In terms of acquiring a college education there is nothing more fraudulent than a so-called "prestigious" university. George Orwell, in 1941, said something to the effect that intelligent mechanics would make better leaders than dimwits with fancy degrees. Unfortunately, graduates of prestigious universities dominate the higher levels of business and government. The primary mission of the prestigious school is not teaching. These institutions are all about research and faculty publishing. While the ambitious professors are researching and writing books and journal articles, their classes are taught by graduate students and newly hired professors afraid to give any student a grade below an A. Moreover, many of the courses taught at the top schools are stupid, silly and useless.
The book Higher Education? (2012) by Andrew Hacker, a retired Queens College professor and Claudia Dreifus, a New York Times journalist, is based on the idea that what goes on in higher education is not education. The authors blame our failed university system on the over importance of research and publishing. They are also critical of tenure.
In a 2012, Jennie Rothenberg Gritz interviewed Andrew Hacker for The Atlantic Magazine. According to the author of Higher Education?, "There are two ways to pick a college. One is to go to a prestigious college and when you graduate the world will know you went to Princeton or Stanford. It doesn't mater what happened in the classroom as long as you have that brand behind you. The second reason to go to college is to get a good liberal arts education. We argue that you can get a better education at second or third tier colleges."
According to Professor Emeritus Hacker, the problem with professors being pressured into publishing is "there are just too many academic publications and too many professors publishing. Not only that, most of the books are too long. A book on Virginia Woolf could be a 30-page article. Somebody did a count on how many pieces have been published on Virginia Woolf in the past 15 years. The answer was several thousand. Really? Who needs this?"
"Academics," said Hacker, "typically don't get tenured until the age of 40. This means that from their years as graduate students and then assistant professors, from ages 25 through 38 or 39, they have to toe the line. So the pursuit of tenure is, in fact, the enemy of spontaneity, the enemy of intellectual freedom. And even people who get tenure really don't change. What bothers us, too, is that over 300,000 professors have tenure. What that means is these people never leave. There's hardly any turnover in the senior ranks. You go to a campus and over two-thirds of the faculty have been there at least 25 years. They begin to stagnate. They become infantilized, embroiled in ideological issues like faculty parking."
Another critic of modern academia was Martin Russ who taught creative writing in several college and university English Departments. A published novelist, he wrote, in 1980, Showdown Semester: Advice From a Writing Professor. This is one of the most entertaining, informative and helpful books on the subject of teaching college students how to write.
In his book, Professor Russ provides a professor's take on college administrators (mostly idiots) and gives the reader a peek inside the ivory tower. Professor Russ says this about tenure: "I have the impression that it is the untenured in most English Departments who are the most effective teachers. This is largely due to the anxiety arising from job insecurity, which forces them to work at full capacity. The tenured professor is never forced to justify his classroom work to his students, and can go on year after year in a take-it-or-leave-it way in which arrogance overrides the kind of teaching that has to do with helping, sharing, giving."
Professor Russ, back in 1980, realized that too many professors were taking time away from their teaching to write books nobody reads: "English professors are always turning out extraneous textbooks or collecting other people's writing and publishing them as anthologies."
The book Higher Education? (2012) by Andrew Hacker, a retired Queens College professor and Claudia Dreifus, a New York Times journalist, is based on the idea that what goes on in higher education is not education. The authors blame our failed university system on the over importance of research and publishing. They are also critical of tenure.
In a 2012, Jennie Rothenberg Gritz interviewed Andrew Hacker for The Atlantic Magazine. According to the author of Higher Education?, "There are two ways to pick a college. One is to go to a prestigious college and when you graduate the world will know you went to Princeton or Stanford. It doesn't mater what happened in the classroom as long as you have that brand behind you. The second reason to go to college is to get a good liberal arts education. We argue that you can get a better education at second or third tier colleges."
According to Professor Emeritus Hacker, the problem with professors being pressured into publishing is "there are just too many academic publications and too many professors publishing. Not only that, most of the books are too long. A book on Virginia Woolf could be a 30-page article. Somebody did a count on how many pieces have been published on Virginia Woolf in the past 15 years. The answer was several thousand. Really? Who needs this?"
"Academics," said Hacker, "typically don't get tenured until the age of 40. This means that from their years as graduate students and then assistant professors, from ages 25 through 38 or 39, they have to toe the line. So the pursuit of tenure is, in fact, the enemy of spontaneity, the enemy of intellectual freedom. And even people who get tenure really don't change. What bothers us, too, is that over 300,000 professors have tenure. What that means is these people never leave. There's hardly any turnover in the senior ranks. You go to a campus and over two-thirds of the faculty have been there at least 25 years. They begin to stagnate. They become infantilized, embroiled in ideological issues like faculty parking."
Another critic of modern academia was Martin Russ who taught creative writing in several college and university English Departments. A published novelist, he wrote, in 1980, Showdown Semester: Advice From a Writing Professor. This is one of the most entertaining, informative and helpful books on the subject of teaching college students how to write.
In his book, Professor Russ provides a professor's take on college administrators (mostly idiots) and gives the reader a peek inside the ivory tower. Professor Russ says this about tenure: "I have the impression that it is the untenured in most English Departments who are the most effective teachers. This is largely due to the anxiety arising from job insecurity, which forces them to work at full capacity. The tenured professor is never forced to justify his classroom work to his students, and can go on year after year in a take-it-or-leave-it way in which arrogance overrides the kind of teaching that has to do with helping, sharing, giving."
Professor Russ, back in 1980, realized that too many professors were taking time away from their teaching to write books nobody reads: "English professors are always turning out extraneous textbooks or collecting other people's writing and publishing them as anthologies."
I’m a big fan of community colleges.
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