Critical-review-of-Why-I-am-not-a-professor-or-the-Decline-and-Fall-of-British-University.docx

Course: Advanced English WritingInstructor: Professor Guo FenrongName:吴梓涵Student Number: 2014013585Review of “Why I Am Not a Proffessor or The decline and Fall of the British University”IntroductionUniversity education has been expanded widely. And more and more students get a opportunity to complete higher education. Without many benefits, there comes up with many problems such as a lower entrance standard, poor teaching quality and less quality degree.These kinds of problem have arouse worries among some experts. Dr. Mark Tarver, a professor of computer science in UK, in his article Why I Am Not a Proffessor or The Decline and Fall of the British University, expresses his opinions over British university education. He cites his own story to points out the decline and fall of British university education under egalitarianism driven by government. From his writing, Dr. Mark Tarver doesnt mentioned the merits but present us some existed problems over university education which really have the universality among universities all over the world.Summary Dr. Mark Tarver states his own story of quoting job as a tenured lecturer and says his story is “also the story of decline and fall of British university and corruption of the academic ideal”. Dr. Mark Tarver points out “universities are extraordinary” because of their poor “foundation blocks” medievalism left. And Dr. Mark Tarver takes his experience as a lecturer in the period of “expansion of university system” , which is in order to argue that the decline and fall begin under the egalitarianism driven by government. He believes that the expansion is noble but it brings enviousness among lecturers, and government simply choose to “water down the education system to a lower standard” rather than making efforts to “improve the educational qualities”. According to Dr. Mark Tarver, a few years later, problems of this system appear. In case of not failing students, there are two ways: “scaling” the marks and ignoring plagiarism, which result students lower “level of attainment”. Dr. Mark Tarver illustrates two criterions of assessment: “Teaching Quality Assessment” and “Research”, which are useless and dont really work for improving educational qualities. And toward egalitarianism, he expresses his worries such as staff crisis, lower teaching quality and debt and degree inflation. He concludes that new university education systems have many hidden problems.Arguments and evaluation In his article, Dr. Mark Tarver doesnt state the merits of university education under egalitarianism. But coins always have two sides. Dr. Mark Tarver only illustrates the problems, and readers are very likely to deny the university education. Actually university education system does have merits in many aspects. For instance, it provides valuable opportunities for those low-born students to make a better future for themselves. It is no doubt that egalitarianism does help in some ways. Moreover, widening access to university generally improves citizens educational level.However, those negative points that Dr. Mark Tarver puts forward are more thought-provoking. First, government choose to widen access to university, then they choose an easier but careless way: Simply “watering down the educational system to a lower standard” attracts more student to university. However, we know that university education is superior which provides strong backup for the needs of elites. But elites are just a small part in our society. The lower standard hurts teaching quality which is crucial to foster elites.Under the new system, Dr. Mark Tarver talks about the criterion of assessment. The ostensible aims are sounding noble but the results are not what are expected. What lectures do are mostly about completing teaching tasks, winning bonus and getting promotion. No one focus on real academy and true scholars and proffessors are less than before. These existed phenomenons are normal but no one talks about them straightly. Dr. Mark Tarver writes them down to awaken readers to current situation of university education.Conclusion: As a university professor, Dr. Mark Tarver analyses weak spots of British university education based on his own experience, although he doesnt list good parts. But his op