From the Department of Science Doesn't Work That Way, Idiot

[ultranos]

Before that, though, I'm pretty sure someone on SG-1 would have gotten Sam this shirt. Just sayin'.

Now, we interrupt this day for a message from the Department of Science Doesn't Work That Way, Idiot:

NY Times Op-Ed: The End of University As We Know It.

I suspect that some other people will find this equally as mindboggling as I did. Especially the suggestion to abolish departments and create multi-disciplinary groups focused on ill-defined problems under so-broad-they're-useless headings, like "Water" or "Time".

I'm frothing because, hey, Science And Engineering Don't Work That Way, Idiot. (Case in point, my own major, Mechanical Engineering, used to, waaaay Back In The Day, encompass all of engineering. Eventually, people realized This Was Stupid. Now we have Electrical Engineers, and Aerospace Engineers, and Chemical Engineers, etc. This means we can do really cool things because we're specialized and aren't attempting to learn EVERYTHING.) But it's also pretty unfair to the humanities and social science majors, as it's basically saying "your specializations are Worth Nothing".

I may be interpreting that wrong.

But I'll be over here trying not to beat my head into a wall or slip into a homicidal rage.

Comments

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Before that, though, I'm pretty sure someone on SG-1 would have gotten Sam this shirt. Just sayin'.

Oh, man, yes. And then they went over to "Teach the Controversy" and got Daniel the one with flying saucers building the pyramids.
And then Jack was done with his Christmas shopping.

[I may have to be ordering some shirts soon...]

Someone in my grad program forwarded us that this morning. Haven't read it yet. Though...considering I'm in one of those new-fangled multi-disciplinary programs (and seeing how well academia does and doesn't manage to wrap it's slow-to-change head around the concept) I may have a different perspective. [honestly, given my limited experience, I find scientists much more flexible and able to think multidisciplinarily than social scientists - certainly my science class has acknowledged the importance of policy and theory and such with my policy and philosophy classes have mostly spent as much effort as possible trashing science]

[ultranos-fic.livejournal.com]

I suspect that you might have a different perspective. I'm not badmouthing your program. :P I think, the way that this guy presented it, it's not even giving your thing much credit.

Excerpt:

"Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water."

It's just a bad way of doing things, because you're defining a "problem", rather than exploring an area to learn as much as you can so you can see all possible solutions to various problems and the intricacies of systems. With a seven-year deadline, you're focusing too hard at the expense of actually learning things.

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't think you were bad-mouthing my program, though there are certainly ways in which it deserves bad-mouthing (like any program).

I read the article and...hm. He makes some good points but overall he seems woefully ignorant of how a lot of academia (or maybe just science/engineering academia) works and the changes that are already happening in a lot of universities and departments.

And, 7 year deadline? I don't know, maybe that's appropriate for something like religious studies, but ecology? geology? oceanography? anything where you're dependent on Earth's cycles...hell no.

At an ACS meeting a few years back I went to a talk on career choices in industry vs. non-industry research (academia, gov't labs, etc). One of the main points is that industry used to have a lot of good research - you hear all the time about the glory of the old Bell Labs for instance. But as the economy and the companies have demanded shorter and shorter time before results, industry has moved further and further away from basic research. You can't put a time limit on basic research and without basic research, you're never going to have applications and progress.

Plus, I mean, I'm one of the biggest proponents out there of getting knowledge outside your field, but there is a reason, and a very good one, for developing a finer-tuned focus as you advance. You need it to do the higher level work.

Hell, I'm more or less arguably doing his "problem" thing only, um, much more effectively than the way he's proposing it.

[ultranos-fic.livejournal.com]

Yes. That's basically it. Basic research and understanding systems and even the problems in those systems just can't be constrained by timelines like that.

It's just, well, the level of ignorance struck me. That's the "Science Doesn't Work That Way" thing. Sure, there are some good points, but they're just bogged down because of the incredible wrongness of the rest of it.

[jessiehl.livejournal.com]

While I agree with your general point, in that I don't think universities need to be restructured to put everything under the author's model, I feel the need to point out that some of sci/eng does work that way. Course 9, for example, works that way (and not just at MIT). It's multi-disciplinary (you need bio, chem, physics, math, CS, EE, MechE, psych, linguistics, etc), and focused around one major theme, the brain.

MIT's Minor Program in Energy also works that way. Course 16, in which the principles of other disciplines are focused around designing aircraft and spacecraft, works that way. The different tracks of course 12 kind of work that way, and I would say that course 3 clearly does too.

Now, I'm definitely not advocating that every field should work that way. I'm just pointing out that there is clearly a place for this model (minus the idiotic "only study it for seven years" thing, which is just insane) in sci/eng.

[ultranos-fic.livejournal.com]

Yep, I mean, I am multi-disciplinary. But I'm reading the author's model as substituting breadth for depth, which will lead to problems.

Not only that, but the author's reasoning seems to also disrespect what it actually means to be multi-disciplinary. I'm really having a problem with his "categories" that these programs would be under, which seem so broad that they're useless.

Course 9 draws on multiple disciplines, yes. But there is value to specialization. I mean, I interpret course 9 as "specialization with the brain". Much the same way that 2OE is "specialization in MechE with Ocean Engineering". Just that 9 is it's own major, instead of 2OE which used to be 13 but got eaten.

This might be a very biased view.

[jessiehl.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not convinced that "Brain", "Planets" or "Energy" are less broad than "Water", "Mind", or "Law".

I agree that substituting breadth for depth is no good, but I do somewhat agree with the author that academic balkanization is a bit out of control. However, it doesn't seem to me like the author's model would fix that, just reorganize it. People can just as easily superspecialize, while being ignorant or dismissive of everything even slightly outside their sub-sub-sub-specialty, in a research program about The Body, as in a bio department.