforhim.B、Substituteforhim.C、Takehimtoaninterview.D、HelphimlookafterhiscousinD此题为判断题。男士周六在图书馆值班
A、Hiswifeshouldexcusehim.B、Hiswifehasnoreasontodothat.C、Heshouldhaverememberedit.D、Heisrighttobeangry.C隐
A、Hejustcamebackfromavocationandspentalldaytravelling.B、Heexercisedalldayanddidnotrestatall.C、Hewasbusy
随机试题
前方标志指示高速公路的名称和编号。
患儿男,3岁6个月,因咳嗽4天加重伴发热急诊入院。4天前受凉后出现咳嗽,初为单声咳嗽,伴痰响,无犬吠样咳嗽及鸡鸣样回声,3天前在当地医院诊断“肺炎”,给予“青霉素+头孢类抗生素”治疗,具体疗程与剂量不详。1天前出现发热,为中低热,最高达39.0℃,用药后可
在一个具有n个单元的顺序栈中,假定以地址低端(即下标为0的单元)作为栈底,以top作为栈顶指针,当出栈时,top的变化为()。
Ayoungfatherwasvisitinganoldneighbor.Theywerestandingintheoldman’sgarden,andtalkingaboutchildren.Theyoung
根据下列材料回答下列问题。“十五”时期,我国邮政业务总量年均增长7.9%。其中,2005年完成邮政业务总量623.6亿元,比2000年增长46.4%。在邮政业务中,2005年完成国内函件731758.9万件、国际及港澳台函件4002.1万件、国内包
现在地沟油生产窝点的规模与此前的小作坊早已不可_______,而一些地方政府却长期_______,有的甚至还颁发了合法证照。填入划横线部分最恰当的一项是:
《宅地法》
阅读以下关于软件架构评估的说明。[说明]某网上购物电子商务公司拟升级正在使用的在线交易系统,以提高用户网上购物在线支付环节的效率和安全性。在系统的需求分析与架构设计阶段,公司提出的需求和关键质量属性场景如下:(a)正常负载情况下,系统必须
Whatdoesthewomanmean?
Completethesentencesbelow.WriteNOMORETHANTHREEWORDSforeachanswer.Inthehome,oneofthemostimportantusesofwa
最新回复
(
0
)