This NYT Column by Mark C. Taylor, the chairman of the religion department at Columbia University, caught my attention. As a matter of fact, he managed to put into words what I have been trying to articulate for a while: the reason why even though it sounds like such a fun idea, I cannot find one good reason to attend Grad school.
The University system as we know it produces two types of people: those technically equipped to deal with non-intellectual yet essential parts of society, such as Engineering or Medicine, and those who study Liberal Arts, whose destine is to continue to study them. They will get degrees, get underpaid as TA’s and go deep into debt in order to become professors. That is, those of them who manage to go through all of it. Wouldn’t all these intellectuals agree on the fact that they could do something to actually help society improve with all that amazing knowledge ammased in disserations read by so few?
Taylor proposes an end to the University as we know it, and a begining of productivity. Philosophy, religion linguistics and political science are indeed subjects essential to solving world crisis. Why not organize Universities around solving problems?
“Consider, for example, a Water program. In the coming decades, water will become a more pressing problem than oil, and the quantity, quality and distribution of water will pose significant scientific, technological and ecological difficulties as well as serious political and economic challenges. These vexing practical problems cannot be adequately addressed without also considering important philosophical, religious and ethical issues. After all, beliefs shape practices as much as practices shape beliefs.”
2 Comments
August 9, 2009 at 3:59 am
Aha. But this only rings true if you believe that intellectual stimulation and development is only good for an end (especially a career focused one).
I personally find it very personally satisfying to see how my thought process has matured and find the language/systems to understand the world around me.
but just my 2cents!
Not only that, but one can easily use the knowledge/skills gained in grad school (further intellectual inquiry) to put a twist on jobs that do not necessarily require graduate degrees (and thus putting the knowledge to good use), or simply to enrich your general way of thinking about the world. Now, if that’s not valuable, I don’t know what is!
I’ve come to realise that really simple policies etc of countries and international organisations just are so obviously flawed after having studied/read about them, but yet they still continue to be implemented as a matter of course. Perhaps this is a chicken and egg problem…because there is this perception that those with grad degrees go into academia, those that do not want to go into academia avoid graduate studies and thus we arrive at the problem of the “knowledge trapped in the rotting never-read dissertation”? If we take a broader approach towards graduate studies–as something that opens your mind further as an individual, then perhaps many more people will go into the non-academic workforce more aware
of course, this is all very idealistic given the $$$$ involved to go to grad school
September 15, 2009 at 1:36 pm
The thing is, most people don’t. The university graduates who go on to do all the practical building in the planet have little knowledge of what those academics do behind closed doors in university libraries. Nobody is saying that they are no good and that they should not be studying and writing dissertations on religion and sociology, but, why not also help out?
I am sure the reason behind many academics’ decision to become professors is actually the fact that they don’t know what else they can do with all this knowledge amassed in their culturally superior brains.The trick is to find a way to unite the two things, and universities per se could be the answer.