The prolific Mark Taylor, chairman of Columbia’s religion department and post-modernist philosopher, has a new book out. Crisis On Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming our Colleges and Universities was released yesterday.
From its description on Amazon:
In Crisis on Campus, Mark C. Taylor . . . expands on and refines the ideas presented in his widely read and hugely controversial 2009 New York Times op-ed. His suggestions for the ivory tower are both thought-provoking and rigorous: End tenure. Restructure departments to encourage greater cooperation among existing disciplines. Emphasize teaching rather than increasingly rarefied research. And bring that teaching to new domains, using emergent online networks to connect students worldwide.
Naomi Schaefer Riley has a review at the Wall Street Journal. On tenure:
The “single most important factor in preventing change in higher education,” Mr. Taylor argues, “is tenure.” It shuts out new talent, allows ineffective teachers to remain in place, and creates a sub-class of part-timers and graduate students who do a great deal of the tough classroom work and grading. A college president in New York tells Mr. Taylor: “I have never been more frustrated. All but a few of my faculty members are tenured, and two-thirds are well over sixty-five but give no hint of when they will retire. Everything is blocked and students are losing interest.”
This is, I think, one of the more interesting problems facing young people — not only with tenure in education, but also in society more broadly — and it’s hardly ever discussed. With increasing life expectancies, the “young” are growing up knowing that they’ll likely be in their 50s or 60s before their parents meet their heavenly reward. To distinguish oneself and make one’s mark while so many establishment institutions remain in the hands of the aged is an utterly new phenomenon. Taylor’s certainly on to something in identifying tenure for the forever-non-retiring as a “block”.
As an aside, in emphasizing teaching over “rarefied research,” Taylor may be standing athwart history, but academia — hand-in-hand with government — seems unlikely to stop its increasingly frenzied research push any time soon.
This trend, of aging professors staying on in positions and blocking the younger generations, has been noticed in the sciences. The age at which a research professor receives his first major grant (RO1) has been steadily increasing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDr. Taylor is a professor of religion. It is certainly correct that humanities PhDs in esoteric disciplines are less marketable. While not denigrating the importance of serious study of disciplines like religion, which is worth study because significant numbers of humans subscribe to religion, these PhDs are clearly much less useful to society both intellectually and economically than PhDs in scientific disciplines, which are essential for the innovation that will create new products and services. Research training is often undervalued by those without any, because they don't understand it and lack the historical knowledge and context to understand the nature of scientific advances. Stop training scientists, and you will inherit the world that you deserve. A better focus, rather than burning down our own house (which is the approach offered by Dr. Taylor) is to demand that government shifts priorities to support more research and less warmaking.
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