Colleges are supposed to be on the forefront of progress. They are both expected to increase our knowledge and to impart it to those who later apply what they have learned to enhancing social conditions. So why is it that colleges are so frequently behind the curve when it comes to improving the ways they operate?
One might think that with hundreds of intelligent faculty members on staff, they would be able to develop homegrown strategies for enriching their teaching and research practices. Yet this is frequently very far from the truth. Most colleges and universities are bastions of intellectual conservatism. Their cultures may be dominated by political correctness, but their levels of initiative are appallingly low.
Let me use my own university to illustrate. On any number of fronts it has adopted academic policies pioneered elsewhere. As a result, it tends to implement them long after they have become standard in other systems. But worse—much worse—it is liable to perpetuate these procedures well after they have failed and been discarded by other institutions.
Thus, in trying to keep up with the Joneses, it often does so after these folks have gone bankrupt. Rarely aware of these fiascos until it they become common knowledge; the school is not alerted to correct its mistakes until after they have done substantial damage. Only then does it roll back these disappointments—and then only slowly.
For example, we are currently creating on-line programs all over our university. The explosive growth of schools like the University of Phoenix has encouraged copycat degrees. Our administrators are apparently worried that they may lose business to these upstarts. Mind you we keep growing and if anything already have more students than we can accommodate.
But worse still, we must dilute the quality of our regular courses to find the resources for the new ones. As it happens, most on-line programs are inherently less sound than the traditional ones; hence we are faced with a double whammy. This is a case of heads you lose and tails you lose, with both sorts of courses being dumbed down.
Then there is the current vogue for interdisciplinary departments. These are supposed to foster creativity by encouraging disciplinary cross-fertilization. Presumably faculty members who work with colleagues from other fields will acquire new ideas that improve their own work. And if they are really lucky, these collaborations will result in completely original breakthroughs.
Except that this is not what experience suggests. In condemning the traditional disciplines as “silos” from which nothing good emerges, they are telling professors not to specialize in the areas of their greatest strength, even though the increased complexity of most fields demands further specialization of those who hope to succeed.
What we are learning at my school, at any rate, is that those faculty members who gravitate to the interdisciplinary departments are frequently malcontents looking to escape the constraints of their home departments. These are rarely our most productive academics. In fact, very few breakthroughs—but a lot of conflict—can be attributed to their efforts. So generally is this the case, that the carcasses of interdisciplinary units litter the scholastic landscape from coast to coast.
Lastly, but not finally, many of the new disciplines that are given freestanding degrees attract small numbers of students. Despite the money and time lavished on fields like women’s studies, black studies, and environmental studies, those at whom they are aimed are aware that there are very few jobs available in these areas down the road. As a result, they opt for subjects that provide better opportunities after they graduate.
Why then do colleges adopt these majors, especially after other schools have begun to discontinue them for want of student support? They usually do so from political correctness. These programs are implemented because teachers want to teach them, not because students want to take them. And the administrators go along because they do not want the potential radicals to make a fuss.
If this does not sound like a particularly intelligent way to do business, it is because it is not. But then who said that everything that happens in the groves of academe makes sense?
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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