Links
Archives
Thursday, April 15, 2004
PROPER ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
UD is always happy, in her very gracious way, to acknowledge things that universities are doing right. Some universities. In some departments. Sometimes. Lunch yesterday with a student at UD's university who's going to graduate school in English next year reminds UD to mention, for instance, the welcome change in some English departments toward admitting very few applicants and funding them all. Judging by her student's current experience, UD concludes that the best schools aggressively recruit, generously subsidize, and actually place in tenure track jobs, most of the people they admit. Why, in my day (insert croaky voice here), universities would admit eighty students, fund a lucky, loathed few, and then begin systemically shedding seventy. This procedure, while bracing in a neo-darwinian way, generated resentment, and didn't necessarily reward the best and brightest. Nurturing from birth a few highly selected and much-loved cubs seems more sensible and more humane. |