Is There a Tendency to Critique University Research?

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

University research has come under increasing fire in the last few years. Maybe part of it is that people have started to feel that it's politicized and maybe another piece of it is connected to sort of the replication crisis like in social science, which is your domain. Part of the problem with replication, I think, is that there's a kind of rush to publication. There also are just egregious cases of misconduct.

Read the full transcript here.

Why are colleges and universities valuable to societies? Why does formal post-secondary education seem unnecessary for some fields like programming, where a person can learn everything they need from internet resources? Do universities have a monopoly on credentials? If so, is that monopoly warranted and desirable, or does it stifle innovation and reduce competition? Why have tuition costs been skyrocketing over the past few decades? How does the quantity and quality of university research compare to military and private research? Are universities too political? Should the humanities still be taught in universities? How must colleges and universities evolve to keep pace with technological and economic change?

Nicholas Dirks, President and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences, is an internationally renowned historian and anthropologist. He leads the Academy in promoting science-based solutions to world challenges, including pandemics and global warming. His work at the Academy facilitates the dissemination of scientific information, supports broad access to science education, studies counter bias in academia and the laboratory, and supports scientists across all stages of their careers. He was awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and has taught at UC Berkeley, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, and Columbia University. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Staff