Whereas our identities will not be revealed until we are employed, it is not a secret that we hold academic jobs. My husband and I teach and do research. We interact with students every day. We try to impart useful skills and any piece of knowledge we have to our next generations.
However, academia, as we know it, is dying. It is disintegrating right in front of our eyes, and even we are unwilling participants in this process.
How is this happening?
First, there is very little money for research. If you are not highly published and high-visibility researcher today, you are lost. Your research ideas will never see the light, they will never be tested. Maybe in 20 or 30 years from now someone else will come up with the same ideas or may be not. Countless sparks of creativity are lost today, every day.
Second, teaching in person is over. We will move all instructional material online.
Have you watched The 2015 Atwell Lecture: Stanford President John L. Hennessy? The talk focuses on the future of higher education, and follows the predictions of the honorable president.
According to him, the students will enjoy short instructional modules of mixed media online and mini-quizzes. This online format may or may not be combined with flipped classroom activities. These are activities, in which students participate on their own - discussions of various scenarios, solving problems, creating small groups to analyze cases.
This does not sound bad, right? However, when the president of Stanford states that all of these activities could be led by teaching assistants and adjunct faculty to save money, the predictions become sordid.
The main reason to make these changes? Decrease tuition. Again - this sounds good (especially if you have a child headed for college). However, think about the fact that tuition has increased in the past 20 years, but the ratio faculty:students has not changed. Where does the tuition money go? The money goes to the ever-expanding administration in our schools.
The same administration is disassembling the academia, in order to decrease the payment to faculty, but not their own overblown administrative salaries.
Think about the impact: no academic jobs, no research, no real interaction between highly intelligent faculty and inquisitive students.
Would the U.S. remain a leader in higher education?
PS
My husband decided to continue this topic in another post.
I also decided to write PART II on Dismantling academia.
More thoughts and information on college tuition could be found here.
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