Inside Higher Ed reports that Indiana State is eliminating physics and philosophy, among other majors, in a move to streamline their programs. These programs have very few majors relative to the number of faculty (physics has five faculty and nine majors, philosophy four faculty and 19 majors), so they're on the block due to an accreditor's comment that they have too many programs.
The discussion in the article centers on the question of whether you can really call a university a university if it doesn't teach physics or philosophy. Several people in comments object that they're only eliminating the major in those subjects, not the department-- there would still be faculty in those disciplines around (they can't fire the tenured ones, after all), just no official majors. If nothing else, they can't completely eliminate physics, because somebody needs to teach the pre-meds physics for the MCAT...
This misses a crucial aspect of the problem, though, which has to do with the quality of the faculty. While it may be technically true that there will still be people on staff teaching physics, eliminating the major more or less rules out any chance of getting and retaining really good faculty in those positions.
Not only is it going to be almost impossible to do research without a pool of majors to draw from, eliminating the major means eliminating the major classes. Which means the prospect of an entire career spent teaching nothing but introductory physics and pre-med physics. I doubt I'm alone in finding this a soul-crushing thought-- picture a copy of Halliday and Resnick falling on a human face, forever.
Eliminating the major means that faculty hired in those areas will never be able to teach the highest level classes in their discipline, which means that they spent years in grad school becoming the world's greatest expert on some area of research, that they'll almost never get to talk about. That's pretty depressing.
"Big deal," you might say, especially if your online alias is "Ponderer," "They're obviously not very good at research as it is if they're looking at Indiana State, so why should they care?" There's a big difference between knowing that the bulk of your work will be low-level teaching, and knowing that all of your work will be low-level teaching. I know that by coming to Union, I am committed to spending a lot of time teaching low-level classes-- we offer something like seven sections of intro mechanics a year, and somebody has to staff those-- but I also get the chance to teach physics major classes, like the Quantum Optics course I did last year. And I get the chance to do research with students in the lab, which is one of the highlights of the job.
If I was looking for a job, and you told me that your job did not offer either of those opportunities, I would look elsewhere. I have no objection to teaching intro mechanics-- it can be a good deal of fun, sometimes-- but I don't want to spend thirty years teaching nothing but intro mechanics. I'm in this business because I want to teach students who are really interested in physics, not just students who have to take physics for some other major.
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Sorry? Do you mean five?
No matter what, it seems like an extremely poor decision.
Yes, that should be "five." I fixed it, and also closed the unclosed tag.
I can't type early in the morning.
James Madison University briefly went through a "we're dropping the physics major" period about 13 years ago, in what was being called in the school paper and rumor mill the "Friday the 13th Massacres". Though the administration claimed it was justified by the low number of majors per year (they usually had between 3 and 10, which isn't bad for a liberal arts school with a strong business college), most insiders felt it was a political attack on two members of the physics department who were very outspoken critics of the administration in the faculty senate.
The major is still there, and more than triple its then number of candidates. The President, meanwhile, resigned a few years later, though those two events are probably not related. :)
The question "Can pre-meds learn physics?" is also interesting. Having started college as a Pre-Med, largely due to parental pressure, I dropped it, in large part because of the nonconstructive nature of the curriculum and goal. But years of first tutoring pre-meds for the MCAT and then dealing with physicians have taught me that most physicians are not capable of retaining physics if they ever learned it in first place.
I have to disagree, somewhat. Yes, teaching Halliday and Resnick year after year is a killer, but with course hours freed from teaching advanced mechanics and E&M to their 9 majors, the department has the luxury to devote to developing new and interesting courses for NON scientists.
I love teaching physics to non-scientists, and I have no real desire to spend half my time doing research. I never have. There are people out there committed to liberal arts education who are excellent teachers. Not everyone without an NSF grant is a second class scientist.
Clearly Indiana State isn't going to be the right place for serious physics research, but I'm certain that physicists come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and temperaments just like everybody else and for some of them a life of teaching physics to English majors and musicians and economists and anthropologists will be an enjoyable and fulfilling career. I would argue that raising the general understanding of and appreciation for physics among the general population is just as lofty a goal as producing a new generation of experts.
One thing I am missing from the piece (besides the obvious, asking the provost for her reasoning) is how general a phenomenon this is. It is not too worrisome to see one school in Indiana becoming an essentially vocational school. I am also wondering if they are allowed to keep their basketball program if they lose their status as a university (realistically, that may be their best motivation to keep those pesky academics around...).
The year before I started my undergraduate studies there, the University of Rochester made plans to put their math department on the chopping block. Outcry from across the country, and across numerous fields (including Nobel laureates), convinced the University that was a bad idea. Perhaps something similar could be put into motion here?
Being a successful researcher does not translate to being a talented teacher, and since time is limited, they are often negatively correlated. This is even more so when you are teaching non-majors. Physics is very rarely well taught to non-majors, perhaps by eliminating their major, a school like Indianna can recommit themselves to the goal of educating their non-physics majors and ultimately provide a better overall education. Their would be physics majors can go find a better program.
yolio, people often say that skill in research and teaching are negatively correlated but in my experience most of my best teachers have been good or excellent researchers. See also this article. Is there any evidence to back up what you are saying?
The problem is that many of us who are happy to focus on teaching (and are good at it) would not find this an appealing proposition. I'm in math, rather than physics, and I enjoy and excel at teaching non-major classes. However, spending the rest of my career teaching such classes is an unpleasant prospect -- it means never getting to present the material that made me fall in love with the subject. In physics I imagine it would be even worse, since at least some non-math majors still need reasonably high-level material.
More simply put: very few people get a PhD in a subject in order to teach it to people who don't want to study it.
Anon, the link you provided simply stated how much university professors teach, not that they do it well. You can teach and do a poor job, I've had enough of such professors myself.
I don't think Indiana State needs to worry that they won't get any "really good" physics faculty, whatever that means. Do you mean high quality research? High quality teaching? Do you think these are correlated? It seems to me that the market is so saturated, they will get someone good whatever they do.
picture a copy of Halliday and Resnick falling on a human face, forever.
ROFL... great Orwell hommage!