I admire NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for his tireless work commenting on easily dismissed abuses around the world.
Apparently, he admires me, too.
Well, not me specifically, but my profession: he deeply admires the "wisdom found on university campuses." I am only one English Professor and an Associate Dean of one Graduate School.
Frankly, though, I am not really feeling the love.
Indeed, just as I was set to continue in a series of blogposts that try to explain the "college" or "University" in relation to education reform's incessant invocation of "Career and College Ready!" -- an incessant chatter bolstered by The NYTimes and its editorial pages -- Kristof popped up with this Sunday morning op-ed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-professors-we-need-you.html?ref=opinion
Unfortunately, like his colleague Thomas Friedman, Kristof gets almost everything wrong about universities and university faculty. This is true even though he is ostensibly asking for academic help. I don't want to be too snarky. I truly admire Kristof and believe him i part. It looks, curiously, like he wanted the title to be "Professors We Need You!" but the NYTimes, following its current editorial path, shifted to a quasi-reformee antagonism: "Smart Minds, Slim Impact." National Review anyone?
Ultimately, then, he reveals to me only that the "university" is failing to do its job -- one it needs to do every 30 years or so -- to explain its place in the world to the world.
Kristof complains that university faculty have "marginalized" themselves by fostering a "culture that glorifies arcane unintelligibility while disdaining impact and audience. This culture of exclusivity is then transmitted to the next generation through the publish or perish tenure process. Rebels are too often crushed or driven away."
Citing some of the disgruntled and "driven away" Kristof argues -- rather strangely -- that faculty have to spend too much time impressing their peers and getting tenure via competing in a scholarly world that they aren't able to take the time to communicate to the wider world until late in their careers -- if then. He seems utterly uninterested in his own logic: that it is somehow a good idea for someone to claim expertise in a field before they have expertise in a field.
Uh, Nick, I work everyday to preserve academic integrity and this really ain't helping.
Kristof, having seen Spielberg's Lincoln with the rest of the NYTimes op ed team, and believing the film's suggestion that you really need to include a team of "rivals" even if those rivals are non-sensical, also feels compelled to throw in a sop to the right wing.
Sociology, he says, is still too lefty. Economics has it right because they have more faculty on the right.
No word, though, about his impressions about cancer immunology.
He finishes with a now standard riff on how TED talks, social media and, of course, MOOCs can correct the medieval monk like lives of academies.
Oh boy.
Where to start. So much of this, including Kristof's passing allusion to the "Sokal Hoax" feels warmed over (1996, a vestige of critical theory culture wars with its own disturbing and historical context -- in academic terms this is like talking about Monica Lewinsky and the dress as if it matters now).
Maybe we can start with the basics and then move our way back down to TED and MOOCs, etc.
What makes universities distinct from, say, high schools, is that their primary mission is research.
For that research to be good and meaningful it needs to be vetted by experts in a field, each competing (in an international marketplace of ideas) for publication space and research grants. Generally speaking, what isn't good or useful in such a demanding market is "excluded," as sometimes, are the folks that produce non-competitive findings ("the culture of exclusivity"). Not all that research or the processes of vetting will be immediately "accessible" to even a general, educated audience. Nor should it be. Very often, what is easily understood or grasped is called an "opinion," not an empirically verified fact. Verifying facts takes time. So does making sound arguments.
You really don't want someone, again, who has not proved themselves in a particular field to be able to pontificate in a modern digital age as an "expert." That is a recipe for celebrity (Michelle Rhee comes to mind in education), not useful expertise.
But this is what Kristof seems to be advocating: celebrity. He will find many willing to jump at the chance, but they probably won't be the folks anyone with real expertise takes seriously.
That's a problem.
In short, you want your "Phd" to continue to mean something. And you want the title "Professor" to mean something. Universities are producing too many Phds for the available academic jobs -- and that is a serious issue -- but it points to the competitive nature of the culture. You don't get hired or tenured without being very good, very driven, and also -- given the numbers -- very lucky.
To their credit, the NIH and NSF are working to help universities move a dizzying backlog of very, very, very smart and talented graduate students to multiple career paths -- something really worth reporting and discussing -- particularly in light of the constant lament about American math and science skills.
Well trained folks are there in plenty if that is truly what corporate American wants.
Let me give a simple example of the competitive world of academia (a far cry from the peaceful monastic life Kristof conjures) from my relatively "accessible" field: Shakespeare. The field has been around for well over 200 years. There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence about the writer and his times. To say something new or even interesting about the playwright is incredibly difficult. To get a tenure-track job as a Shakespearean, then, at a research university (there are only 10 to 20 available in a given year), you have to be able to demonstrate the capacity to enter that long discussion in a noteworthy way.
Indeed, you have to be something of a "rebel" to even get noticed in this field of competition.
But not so rebellious that you have nothing persuasive to say. It depends on what you mean by "rebel." Very often, unfortunately, rebel can mean simply someone looking for an end around this difficult and challenging arena.
Despite this sociological/economic situation in Shakespeare studies, the NYTimes and other entities continue to promote nonsense like the "Shakespeare isn't Shakespeare" fantasies of gifted actors like Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi when ever they get a chance. Brave, informed souls like Columbia's James Shapiro might try to enter a popular debate but if you are trying to muster argument in the face of the will of the NYTimes...well, why bother?
Consider this: if any of the tens of thousands of qualified Shakespeareans or potential Shakespeareans could find one piece of evidence to support the conspiracy folks they would be on the road to academic success beyond their wildest dreams.
But the evidence isn't there.
It is difficult to communicate specialized knowledge to a broad audience because very often a broad audience isn't really interested in specialized knowledge.
Startling break throughs in any field are in short supply -- and you want it that way. That does not mean, however, that the long, extensive process that produces those break thoughs (the "arcane" journals, etc.) aren't valuable. On the contrary, they are needed now more than ever.
Back to the MOOCs on this point. The Stanford model of the MOOCs, for those that don't know, is this: there are only so many faculty in given fields that regularly produce meaningful content knowledge so why not use their work to "teach" one or two courses and have all these other "professors" be "facilitators" -- BINGO? University tuition drops!!!
The problem is this. While it is certainly true that only a dozen or so faculty members in a given field produce regularly valuable research they do so ONLY because so many tens of thousands of others are working so hard to make things competitive. The current MOOC model makes as much sense as saying their is only one Lionel Messi in soccer so let's watch him and shut every other soccer league down.
There, I think, is a real sop to the right wing and free market competition ideologues. Leave the Sociology Department alone.
Please, Mr. Kristof, if you want faculty expertise, all you have to do is ask.
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