Intracurricular Activities
The paradigm shift in Higher Ed can be expressed as a change from the accumulation of knowledge to the translation of knowledge. Up until the end of the 20th century, professors provided students an archive of knowledge and tested how well they had digested it intellectually. The goal was mastery of a subject-area, and once "mastery" had been certified, students were told they could now go off into the world and do something with all that information. Or not. This typically meant that at your graduation party, some great-uncle or another recommended you get into plastics, Plastics!, before you jumped into the swimming pool still wearing your clothes in existential despair.
The 21st century HEI must be oriented to communicating knowledge into action beyond the walls of the institution, prior to graduation. This may have to do with the fact that the archive of knowledge and its categorical subject-areas can be now be automated to a large extent, such that the intellectual energies of students need to be re-directed to what used to be considered "extracurricular" activities. This is fodder for musing in a subsequent post. But to be brief, in today's HEI the extracurricular is now intracurricular.
Without commenting as to whether these are positive or negative developments, the following effects are to be expected: 1) The undergraduate curriculum will be re-fashioned as a narrative, in which the student comes to realize themselves through participation in a cumulative experience prior to graduation. 2) Graduate education will be less oriented to reproduction of knowledge-archives, and hence reproduction of the subject-area as a social institution, and more oriented to the application of intellectual capacities beyond the subject-area. 3) Faculty will be under increasing pressure to conduct research that is readily available for non-academic applications -- indeed, many faculty would probably agree this is already the case. 4) Whole new levels of administration, as yet unimagined, will be required to handle these modifications to the university.
The university as such, however, has been constructed for the eternalization of knowledge, regardless of the perceived exigencies placed upon the archive. This means that HEI's as social institution must necessarily crack. They will survive, but they will crack. And the breaking-point will be the academic department, since the department is the fulcrum upon which pressures from changing student and faculty needs from below must be balanced with pressures from changing institutional demands from above.
The options for the department-in-translation are thus: A) Total distintegration; B) Receivership and co-optation by an increasingly bloated and expensive administrative apparatus; C) Discovery and adaptation to new, as yet unseen efficiencies, so that respective archives of knowledge are not only preserved, but carried over into new, dynamic action.
The first two options are easy. The third is heresy. Or rather, by way of translation, heresy is the only option.
The 21st century HEI must be oriented to communicating knowledge into action beyond the walls of the institution, prior to graduation. This may have to do with the fact that the archive of knowledge and its categorical subject-areas can be now be automated to a large extent, such that the intellectual energies of students need to be re-directed to what used to be considered "extracurricular" activities. This is fodder for musing in a subsequent post. But to be brief, in today's HEI the extracurricular is now intracurricular.
Without commenting as to whether these are positive or negative developments, the following effects are to be expected: 1) The undergraduate curriculum will be re-fashioned as a narrative, in which the student comes to realize themselves through participation in a cumulative experience prior to graduation. 2) Graduate education will be less oriented to reproduction of knowledge-archives, and hence reproduction of the subject-area as a social institution, and more oriented to the application of intellectual capacities beyond the subject-area. 3) Faculty will be under increasing pressure to conduct research that is readily available for non-academic applications -- indeed, many faculty would probably agree this is already the case. 4) Whole new levels of administration, as yet unimagined, will be required to handle these modifications to the university.
The university as such, however, has been constructed for the eternalization of knowledge, regardless of the perceived exigencies placed upon the archive. This means that HEI's as social institution must necessarily crack. They will survive, but they will crack. And the breaking-point will be the academic department, since the department is the fulcrum upon which pressures from changing student and faculty needs from below must be balanced with pressures from changing institutional demands from above.
The options for the department-in-translation are thus: A) Total distintegration; B) Receivership and co-optation by an increasingly bloated and expensive administrative apparatus; C) Discovery and adaptation to new, as yet unseen efficiencies, so that respective archives of knowledge are not only preserved, but carried over into new, dynamic action.
The first two options are easy. The third is heresy. Or rather, by way of translation, heresy is the only option.
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