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Wednesday, February 01, 2006
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What If They Gave A University And Nobody Came? With professors guaranteeing a grade of B to students willing to drop their courses (Mr. UD dubs this a freebee), with students forsaking lectures for downloaded iPod content, and with already well-established traditions of class skipping, it’s time to ask whether universities have had it. Demoralized professors who don’t really want to show up for class - who want to stay home and read Rate Your Students - and restless students enrolled for the sake of games and a credential, do not make humanities halls hum. On the contrary, they generate the glacial silence you hear as you walk along peeling classroom corridors on your way to the football stadium’s luxury boxes. Peer in those classrooms and you’ll find not people but equipment: computers, VCRs, Powerpoint paraphernalia, overhead projectors left over from the last century, little mechanical boxes at every seat where students can key in comments. If there’s a class in session, it’s liable to be taking place in a darkened room where students watch movies. Do you know how hard it is to find a podium these days? UD likes to lean against a podium while teaching, but this modest wooden element has been replaced by a high black platform, on top of which stands an immovable Powerpoint-ready computer. The idea that a professor would lead a discussion from notes she’s written on pieces of paper, and that she wouldn’t want to be hidden from the class behind a screen, seems to have had its day. The professor hidden behind the screen, the professor as Powerpoint pawn, is, UD figures, a transitional step between the face to face discourse of yesteryear and the echoing air that awaits the academy as everyone repairs to bedroom or dorm room with their personal equipment. Try as she might, UD can’t think her way around this unfolding tale without concluding that the crucial character in it is the American university or college professor. If your job is to stand up and pronounce information to a large audience able to get it online or in books, you’re about to be replaced by for-profit information providers. If you can inspire students with the sight of your brain and personality engaging in real time with the depth of the things you know, you might be able to hold on to your job. If your lecture plus discussion course is about letting students blab, you’re endangered. If you can maintain a significant exchange, you might be okay. The only person who can make a case for the university is the professor. Once the professor opts out, it’s the football coach all the way. |