Dear sublist,
here is some (maybe quite interesting) article concerning
the North American university system.
Best regards
Otto
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FORGET TEACHING, RESEARCH IS KING
Robert Fulford
National Post
A dangerous contradiction lies at the heart of the university system
in North America. The citizens who pay for the great universities
believe they exist mainly to teach the young and prepare them for the
rest of their lives. People directing universities have other goals.
They believe a university fulfills itself when it creates knowledge.
Research makes a university legitimate. Administrators adore the term
"research university." When you become a research university you
enter the big leagues, like the best American schools.
Many professors consider teaching at best a secondary activity, at
worst a nuisance. That's a big change. Two or three generations ago,
great teachers had great reputations, and their students were much
envied. Today we rarely hear of such a person. The age of the star
teacher has died. I have actually heard one tenured professor say of
another, with blithe condescension, "He's not done anything important
in years -- the only reason he retains any stature at all is that
he's apparently quite a terrific teacher."
University administrators will argue in public that they emphasize
both teaching and research, more or less equally; but I have not
heard anyone say this in private for at least 20 years. Certainly you
won't find support for it in No place to learn: Why universities
aren't working (University of British Columbia Press) a tough,
eloquent book by two political scientists at the University of
Alberta, Tom Pocklington and Allan Tupper.
How can we be sure that universities no longer take teaching
seriously? Pocklington and Tupper answer in one memorable sentence:
"To our knowledge, no Canadian university in recent memory has hired
a senior professor from another university because of his or her
demonstrated teaching skills." (Outraged deans and provosts wishing
to dispute this statement will please submit names and dates rather
than the usual empty rhetoric.) A national survey by Pocklington and
Tupper reveals that professors at all career levels believe hiring,
promotion, and salary almost always depend on published research,
almost never on teaching.
Pocklington and Tupper go so far as to question the principle that
research and teaching are interdependent and that good researchers
make good teachers. This is a sacred belief in academe, but no one
has ever demonstrated it; the only evidence for it is anecdotal, the
kind that professors reject when it's offered by students. Anyway,
say Pocklington and Tupper, if that idea is valid, why do
universities reward good researchers by lightening their "teaching
load?" They also argue that professors, driven to justify themselves,
often do research of no value to anyone.
The conflict between the public's belief in teaching and the academic
belief in research makes the central problem of the university
unique; there's no other great social institution afflicted by such a
radical division between public expectations and professional goals.
Can anything be done about it? No Place to Learn says universities
must re-establish undergraduate teaching as their first priority and
recognize it as "a complex and important activity that demands broad
reading, disciplined thought, and great effort."
The word "effort" clicks quietly into place in that sentence, but
behind it we can glimpse the outline of an embarrassing question: Are
established, tenured university professors, as a class, lazy?
Pocklington and Tupper say most professors work hard. Yet they note
that in the 1990s, when universities complained that reduced
government grants were eroding education, "not one of them responded
by increasing the teaching obligations of their permanent
instructors. In fact, many managed to reduce even further the
teaching activities of professors."
No Place to Learn has drawn a searching and thoughtful response from
Reg Whitaker in the September issue of the Literary Review of Canada.
A political science professor, much admired for his writing on
subjects ranging from the RCMP to the financing of the Liberal Party,
Whitaker mentions in passing that last year, at age 58, he retired
from York University -- apparently because he couldn't stand the
system any longer.
He endorses the conclusions of No Place to Learn and enlarges the
debate by discussing a subject that Pocklington and Tupper don't
emphasize, the poisoning of university life by rights-seeking groups
who insist (Whitaker writes) that academic life is naturally "sexist
and racist and can only by kept in check through intensive regulation
and control ... Everything that goes on must be monitored and
policed." Which, of course, is the opposite of how we expect
universities to operate.
Whitaker, while favouring equality of treatment, has learned by
bitter experience that codifying decency and fairness has created a
nightmare. Consider the intense anxiety that afflicts hiring
committees, whose members know that every tiny decision may come
under the hostile microscope of an "equity officer" or some other
licenced busybody. For Whitaker, one great benefit of retirement is
that he'll never again have to take part in this charade.
Pocklington and Tupper write with clarity and vigour, aiming at a
general public. They deserve wide readership, though it's doubtful
that a university press can find it for them. They hope to create a
debate about universities, which for too long have sailed "on seas of
unwarranted deference." But the system may be beyond fixing. Tenure,
entrenched labour unions, rampant careerism, uncomprehending
politicians, narrow-minded university governors: the obstacles to
reform are so intimidating that the possibilities of change appear to
be, at this stage, no better than marginal.
