Where Do the Bright Minds Go? An Epiphany…

This semester I am teaching a course for the Honors College. It is an introductory course on International Relations. For my non-American readers, Honors College is where they pool the bright students with high scores. In general, they have a separate dormitory, a lot of tailored support and a whole separate Dean to cater to the students’ needs.

My students mostly have pharmacy, biological & agricultural sciences, and engineering backgrounds. And did I mention, they are very bright.

In the last few years, I have been working at universities that had strong science and engineering departments. For the longest time, I thought this was a great thing!

The last university that I worked in Turkey was very strong in engineering, for which I was proud of. I still don’t know what exactly nano-technology means, but they were nice folks up there making cool graphics.

Here in the US, my university has strong pharmacy and Ag-Bio sciences programs. They go out of their way to attract students into STEM disciplines –basically, science and engineering programs. 

 

In the US, the economic recession is still hammering the job market. Therefore, there is a concerted effort to channel students into areas where they would have guaranteed employment. Nursing, engineering and other technical departments are having their heyday! Music and art history, not so much…

For the longest time, I though this would be a great thing: that we should encourage ‘good’ students to go into these ‘hard’ disciplines. That’s what the society needs, right?

However lately, I am beginning to question this approach.

So what are we doing at the moment? We are railroading all the bright minds into pre-med, biology, nursing and engineering. Essentially, we are skimming the top and placing these kids into technical fields. As overachievers, they take their responsibility very seriously and spend significant time and energy on math, biology, anatomy, chemistry and other such ‘hard’ courses.

I teach International Relations and Comparative Politics, which for these students mean ‘stuff that happens outside the US’. They are so solidly geared towards their professional careers that any such class in social sciences becomes a ‘distraction’ for them.

STEM'pede...

So what do we have in our equation: We have a pool of best and bright minds. We sort them into these technical, professional disciplines. We pump them up with the importance of STEM disciplines night and day, so they dedicate themselves and excel in their particular fields.

Yet, is this what higher education is all about? Is university just a bigger vocational school??

I think the academia and society in general are doing a huge disservice, by creating these seasonal fads in higher ed. For a while, it was finance. You had the best and brightest going into economics and business schools. Supposedly, they would graduate and instantly take up jobs with six figure salaries at Wall Street. Subprime crisis and the disgraceful collapse of the finance sector hopefully put the brakes on this a bit.

Similarly, there was the Law School fetishism. The best and the brightest would go to law school, pay an arm and a leg for tuition, and graduate with thousands of $s of student loans. But it was all worth it! Because they were going to land on six figure salaries in prestigious law firms.

Unfortunately, students soon realized that not all law graduates could become Ally McBeals. The job market for the law graduates saturated rather fast, and many students ended up saddled with huge student loans, doing clerical work for pitiful hourly wages.

Let me wrap up: I think the current hype about STEM areas will do us harm in the long run for at least three reasons:

1.     Eventually, we’ll have an over-supply problem in these technical areas. Hence, in the lung-run, this will be another self-defeating mission, much like the cases of finance and law.

2.     By treating the disciplines other than science and engineering as ‘second class’, we are undermining the principles of a liberal arts education. It was this liberal arts aspect of the US higher education that made it superior, compared to other countries, such as Germany, which is rather advanced in engineering and technical fields. We cannot have well-rounded, sharp and worldly citizens with critical thinking skills, by having them write lab reports only. A university degree should be much more than just a ticket to employment.

3.     Lastly, there might be significant opportunity costs for channeling all our best and the brightest into these technical areas. Speaking for my discipline, we still don’t have clear answers to some of the most critical questions in political science. What is the relationship between income distribution and democracy? How can political systems address the issues of justice, equity and efficiency simultaneously?  Is democracy exportable to the rest of the world? Maybe some of these students who are so eagerly channeled into STEM disciplines might have the answer, but we would never know…

I am not arguing that we should terminate the efforts to recruit more students into STEM disciplines. As long as the short fall in those areas continues, this is certainly a noble mission, especially when it encourages the recruitment of women and minority students.

But I think STEM support should not come at the expense of other areas, particularly the social sciences. We should not build structural barricades for good students that effectively steer them away from social sciences.

Skimming the top students and placing them into technical fields might give us top-notch nurses, doctors and civil engineers. But it would deprive us of top-notch writers, diplomats, and political leaders.

Given the way world affairs is unfolding lately (Syria about to explode, Iran brewing nukes, Arab Spring spinning out of control, Europeans agonizing over self-inflicted wounds, China being a Pandora’s box, etc, etc) we do need the best and the brightest as leaders and diplomats.

Wishing you all brilliant veterinarians and political leaders,

The STEM-wary Academic Mommy

Universities: The Gateways to Freedom or Submissiveness

Above photo is taken at a public university in Turkey. It may not seem remarkable at first glance. Just another plain cement building, reminiscent of the uninspiring public sector.

However, what makes it interesting is the two words written above those doors: “Student Entrance” (Öğrenci Girişi)

Few feet away, just around the corner is another door. “Faculty Member Entrance” (Öğretim Üyesi Girişi) it says.

I am sorry, but having separate entrances for the academic staff and the students -at a public university, of all places- reminds me of the Jim Crow laws in the US. This is segregation to me, no matter how you swing it.

What could be the rationale for having separate doors for faculty members and the students? Are the university students a wild pack that we need to avoid when getting in and out of the buildings? Would the mighty professors get stepped on if they walked with the common folk? It just doesn’t make sense…

The problem of hierarchy and super rigid pecking orders under the roof of what is supposed to be a universal institution of higher education bothers me a lot.

When I was teaching at a public university in Ankara, my university had five (yep, FIVE) separate lunch halls depending on your status in the pecking order.

At the bottom were the students. They had their separate place and God forbid, if they dared to show up at the other lunch halls. Their cards wouldn’t work and they would get scoffed at.

Then came the super rigid ladder for the staff. The lowest step was the manual laborers. They had their separate quarters tucked way in the back. Only once I peeked my head in, for I had lost my way. Instantly everyone stared at me and I understood my grave (!) mistake. I bowed down and backed out to my assigned quarters…

Next, came the second tier of staff. These were low ranking, white-collar workers, such as secretaries. They wouldn’t mix with the manual laborers, but wouldn’t mix with the higher ranked staff either.

With my meager status as a TA, I was a member of the third tier. This was a middle-of-the-road crowd, with bunch of low ranking academics, like TAs and instructors, and high-ranking admin staff, such as faculty secretaries. Assistant Professors who wanted to show some solidarity also came and ate with us.

Lastly, the top tier: Assistant Professors and up. The mighty professors didn’t line up with trays like us the commoners. They were perched up at a restaurant with the best views of campus, had tables with white linen and waiting staff…  

In a recent column, Gunduz Vassaf states that human beings feel extremely submissive to authority, when they don’t feel confident and powerful as individuals. He gives the examples of universities in Turkey, as institutions that cultivate this culture of hierarchy and submission.

Unfortunately, since the last military coup in 1980 the academic circles in Turkey failed terribly in terms of adhering to the universal principles of higher education. Instead teaching universal values like equality and freedom, majority of the universities are grinding the young generations into docility and submission. Their institutional culture is inimical to cultivating self-respecting individuals with critical thinking skills. Segregated entrances and lunch halls are all part of this structure that instills submission to authority.

The word university is derived from the Latin word, universe. It is composed by putting together uni (one) and versus (turned), with the combined meaning referring to one becoming whole, as in the whole cosmos.

If we cannot even bring students and faculty together and have them walk through the same gates and have lunch at the same tables, what kind of a whole are we talking about? What kind of a university are we talking about?

When I transferred to a different university in Ankara, one of the first things I appreciated was the de-segregated food court! Faculty members and students all lined up with their trays, chose their meals and sat wherever they could find. All as equal human beings! What a relief, I thought...

Wishing you all free and egalitarian university experiences,

The hierarch-averse Academic Mommy

Visiting the Brazilian Ambassador:

Photo: Ministry of External Relations (The Itamaraty Palace) in Brasilia, Brazil

  Today, I had a nice long visit with the Brazilian Ambassador. As usual, we covered many topics ranging from PetroBras to black labs... But my entry is not about the content of our conversation. Rather, I’d like to talk about political cultures.

  Throughout my academic career, I had the opportunity to encounter and work for some high profile individuals. At my Alma Mater, Bogazici University, for instance, I was the assistant for the then vice-rector, who got degrees from Yale and Stanford.

  When working at the University of Hartford in Connecticut, I had the chance to meet with the ex-president of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo. We had a nice chat about my dissertation with Dr. Zedillo, who incidentally has PhD in Economics from Yale.

  My last rector in Turkey, who was recently promoted to be the head of the highest scientific research institute of the country, received his PhD from Georgia Tech. He was both the sharpest and most accessible administrator that I ever worked with.

Here is where I am trying to get at:

  When I look at the high profile people that I interact with, the ones that I communicate with utmost ease all have some education experience in the US. Therefore, it wasn't a great surprise for me when the Ambassador said he too had studied in the US. 

  I think the higher education system in the US, particularly the Liberal Arts tradition, is the best form of soft power that the US could ever achieve. It breeds a unique blend of cosmopolitan individuals, who acquire the pragmatic, laid-back, no-nonsense attitude that is emblematic of the American political culture.

Let me put this in a comparative perspective, so that the contrast would pop out more:

  In my home country, which is not much different from the other members of the developing word, protocol and hierarchy are strongly entrenched qualities in political culture. The higher up in the ranks you go, the more stiff you get. Consequently, it is really hard to have a genuinely open, productive communication with these people…

  Unfortunately, the Europeans are not immune to this stiffness virus either. Their strong adherence to bureaucracy (see the colossus they’ve created called the EU), the meandering way they talk, which involves so many subtle connotations that you need a decoder to capture them all, make it really hard to get to the nuts and bolts of an issue. 

  There has been a growing literature on the American decline since the 1980s. Yet, most of these were coming from the left-leaning IR scholars, hence were not taken too seriously by the mainstream. Recently however, even the centrist, mainstream scholars are talking about the “US decline”. (Here is a great piece by Stephen Walt of Harvard)

  Hard power (military and economy) is a whole other issue. But if it wants to maintain its soft power, the US cannot afford to lose its global edge in higher education.

My humble suggestion: 

 Get the  public university budgets off the butcher block, and stop the intimidating visa procedures for international scholars and students. What all these end up doing is undermining the precious US soft power in the long run... 

  Happy Thanksgiving!

The Liberal Arts loving Academic Mommy