Get back in the classroom

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Get back in the classroom				January 28, 2009

In his recently published book, “The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities,” Frank Donoghue argues ominously that the demise of the humanities as curricular bastions of learning for its own sake, with little regard for practical outcomes, is at hand.

“Except in a few private wealthy universities,” writes Donoghue, “the splendid and supported irrelevance of human inquiry for its own sake is already a thing of the past. In two or three generations, humanists will become an insignificant percentage of the country’s university instructional workforce.”

What appears to be happening is that money-strapped colleges and universities are shifting their priorities from the Platonic notion of discussive and interpretive value-associated epistemology to curriculums that assure a practical exit strategy for students who are paying more and more every year to take classes that will land them a healthy job in the outside world.

Indicative of such a shift is the fact that at most universities the pay scale for humanities professors is lower than that for instructors in the sciences, law and business. In addition, tenure-track positions in the humanities are fading, and full-time professors are being replaced by much more economical adjuncts.

One need look only at the most recent building projects at William & Mary to judge where the priorities of the college are headed. While humanities departments are scattered from one end of the campus to the other, the college is now constructing a huge new business school. In the near future, a career counseling center will be built. Recently completed was an athletic mausoleum bearing the name of football coach Jimmye Laycock.

Could the message be any clearer?

In the dark days of the of the ‘60s and ‘70s, William and Mary was known as an institution that valued excellence in teaching above all. Professors regularly taught four courses each semester, and the variety of courses offered at this relatively small college was rather stunning. Humanities departments, as well as those in the sciences, thrived as a result.

Research, though important, was conducted during the summer months or, later, as a result of semester grants awarded by the Faculty Research Committee.

Now, however, the college and its professors, including most humanities professors, have decided that the best defense against the onslaught of an educational telos constituted of practicality and job orientation is to reduce teaching loads to two courses per semester.

The reasons given for such a precipitous decision are two: to encourage research and to make the college more attractive to future hires.

While requiring more research in the humanities for tenure or promotion might sound existentially profound and be productive of better teaching, the fact is that requiring an instructor to pump out X number of books or papers may well be according published prolixity a deceptively destructive position in the hierarchy of epistemological worth.

Truly solid research that may take years of intense study and grueling grunt work to complete is worthy of great reward. The recently published “The Uncollected Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne” by English professor Terry Meyers is an excellent example of a long-term project of indisputable intrinsic value.

But to require professors to crank out books or papers in limited time frames for the sake of tenure or promotion is insanity and results frequently in a type of quasi scholarship laden with inane, if not faddish, twaddle. Consider the ill-fated dalliance with deconstruction.

Relative to attracting future instructors to positions in the humanities, it should be noted that graduate schools are producing far more doctorates in the humanities than there are jobs to accommodate them. The reputation of W&M alone is enough to attract prime candidates, regardless of the number of courses they will be required to teach.

In his review of Donoghue’s book for The New York Times, Stanley Fish summarizes the views of John Sperling, one of the founders of Phoenix University: “The for-profit university is the logical end of a shift from a model of education centered in an individual professor who gives insight and inspiration to a model that begins and ends with the imperative to deliver the information and skills necessary to gain employment. Insofar as there are real-life faculty in the picture, their credentials and publications are beside the point, for they are just delivery people.”

If what Sperling says is true, it would behoove W&M humanities professors to prove their worth by getting back into the classroom. It may well be the last bastion of whatever relevancy they have left. If they persist in thinking that Donoghue’s portentous predictions could never reach fruition at W&M, they would do well to contemplate the wonders of the new business school and its concomitantly emerging career counseling center.