Oh Gawd: The Agile University?
I sometimes feel I'm living in an alternative university (er, universe).
1 - Are we talking about education or academia? If the latter, yes
its fucked up. I worked in Silicon Valley and knew I could be "let
go" at any time. I didn't mind, there were lots of jobs, and I
cleverly made myself (gasp!) USEFUL. If the former, my Physics/Math
background was not described by the (rather poor) article .. it was
not too narrow (Hilbert Spaces are fungible), and to this day still
relevant. I was not a slave -- I got a fellowship.
2 - None the less, education has been migrating towards blurring the
lines between Education and Creativity. I.e. my Stanford, U of
Rochester, RIT and other grad students were all Creative .. they got
things done, and did it through Agile (in the current programming
paradigm sense) techniques that leveraged their schools and industry.
I think this is a Good Thing.
3 - So I presume I'm listening to a conversation far removed from my
experiences. For one thing, in my life education never stopped. At
Xerox, Apple and Sun I was expected to learn new stuff continuously.
4 - Dave West is taking a shot at fixing what some of the discussion
apparently is focused on: restructuring. In Computing we discuss
"Refactoring" programs .. changing their Architecture as they scale in
size and scope. Dave's approach refactors along a time/topic/
methodology triple: Shorter bursts, therefore adaptive depth/breadth
topics, and with a project focus.
@George: Name another profession where you mostly get to do what you
want to do, work in a pretty pleasant envirionment with intelligent
colleagues and students to chat with, and if you are a full
professor at Columbia you make a pretty decent salary.
Ans: All my jobs in industry. Every one. Not just the companies (3)
but jobs within them (12, say).
@Russ: I doubt that any working person would happily agree to term
employment if it implies that after N years the employer has no
obligation, legal or moral, to retain that individual.
Ans: Me. I liked it. Thrilling, and boy does it keep my honest!
@Pamela: My impression of the op-ed piece was that it was mostly
about the humanities, where I'm sorry to say the numbers are
correct...
Ans: Thanks! That does clarify a lot for me. Although its a bit
spooky .. after all we are all human, the presumed focus of
humanities, and its being mishandled is both sad and frightening.
Dave's approach seems apposite.
@Merle: Did you guys read the same op-ed piece that I read? It's
about revitalizing higher education as a complex adaptive network.
It's about how specialization doesn't work for today's world. It's
about how irrelevant and boring higher education has become. And
all you guys can talk about is JOBS and MONEY. I guess most of you
are somehow connected to the privileged, but sadly constrained
world of academia. Come out into the fresh air where the work is
always exciting, and the money is just enough to sustain the
excitement.
Ans: Well, sorta .. and along with Pamela it does explain that I
indeed DO live in a parallel universe. It became clear after a few
emails that there were two conversations going on, one about academia,
one on education. I like the latter and find the former quaint. I
think the 6 points sorta blur the two, but I sorta like them.
I think I've been living in the future too long.
-- Owen
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