The University is dying. Hurrah.
How do I not love you? Let me count the ways
- It talks about teaching when it should be focussed upon learning
- It has an outmoded view of education:
- That lectures are effective for learning whereas in fact, they are
simply the easiest thing to do for instructors, but the worst
way to learn
for students
- It believes that it must teach students ALL the essentials they need,
whereas students forget most of the material as soon as the examination is
over. And if they ever do need it, they have to learn it all over again
- Which implies that students should learn how to learn as opposed to
whatever miscellaneous stuff the class has presented to them
- Education should be life-long, not just while young
- The division of courses into hour-long sessions, three times a week,
taught in quarters or semesters of roughly 10 or 15 weeks has no
educational benefits (but simply makes room scheduling easier).
Different material requires different educational structures and time
frames.
- Problem-based education (which is how many design courses are taught)
is not well supported. Moreover, these courses usually require a higher
teacher/student ratio than universities can afford
- The university is pricing itself out of existence, especially in the
United States, but in all countries (except that the cost is often hidden
because of state subsidies, free tuition, etc.)
- The internet makes impossible to learn anything you want, any time you
need it.
- <amy professors do not know anything about modern learning theory or
about how students learn. What they know is folk knowledge, usually based
on how they were taught. But professors are obviously an elite: they are
the ones that managed to get through school and are successful. They do not
represent the vast majority of students.
- Schools do a horrible job of preparing students for the world after
school. This is, in part, because most professors have never had a job
outside of the university. So professors think they know what skills are
needed, but they are provably wrong.
see
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-college-good-for/546590/
Why do we have research universities?
The standard answer is because universities are excellent at studying, deep
profound issues. That used to be true. Is it true today?
- Research costs money, and funding agencies (Foundations and
governments) are increasingly unable to or unwilling to pay.
- The pressure for academic publications to get a job and then, to get
promoted, has led to an outrageous increase in low-quality journals,
conferences, and publications. Many conferences are now dominated by
graduate students who need conference presentations and publications in
order to get jobs. The quality of the conferences is, as a result, low.
- Fake journals, fake data in prestigious, important journals,
duplication of publication ... all are common.
- Many academics are ill-trained. They do not understand the nature of
an argument, of logical thinking, of the role of evidence. This weakens the
quality of instruction, of research, of publications, and of reviewing.
- So much is being published that it is impossible to keep up, to
discover the important pieces from the crap.
- The increase in specializations means that the work is becoming more
and more abstract, more difficult for people outside of the specialized
area to follow, and less able for colleagues to evaluate.
- Universities still prize abstract, in-depth studies over applied work.
Applications, putting together the findings of the many disciplines, are of
critical importance, but they tend to be shunned or given extremely low
status by the University.
The entire system is broken: Education and Research
In my humble opinion
Don
--
Don Norman
Prof. and Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego
[log in to unmask] designlab.ucsd.edu/ www.jnd.org <http://www.jnd.org/>
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