Just a couple of brief comments . . .
From: some...@somewhere . . .
(Do you give
an undergraduate a major in "Water"? What are they then prepared
for?)
For what it's worth, the largest major on our campus is "Liberal
Studies" . . . I'll let you speculate on "What they are then prepared
for . . ."
I would say that one of the big problems with undergraduate education
these days is the idea that your "major" is "preparing you for a
job." That might, perhaps, be better said, "preparing you for the
interview for your first job" . . . I've seen statistics indicating
that it has been (and will be) typical for a person to change careers
(not "jobs") 3 or 4 times during their working life. Suppose I, as an
educator, want to help my students be prepared for the next 40 years
of their lives. What should I help them learn?
My bachelors degree was in Philosophy, and my first "real" job was as
a budget and forecasting analyst in a financial institution . . .
turned out I was quite well "prepared" for that job . . . (but also,
ask me sometime about IPOs and ethics and . . .)
Concerning tenure -- maybe understanding it is not a lot more
complicated than understanding "emergence" :-) At some level,
"tenure" is an emergent (partial?) solution to a set of problems -- I
find this essay on the topic interesting:
http://agecon.unl.edu/royer/tenure.htm
Herb Simon once pointed out that good interdisciplinary work
must be first-class work within the standards of each discipline
involved.
I think Herb Simon (along with many other people) mistakes
"interdisciplinary" for "multidisciplinary." I would agree with him
if he's really talking about multidisciplinary work, but not so much
if he's talking about interdisciplinary work.
"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look
respectable."
John Kenneth Galbraith
Or, as someone said, "Economists have predicted 10 of the last 4
recoveries from recessions." :-)
tom
p.s. Also for what it's worth . . . some 15 years ago, I was part of a
task force helping to "create" a new California State University (CSU
Monterey Bay). They wanted it to be a "new kind of University," so
they asked us to "think outside the box" (etc. . . .). My group was
supposed to develop a division/college of "informatics and media" . . .
I put together a proposal:
http://csustan.csustan.edu/~tom/misc-admin/academic-organization/academic-organization.txt
(which, of course, was roundly rejected as "absurd," "utopian,"
"unworkable," "incomprehensible" . . .)============================================================
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