Christine Ortiz, an MIT materials science professor and dean, is starting a new university. This article makes it sound as though nearly all of the money will be spent on real estate and administration because there will be a physical campus in the Boston area. What about the teachers? Here’s a great exchange:
Q. Prestige is a very important factor in higher education. Do you worry that you’ll have trouble attracting top scholars and academics because it’s so new and untested?
A. There are so many talented doctoral students and postdocs that are unable to secure jobs in academia. I can name like 100 right now … but there are not just enough jobs at prestigious university. So I know there is a plethora and a pool out there of potential faculty and faculty who would want to be part of a really innovative model and want to be part of a transdisciplinary community. And I’ve gotten hundreds of responses from potential students already saying, When can I apply?
Q. What about tenure? Will your university have that?
A. My thinking at this point is very much moving away from tenure. I’m going to really investigate alternative models, and really there are a number of alternative models that are being used. At this point, tenure seems like a great mismatch with the system that we’re thinking about.
In other words, all adjuncts all the time. I am going to follow this start-up with interest!
[Separately, Professor Ortiz may not realize what a world of hurt she can get into with the state government:
Q. Will it have the word university in it?
A. Unclear at this time.
About 16 years ago we started “ArsDigita University” as a free one-year post-baccalaureate non-degree program in CS. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts assigned a state worker essentially full-time to the job of threatening us with litigation if we did not change the name. It seems that one cannot be a “university” if one does not issue graduate degrees. We responded with “Since we’re not charging money for this we can call it whatever we want, especially give that the first sentence of our home page says that there is no degree at all.” The battle went on for at least 1.5 years before the Commonwealth lost interest in us.]
It’s popular these days for hip companies to describe themselves as “a technology company that does X”. I first saw Vox describe themselves this way, with x being journalism, in their case.
Maybe the new trend will be founders calling their new company a university.
“We’re a university without lectures, professors or degrees. And we also happen to sell plumbing supplies.”
My ideal teaching university would require every professor pay a fee of $1M/yr to the school to be allowed to teach (yes, a fee paid by the prof to the school). Tuition would be free for all students, after they were granted admission from said professors.
This would ensure only the most successful people teaching only the most deserving students. Surely there are enough rich, successful people interested in passing their knowledge and insights to the next generation? Rather than just making a donation and having their name on a building they could take a hands-on approach and teach a few classes.
billg, existing universities could do this, by requesting donors to give them less money and to teach instead. However, existing universities, businesses themselves, are more interested in the money than in instruction. And not all rich people can teach.
I think there can be a place for tenure, but I would limit it to positions that are backed by an endowment. Maybe that means it should be called something other than tenure (like whatever they call it at the Institute for Advanced Study). Given the supply and demand of talent, it doesn’t make sense to regularly give tenure after 6 years. There is an inherent survivorship bias in tenure.