Review-of-Why-I-Am-Not-a-Professor-or-The-Decline-and-Fall-of-the-British-University.doc

Review of “ Why I Am Not a Professor or The Decline and Fall of the British University ”Introduction Suffering from the great depression brought by the WWII, the British government undertook a series of reform in higher-education system to guarantee access to university for all students and provide more talents for the personnel market. However, has it met its prospective goals virtually? Under the title “ Why I Am Not a Professor or The Decline and Fall of the British University ”, Mark Tarver, a former lecturer of School of Computing at University of Leeds, states that the British university undergoes a decline after implementing the reform. He claims that the “ modularisation ” messes up the students degree studies and the preparation for the assessments occupies most of the lecturers time. Ultimately, it leads to a slump in the education quality. In his article, Dr. Tarver does present some thought-provoking problems, but his arguments lack some adequate evidences to be convincing. Besides, he is apt to be shackled by his identity of being a lecturer, hence the article falls short of objectivity.Summary In his article, Dr. Tarver claims that the British University is experiencing a decline, then he gives an analysis over how the British University makes its descent. He owes the down-turn to the two measures that the school takes- one is the “modularization”, and the other is the assessment of teaching and research. According to the author, the “modularization”, which allows students to select whatever courses they like, mixes students degree studies and produces many unqualified graduates. Furthermore, the options allotted to the students trigger the drop-off of some hard traditional subjects, making it impossible for brilliant students to learn. Additionally, the assessments are merely a sort of ideology. The lecturers write papers industriously, though their products are just valueless “empty sets”. Finally, he concludes that what the system brought to the students is “debt and degree inflation”, and the students have little communication with their lecturers who dedicate themselves to writing papers.Arguments and Evaluations Dr. Tarver points out a great many problems that pop up since the adoption of the reforms, for example, the general degeneration of students academic performance. Then, he reveals some serious phenomena prevailing in British universities, such as “scaling” and not failing students for their money. And the metaphor he employs, “ Figures record yet another triumphant over-fulfillment of the five-year plan while the peasants drop dead of starvation in the fields”, vividly presents the scenario that the leturers are blindly scribbling for piles of papers to get a promotion. However, the article lacks some sufficient evidences to support its arguments, and all the arguments are too subjective to be persuasive enough. First of all, the author fails to recognize the merits of “modularization”. According to Abigail Bairstow, a graduate from the School of Computing at University of Leeds, who is now a business consultant working at Systems Applied Intelligence, says that “Each lecturer we had for different modules were passionate and enthusiastic about the module they were teaching which helped interest students as it made it more interactive.”As he said, the modularization enables lecturers to specialize in one specific module, and thereby it also helps students acquire professional knowledge. “ The School of Computing courses were right up-to-date and clearly relevant to business. Not only did they cover technical topics but also more business-oriented subjects such as strategy, “ says Tim Kormornick, an alumnus of School of Computing, while asked about why he chose the University of Leeds during an interview. That the modularization covering a varieties of topics, ensures its courses keep abreast with the times, attracts more students. Second, the author takes no account of that carrying out the reform takes time, while saying the hundreds of papers are just “empty sets” seven years ago. As is shown on the website of the Shanghai Ranking, “In the recent RAE ( which assesses the quality of research in universities and colleges in the UK), more than half our schools were ranked in the top 10 in the country-and 61% of our research was judged to be world leading or internationally excellent ”, the quality of research is going up. Finally, the authors concludes that students have little opportunity to contact with their lecturers who are too busy filling out the forms and chasing money, which seems to be totally groundless. “Also, when I needed help with coursework etc, they were always willing to help and provide assistance, when they could have easily said no as they were too busy with their research,” John Hitchon, another alumnus recalled. Actually, the lecturers are always very enthusiastic in communicating with students, despite their busy research.Conclusion From the aspect of the content, we can draw a conclusion that the reform did brought some problems to the British higher-education, however, as time goes by, it also illustrated its benefits to the education system. From the aspect of the writing, the insufficient su