Crisis on Campus_ A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities - Mark C. Taylor [6]
For Kant, the university was to serve two primary functions: first, to provide educated bureaucrats for the state, and second, to conduct research whose goal was the production of new knowledge. In this scheme, teaching is relegated to so-called gymnasiums, educational institutions similar to advanced high schools. The disciplinary structure and division of responsibilities that Kant established have proven remarkably stable over the years, but the expansion of knowledge and increasing complexity of problems created by the proliferation of information and the emergence of new areas of inquiry can no longer be confined within traditional disciplinary boundaries. It is, therefore, time to reassess the effectiveness of this model.
But history alone does not explain the context for the changes that are required. It is also necessary to examine the social, political and economic significance of the technological developments now occurring. During the latter half of the twentieth century, we moved from what can best be described as a world of walls and grids (industrial factories and assembly lines) to a world of networks (communications media and information-processing devices linked in worldwide wireless webs). Grids are closed—walls separate and isolate their components into autonomous regions, departments and divisions; networks are open—webs connect and interrelate ideas, individuals and organizations. An understanding of how networks operate prepares the way for reconceiving what universities should do and how they should do it.
The same technologies that create opportunities for productive change sometimes turn destructive. The recent tumult in financial markets that led to a worldwide economic meltdown was made possible, perhaps inevitable, by new information, communications, media and technologies. It has become commonplace to insist that since the 1980s we have been living in a bubble economy—junk bond bubble, dot-com bubble, housing bubble, debt bubble. Now, as I said earlier, we are facing the education bubble. Continuing problems in global financial networks are already having a profound effect on higher education, and this situation will worsen in the near future. Wealthy colleges and universities will survive and, in some cases, merge with other institutions, thereby becoming even more influential. Other colleges and universities will be taken over by foreign countries or organizations eager to expand their share of the growing education market or to jump-start their own education industry. Still others will be bought by for-profit businesses and redesigned to produce steady revenue streams. And, finally, many colleges and universities will simply close.
The changes I am going to propose are closely interrelated and are designed to both accommodate and take advantage of developments occurring in the broader society and culture. To reform the university system, we must begin by understanding the restructuring of knowledge now occurring. The organization of knowledge is neither set in stone nor hardwired in the brain, but changes as societies evolve and knowledge expands. Technological innovation alters the structure of knowledge, and, conversely, the changing structure of knowledge results in new technologies that transform both what we know and how we learn. Consider, for example, the difference between a traditional book like the one you are reading and the multimedia works, interactive websites and social networks so frequented by young people today. New ways of producing and communicating knowledge are forging different relationships among people that are transforming traditional academic disciplines in ways that we are just beginning to understand. When the organization of knowledge changes, the structure of educational