<div class="gmail_quote">hi George<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im">On 21 September 2011 00:05, George Siemens <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gsiemens@gmail.com" target="_blank">gsiemens@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>Question: How do those of you who are calling for large scale educational reform (I'm one, btw), but don't earn your living in the "practical sciences" like engineering, math, etc., envision the future of your discipline if the traditional system implodes? Who will pay the people whose research and ideas influence decades in the future, rather than in the next quarterly corporate report?</div>
</blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>challenging question. I also think there is a need for reform, but I'm all small scale and am incapable (seriously) of thinking big like this. I think there needs to be reform in what and how things are taught and why. At least in the academic areas I know about. This reform does not need or assume the gutting of the institution. I think I think that there remains a key role for universities as we increasingly move towards knowledge ecologies, but for universities to be relevant in this they do need to evolve. </div>
<div><br></div><div>State support will continue, and should continue (though in the US with not only the nonsense that is the Khan Academy and that odd faith in 'small government' who knows what might happen), but to use the contemporary vernacular, universities need to become more fluid, agile, and porous. Possibly the humanities (as I think Alan Liu is working on) need to stop assuming or taking for granted their relevance and start demonstrating/arguing for it. (I don't mean by only do 'real world' research topics, I mean by demonstrating the value of what is done to those that we want to pay for it). </div>
<div><br></div><div>Universities provide the intellectual infrastructure for any economy, and I'd probably start the defence/legitimation of the role of the humanities in those terms.</div><div><br></div><div>an appropriate closing</div>
</div><div name="mailplane_signature">
Adrian Miles<font color="#888888"><br>
<a href="http://about.me/vogmae" target="_blank">about.me/vogmae</a></font></div>
</div><br><div name="mailplane_signature">an appropriate closing<br>
Adrian Miles<br>
<a href="http://about.me/vogmae">about.me/vogmae</a></div>