Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Peter Klein on universities

After quoting from an article Peter Wood What Ails College Teaching?, Peter Klein says in Education Quote of the Day:
"That’s from Peter Wood, whose subject is actually the division of labor at many large US universities between tenured/tenure-track faculty, who do research and teach small classes to graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and the specialized, non-tenured teaching specialists who handle the bulk of the undergraduate instruction, assisted by a “small army” of graduate and undergraduate TAs. Wood points out, rightly IMHO, that one day the universities may decide that the prestige and grant dollars and other bennies generated by the research faculty isn’t worth their high salaries, perhaps choosing to go the University of Phoenix route instead."
I think that there are not just two alternatives and as he says in an earlier article The University of Phoenix and the Economic Organization of Higher Education:
"Is the Phoenix model better or worse than the traditional model? Who knows. No one is compelled to attend the University of Phoenix. Why not let a thousand flowers bloom? Universities claim to promote experimentation, creativity, and diversity, but when it comes to experimentation and diversity in the production and delivery of higher education, the established universities express shock and alarm."

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