The research-based model for the university has outworn its us | Jazzhands FTN

The research-based model for the university has outworn its usefulness. While it was a stroke of Germanic genius in the 19th century, which and led to a flowering of historical and cultural research and analysis, it has sucked all of our intellectual energy away from teaching. The Western universities are no longer reproducing the European cultural type. This has been a political disaster for us. But it has also led to an intellectual dead-end, as academia has not been able to turn out students who are well-educated enough to conduct research, because all the people who should be teaching those students are themselves busy chasing the presitige that they can only win through research!

This should have been clear decades ago, but western scholars and academics have continued to praise the research model. I suppose the counter-argument would be that we don't want to be like the Arabs after al-Ghazali or the Chinese or Indians in the eras of their cultural senility. We need something new! But the fact is, we have ploughed these fields for too long, it's time to let them lie fallow. It is funny how, in the research-model, academia has mimicked the art-world, where newness has been valued so much that every other good quality has been neglected.

A major university reform would start here. Obviously most "academics" are nothing of the sort and need to be thrown out. But the key to long-term cultural rejuvenation is to reward people who are good at teaching. Research must be made secondary.