June 1, 2010
Taylor (Religion/Columbia Univ.; Field Notes from Elsewhere: Reflections on Dying and Living, 2009, etc.) reaffirms his call—first sounded in his controversial New York Times op-ed piece of April 27, 2009—for a drastic reform of higher education.
With this book, the author will make few friends in academia, at least among the aging and tenured professors whom he attacks. Taylor calls both for the elimination of tenure and for mandatory retirement at age 70, and he characterizes American higher education as expensive, wasteful, archaic and monolithic. He traces the current university organization to a late-18th-century treatise by Kant and argues that the system has changed little since then. Entrenched faculty, fragmented curricula, incompetent teachers, strained financial resources, outmoded teaching strategies—all combine to produce an edifice that Taylor believes is imploding. His alternatives include more flexible, adaptable and thematic interdisciplinary curricula delivered both in classrooms and via other media (principally, the Internet); faculty members who collaborate across traditional disciplines; a diminishing emphasis on research and publishing; an increasing emphasis on high-tech pedagogy; the elimination of duplicate programs at colleges and universities who share pools of potential students; and the creation of partnerships with businesses, nonprofits and other organizations. Taylor reiterates his firm belief that students must still master traditional skills of writing and reading—he required his own children to write a weekly three-page essay—but disdains those old warhorses Term Paper and Dissertation. The author's tone is neither whimsical nor utopian. Nearing the age of mandatory retirement himself, he writes with urgency and conviction, and even fear. The resistance to change, he argues, is destructive.
Highly provocative and certain to stimulate a spate of indignant op-ed pieces and blistering bloggery.
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August 1, 2010
Taylor (chair, religion dept., Columbia Univ.) is a widely published, highly successful academic who remains involved in innovative teaching projects. Here, he asserts that American higher education faces an intellectual, organizational, and financial crisis and needs to be transformed. Because new information and communication technologies have created a network culture that changes the way information is produced and consumed, universities need to develop strategies for interdisciplinary curricula and collaborative relationships with both academic and nonacademic institutions. In his wide-ranging analysis, Taylor combines intellectual history and contemporary cultural criticism with examples of academic innovation and current university inefficiencies. He demonstrates an exuberant willingness to take on academic conventions, most dramatically calling for the end of lifelong tenure appointments. VERDICT Because American higher education is decentralized, there is no easy way to move forward on Taylor's recommendations; however, his innovative proposals will generate thoughtful, occasionally angry responses from academic leaders and interested laypeople alike. Serious, challenging, and well written.--Elizabeth R. Hayford, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL
Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 1, 2010
Taylor expands on his controversial 2009 op-ed essay in the New York Times that questioned long-standing traditions and practices of American universities, from tenure to strict delineation of academic departments. Worries about outdated practices in higher education are exacerbated by shrinking endowments of universities hurt by the financial crisis, a crisis threatening the very existence of some institutions. Taylor begins with a historical perspective, including Immanuel Kants enduring vision of the university and the evolution to overspecialization that drives academic disciplines, tenure, and the valuing of research over teaching. Drawing on his experiences at Williams College and Columbia University, Taylor also offers examples of creative solutions from multidisciplinary courses taught by shared faculty to teleconferencing technology. Universities might also consider partnering with other universities, museums, and think tanks and even franchising universities globally. Taylor argues passionately for more open ideas on what is valuable to learn, in what format and through what methods, for a generation raised on the Internet and iPods.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)
May 24, 2010
"The entire system is now unraveling," Taylor, a religion professor at Columbia University, declares in this enlightening if controversial narrative, proposing not reform but revolution. After setting a historical context resting in Kant's "notion of a university" that "must be changed," Taylor examines the "social, political, economic, and technological developments that have lead to our current impasse," from the culture wars of the '80s to the current "financial meltdown." To fund what he calls "fundamental transformation," conventional sources would be supplemented by the establishment of franchises abroad, partnerships with "for-profit businesses" and corporate sponsorships. To control costs, Taylor urges the abolition of tenure, increased teaching loads for unprofitable departments, and mandatory retirement. His radical proposals notwithstanding, Taylor's dedication to scholarship and his concern for students is profound. His delineation of technologically sophisticated, interdisciplinary courses he has taught are pedagogical models. That colleges and universities must remake themselves to provide an adequate education "in the global society that is now emerging," for Taylor, is indisputable.