学生应该成为研究生课程的主导者

I know, why don't students just teach themselves? Better still, we might explain to this author the history of knowledge.

Clearly the writer is simply trying to stir up reaction. Do not assume that academic life is some kind of vocation.

This is morally bankrupt. As the author recognizes, it would further entrench a class of early-career academics who are employed on temporary contracts for a few years, with great financial and geographic instability. Forced to focus on intensive teaching rather than updating their knowledge with the latest developments in their field, their careers would last only as long as their doctoral research was cutting edge, after which they would need to seek non-academic careers--with few of the transferrable skills firms seek in new recruits. But this would not merely damage the tens of thousands of academic mayflies who dedicate years of their life preparing for temporary, fragile teaching gigs. It would damage the whole academic system, and the societies who rely on the knowledge they generate, by directing many promising young academics away from research. Rather than dedicating their careers to a mixture of research and teaching, as used to be the norm, this proposal would see capable scholars forced to abandon research entirely, taking a series of temporary teaching roles at the whims of a fickle market until their once cutting-edge knowledge becomes stale and out-of-date. Rather than playing a role bridging the two worlds of research and education, creating new knowledge and insight then passing it along to the next generation--along with unquantifiable tacit knowledge generated through deep, longstanding familiarity with their field as it develops--this proposal would see the bridge broken, and the cost falling on the side of research. This is indefensible.

Agree with the comments above - this is a depressing article in a THE that also highlights the impact of COVID-19 on staff without permanent contracts. Universities are not just followers of trends or fashion nor do we provide training. Education is a process of transformation that produces, inter alia, an effect on employability. If I did not have greater insight into where my subject is heading than the students and society in general, then there would be something wrong. An article such as this one is really out of place since the pandemic should have shown us that none of our endeavours matter if we do not survive to enjoy their rewards. Let us decouple education from its utilitarian aspects.

Except for the hire and fire them - the block module described here happens in a lot of Business Schools.

Great theory, except had this applied in the past, the world would still be flat, women still wouldn't be allowed to learn mathematics for fear of shrivelling their ovaries/brains, and we'd be treating Covid-19 with leeches and mercury. Working towards an understanding of the world takes a lot more than obedient submission to flat pack knowledge. The work of leading sociologist Basil Bernstein is helpful here. He talked a lot in his work about the dangers of divorcing knowledge from the knower in education in the way the author of this article seems to want. Bernstein drew on Durkheim's ideas of 'sacred' and 'profane' forms of knowledge, and this is an important distinction if you are the understand university-level learning. If you commoditise 'profane' knowledge to be delivered in corporate packages in this way, by itinerant academics as a kind of side-hustle, then you end up with a kind of sterile, static package of material that degrades over time, never refreshed by more recent research. The knowledge they communicate ends up simple being a reflection of a reflection of a reflection, increasingly devoid of meaning. If, on the other hand, you have people working deeply and thoughtfully on new research in which they feel personally and spiritually invested, aka 'sacred' knowledge, weaving that into their teaching, you end up with something altogether richer and more dynamic, that reflects the best of what is known and understood at any given time, and which encourages deep engagement on the part of students (and their teachers). If you don't understand that, then you don't really understand what the entire point of the university is supposed to be. Like the slow food movement, we are the slow learning movement - if you don't like that, go and find an intellectual hamburger and leave the rest of us to savour our whole foods slowly.

So is the UK government sponsoring articles in the THE as well as the Mail now?

Honestly, this is the kind of lazy journalism I’d exempt from the Sun, but actually they would probs have been more subtle. I HATE when people who make comparisons drawing on the US. It’s a totally different system, funded differently, organized differently, and looks at teaching and learning in very different ways. The assertions made here are obviously meant to provoke. Why is our trade publication publishing this stuff? Please can we just have some decent journalism?

Whee are suddenly these education apostles coming from preaching total nonsense. Put them on casual contracts immediately with zero chance for renewal.