No More Education. Please.

by Wayne Crews on February 7, 2010 · 1 comment

in Culture, Odds & Ends

Graduate school can destroy lives. That's the takeaway from "The Ph.D. Problem" in Harvard Magazine, though the publication is too polite to say so directly. But there you have it. Maxim magazine put it similarly in a story by Tom Conlon called "No More Education" with the teaser: "There's a time and a place for everything, and that's college. But once those four years are up it's time for you to get a life." And further:

You know who you are. You're the twenty-and thirty-somethings who refuse to grow up and get a job. You're the research assistants, TAs, philosophy master's candidates, and other lifelong academics who hide behind syllabi and term papers, hoping real life won't notice you....We're calling your bullsh*t. You're officially on notice.

Of course, the political and social response to such waste is yet more money for universities and programs in all walks of life, from the mania for "saving" brick-and-mortar libraries in the Amazon and Google Books age, to the new House-passed "Cybersecurity Enhancement Act" that funnels millions to research centers and the creation of Ph.D.'s, which may have little to do with specific computer security training actually needed. No one will point out how off the rails the whole thing is, we have to pretend together.

Anyway, these articles and the runaway university-state reminds me of a point made by a social critic 150 years ago: “There are two universities in England, four in France, ten in Prussia, and thirty-seven in Ohio.”

{ 1 comment }

ruminator February 7, 2010 at 7:24 am: This was an amusing piece and the title was enough to pique my interest.
I can take issue with a lot of things at the university and the way universities are currently operated (at least here in the U.S.). I was an academic for fourteen years teaching young civil engineers and conducting research for a variety of sponsors. I saw a lot of stuff and spent a lot of time and energy thinking about what university ought to be in contrast to what it is. Maybe one day there will be a book from all of that — we'll see.
In the meantime, there is a place for graduate education and a need for those who pursue (and complete) graduate school. The thesis is a little oversimplified. But the point is well-taken.