I've thought about this post for a day now. I'm seeing a few issues cropping up. I agree that the nature of education is and will continue to change with the advent of Web 2.0, Web 3.0, etc. To what end? Where is higher education going? Are we going to shed the hoops of the breadth requirements? Will we go ultra-pragmatic & if so, how specialized? Ten years ago, being a software programmer was a great job to have. Now, they're a dime-a-dozen. Without a broader base of skills, are we running the risk of just turning into pre-professional "vocational education."

I think we need to unpack the issues of acadème as a concept and acadème as a practice, within a complex institutional milieu (of fields, universities, accrediting bodies, etc.). If academe focused on concepts and making connections between them, wouldn't that be an idea? Unfortunately, the organizational reality inhibits this type of activity. Universities and disciplines tend towards creating silos of knowledge.

I think universities need to remember that what gives them status is the talent, infrastructure, and resources that they configure. Unfortunately, I think the decisions on that configuration fall into politics. For example, why should a business school collaborate with a communications or journalism department? What are the incentives to do so? Sharing faculty lines, differences in salaries, epistemological differences, and sharing resources are just the tip of the iceberg of issues that inhibit collaboration, as these become politicized.

I see the future of acadème needing to create new organizational structures. I feel that the traditional university structures are under fire because they're straining to provide value. I'm interested in examining how new configurations can be created and sustained & I feel the time is right to start exploring this.

First of all, I completely agree with the following statement “We’ve tilted so far in our graduate training toward academic specialization that our product has become idiosyncratic, unrewarding, and irrelevant to the larger society.” Obscure dissertation topics such as the one in Taylor’s Op-Ed on how the medieval theologian Duns Scotus used citations are completely worthless. Another problem is that there is so much research going on that when something more important comes out, it might not get the attention it deserves.
I can see how clustering interests is the way to go if we want to decrease specialization. However, to me this is almost circular because the entire purpose of graduate school is for specialization. I agree that it has probably become too specialized, but I’m not sure if developing programs instead of majors would fix the problem. The difficulty would lie in the actual classes. With so many people from different “majors” in one “program,” there would be much more disparity between education levels. Some may think like a philosopher while others can do the math behind it. However, assignments would have to be specialized based on what the student’s “major” interests are because if it were not, it would be the same class before any re-structuring. In addition, it seems to me like even with getting rid of departments eventually you will still go for that specialization. This is because simply, it is economically much more efficient than trying to do more things alone. In conclusion, while I agree that there is over-specialization, I don’t think re-structuring curriculums is the right idea. Instead, we should focus on making each major much more challenging so that jobs will be available for those few who make it. Cutting out certain specialties that are of no extra benefit would be advised as well. Lastly, projects such as dissertations would have to be real-world applicable and helpful. By increasing the rigor, there will be less students and less need to write on obscure topics.

Graduate school requires one to overinvest to develop training for a job that, depending on the state of the financial nation, may or may not be there (this coming from one who hopes to be grad school bound). However, it is specifically that specialization that makes graduate school so necessary. If polled, I’m sure the majority of people would choose a doctor that graduated from Johns Hopkins than one from University of Nebraska (my apologies to ‘Husker fans). At CLU’s undergraduate level, I believe students prefer to engage in their specializations rather than indulge in all Core 21 has to offer. We are forever checking online to see what “double dips,” in the hopes of crossing that pesky intensive writing section from our lists.. We want to be specialists and experts because there lies a sense of validation – how often to do identify ourselves by our major? Constantly. When we meet new people, join new clubs, or are forced to reiterate our current lives at those painful family reunions. As with doctors, many undergrads believe that one of the most defining things about them is what subject they choose to make a career. Health and legal professions aside, many lesser known specialties seem to serve little to no purpose (ie medieval theologian citations). As we say so often in math classes, “When will I ever need to actually use this?” I have seen so often where certain departments on campus have coalesced without being aware. During my freshman year, Dr Hanson was discussing the medical ramifications of particular Spartan practices. Two hours later, Dr Collins was lecturing on how certain medieval cultures have affected the evolution of particular genomes. If World Civilzation and Cells and Organisms made the unconscious leap, how easy could this be for psychology and sociology, English and sociology? Restructuring university departments is a massive undertaking because we cannot cut too much. Given America’s current financial position, maybe the solution is dissecting, but simply modifying. Don’t remove a class, but tailor it to the major/program to make it more difficult. I agree with Molly in that the challenge factor has to be escalated – the last thing we want is a new generation of idiots running the country.

"I personally love the use of the complex adaptive network metaphor."

I agree. This is the most appealing aspect of Taylor's piece, as it seems to be updating the way we approach knowledge/understanding. Having interdisciplinary departments organized around social problems could be quite useful. I am, however, very put off by Taylor's insistence of applying free market principles to the universities, as if they were factories.

I also wrote an essay in response:

http://www.whyweworry.com/blog/2009/06/25/restructuring-humanities/

The open-sourcing that is proceeding, from one end by the opencoursewear initiative, and from post-Google startups, will be real thing that shakes up the Old School model.If the new organizational models provide an education that is genuinely *useful* to its students, and do so at an utterly low cost (totaling thousands, not a hundred thousand) -- then the economics of the situation will force the change, while professors look on in dismay from within the shaky walls of the ivory tower.