I recently attended a presentation by David Helfand who is the President of Quest University Canada. The talk was entitled "UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM: STARTING FROM SCRATCH" and I was amazed at how radically different this university is from all the rest:
* There are no departments, or ranks: all academics are called tutors and sit randomly in a round building.
* Lectures are taken sequentially thus students have to devote all their attention to one topic during a few weeks and therefore can spend time doing field work without the problem of attending other lectures or doing someone else's homework.
* Field trips are part of the curricula in many courses.
* Education of students is the main priority, unlike other universities (such as the ones in the UK) in which teaching time is generally seen as a burden since it counts for very very little when it comes to progression (way below publications or research money).
* Instead of "teaching load" and "research opportunities" they regard activities as "teaching opportunities" and "research load".
David Helfand was a professor of Astronomy at Columbia University in NY and a highly successful academic in the traditional path and has lead Quest to be the best University in Canada as measured by five key criteria: academic challenge, student-faculty interaction, supportive campus environment, active and collaborative learning, and enriching educational experience. Given that they just started in 2007 this sounds amazing.
Needless to say, they were only able to start this University Model because they began from scratch without the inertia that is present in other universities where departments are natural barriers, etc.
Anyone is aware of this university model and has any ideas of how could this be translated to traditional universities?
Well, I agree in that it is the university of the future, or rather of the present with all the rest being universities of the past. I would not see any traditional university changing radically their internal structure or their promotions structure simply because a) it would be considered risky and b) those who have climbed through the existing systems would not like to see it scrapped so easily.
Helfand himself tried to changed things at Columbia and after many many years (something like 20) he was able to add ONE core subject.
The idea of having different kinds of staff for teaching and research is getting through:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/09/09/study-finds-students-learn-more-non-tenure-track-instructors#!
but teaching staff are sometimes seen as second-class, at least in many UK institutions.
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