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Quote by Louis Menand

“The difficulty with coming up with a curriculum is mainly that faculty aren't trained to think in terms of general education. They're trained to think in terms of their own discipline, or their specialty.”

Quote by Louis Menand

Author

Louis Menand is an American writer renowned for his cultural commentary and literary criticism. His writing style is characterized by incisive analysis and a sense of humor, covering a wide range of topics from history to contemporary social issues. more

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“Getting faculties to come to a consensus about something that they've never really thought about or had to worry about in their careers before can be a rather slow process and a long process, it certainly was the case at Harvard, and it's the case with most of the general education curricula that I know of, it takes four or five years just to get everybody on board with one idea.”

Knows Years Long Ideas Process Careers Cases Worry Five Four Boards Five Years Faculty Consensus Harvard General Education

Author:Louis Menand

“You want diversity in any intellectual organization. I mean, that's how good ideas arise.”

Want Mean Ideas Diversity Intellectual Organization Arise Good Ideas

Author:Louis Menand

“Universities are set up to get people to work together by having them disagree with each other.”

People Together University Working Together Disagree

Author:Louis Menand

“Basically what you want in any profession - I would say the same thing if I were a lawyer or a doctor - is you want bright undergraduates to look at your profession as something they would be interested in getting into.”

Ifs Want Looks Would Be Doctors Profession What You Want Lawyer

Author:Louis Menand

“I do worry a lot about the time it takes for people to get a PhD, about the difficulty of finding employment, about the difficulty of getting tenure, and generally about the perception that undergraduates have, that this is a very high-risk career to get started.”

People Careers Worry Risk Findings Perception Difficulty Employment Tenure Phds High Risk

Author:Louis Menand

“It's generally sort of sociologically observed that the better educated people are, the more liberal they tend to be, which would suggest that professors are going to be more liberal than the general public.”

People Educated Professors General Public

Author:Louis Menand

“I don't think that you want to see universities in any way trying to have any kind of quota system about political views, or views in general. You want the market to work in the way the market works.”

Thinking Way Want Trying Kind Political Views University Quota Political View

Author:Louis Menand

“The time between Bachelor's degree and a PhD, the median time is over 11 years. So then you're still only on a tenure ladder, you're not tenured. So it generally takes 6 to 8 years after that to get tenure. So that's a very long period of what's essentially apprenticeship, of insecurity.”

Years Long Stills Periods Degrees Insecurity Ladders Bachelors Tenure Apprenticeship Phds Median

Author:Louis Menand

“It's difficult to get a job and people stay in school longer because they're employed as teaching assistants or instructors by their schools, by their schools where they're graduate students, and that does become exploitative eventually because they're very cheap labor and there's a way in which in it's not in the institution's interest to give them a degree if they can continue to employ them, I don't think anybody thinks that way, but effectively that's the way the system is starting to work.”

“Cognitive science is a rapidly developing area, so it could be that there are some surprises around the corner. That does seem to be kind of where the trend line is leading.”

Kind Doe Seems Lines Areas Surprise Corners Developing Be Kind Trends Cognitive Around The Corner Cognitive Science

Author:Louis Menand