… a nicely written but somewhat bland and evasive review of a new book about American universities. It’s in the New York Times book review section. Here.
UD wrote about the same book here.
President Knapp’s response to the authors’ call for universities to drop their medical schools, for instance, is rather weak:
Consider, for instance, the proposal that universities divest themselves of medical schools: they are, the authors think, too distracting and costly, if not in dollars, then in their demands on a president’s attention. A tempting suggestion, many a president will agree!
But what an odd suggestion from the pen of authors who lament the self-enclosure of traditional academic disciplines. This is an era, after all, in which some of the most searching inquiry — and most exciting teaching, including the teaching of undergraduates — is taking place precisely at the intersection of medicine and other fields, not just engineering and physics but also fields like anthropology and history. It is a time when some of our most engaged undergraduates are fascinated by fields like global health, which brings medicine and the social and human sciences together in ways more rich and subtle than students of my generation could have imagined. And where are the humanities more alive, right here and now, than in seminars in bioethics that expose undergraduates to searing and quite possibly unanswerable questions about the beginning and end of life?
I mean, maybe — I’m not sure Knapp’s right that this is the hottest deal in the humanities at the moment. But what’s more important is his implicit characterization of medical schools as bursting with intellectuals who want to lead bioethics seminars. Aside from the fact that you typically draw such people not from medical schools but from philosophy and the social sciences (and maybe law), his comment overlooks the fact that med schools are mainly about practicing physicians and empirical research.
Anyway, Knapp doesn’t engage with the authors’ larger point – that major institutional distractions (athletics and professional schools, mainly) and an overvaluation of research over pedagogy, have combined to degrade the essential function of a university: high-level teaching.
August 18th, 2010 at 9:47PM
I can’t speak to the humanities, but I have no doubt that those in the social sciences interested in analyzing health and medicine gain a wealth of insight through regular interaction and discussion with physician colleagues in medical schools. Perhaps what Knapp is talking about is not that medical schools are bursting with intellectual bioethics experts, but that the physicians and other clinicians do bring an important perspective to the table that informs and improves the application of research to health and medical questions in the social sciences, humanities and other ields.
There are clearly downsides to medical and professional schools, but there are some evident upsides to me of research collaborations between medical school faculty and economists.
August 19th, 2010 at 8:57AM
But why does someone have to teach at the same school as oneself in order to collaborate with them on research? Especially in urban areas where there are several universities within a 6-mile radius, why can’t the med school guy be at university #1 and the economist be at university #2?
August 19th, 2010 at 9:34AM
Exactly, david. I actually don’t agree with Hacker that professional schools are a serious problem for universities, but to the smaller point being made here – you’re right. There’s already a well-established consortium of universities in DC that cooperate in all kinds of ways, and they could also cooperate in this one.
August 19th, 2010 at 9:58AM
They don’t have to be at the same institution, but the author’s call is for universities to completely divorce themselves from medical schools. If medical school guy is not at any university at all, there can be significant problems in trying to work out research collaborations. The difficulties of negotiating HIPAA and IRB across multiple institutions often grows exponentially, and a lot of good health services research requires patient data that is, for very good reasons, protected.
It’s not impossible, but it certainly can create new roadblocks to collaboration.