Leiter reports that ISU is downsizing, for no apparent reason, its philosophy and physics departments. This is not unique to ISU. I have seen it occur in a couple of Australian universities too. The odd thing is that this is not because student enrolments are low; teaching loads are large in some cases. It appears to be due to individual objections by powers-that-be to philosophy for various reasons. One such reason here is that humanities students attract a lot less funding per head than science students, leading to unreasonable teaching loads to break even. This reduces the research capacity of the teachers, and since much funding is tied to research, and is more "profitable" than teaching, a downward spiral occurs.
Like Leiter, I wonder if a university that fails to teach a rounded program in philosophy deserves to be called a "university" (wherein the totality of human knowledge and subjects are taught). Since the 1980s "Dawkins reforms" (named after the minister for "education" here, not Richard Dawkins) Australian universities have become increasingly vocational education systems, for industrial purposes, not for cultural education. All of the traditional non-vocational subjects, apart from those which are politically agreeable, have been subjected to downsizing. One university I attended (go see my web page if you want to guess which one) stopped teaching classical languages entirely, and reduced European languages to a rump.
We are in a period of increasing mediocrity and ignorance.
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The issue, here in Indiana, is "brain drain." Daughters #1 and #2 are both examples - they absolutely refuse(d) to stay here, once they have their undergraduate degree.
The government response is to work for high-paying jobs - and I can't really fault this, since the state has lost serious manufacturing plants, mostly associated with the automobile industry, and my students are trying to get into the allied health-care field. However, Daughters #1 and #2 aren't leaving for manufacturing, the older has her BA in Art History, and the younger will have an Asian Studies (Japanese language, primarily) degree. They are leaving for the lack of a diverse culture. They can't discuss art, history, politics, or distinct cultures with the grand majority of their age cohort here in this state.
So the brain drain will continue, for exactly the reason that ISU (and IU and Purdue and Ball State U) are de-emphasizing education and concentrating on job-training.
fusilier
James 2:24
A traditional liberal arts education for all students made sense in a world in which a rather small proportion of the population went to college. Right now, a larger number of students may be trying to get a higher education than either the social or the economic system can sustain. It may be that it no longer rational to go into debt for an education that neither guarantees elite status or a sufficient financial return and no longer possible for mediocre public schools to go on claiming they can deliver something besides a voc tech product. A "university" that teaches no philosophy sounds pretty lame to me; but in the context of a general lowering of expectations, it may not be so odd after all.
Education is either education, or it is training. Whether there is much call for it, philosophy is part of the western intellectual tradition, and contributes directly to law, science, business and a host of other fields. It isn't a university if it fails to teach western intellectual traditions. It can be a tech college, but not a university. The inflation of qualifications is directly counterproductive. I fail to see, for example, why nursing needs to be a university degree. It only makes it harder to get nurses, and they learn (as I know from direct knowledge) how to be nursing academics, not nurses. Same thing for most other vocational disciplines. Law may be an exception.
Curious that physics is seen as not being vocational.
Bob
If you can't sell it, buy it, open a beer bottle with it, or get into a political party or PR firm with it, I guess it's not important.
Might it have something to do with how a state allocates resources and courses amongst its schools? It's been a few years since I attended IU, but I was pretty much unaware that there were people who went to university to study philosophy of science; I wound up with two roommates who did. Do the other schools (like ISU) continue to provide at least some philosophy, enough to provide undergraduates with a helpful exposure?
I could see how that would be a problem for the physics department, but for philosophy? If the philosophy faculty is ocncerned about "research capacity", they could switch to a cheaper brand of wine.
The best philosophy requires the best wine and beer. This accounts for French philosophy...
So your opinion is that French wine is swill? Or at least has been after about Voltaire's time?
But seriously, it really seems that both physics and philosophy as independent subjects have been on the downswing lately. I've met numerous ex-physicists who have decided to become biologists/bioinformaticans and biology also seems to be the hot topic among philosophers, what with Hull, Dennett, Ruse, Sober, Kitcher, and um... Wilkins?
French wine is very much like its philosophy - sometimes excellent, often rubbish. Australian philosophy is likewise - always good, sometimes brilliant...
[OK, now I'll never get that French fellowship, will I?]
John,
Someone in India acted really stupid yesterday. The governor of the state of Uttar Pradesh - http://tinyurl.com/2g994x - (the federal representative in the state) at a convocation at a Sanskrit University advised the students to learn English and science instead and stop wasting their time with a backward language like Sanskrit! And following that a few 100 people have decided to outdo the governor in stupidity and have completely missed the intellectual issues involved. One would have expected scholars of Sanskrit in India (especially Varanasi/Kashi where the university is located) to educate the public on the importance of the language in India's history of letters; and the vast corpus of writings in the language on aestheics, sciences, grammar, philosophy and other such things. Even the Jawarharlal Nehru University (a hotbed of radical politics in New Delhi) for many years would not have a department of Sanskrit! Worse things have happened in blighty with unis shutting down mathematics graduate programs! Who needs learning!