Academic Structure Quotes

I really didn't like the academic structure of science, but I realized I loved science and missed science.

In the schoolroom her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness.

Economic analysis is the first principle of Marxism. Professors who were genuine leftists would have challenged the entire economics-driven machinery of American academe the wasteful multidepartmental structure, the divisive pedantry of overspecialization, the cronyism and sycophancy in recruitment and promotion, the boondoggling ostentation of pointless conferences, the exploitation of graduate students and part-time teachers, the subservience of faculty to overpaid administrators, the mediocrity and folly of the ruling cliques of the Modern Language Association.

There's a lot wrong [with American universities]. I'd remove 3/4 of the faculty - everything but the hard sciences. But nobody's going to do that, so we'll have to live with the defects. It's amazing how wrongheaded [the teaching is]. There is fatal disconnectedness. You have these squirrelly people in each department who don't see the big picture.

American universities are organized on the principle of the nuclear rather than the extended family. Graduate students are grimly trained to be technicians rather than connoisseurs. The old German style of universal scholarship has gone.

The Committee supports the idea that there should be, within the University of California, a campus which puts particular emphasis on the education of undergraduates within the framework of a College system.

Even within traditional universities there has always been debate about whether it wouldn't be better to focus on only one course at a time.

I miss the simplicity of college, with specific due dates, a consistent schedule, and a solid routine.

I loved school; I loved the rules, and I liked there being right answers, wrong answers, and being able to give the right answer all the time. And that goes against who many would predict is going to go out and break rules and tell stories for a living.