A view from below.

I wonder why I so often look to that structure, sometimes piercing low hanging clouds, for answers to the questions that we have concerning our society. That structure is a tower; it is made of ivory. But ivory can’t be legally sold so it must be a figment of my imagination or the result of fables told.

The high priced help working in the academic offices of our nation warrant questioning. When and why were the rules made for the hiring, maintaining, firing or retiring these people?

Now, I can well understand lectures being given in hallowed halls of our universities. I can see many individuals sitting in large auditoria listening to the voice of great lecturers who provide ways of questioning and searching for knowledge and who provide the motivation that is sometimes required for students to think deeply, to read voraciously and then to commit to paper their thoughts, interpretations and ideas relating to particular areas of study.

What I find difficult to understand is how these professors spend their time. If we total the amount of time spent in the lecture hall we come quickly to the conclusion that it is a small fraction of the work-time of the professors. We also find that the academic year is short or the number of courses “taught” by the professors is not that great.

In many of those institutions, we find lecturers teaching introductory courses to large numbers of students; here we are not talking about 20 or 30 students but many more sometimes exceeding one hundred. Those lecturers do not receive a high income but they do generate many dollars coming from student tuition fees and this support the life style to which professors have grown accustomed. Between those lectures, sometimes excellent lectures, and the school libraries, students can forge ahead in their pursuit of knowledge and in the development of their critical questioning techniques.

I now question the across the board sabbatical, those seventh-year recuperation periods during which some research activity and writing can produce “new knowledge” or something that can be recognize as forward movement of the professor, in many ways unknown.

Then we hear of “publish or perish”, that demand of the system that tells the world or at least those within the same discipline that the professor is contributing to the field of study. How much publishing should be coming from those institutions and for what purposes?

My personal view is that we see little coming from the ivory towers to help resolve the many problems within our society. With their vast knowledge and understanding of the ways things happen and perhaps better ways for things to be done, little do we hear from those brilliant academic minds. This does not mean that there are not professors who are advancing knowledge and in practical ways are sharing what they know for the improvement of world conditions, often starting at the local level.

We are here to praise the positive contributions made to society coming from our academic institutions. At the same time I have many questions concerning an antiquated approach to what takes place within those institutions. These questions need to be asked to bring the world of learning as exemplified within those institutions into the twenty first century.