The Self-Importance of Self-Criticism

Perhaps because of the Great Recession, or as an inevitable consequence of globalisation's long-term restructuring of every aspect of our lives (when, as Marx once put it, "all that is solid melts into air"), it has become fashionable to suggest that the university system in the United States is due for a fundamental re-structuring. Most of the animus seems to be directed at humanities education as increasingly "useless" and "irrelevant" in an economic climate where tenured faculty positions are fast disappearing. On the external side, the argument (put forth with some force a few years ago by Thomas Friedman) that the U.S. lags behind Asia in scientific education is a valid policy concern. But it is the internal criticism that has been gathering steam: by this I mean academics turning an introspective, self-critical look on their profession and its limitations for the future.

The most high-profile shot across the bow was fired by Columbia professor Mark C. Taylor in his recent New York Times op-ed entitled (provocatively enough) "End the University as We Know It."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html

To those of us thinking about an academic career, some of his arguments are all too familiar. He correctly notes the oversupply of underpaid, debt-ridden graduate students vying for jobs that do not exist. His attacks of the tenure system and increasing specialisation (which means that young scholars produce, in Taylor's view, obscure books that do not sell) are entering dodgy territory. His solutions, especially his thematic interdisciplinary re-organisation of educational institutions around problem areas like "Water" are in the domain of the fantastic. Though Taylor gets points for creativity, his proposed system would eliminate the opportunity to specialise in a particular discipline that lies at the very basis of interdisciplinarity. A scholar not properly and rigorously trained in history and anthropology can have little to add to a colleague in the mathematics or physical sciences. If everyone is a bit of a poet and a bit of a biologist, they end up being nothing much at all.

It would be easy to take the route of defending humanities education by pointing to the intrinsic worth of "developing the mind," or stressing the transferrability of "critical thinking" skills to the business or policy domain. But this would be a cop-out precisely because it entails a complete surrender to the argument that humanities are useless, by making them either a "Chicken soup for the soul" that cannot be taken seriously in an environment of difficult budget choices, or admitting that the only way a humanities major can be useful is by taking a job in government or business.
Taylor and other critics have named the problem: the humanities do not engage with the wider social world. But the pressure to change should not only be on universities. Why not demand that policymakers, businessmen and NGOs pay greater attention to those obscure books that do not sell? Would not our foreign policy, for instance, be different if people in Washington read less popular histories and simplified security reports and engaged instead with serious in-depth studies of the people of a region (like the Middle East or South Asia)? But the process of translation is tricky. The world of academic writing requires a sense of open-endedness and refusal to prescribe, while the world of policy calls for immediate action. There is a window for dialogue, but historians and anthropologists must be left alone to do their job as observers of our complex world, not transformed into task-oriented bureaucrats.

To return to the crisis of academia, in an even more introspective critique known to many students currently applying to graduate school, Prof. William Pannapacker writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education with some categorical advice: "Just Don't Go."

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01/2009013001c.htm

This is an impassioned plea that is much easier to accept because it is written to help save thousands of unfortunate souls from a life of misery. Once again, much of what Pannapacker says is absolutely spot-on, particularly his astute observation that many students who go to graduate school do so because of esoteric concerns like their "special interest" and "love" for a subject, their refusal to venture out into the real world, their need for validation, their romanticism of scholarly life, and the limits to their skills. His assessment of the declining number of secure jobs and the massive competition that results (thousands of applicants for one position amounting to nothing more than a lottery) is sobering and realistic. His solution is far simpler than Taylor's: unless you have an independent source of income or reliable connection, don't get a PhD.

The problem with all these criticisms is their exaggerated self-importance. Pannapacker is doing precisely what he accuses his naive graduate students of doing: making an emotional argument based on idealistic, insider notions about what academia is. Teaching at a university is simply a job like any other. Garbagemen, foresters, baristas, taxi drivers and call centre operators do not go around on the Internet posting long-winded diatribes about the state of their profession. Those of us who are going into academia certainly need to be, and are being, made aware of the enormous financial and lifestyle risks of such a choice. But we should understand that there are many jobs that are far worse and far less economically secure in a service-based economy. Farmers, manufacturers or people without college degrees in the United States are in an arguably worse position, not to mention everyone in the developing world trying to scrape a living for their families by diversification, immigration and other means. The trials and tribulations of an unemployed PhD. are painful but not catastrophic. Taylor and Pannapacker grew up in an age when academics enjoyed a comparatively more important social position, and their expectations for the profession (as well as their assumptions of students' expectations) reflect this. The future generation of academics already knows better.