Honestly, these authors sound pretty nuts. Take engineering only after liberal arts because "young people today are going to live to be 90"? Really? So we're all going to work until we're 75 and hope that modern medicine is able to wind back the clock of youth and add useful working years, rather than just prevent our aged bodies actually dying? Who's going to pay for 25 straight years of education?
Even after throwing away the obviously mental comments, it's bothersome that they've framed the problem of universities doing public research as:
a) Wrong - Who else is going to do it? Industry?
b) American only - I've been at universities in the UK, US and New Zealand, and it's all the same.
It's not wrong for good scientists to do research, it's reality. Not only that, but America actually has a system that supports teaching colleges: the state and community colleges are almost entirely geared towards teaching. That doesn't exist in the UK and New Zealand, and I'd hazard other places as well.
Universities have always been research-oriented, even Plato's Academy was: "In at least Plato's time, the school did not have any particular doctrine to teach; rather, Plato (and probably other associates of his) posed problems to be studied and solved by the others." [1]
EDIT: Because this interview is just filled with little morsels of insanity, I couldn't resist another good one: "It's a third-tier university, but the faculty realize they're going to stay there, they're not going to get hired away by other colleges, so they pitch in and take teaching seriously." Read: the faculty are resigned to the fact they're not going to get hired by anyone else because they didn't make the grade, so they're just going to teach rather than bother getting their papers rejected.
> Take engineering only after liberal arts because "young people today are going to live to be 90"? Really? So we're all going to work until we're 75 and hope that modern medicine is able to wind back the clock of youth and add useful working years, rather than just prevent our aged bodies actually dying? Who's going to pay for 25 straight years of education?
Lifespan increases are not due to dragging out the time where one is feeble and sick, but by increasing the healthy part. People in their 50s are 'younger' than they were decades and centuries ago. Thinking that the increases are increases in morbidity has been called the 'Tithonus error' or fallacy.
> Universities have always been research-oriented, even Plato's Academy was: "In at least Plato's time, the school did not have any particular doctrine to teach; rather, Plato (and probably other associates of his) posed problems to be studied and solved by the others." [1]
I say this sadly, but Wikipedia's philosophy articles aren't always too great. That Plato's Academy was not pushing its own doctrine is a disputed topic; Aristotle (who would know) says that the Academy promulgated a Pythagoreanism as its esoteric doctrine, and that Plato's dialogues are only exoteric exercises and preliminary to a real understanding is a very old view (you may have seen the recent coverage of possible numerical structure to his dialogues).
Even after throwing away the obviously mental comments, it's bothersome that they've framed the problem of universities doing public research as: a) Wrong - Who else is going to do it? Industry? b) American only - I've been at universities in the UK, US and New Zealand, and it's all the same.
It's not wrong for good scientists to do research, it's reality. Not only that, but America actually has a system that supports teaching colleges: the state and community colleges are almost entirely geared towards teaching. That doesn't exist in the UK and New Zealand, and I'd hazard other places as well.
Universities have always been research-oriented, even Plato's Academy was: "In at least Plato's time, the school did not have any particular doctrine to teach; rather, Plato (and probably other associates of his) posed problems to be studied and solved by the others." [1]
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_Academy
EDIT: Because this interview is just filled with little morsels of insanity, I couldn't resist another good one: "It's a third-tier university, but the faculty realize they're going to stay there, they're not going to get hired away by other colleges, so they pitch in and take teaching seriously." Read: the faculty are resigned to the fact they're not going to get hired by anyone else because they didn't make the grade, so they're just going to teach rather than bother getting their papers rejected.