“"I'm a practical guy, I am not an egghead," Kaplan said. "I can't sit and do these ephemeral things."....”

James Kaplan immediately reminds me of those who are illegitimately scornful of “eggheads.” Richard Hofstadter’s wrote about this phenomenon in his seminal --Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963)--. This is the sort of bad anti-intellectualism which I unhesitatingly reject. Is there such a thing as good anti-intellectualism. Yup, there most certainly is! I also whole heartedly agree with William F. Buckley that it would be better to be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston phone than the faculty of Harvard University. One simply has to make the proper distinctions.

Well, this I find depressing.

Look, Hip-Hooray for productivity checkers, as many's the tiime I've sat at my PC and whiled away at the web while waiting the results of this decision or that. But I think perhaps Mr. Kaplan is in the wrong line of work for productivity arguments. My contention goes something like this.

AMong other reasons, my friendship with Tom Foster (this boards TommyG) has to do with a shared past. Tom now 'totes the gun' as I did in my younger days, and one hopes that he'll use that expertise to one day follow on and direct 'things'.

Back when I was 'toting the gun', stomping about the back-marshes of this rock, I took it as a matter of course that my efforts on the 'all execution, no thinking' front were balanced by some 'egg-head' with a 'THD' thinking deep thoughts back in the good ol' e pluribus unum.

And I'd be just as angry to here that some 'efficiency expert' was stalking professors in the white towers, as I would when they showed up (and they did) with their clip-boards and started telling us that a squad of 9 could accomplish just as much as a squad of 11 (Mind you, I think it's down to 7 now). The social contract implicit in professional organizations - whether organized for breaking things, or fixing things - is that they police themselves. At least that is what was being taught at university when I attended.

Mr. Kaplan, if *your* professionals are not to be allowed to pursue knowledge for it's own sake, then who is?

Josef Pieper perspicaciously contended that “Leisure: (is) The Basis of Culture.” A persistently active person will rarely, if ever, achieve intellectual greatness. Choosing the life of the scholar requires one to possess something of the contemplative spirit. You definitely need to to “waste” time. And I might also add, you must enjoy being by yourself for long periods of time.

They could always hire professors in India, and have the classes provided by videoconference, or by prerecorded streaming video.

Having spent 20 years as a business "practitioner" (as academics humorously call us)and now the last 5 years as an academician, I can say without a doubt....Let me say this a little more emphatically, I can say in no uncertain terms that the academic community is a sesspool of inefficiency and laziness. Kaplan has hit the motherlode of logic. And he will quickly realize that the process will involve changing the "diapers" of a whole community of screeching 2 year olds.

Dan,

I'd say your post says a lot mroe about you than about Mr. Kaplan. Specifically, you seem to have a religious belief that "Universities" and "Professors" are good, without any examination of what they're actually accomplishing (i.e. "output).

American Universities are finally starting to reap what they've sown. This is a good thing. What is the benefit to the IL taxpayer of one more monograph on "Feminist images in Jane Autin's books", or whatever drivel the English Profs are publishing these days? If they're not teaching great works that speak to us across the generations, exactly what are they accomplishing that makes them worth the money we're spending on them?

There are a lot of things the government, and people in general, can spend money on. Bastions of thought and knowledge, dedicated to learning and understanding, would be quite valuable. Bastions of political correctness, group-think, and left wing indoctrination are not. Unfortunately, US Universtities today seem to be more of the later.

It's long been a source of amusement to read telling critiques of the current system of funding research, published by academics. Who then turn around and scream like gelded horses when anyone tries to address the issue. Which is what this sounds like.

"Despite this fact, the state's control over the university system -- with its added layers of regulation and bureacucacy -- has not changed one iota."

It would seem that Kaplan and the Administration are buddy buddy. As most bureacucacys are.

Clean up the administration, put some good leaders in there, then let the new administration clean up the expences, teachers, ect.

Socio-orthographic note: posters who favor "efficiency" also seem to have trouble spelling. This is not to dispute that academe is a sesspool [sic] of, um, you know, waste.

But I expect that a meaningful evaluation (or, God help us, "metric") of academic productivity will take a bit more thought than Kaplan wants to give it. Of course academics have come up with plenty of these themselves. They're called rankings. Perhaps you could divide them by budget to provide a starting point?