
The Slow Death of the University - mgunes
https://chronicle.com/article/The-Slow-Death-of-the/228991/
======
protomyth
"It would also seek to restore the honorable lineage of the university as one
of the few arenas in modern society (another is the arts) in which prevailing
ideologies can be submitted to some rigorous scrutiny."

Then the battle is lost, because universities, at least in the USA, are the
home of "free speech areas" and not letting people speak who a group disagrees
with. When people are talking about "safe areas" to protect students from
words spoken by a speaker, then criticism is dead. Political parties have more
diversity of allowed thought. STEM is often criticized as unwelcoming, but
humanities has become a place of "agree with me" or be condemned.

If you didn't forge your ideas in the fire of criticism at university, then
you were cheated by others or yourself. The best teachers will make you argue
both / multiple sides of a scenario and be offended that you parroted their
opinion back to them. The worst teachers only see one valid way to think and
are doing "missionary work" instead of teaching.

It is often depressing to read
[https://www.thefire.org](https://www.thefire.org)

~~~
derefr
> When people are talking about "safe areas" to protect students from words
> spoken by a speaker, then criticism is dead.

I understand what you're getting at, but some people really do have PTSD, and
some speeches really do contain things like graphic recountings of abuse.
Should those people just not attend university? (I'm actually undecided.)

~~~
click170
When specifically did you gain the right to not be offended? As far as I'm
aware, nobody has any such right.

If you don't like what someone is saying, walk away.

~~~
derefr
Not being _offended_ , and not entering a dissociative fugue state and shaking
and screaming and muttering for 30 minutes and _quite disrupting the speech_
in the process, are very different things.

PTSD is not Tumblr-fairy disease; it's the thing you get from being interned
in a POW camp or locked in someone's sex dungeon for months/years. People do
have a right to avoid reliving that sort of experience.

Which, like I said, _might mean_ that they'd have to avoid going to university
altogether. It's probably nearly impossible to have an environment that both
allows for a free-flowing exchange of ideas, and yet protects people with this
sort of permanent mental disability.

But making an allowance for rape survivors to leave the room when there's
going to be a live screening of _Salò_ isn't all that hard, is it?

~~~
reality_czech
Yes, they are very different things, which is why you are arguing against a
strawman. You know perfectly well that letting someone voice his conservative
political opinions is not going to trigger PTSD. Pretending to be offended in
order to stop the debate is the left's version of invoking terrorism in
ridiculous contexts.

The biggest irony, which you probably can't even see, is that your own comment
is an example of the disturbing and vile speech you claim to hate ("sex
dungeon", "POW camp", "Salo"). You didn't need to bring those up to make your
point, but you did. Somehow disturbing and vile things like burning the flag
and condoning drug abuse never seem to upset the left (and I could go on...),
but talking about individual rights and respnsibilities does. Funny how that
works.

~~~
derefr
I... didn't claim to hate anything? I was making an argument that some people
will get sick from some speech. It's a medical issue, and there are several
solutions. I'm not sure you read my comment charitably.

Now, I'm not from the US, haven't been to a university for quite some years,
and so am not personally experienced with what these "safe zones" are about
_in practice_ , the politics surrounding them, etc.—but I was trying to say
that, if they had _any justification at all_ as a theoretical construct, it
was in giving people with PTSD a way to get away from "broadcast all over
campus" things like graduation speeches, _if and when_ a planned speech is
found to have content that might trigger specific kinds of traumatic stress
attacks.

Not because it might offend someone. Not with voluntary ability to leave for
any reason one might like. Just a medical excuse from attendance, like a
person with acrophobia would get from a field trip to the roof of a
skyscraper.

And again, even then, it might be better for those people to just leave the
university campus, or avoid coming in the first place.

------
Shyis
This is only mildly related to the article, but does anyone else have
difficulty imagining what others' jobs are? For example, I'm just young enough
to remember a time when I thought a programmer was someone who hid in a closet
to slam at a keyboard for nine hours a day, but that notion was only corrected
by entering the workforce. What about my other misconceptions? There's no way
to learn about all of them firsthand. I figure plumbers just travel between
job sites to hit pipes for nine hours a day, managers just scream into phones
and reply to emails for nine hours a day, and literary theorists ... sit ...
in their offices ... for nine hours ...

That's the problem; I'm not possessed of a sufficiently creative (or informed)
mind to fill in the blanks here. Dangerously, due to that programming
knowledge, I also have the incorrect notion that everyone else could be
replaced by either a handful of code and some lightly trained workers, or
wholesale by mechanization. Clearly this isn't the case (or the market is
doing a very poor job of finding exploitable niches), so what gives? What do
people _do_? Because I'm at a loss and need to educate myself.

~~~
aklemm
"Working" by Studs Terkel comes to mind. [http://www.amazon.com/Working-
People-Talk-About-What/dp/1565...](http://www.amazon.com/Working-People-Talk-
About-What/dp/1565843428)

So many people have this question early in their careers, it really seems like
something is wrong. Perhaps we need a serious/mandatory/formal job-shadowing
program for teens and college students.

~~~
dhagz
Like apprenticeships? Man, what an outdated idea. They did that in the Dark
Ages, for goodness sake! /s

We have a strong push towards internships, it seems odd that students aren't
taking advantage of this hands-on experience in a field that interests them.
Of course, missing out on a paid job for the (most likely unpaid) internship
is probably a factor.

~~~
aklemm
Well, an apprenticeship is far more of a commitment than what is needed here.
Rather young people are looking for a survey of what specific careers _really_
look like. Might be impossible, but job-shadowing might be the best answer. I
shadowed a judge for a morning as a high schooler, and it was tremendously
enlightening, but it could have been a lot better if he did it frequently and
if I had a chance to shadow other professions for longer periods.

------
marcosdumay
What's it with humanities people that make them believe that only them, of all
people, are able to do critical thinking?

Anyway, the author is part of the problem. Just at the beginning of the
article he states that humanities are only good for rich students to pass
their time. Until the professors themselves stop thinking this way, no
government will prioritize them.

(And no, I don't agree that humanities are useless. They have a huge
potential. But for them to be of any use, professors will need to seek those
applications, and study them. Locking themselves in a room, nostalgically
talking with like-minded people without ever doing anything leads nowhere.)

~~~
ForHackernews
At the risk of being overly confrontational, the things that make humanities
people believe that they are capable of critical thinking (in contrast to STEM
types) are comments like yours.

> Just at the beginning of the article he states that humanities are only good
> for rich students to pass their time

Where in the article does the author state or imply this? The section
beginning "When I first came to Oxford 30 years earlier..." is obviously
written to be tongue-in-cheek.

A close reading (humanities skill!) of this article might highlight the
following passage as the central thesis:

 _Universities, which in Britain have an 800-year history, have traditionally
been derided as ivory towers, and there was always some truth in the
accusation. Yet the distance they established between themselves and society
at large could prove enabling as well as disabling, allowing them to reflect
on the values, goals, and interests of a social order too frenetically bound
up in its own short-term practical pursuits to be capable of much self-
criticism. Across the globe, that critical distance is now being diminished
almost to nothing, as the institutions that produced Erasmus and John Milton,
Einstein and Monty Python, capitulate to the hard-faced priorities of global
capitalism._

> Locking themselves in a room, nostalgically talking with like-minded people
> without ever doing anything leads nowhere.

Again, where in the article does the author suggest this course of action? If
anything, he seems to be suggesting the opposite, that the humanities should
be returned to their traditional place in the public square, questioning and
criticizing the prevailing ideologies of the day:

 _It would also seek to restore the honorable lineage of the university as one
of the few arenas in modern society (another is the arts) in which prevailing
ideologies can be submitted to some rigorous scrutiny. What if the value of
the humanities lies not in the way they conform to such dominant notions, but
in the fact that they don 't?_

~~~
paganel
> Universities, which in Britain have an 800-year history, have traditionally
> been derided as ivory towers, and there was always some truth in the
> accusation. (...) Across the globe, that critical distance is now being
> diminished almost to nothing, as the institutions that produced Erasmus and
> John Milton, Einstein and Monty Python, capitulate to the hard-faced
> priorities of global capitalism.

I never looked at Oxford people with the same eyes again after reading
Giordano Bruno's works and about how the professors in there treated him. From
his wiki page
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno#England.2C_1583...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno#England.2C_1583.E2.80.931585)):

> His views were controversial, notably with John Underhill, Rector of Lincoln
> College and subsequently bishop of Oxford, and George Abbot, who later
> became Archbishop of Canterbury. Abbot mocked Bruno for supporting "the
> opinion of Copernicus that the earth did go round, and the heavens did stand
> still; whereas in truth it was his own head which rather did run round, and
> his brains did not stand still",[23] and reports accusations that Bruno
> plagiarized Ficino's work.

I've recently read a book by French historian Jacques Le Goff who was saying
something along the lines of: "the University as we know it was born around
year 1,000 and flourished for the next couple of centuries, only to become
more segregated and focused on itself starting with the 14th century, so much
so that the Renaissance happened outside of its sphere of influence".

So I will keep my hopes up. This downfall of the University as an institution
has happened before but we still managed to create and produce great things
outside of it.

~~~
grayclhn
> I never looked at Oxford people with the same eyes again after reading
> Giordano Bruno's works and about how the professors in there treated him.

Dude, you are going to be bummed when you find out how _the rest of humanity_
has treated _everyone_

~~~
paganel
I now that, after all I'm a subscriber on /r/syriancivilwar , is that when
you're a professor at a place like Oxford supposedly you don't actively fight
against science.

------
mathattack
I wonder if this death of criticism is misty eyed nastolgia for a future that
either never, or rarely existed.

Let's not forget that our so-called great universities:

\- For a long time excluded women, Jews and many minorities.

\- Were the providence of only the technocratic elite.

\- Did very little research before the 20th century.

And now that the costs escalate out of control, is it any wonder that they
have to go more commercial?

Some back of the envelope math: If every student takes 10 classes a year (5
per semester) and every professor teaches 5 classes per year to 20 students
each, and gets paid 100K all-in, then the per-student faculty labor cost is
100K _10 /(20_5) = 10K per year. That's not too bad for critical learning.
Expand the classes to 40 and you can cut the cost in half, or give the faculty
a big raise.

~~~
jseliger
_I wonder if this death of criticism is misty eyed nastolgia for a future that
either never, or rarely existed._

Not entirely. Take a look at Louis Menand's _The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform
and Resistance in the American University_
([http://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-
lo...](http://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis-
menands-the-marketplace-of-ideas-reform-and-resistance-in-the-american-
university-2/)). Universities grew enormously from 1945 – 1975. During that
time, too, a disproportionately large number of students majored in English in
particular, as well as other humanities disciplines. During that 30-year
period, universities expanded and especially grad programs expanded—by 900%.

Most of those grad programs are still pumping out PhDs, even though the market
for PhDs is weak. ABDs are a huge economic win for universities. So we have a
situation in which supply has far outpaced demand for decades.

At the same time, I'd argue that there's a huge amount of bogosity in
humanities departments, and that bogosity has mostly gone unaddressed
([http://jakeseliger.com/2012/09/22/the-stupidity-of-what-
im-d...](http://jakeseliger.com/2012/09/22/the-stupidity-of-what-im-doing-and-
the-meaning-of-real-work-reading-for-phd-comprehensive-exams/)).

~~~
mathattack
Shouldn't the overproduction of Phds drive down university costs?

I hear you on the bogosity factor. I wonder why this persists. Perhaps because
by the time someone realizes it's all BS, their career it too invested in
exposing it?

~~~
jseliger
_Shouldn 't the overproduction of Phds drive down university costs?_

Most cost increases appear to come from technology, ancillary services (gyms
are popular punching bags in this regard) and administrative staff (everything
from diversity deans to grant writers).

 _I hear you on the bogosity factor. I wonder why this persists. Perhaps
because by the time someone realizes it 's all BS, their career it too
invested in exposing it? _

I think this is precisely the issue: the system selects for people who become
very, very invested in the system.

Another important change involves the elimination of mandatory retirement:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/life/silver_lining/2011/04/ple...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/silver_lining/2011/04/please_take_the_gold_watch_please.html).
Until the early 1990s, tenure care with an expiration date around age 65.
Someone who got tenure would be on the books for 25 – 35 years. Today tenure
doesn't have an expiration date—someone can be on the books for 50 years or
longer. That makes tenure much more onerous.

I'd like to see universities shift from a tenure-based system to a long-term-
contract-based system. This has downsides but its downsides seem better than
the current tenure-based downsides.

~~~
mathattack
In theory technology costs should drive others down, no? But that's more true
in the corporate world than non-profit or government which the universities
resemble.

I agree on tenure costs. It seems like they're really bloating the system in
the name of academic freedom. I get it at the large research universities
where the professors bring in lots of research money, but is it really worth
it elsewhere? People say it's a bulwark against poor administrators making
short term decisions, but that's what the rest of the world has to deal with
too.

Perhaps just timeboxing the tenure part would work. "The department has X
tenured slots. After 65, you can stay on as an untenured professor emeritus at
a lower salary."

------
devindotcom
It's a big, complex problem.

There is of course the change over the last few decades by which universities
have become a third stage of standard education rather than a voluntary
pursuit of possibly esoteric learning. This has been brought about by a number
of factors, but has (I think) led to more education, which is a good thing. Of
course, to offset the cost of 4 years of school and 4 "lost" years of
productivity, students want degrees that will improve their odds of getting a
job. That pretty much explains the shift towards professional training.

Bringing the universities to everyone also means broadening the offerings —
originally when it was only the erudition-inclined or well-to-do, a university
could get away with having a great deal of humanities and other fields that do
not generate grants or jobs. It was learning for learning's sake, which few
could afford.

I do think we're approaching an inflection point in the future at which some
major universities will fight back against this trend. But because this will
be expensive to them and their students, I don't think it will happen soon. We
need a time of extraordinary prosperity in which money can be lavished on
social services and education, and that's not today or the next ten years.

It's sad, but I'm hoping it's a transitional phase, not a final one.

~~~
DanAndersen
There's something of a shift toward professional training, but there still
seem to be a glut of students entering college without a clear idea of what
they're getting out of it or what it will cost them. Pressured to attend by
the social expectation that everyone should go to college, the now-foolish
guidance many in my generation received of "do what you love," and the ready
supply of student loans, students are still throwing themselves into the
gaping maw of debt and degrees that are not useful to them in the workforce.
(I am very lucky that, for me, "do what you love" ended up meaning the field
of computer science).

What we need is to break out of this idea that everyone must attend university
"or else you'll be a garbageman" or whatever they were telling us in school
growing up.

------
fennecfoxen
> It is true that only about 5 percent of the British population attended
> university in my own student days, and there are those who claim that today,
> when that figure has risen to around 50 percent, such liberality of spirit
> is no longer affordable. Yet Germany, to name only one example, provides
> free education to its sizable student population.

... Yes, they have, and from what I've heard it consists substantially of very
large seminar classes and an expectation of self-directed, self-motivated
study from its students: hardly the paradigm the author has been mourning
where faculty might expect that

> the undergraduate would simply drop round to their rooms when the spirit
> moved him for a glass of sherry and a civilized chat about Jane Austen or
> the function of the pancreas.

(Also available in Germany, just to note: immigration opportunities for
international students, a premise the UK (and the US) have been shying away
from.)

------
nbourbaki
I think the crux of the problem lies in the sheer number of students who
attend college today; as the author points out:

    
    
        "It is true that only about 5 percent of the British population attended university in my own student days, ... [today] that figure has risen to around 50 percent..."
    

The reality is that teaching critical thinking doesn't scale nicely, because
it requires an intimate dialogue; the process of rigorously critiquing ideas
is a two-way street. In today's institutions, where professors lecture to
classes of 200+ students, this simply isn't possible.

In the article, the author claims universities have abandoned their roles as
centres of critical thinking due to capitalistic forces. While I think this is
true, I also believe that our collective attitude towards university shares
the blame. Unfortunately, college is seen as the only legitimate path to
success after high school.

If students had more opportunities to explore their interests, instead of
being funnelled into university, perhaps universities could re-establish
themselves as institutions where critical discussion takes place.

------
contingencies
Descriptions of certain ancient centers of learning (I am thinking of
Nalanda[1]) seem to convey an atmosphere of open-to-all-and-sundry and free
sharing of knowledge, ideas and interpretation amongst the entire community.
We can at least look for that online.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda)

~~~
reallyRaoul
finland.

------
naringas
Isn't this part of a larger, global trend of turning public institutions into
private businesses? It happened to the American prision system, it's happening
to healthcare, education, and higher education.

~~~
zackmorris
Ya just replace private with hierarchical. I don't think many techies grew up
dreaming of being cogs in an industrial machine but for whatever reason
libertarianism/authoritarianism has taken a strong hold on many of their
imaginations and we're seeing a lot of these controversies framed in ways that
limit possibilities.

College is wonderful. Everyone should get to go. Acceptance should be based on
age or merit, be freely provided by government funding, and the alumni should
remember how they got where they are and pay it forward. And to extend that,
significantly more research needs to happen at universities so it’s not
tainted by the profit motive. Also we should remember that the adage “those
who can’t do, teach” gave us the gift of a system where a single person can
change dozens or even hundreds of lives a year, and thousands over a lifetime.

Frankly the older I get, the more these “lets all just forget the lessons of
the past” arguments sound like a bunch of hooey. Yes there are compelling
innovations all of the place that will let people learn at a vastly
accelerated place outside of school. But public education was never just about
learning. As much as I hated long periods of it, I can’t really imagine a
democracy functioning in its absence. And fixing it would be rather
straightforward, if we let teachers/professors have more of a say in it and
got the blasted politicians and financiers out of it.

------
kijin
Those South Koreans were probably carrying brand new Samsung phones under
their jacket. Just as potent as a pair of Kalashnikovs, which their Northern
brethren prefer ;)

In certain parts of the English-speaking world, universities are not dying,
they're actually flourishing... but only because of a major influx of Chinese
and Korean students willing to pay those exhorbitant out-of-state fees.

And since most of those valuable foreign customers want to study business,
finance, medicine, law, and a handful of STEM fields, universities have no
choice but to cater to their demands. Some programs in the West Coast are half
Chinese by now. Those kids probably pay 80% of the gross fees, too. On the
other hand, when I took English or philosophy, I was often the only Asian in
the class.

But China is growing very fast (slower than before, but still fast), and Korea
has all but done catching up with the rest of the developed world. Other
countries might then supplant China as the largest supplier of international
students, but they'll grow up, too. Sooner or later, all the international
students who are propping up American universities will decide that they'd
much rather spend their dollars elsewhere. When that last bubble bursts, even
STEM fields will not be immune from a massive shock, and heavily subsidized
humanities departments will be in real trouble this time.

------
riemannzeta
The author would have benefitted from a bit of historical knowledge of the
university as an institution. The English were making the same sort of
complaints about Scottish universities in the 18th Century, and it's pretty
clear from our perspective now where more of the insights emerged in that
period.

While he may find it distasteful, the first university in Bologna appears to
have formed around a core faculty who decided to start charging students for
their lectures.

------
cafard
Somebody should offer a prize for the earliest citation of the expression
"critical studies" as used here. It may not go back to Monty Python's time,
and certainly not Erasmus's. (I imagine the award to be the right to look
coolly at Terry Eagleton and say "kill him" in Korean, or the language of
one's choice.)

I think that the humanities gave away a good deal of their own prestige by
chasing a false notion that they could and should become scientific. Northrop
Frye, whom Eagleton mentions, had some big grand ideas about schematizing
things, I recall.

------
nickysielicki
The question is what's causing this? Is it income disparity and a lack of
wealth distribution, making our universities tailor more towards making money?
Is it the information golden age that we're in, making education more of a 4
year summer camp for people to have fun instead of learning? Is it leftism and
our need for increasing political correctness and thus bureaucracy to enforce
that? Is it a side effect of our new trend of sticking everyone into a skinner
box?

I dunno.

------
pXMzR2A
Good article by Eagleton but I do wonder very much if it would have made
headlines on HN if the title was "the slow death of the university as a center
of humane critique" and the HN readers knew of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Eagleton#Literary_Theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Eagleton#Literary_Theory)

~~~
emodendroket
Well the point seems to be that the university is becoming something quite
unlikely it has traditionally been conceived.

------
ffn
This was easily one of the wittiest and funniest articles I've ever read from
a British author...

But why shouldn't vampires be more lauded than Victorians? Why should Jane
Austen, with her painfully circumlocutions, be more academically welcome than
that woman (forget her name) who wrote 50 shades of gay? In many ways, old
"classical" works are telling the exact same stories as modern "trash novel"
works, except the modern "trash novel" works are doing it in such a way that
is clear, simple, relevant (to today's audience), and thus free of
misunderstandings. From them, through clever literally mental contortions, one
can still elucidate all the themes, lessons, and humanities like you could
from confounding classics - just less obfuscated like "there is no place like
home" instead of "lost is my homecoming", "...and then they had sex and fell
in love..." instead of "... I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy
shrine, the gentle fine is this...", etc.

And who says the arts are dying? The arts are vibrant and alive in today's
web-comics, video games, movies, and tv-shows. The medium has changed from a
completely closed system of ink and paint to a modular, copyable, and
distributable one of .mdl files, computer images, and carrier streams. It's
just intentionally confusing junk like cubism, poorly drawn junk like medieval
art, and inhumane junk like pyramid building that's gone away.

The pressure to have to constantly monetize, I'll admit, is painful... but
that primarily hurts the large institutions who have bottom lines that must be
covered. And in my opinion as a flexible small business kind of guy, that's a
good thing. Large institutions were necessary for centuries for individual
survival at the cost of individual self-actualization, but in today's flexible
scale era, it's entirely possible to just be good at something and survive
without having to give up your soul to a large corporation. In that case,
going small, lean, and individual is the way of the bright future.

~~~
chippy
In asking the question of why modern things such as "things that are currently
fashionable to today's 20 year old's" are less worthy for study than
traditional subjects, these phrases were given:

>free of misunderstandings

>less obfuscated

>clever literally mental contortions

>intentionally confusing

I imagine you would be seeking to understand the difference, and seeking to
understand why some things that may appear obfuscated and confusing to a
modern person are thought of by many to be better. I hope I can help the
understanding via this comment.

Pretty much all _poetry_ for example is full of misunderstandings, obfuscated,
with clever literally devices and it is intentionally so. Consider poetry
then! Think about why many people value poetry over a clear concise newspaper
article. Why do humans like art, why do people like these confusing things? Do
they actually enjoy the confusion, or is it something else that they enjoy?

Your example is Jane Austin vs 50 shades of grey. Perhaps other comparisons
would help. How about Dan Brown vs Shakespeare? How about Beethoven vs
Bananarama? How about Turner vs Bob Ross? Do these comparisons help in
understanding what defines a quality piece of work? Do you think that a
university that for two years examines Dan Brown in it's literature department
will continue doing so when Dan Brown no longer becomes popular and Game of
Thrones becomes popular? What does that say about the educational and artistic
value of an author when they are forgotten a few years later?

Should the subjects of universities be decided by the consumers, the young
students? Or should they be decided by the academic establishment? What
difference would that make to education, to critical thinking? This is some of
what the article was about.

------
jqm
Some people think debt or decadence will be the end of the West. I personally
believe it will be bureaucracy.

~~~
djulius
Couldn't agree more. For universities, it is the dictature of the accountants.
Every penny spent must be checked by an almost infinite hierarchy of
accountants/manager who have no experience of the core tasks of a university
(teaching/research).

More precisely, I don't know if the hierarchy is finite or not, or if there is
a termination problem in the process. Sometimes penny checking finishes,
sometimes not.

------
pacaro
Reading this reminds me of "A Very Peculiar Practice"[1][2] which foreshadowed
this by nearly 20 years

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Very_Peculiar_Practice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Very_Peculiar_Practice)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9St60ZzwGgc&list=PLJ4mcFE1FY...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9St60ZzwGgc&list=PLJ4mcFE1FY8dGdRX6DyCFcTHF3wSHPb3s)

------
hanief
It reminded me of a quote from Hemingway's book, _The Sun Also Rises_ :

\- “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

\- “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

------
princetontiger
The university is not dead. People who are going to inferior schools want to
make this logic a fact.

~~~
aswanson
Your second sentence ironically defies logic.

------
coliveira
Universities have been "dying" for hundreds of years. Please call me when they
stop existing! Whenever there is a new technology (printing press, cinema, TV,
computers, internet) there will be someone saying that universities are old-
fashioned and useless. Of course, this never happens, because there is always
a need for institutions of knowledge, in one way or another.

For example, people buying into the internet-crazy think that everything can
be replaced by the Internet. Media companies (music, cinema, book publishing)
were supposed to be dead at least a decade ago. It turns out that in reality
they are bigger than before. What people forget is that the Internet doesn't
create things by itself. Good movies will continue to be produced by
specialized companies, good books will continue to be published by specialized
publishers, and so on. Only the technology changes, but human needs continue
the same.

Similarly, universities will be just fine in a century or more. They will
adapt to the new technologies and continue to produce knowledge as they have
done before.

------
alexashka
What... is this guy talking about?

"the slow death of the university as a center of humane critique."

What? What the hell is humane critique?

"Universities, which in Britain have an 800-year history, have traditionally
been derided as ivory towers, and there was always some truth in the
accusation. Yet the distance they established between themselves and society
at large could prove enabling as well as disabling, allowing them to reflect
on the values, goals, and interests of a social order too frenetically bound
up in its own short-term practical pursuits to be capable of much self-
criticism."

Wow... You know what allows you to reflect? Having enough time while being an
active part of society. Time to reflect, being active to have proper
perspective. If all you're doing is reading books and talking, all you can
reflect on is books and hearsay, combined with some intuition.

The last thing an English major can do is reflect on anything that requires
understanding mathematics or statistics or... you know, the stuff that people
who do science have to know?

Just because you read Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, doesn't mean you can
critique anything that actually matters, that people who haven't read
Dostoevsky can't...

There's scientific knowledge, and then there's entertainment such as fiction
and television shows etc. Guess which category this guy belongs to?

The all-over-the-place sloppy writing this guy produces is telling. I guess
when you're surrounded by a bunch of folks who don't create anything but
words, you start thinking you know a thing or two beyond entertaining people
with words.

