The military institution,or"You made the call to come here in order to avoid the other three" I joke, punctuating it with my muahaha.
The penal institution, or
The mental institution, or
A higher education institution.
We require them all to clock in and clock out somewhere, until they can be of legal drinking age (ok, drinking-age plus one!)
In higher education, we do not question why it has to be a four-year degree. We do not question why every student has to go through the same process, even when we are fully aware that students differ in their abilities.
It is a mass production factory system--yes, that, too, is sometimes what I tell students. How much ever things have changed in "the real world," we dare not question some of the fundamental units of higher education.
Like, why an academic year is only thirty weeks. A century ago, the logic was that students were much needed as labor in the farms during the precious summer months of up in the latitudes here. The old folks talk about picking one fruit variety after another throughout the months. It is a different world now, and even the summer farm labor demand is now met by legal and illegal immigrants. So, what do students then do in the summer months? That is increasingly becoming a difficult blank to fill.
We require all the students to spend the same amount of time in order to develop and demonstrate competency in whatever that we require. Even though in any class it is clear that some students can develop the competence in the subject in a few weeks less than a term, while others might need more than a term.
Could it be that we continue to engage in such practices because:
Institutions will try to preserve the problems to which they are a solution.I came across that marvelous statement, cynical as it is, in this essay on literature and the publishing industry. I suppose that quote, from the social thinker Clay Shirky who apparently has that as a rule named after him, can be applied in many, many contexts; such is the world in which we live!
Thus,
The military institution tries to preserve the problems to which it is a solution.
The penal institution tries to preserve the problems to which it is a solution.
The mental institution tries to preserve the problems to which it is a solution.
Why should we expect higher educational institutions be any different, eh!
5 comments:
One of the obvious solutions to the cost problem in universities. make Profs work 10 hours a day for 50 weeks in a year , just as everybody else in other professions do. Voila, we need only half the number of professors. Working only 30 weeks in a year and teaching only one term a year (or sometimes not at all), no late night phone calls, no travel - profs lead absolutely cushy lives :)
Yes, you can rant against that in your next post :):)
Hey, my post was in the US context.
Here, if, for instance, professors at research universities teach only one term a year like you write, then that typically happens when they bring in research money to buy themselves time to do research and the funds they bring pays for the replacement hire. In teaching universities like mine, there is no way we can only teach one term or not teach at all.
Our contract to teach is also only for nine months. My father was shocked when I told him this during my sabbatical. A contract being for nine months means, yep, we don't get paid for three months that is the summer. I told father that his granddaughter--my niece--vastly outearns me, even though she is just a tad over half my age. This shocked him even more. Father's response was classic, and rational: "you could have earned a lot more if you had continued with electrical engineering."
I told him that I, like many, get into teaching not for the money but because of our interests to spend time on intellectual inquiries that are beyond dollars and cents.
If this is the case, then why is higher ed so costly, right? That is what I often blog about. The explosion in "student life bureaucracy" has added administrative bloat. Expensive multimillion dollar investment in athletics. Wasteful capital expenditures. In other words, costs have increased not because of more dollars spent on teaching and learning, but because of the spending on everything but teaching and learning.
A dignified and well argued response - so typical of you. Yes, of course, much of the high cost of education revolves around non education spend that you rightly mention.
But I still believe that you can wring more work out of the teaching staff too. Do you really assert that Profs in teaching universities work flat out 10 hours a day, even for the nine months they are paid. 60-70 hours a week working is simply the norm in the corporate world. Having said that I completely agree that Profs must be paid more :)
It depends on what we want out of university faculty, Ramesh.
A long time ago, Kalidasa--yes, our old literature man--said this (well, a translation of his Sanskrit verse):
If a professor thinks what matters most
Is to have gained an academic post
Where he can earn a livelihood, and then
Neglect research, let controversy rest,
He's but a petty tradesman at the best,
Selling retail the work of other men.
What Kalidasa wrote more than 1,700 years ago is perhaps even more valid today than ever. Teaching is not merely to peddle something from a couple of textbooks. Because, then within a matter of a couple of years, my knowledge-base will be completely outdated and students in my classes will then get absolutely nothing at all, though one might think it is more "efficient" if there were an increase in my class time presence. As Kalidasa put it, I will quickly become nothing more than a retailer.
So, do faculty work the kind of hours you refer to? There is no doubt about that at research universities, where thanks to the pressure to do research and publish and bring money, faculty work under insane pressure. At teaching universities like where I work and at community colleges, workload is of a different kind.
A few students have pointed out that they can easily skip my classes as long as they read through my blog posts. Which is not that off the mark--my blogging is a way for me to "take notes" of things I read and think about, as well as opportunities to test out the arguments that I can use in the classroom, depending on the topics I am discussing. The modern information world has made it immensely easy for me to keep myself updated and to also readily access whatever information I need. Technically, other than a few posts on a lighter vein, my blogging is actually my work--both class prep as well as making sure that I am not a mere ordinary retailer that Kalidasa warned that I would otherwise become. I am not at all kidding when I remark, as I often do, that my work is my hobby and my hobby is my work.
Now, could there be faculty who don't work and update themselves? Of course, yes. Anywhere, you can find people who might take advantage of the system. But, hey, at least a faculty slacking off doesn't cause as much damage as the actions of a hardworking rogue trader can ;)
Wonderful. If only many other people can cogently and without anger, present their well reasoned arguments like you do. I was being deliberately provocative to enjoy the energising and enriching repartee that you provide !!
If only many (even a few) Profs were like you ........
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