… here’s how to write total nothingness, at a cost to the citizens of Ohio of over a million dollars a year.
… here’s how to write total nothingness, at a cost to the citizens of Ohio of over a million dollars a year.
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March 13th, 2009 at 8:18AM
At least Gee doesn’t pretend to have a doctorate.
March 13th, 2009 at 10:56AM
"universities must break out of the silo structures – of departments and budgets and mind sets – that have calcified over time. The world’s problems do not fit solely inside the bounds of a mechanical engineering department any more than they do an English department"…the term "silo" is increasingly being used as a general-purpose organizational insult. Of course the problems of the world do not fit into the bounds of an ME department or an English department, but this doesn’t mean these structures don’t represent reasonable and useful ways of organizing knowledge. The probable alternative is pure mush, in which all knowledge would be reduced to something like an 8th grade "social studies" class.
The idea that the university exists to solve the world’s problems is also pretty presumptuous.
March 13th, 2009 at 7:04PM
On one hand, he produces an utterly banal thought: "To start, we must ensure that all of our students possess passports, enabling them to take full advantage of opportunities to study, work, and live abroad." But then in almost the next sentence, he uses the word "archipelagic", which is probably the first time I’ve ever seen "archipelago" turned into an adjective. Pedantry? Perhaps, but most other authors of banal prose would have written something like "balkanized". I’m not sure that’s worth $1M/year, though.