Ken,

With terms defined, I can't disagree with you. If we define "university" as synonymous with "traditional research university" (or even, perhaps, just "research university"), then saying that faculty (and particularly faculty in charge) should be researcher is almost axiomatic (or tautological.)

I also do not, by the way, wholly reject your description of the advancement of design or of particular design fields.

Many discussions on this list and elsewhere have turned out to be quibbles about who gets to own the word "design." I won't get into a similarly silly wrestling match about who owns the word "university."  I will note that yours may be traditional but it is hardly common. The common definition is an institution of learning that comprises multiple colleges and confers multiple degrees. There are many sorts of universities and I believe that there should be. (That does not imply that I am naïve enough to assume that most of them are good at what they do.)

I'm going to respond in an apparently parochial manner by focusing on graphic design only. I want to avoid the over-generalization that causes much of the heat-sans-light in these discussions.

I believe in the value of diverse ecosystems. Although the notion that most of anything can be "first rate" goes beyond Lake Wobegone fantasies,* it is a mistake to assume that there is one definition of the phrase. I think traditional research universities are important and should be supported. I also believe that most aspects of traditional research universities can survive quite nicely within broader universities (and often do.) But I don't believe that traditional research universities are always (or even usually) the best place for most education.

I particularly don't believe that traditional research universities are always or even usually the best place for most graphic design education. I think a broader university that incorporates traditional research functions would be an excellent place for graphic design education but not the only excellent place.

I have some specific misgivings about the convergence of the PhD degree (as you define it), the university (as you define it), and graphic design education. I am not arguing for the status quo nor for anti-intellectualism. Your ideal of "excellent professional practitioners that are also capable of high-level research" is admirable. If you can find those faculty and can maintain a good balance of professional knowledge and a good balance of research then you have accomplished something wonderful. I cannot dispute your claim that "[t]hese people exist, and some are looking for jobs" but I can say that there are not many of them now and there will not be very many of them unless the economies of universities change radically.

In the best situations, there will be tension between the research needs of the university and the teaching needs of the university. If university politics play out as you advocate and if this model predominates at the wannabe institutions you dismiss as not actually universities, the research interests will dominate. 

Most art and design programs I've seen (mainly here in the US) are divorced from research, broader educational issues, and what I'd like to think were the values of the university. Within the programs, art historians often provide the only "book learnin'." They depend on the rest of the university to provide "general education." I think we agree that this is not healthy for several reasons.

Other art schools look for directly related intellectual content in areas such as critical theory. (The question of what is "directly related" is beyond what I can deal with in this post.) The concerns of the research field inevitably dominate the undergraduate classroom even when it is hard to make a case for relevance to their field of study or that this represents broad educational value. 

The attitudes you espouse about governance and power when placed in another context means that the "intellectual content" providers tend to gain higher positions. (In other cases they are marginalized and their subject treated as a required burden like cleaning your room and brushing your teeth but that's another issue.) 

Your claim that curriculum should be controlled by researchers strikes me as a real problem. Again, I am not advocating the perpetuation of the status quo but faith that researchers will not tend to bend institutional goals to their research goals is contrary to my experience.

There is a real danger of academic carpetbaggers** taking over graphic design programs if your rhetoric is absorbed broadly. If having design researchers run design education is important, then someone with a PhD with research relating to design will be hired to teach design. Graphic design would often be a field defined by people who might better fit in areas with fewer students and less money. Philosophers, cognitive researchers, and political scientists have much to offer graphic design but setting up a system where they will define the field would be a mistake.

Again, I believe in the value of diverse ecosystems. There should be design programs run by researchers (and even design programs run by critical theorists.) I wonder how many will be honest about their priorities when they put together student recruiting materials.

Communication is a field that has gone through some of the transition you advocate for design. The departments are staffed by researchers with PhD degrees. Many (most?) still promote themselves to students as the right place to go to become a journalist or filmmaker or web designer even though the faculty has no professional experience in the fields. They teach their students based on their interest and experience. (Maybe they do understand the future of those professional fields. God knows most of the people in those fields don't have a clue.)

At best, much is lost by their having no direct connection with the trades they claim to prepare their students for. With each generation, the connections are bound to become more distant.

You and other "first rate" may find "excellent professional practitioners that are also capable of high-level research" but the second rate ones will not. Most schools will not rise to the level of second rate but even the second rate schools will be acting to the detriment of the field. And most universities act to the detriment of their broad range of stakeholders when they pretend that the assumptions you make about traditional research universities should apply to them.

Gunnar
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at East Carolina University:
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*I realize the reference probably doesn't travel well. For the non-Americans, Garrison Keillor does a radio show called "Prairie Home Companion" about a Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon " Where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all of the children are above average."

**Sorry. Another Americanism. "Carpetbagger" is the term used by Southerners for people from the north who played a role in reconstruction after the American Civil War. It implies "outsider" or "usurper" and illegitimate power enforced by external standards. (Use of the term does not imply an endorsement of Southern views of mid-to-late 19C American politics.)