








































© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2009, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW

[Expo. 3.2 (2009) 141–142] Expositions (print) ISSN 1747-5368  
doi:10.1558/expo.v3i2.141 Expositions (online) ISSN 1747-5376 

Overheard in the academy

Crisis, Opportunity, Danger? Mark C. Taylor’s “End the 
University as We Know It”

BERNARD G. PRUSAK

Center for Liberal Education, Villanova University

As no doubt all too many academics do not need to be reminded, the  
recent and ongoing economic crisis has many colleges and universities run-
ning scared—cutting budgets and courses, if not faculty and programs, freez-
ing salaries and new hires, warily watching every dollar and every report of 
the latest “economic indicators,” as well as buzzwords. This is the context for 
the bombshell opening sentences of Mark C. Taylor’s April 26, 2009 New 
York Times op-ed, “End the University as We Know It.” “Graduate educa-
tion,” Taylor wrote,

is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American 
universities produce a product for which there is no market (candi-
dates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for 
which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within sub-
fields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-
minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over 
$100,000 in student loans).

What, then, are we to do? Taylor went on to propose six reforms, among 
which doing away with “[t]he division-of-labor model of separate depart-
ments” in favor of multidisciplinary “problem-centered programs,” and abol-
ishing tenure in favor of multiyear contracts.

Of course, Taylor—long a professor of religion at Williams College, more 
recently chair of the religion department at Columbia University—is hardly 
a lone voice in his criticism of what Alasdair MacIntyre, to name another 
critic, has called “the fragmentation of the American university.” MacIntyre, 
in an article published in Commonweal in 2006 under the title “The End of 
Education,” noted that “[e]ach part of the curriculum is someone’s responsi-



142 Overheard in the  Academy

© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2009

bility, but no one has a responsibility for making the connections between the 
parts” (MacIntyre 2006, 11).1 MacIntyre’s focus in this article is undergradu-
ate education; if the claim to be “the Detroit of higher learning” is taken, 
perhaps we could say that, for MacIntyre, undergraduate education is the 
IKEA of higher learning, where the job of assembly falls to the student—only 
without instructions.

Taylor’s proposals have provoked, predictably, much discussion, celebra-
tion, and consternation; the Times’ online site lists 437 readers’ comments, 
and a quick Google search shows bloggers found yet more to say. Expositions 
has asked four scholars to reflect more deliberately on Taylor’s criticisms and 
proposals. Though it appears, pace popular opinion, not to be an “ancient 
Chinese proverb,” perhaps there is still, after all, opportunity in crisis, in this 
instance for higher education. Or perhaps there is only danger.

Note
1. Compare MacIntyre 2009, 135 and 174.

References
MacIntyre, Alasadair.

2009 God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical 
Tradition. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

2006 The End of Education: The Fragmentation of the American University. 
Commonweal 133(18), (October 20, 2006): 10–14.


