The academic system is to preserve a very specific culture that happened to be really good at uncovering the truth. You can tell that because otherwise none of the rigmarole around degrees makes a lot of sense. The only way I know of to preserve cultures is a really lopsided teacher-student relation where the teacher has absurd amounts of power. Otherwise the culture won't be preserved.
There is this odd tension between academics and society where there was this system that was never designed for it is being treated like some sort of vocational certification system. It'll be a pity if academic culture gets destroyed on the way through.
Anyway, TLDR; I agree that the academic system is archaic and paternalistic but if that is a problem people should expect to go build a new system. Preserving a culture is going to get archaic in less than a generation.
but if that is a problem people should expect to go build a new system
Imagine you're walking on the street and see a helicopter crashed on a tree. You don't need to be a helicopter mechanic, or aeronautical engineer, or a pilot, to know that the helicopter shouldn't be on that tree. And you definitely don't need to propose new helicopter control methods to apply common sense and conclude that it's a bad thing that the helicopter crashed on the tree and we should try to not do that again in the future.
Sure, but imagine you go to a university and see a pretty standard mentor-apprentice relationship designed to perpetuate a culture. We don't need to be psychologists to apply common sense and say it is done that way for a good reason and alternative approaches should be trialled in a different system.
It would be good to have a better system, but we can develop it without risking the valuable academic culture. You can see how valuable it is because people keep signing up to it despite the archaic nature of its traditions.
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The academic system is to preserve a very specific culture that happened to be really good at uncovering the truth. You can tell that because otherwise none of the rigmarole around degrees makes a lot of sense. The only way I know of to preserve cultures is a really lopsided teacher-student relation where the teacher has absurd amounts of power. Otherwise the culture won't be preserved.
There is this odd tension between academics and society where there was this system that was never designed for it is being treated like some sort of vocational certification system. It'll be a pity if academic culture gets destroyed on the way through.
Anyway, TLDR; I agree that the academic system is archaic and paternalistic but if that is a problem people should expect to go build a new system. Preserving a culture is going to get archaic in less than a generation.
Imagine you're walking on the street and see a helicopter crashed on a tree. You don't need to be a helicopter mechanic, or aeronautical engineer, or a pilot, to know that the helicopter shouldn't be on that tree. And you definitely don't need to propose new helicopter control methods to apply common sense and conclude that it's a bad thing that the helicopter crashed on the tree and we should try to not do that again in the future.
Sure, but imagine you go to a university and see a pretty standard mentor-apprentice relationship designed to perpetuate a culture. We don't need to be psychologists to apply common sense and say it is done that way for a good reason and alternative approaches should be trialled in a different system.
It would be good to have a better system, but we can develop it without risking the valuable academic culture. You can see how valuable it is because people keep signing up to it despite the archaic nature of its traditions.