Sweet glayven!
That said, there are men and women of great intellect alive today who have forgotten more than I will ever learn. Most of these people are Ph.D’s who dedicate their lives to expanding the boundaries of human knowledge.
Having attended a large state school, I felt that there was a common and underlying gripe by the undergraduate population that our professors were more dedicated to their research than to their teaching. Many of my lower-division classes were either taught by teaching assistants, adjunct professors, graduate students, post-docs, or in large 300+ lectures.
Now, I held no false pretenses that UCLA as an institution or its professors as individuals prioritized the undergraduate education. It’s a thinly veiled system to finance the moneymakers of higher research, and that’s fine by me…I still got what I needed out of the experience.
What did/does bother me is the culture of professorship that stresses research for the benefit of other Ph.D’s. UCLA’s motto is Fiat Lux (”let there be light”)… well, the current practice of communicating newly discovered research is equivalent to flashing signals in morse-code with a flashlight.
Now, I’m not saying that the traditionally structured research paper (i.e. abstract, background, methodology, findings, conclusion) is obsolete. There is certainly great value in “establishing careful definitions, dotting terminological i’s, and crossing conceptual t’s.”
What I am saying is that for a simpleton like myself (or, for the purposes of salvaging my tender ego, a “generalist” like myself), this format of “sharing” important information is obtuse and oftentimes impenetrable.
Professors need to remember that their journey to explore the boundaries of knowledge is a solo one. The research paper leaves a crumb trail on the path that led them to their discoveries. Well, we leave in an Information Age, right? Why not GPS that shit?
Last week I wrote about the “conceptual scoop”; essentially the repackaging of information in a unique way, as to initiate a “conversation starter” within the general public. While this is great, why does it take the filter of a journalist to generate these ideas? It’s the researchers that are coming up with the really insightful observations. Allowing journalists to scoop trained experts is like having a middle-manager usurping control of distribution channels from the CEO.
“Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.” That’s Ralph Waldo for you. Good news reporters know to contact university professors to explain and comment on the significance of new legislation, world events, paradigm shifts, etc. Obviously their expertise is valued.
But why not get it straight from the horse’s mouth?
7 responses so far ↓
Rohit // June 28, 2007 at 9:03 pm |
As yet another product of “Fiat Lux,” and having escaped Berkeley having had only one class with a professor teaching under 20 students (it was a graduate class, incidentally), I can totally relate to this post.
At the same time, however, I think that to a certain extent, the cutting edge level at which professors are working doesn’t lend itself to direct communication with the unwashed masses. Professors probably have neither the time nor the inclination to communicate their research to people who don’t even understand the fundamentals of their fields; I can’t really argue with that sentiment, since I too sometimes feel that way too with subjects where I possess more knowledge than the layperson.
Also, perhaps, the reason we don’t hear it from the horse’s mouth is because the same people who possess the skills to expand human knowledge don’t possess the proper communication skills to present that knowledge to the unknowledgeable.
Finally, Emerson sucks.
Jon // June 28, 2007 at 9:24 pm |
I agree that professors don’t have the time nor the inclination to communicate their research to people who don’t even understand the fundamentals of their fields. But I disagree that they SHOULDN’T have the time, and especially the inclination, to share their findings with the world.
The very idea of “peer-reviewed” research is a double-edged sword… assuring quality at the expense of universality. And the pressures to publish and produce certainly result in an insular environment.
But you have to take a step back and say: what are (our) objectives? Discovery for the sake of discovery? Discovery for self-aggrandizement? Discovery for intellectual property rights? Or discovery for the advancement of mankind?
My criticism was chiefly against the social sciences, but there are some concepts in the hard sciences (string theory comes to mind) that have been brought to the mainstream by scientists who picked up on a method of communication in the same vein as the Malcom Gladwell/Freakonomics/Made to Stick “pop” genre.
And ouch to Emerson.
AJS // June 29, 2007 at 12:05 am |
The pace of your posts shames me.
Rohit // June 29, 2007 at 5:53 am |
I don’t dispute your contention that professors should have time/inclination to share their results, but I think the unfortunate reality is that the way we incentivize (that maybe a corporate non-word) research in universities is not at all conducive to taking the time to present results so everyone (or rather, reasonably intelligent/educated individuals) can understand.
Also, inevitably, laypeople are impressed by use of jargon, because it makes people seem smart. This is why we have a business lexicon so riddled with nonsense that if one stops to think, it is hard to glean even one cogent idea that makes any sense in a 20 minute long presentation.
Maya // June 29, 2007 at 2:05 pm |
Adding to the diatribe, often the communication block for professors, at least in the UC system from what I can gather through my own experiences, is impatience and annoyance. Many established professors have already gone through years of smaller or still large classes and teach the same shit over and over potentially (if they are good at what they do) with relevance to current events and research. But they have already experienced years of idiotic questions, banal conversations, pointless combative retorts and pretentious asshole students that think they know more than the professor (there is always a token kid yabbering away that generally does not actually have a point that hasnt already been said or agreed with). So, while I agree that often those in the research field dont take the necessary time to open their findings to the minds of the rest of society, I gather they are probably just plain old tired of it (or wound up pretentious assholes themselves). Not that I think the outcome is right–it is most certainly in need of change. Unlucky for us I suppose, though I was lucky to have a major at UCSD with upper division courses no more than 20 students per class. I also was taught profusely that communicating verbally and in writing are sought-after skills in this economy, since the majority of the U.S. population that completed higher education still lacks even a basic command of proper English (I made up that general statistic, but really, its a skill that I find translates as a commodity in all fields and gives me a leg up in business, and by that I mean makes me an equal candidate for jobs that I have zero other skills for). Ugh, I have edited the craziest bullshit written by old assholes with tons of initials after their name and argued the merits of a fucking period.
Jon // June 29, 2007 at 2:29 pm |
I’m not even that concerned with what goes on in the classroom. I could frankly care less if an “established” professor teaches me an intro class, or if a grad student does. As long as the course curriculum is well thought out and the reading assignments are relevant, I’ll learn what I need to.
What I’m talking about is the disconnect between the “cutting edge” and its penetration into the collective sphere of knowledge. I have similar concerns for an accelerating technology gap or wage distributions as a result of globalization.
Jon // June 29, 2007 at 8:01 pm |
Rohit, laypeople are both impressed and turned off by jargon. But there are professors out there like Diamond and Chomsky that still find a way to turn their very complicated research into NY Times best-sellers and standard airport reading material.
And there are professors like Harvard KSG’s Dani Rodrik and UCLA’s Mark Kleinman that apply their clearly defined world view (shaped by their knowledge and experience) to the interpretation of world events.