Both newspapers and universities have traditionally relied on selling hard-to-come-by information. Newspapers touted advertising space next to breaking news, but now that advertisers find their customers on Craigslist and Cars.com, the main source of reporters' pay is vanishing. Colleges also sell information, with a slightly different promise -- a degree, a better job and access to brilliant minds. As with newspapers, some of these features are now available elsewhere. -...-
Isn't that 'freedom to take intellectual risks'? I can self-publish a book that everyone may read if they only have the faintest interest in the matter, without going through the hoops of established publishers who think the views in the book are hurtful because they expose or don't conform with the party line of the day enforced by editors, publishers, review panelists, politicians and bigoted pressure groups bankrolling them. Sure, there is much self-published garbage, but who says a $100 university press hardcover 250 pages volume IS quintessential wisdom?
Similarly, at noon on any given day, hundreds of university professors are teaching introductory Sociology 101. The Internet makes it harder to justify these redundancies. In the future, a handful of Soc. 101 lectures will be videotaped and taught across the United States. -...-
A model similar to the teaching company.
But unless we make a strong commitment to even greater funding of higher education, the institutions that have allowed for academic freedom, communal learning, unpressured research and intellectual risk-taking are themselves at risk.
What is this talking about?
The 'freedom' of university presses that veto and filter projects according to the political humor and leanings of fundraisers, politicians etc? Unpressured research? What about the 'publish or perish'? You don't publish and thus perish if your ideas don't follow the party line. Intellectual risk taking? Go ask Norman Finkelstein and Ward Churchill.
If the mainstream of "college teaching" becomes a set of atomistic, underpaid adjuncts, we'll lose a precious academic tradition that is not easily replaced.
Tradition of what? Undergraduate toiling rests most with assistants and adjuncts anyways. Celebrity faculty are busy writing grant applications and endearing themselves to some political side or the other.
Isn't that 'freedom to take intellectual risks'? I can self-publish a book that everyone may read if they only have the faintest interest in the matter, without going through the hoops of established publishers who think the views in the book are hurtful because they expose or don't conform with the party line of the day enforced by editors, publishers, review panelists, politicians and bigoted pressure groups bankrolling them. Sure, there is much self-published garbage, but who says a $100 university press hardcover 250 pages volume IS quintessential wisdom?
Similarly, at noon on any given day, hundreds of university professors are teaching introductory Sociology 101. The Internet makes it harder to justify these redundancies. In the future, a handful of Soc. 101 lectures will be videotaped and taught across the United States. -...-
A model similar to the teaching company.
But unless we make a strong commitment to even greater funding of higher education, the institutions that have allowed for academic freedom, communal learning, unpressured research and intellectual risk-taking are themselves at risk.
What is this talking about?
The 'freedom' of university presses that veto and filter projects according to the political humor and leanings of fundraisers, politicians etc? Unpressured research? What about the 'publish or perish'? You don't publish and thus perish if your ideas don't follow the party line. Intellectual risk taking? Go ask Norman Finkelstein and Ward Churchill.
If the mainstream of "college teaching" becomes a set of atomistic, underpaid adjuncts, we'll lose a precious academic tradition that is not easily replaced.
Tradition of what? Undergraduate toiling rests most with assistants and adjuncts anyways. Celebrity faculty are busy writing grant applications and endearing themselves to some political side or the other.
A.A Mole University
B.A London Institute of Applied Research
B.Sc Millard Fillmore
M.A International Institute for Advanced Studies
Ph.D London Institute of Applied Research
Ph.D Millard Fillmore
B.A London Institute of Applied Research
B.Sc Millard Fillmore
M.A International Institute for Advanced Studies
Ph.D London Institute of Applied Research
Ph.D Millard Fillmore