October 2011
Dan's Blog Archive | November 2011 | September 2011

Back to work!

12/10/11 18:46
ths
Is the academy breaking down? Who really knows. It might be more accurate to say that it's fragmenting, splitting into different parts that will serve different people. There will probably always be Harvards and Stanfords, it's hard to imagine what types of forces would make them unattractive to the people they've always attracted. Similarly, there will probably always be small, well-endowed, private liberal arts colleges. But there will also be big, online, virtual public institutions -- and they'll be responsible for educating the majority of college students in the future.

I've been thinking about this for a while, both from the student's perspective, and from the perspective of someone getting a PhD, which qualifies me to teach undergraduates and grad students. I've sent several posts on the subject over to THS (as you can see, from the list of my recent posts), but I think people are getting tired of reading about this. Except for a polite, sort-of obligatory response from the moderator, Randall, I get no feedback anymore. People have probably tuned out, and stopped reading my posts. So maybe this one will be my last. The post I just sent over is also going to appear in the UMass grad student paper -- maybe it will generate more interest in that venue.

In any case, it's time for me to get back to work on my projects, rather than the academy's. I cancelled a paper I was going to give at a conference in Boston this winter -- there's no point doing conferences and writing for journals, because there are no jobs for me in the academy. Even UMass won't hire UMass PhDs (that's gotta say something about the faculty's confidence in their ability to train scholars, but I don't care anymore). Luckily, I've got another reason for getting the PhD, and I'm getting back to it. Like Kevin Flynn says in Tron Legacy, "Chaos -- Good News!"