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The Slow Death of the University
21–30 of 134 posts
Re: The Slow Death of the University
#22Good article by Eagleton but I do wonder very much if it would have made headlines on HN if the title was "the slow death of the university as a center of humane critique" and the HN readers knew of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Eagleton#Literary_Theory
Re: The Slow Death of the University
#23What's it with humanities people that make them believe that only them, of all people, are able to do critical thinking?
Anyway, the author is part of the problem. Just at the beginning of the article he states that humanities are only good for rich students to pass their time. Until the professors themselves stop thinking this way, no government will prioritize them.
(And no, I don't agree that humanities are useless. They have a huge potential. But for them to be of any use, professors will need to seek those applications, and study them. Locking themselves in a room, nostalgically talking with like-minded people without ever doing anything leads nowhere.)
Re: The Slow Death of the University
#24I wonder if this death of criticism is misty eyed nastolgia for a future that either never, or rarely existed. Let's not forget that our so-called great universities: - For a long time excluded women, Jews and many minorities. - Were the providence of only the technocratic elite. - Did very little research before the 20th century. And now that the costs escalate out of control, is it any wonder that they have to go m…
Indeed, as the author lamented about how much the deck is stacked against the humanities, I found myself wondering: are there actually fewer students today studying the humanities than at some point in the past?
Is the number of people with degrees in medieval literature actually decreasing, or just not increasing as much as the number of engineers?
Seems more likely that there are just a lot more students who can attend university now, and the sustainable way for this to happen is for most of them to be encouraged to go into particularly employable fields. This would fit with the observation that there's currently a huge oversupply of humanities Ph.D.'s with no academic positions waiting for them.
Re: The Slow Death of the University
#25This is only mildly related to the article, but does anyone else have difficulty imagining what others' jobs are? For example, I'm just young enough to remember a time when I thought a programmer was someone who hid in a closet to slam at a keyboard for nine hours a day, but that notion was only corrected by entering the workforce. What about my other misconceptions? There's no way to learn about all of them firsthan…
Maybe also a good question is "what should they do". A lot of jobs are rubbish. That opinion rubs people the wrong way for totally acceptable reasons, but only a hundred years ago, around 90% of people were farmers. Today it's 2%. I think it's fair to say that the cataclysmic effect that our human economy is having on the planet can not last in it's current configuration. Most people should be employed in building and maintaining the planetary biome... in other words, they should be: farmers, only a sort of high-tech, hi-fi, scientific mercenary warrior type of farmer. A plumber for example - the world will always need those - ought to be primarily concerned with diverting waste as a source feed for soil, in a clean and efficient way: a hero. But most jobs exist under a 100 year old paradigm which will change rather quickly. You might say they are "soon to be farmers" - that's the best case scenario. Other's would have us all be mercenaries and go out in a blaze of glory. Not me.
Re: The Slow Death of the University
#26I wonder if this death of criticism is misty eyed nastolgia for a future that either never, or rarely existed. Let's not forget that our so-called great universities: - For a long time excluded women, Jews and many minorities. - Were the providence of only the technocratic elite. - Did very little research before the 20th century. And now that the costs escalate out of control, is it any wonder that they have to go m…
Yes, the message is a bit ironic, coming from a country promulgating persistent class hierarchy. Just keep giving us a cut of an endowment and 16th century trust, and let the peasants get back to tilling the fields.
The "commoners" of today want to learn engineering and practical things so they can improve their standard of living, which is unfortunate for the overall percentage of educators in social sciences.
Re: The Slow Death of the University
#27I wonder if this death of criticism is misty eyed nastolgia for a future that either never, or rarely existed. Let's not forget that our so-called great universities: - For a long time excluded women, Jews and many minorities. - Were the providence of only the technocratic elite. - Did very little research before the 20th century. And now that the costs escalate out of control, is it any wonder that they have to go m…
I wonder if this death of criticism is misty eyed nastolgia for a future that either never, or rarely existed.
Not entirely. Take a look at Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University (http://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-lo...). Universities grew enormously from 1945 – 1975. During that time, too, a disproportionately large number of students majored in English in particular, as well as other humanities disciplines. During that 30-year period, universities expanded and especially grad programs expanded—by 900%.
Most of those grad programs are still pumping out PhDs, even though the market for PhDs is weak. ABDs are a huge economic win for universities. So we have a situation in which supply has far outpaced demand for decades.
At the same time, I'd argue that there's a huge amount of bogosity in humanities departments, and that bogosity has mostly gone unaddressed (http://jakeseliger.com/2012/09/22/the-stupidity-of-what-im-d...).
Re: The Slow Death of the University
#28Good article by Eagleton but I do wonder very much if it would have made headlines on HN if the title was "the slow death of the university as a center of humane critique" and the HN readers knew of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Eagleton#Literary_Theory
Well the point seems to be that the university is becoming something quite unlikely it has traditionally been conceived.
Re: The Slow Death of the University
#29I wonder if this death of criticism is misty eyed nastolgia for a future that either never, or rarely existed. Let's not forget that our so-called great universities: - For a long time excluded women, Jews and many minorities. - Were the providence of only the technocratic elite. - Did very little research before the 20th century. And now that the costs escalate out of control, is it any wonder that they have to go m…
I wonder if this death of criticism is misty eyed nastolgia for a future that either never, or rarely existed. Not entirely. Take a look at Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University ( http://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-lo... ). Universities grew enormously from 1945 – 1975. During that time, too, a disproportionately large number of students major…
Shouldn't the overproduction of Phds drive down university costs?
I hear you on the bogosity factor. I wonder why this persists. Perhaps because by the time someone realizes it's all BS, their career it too invested in exposing it?
Re: The Slow Death of the University
#30The author would have benefitted from a bit of historical knowledge of the university as an institution. The English were making the same sort of complaints about Scottish universities in the 18th Century, and it's pretty clear from our perspective now where more of the insights emerged in that period.
While he may find it distasteful, the first university in Bologna appears to have formed around a core faculty who decided to start charging students for their lectures.