Things academic

Interesting article How to Learn About Everything (via Marginal Revolution which has interesting comments). Some excerpts:
"Note that the title above isn’t “how to learn everything”, but “how to learn about everything”. The distinction I have in mind is between knowing the inside of a topic in deep detail — many facts and problem-solving skills — and knowing the structure and context of a topic: essential facts, what problems can be solved by the skilled, and how the topic fits with others.

This knowledge isn’t superficial in a survey-course sense: It is about both deep structure and practical applications. Knowing about, in this sense, is crucial to understanding a new problem and what must be learned in more depth in order to solve it. The cross-disciplinary reach of nanotechnology almost demands this as a condition of competence.

Studying to learn about everything
I recommend that intellectually ambitious students invest considerable time in a mode of study may set off subconscious alarm signals that conflicts with almost instinctive impulses imparted by classroom experience:


Read and skim journals and textbooks that (at the moment) you only half understand. . Include Science and Nature.
Seldom stop to study a single subject with a student’s intensity, as if you had to pass a test on it.
Don’t drop a subject because you know you’d fail a test — instead, read other half-understandable journals and textbooks to accumulate vocabulary, perspective, and context.
Notice that concepts make more sense when you revisit a topic, and note which topics provide keys to many others.
Continue until almost everything you encounter in Science and Nature makes sense as a contribution to a field you know something about.
Why is this effective?
You learned your native language by immersion, not by swallowing and regurgitating spoonfuls of grammar and vocabulary. With comprehension of words and the unstructured curriculum of life came what we call “common sense”.

The aim of what I’ve described is to learn an expanded language and to develop what amounts to common sense, but about an uncommonly broad slice of the world. Immersion and gradual comprehension work, and I don’t know of any other way."

The general thrust of this and his previous article seem interesting and useful to me, even with in one subject. It is not so hard to get a grasp of the structure of related areas or possible areas which may have a bearing on the problems one is interested in. Sometimes, one may be even able to contribute to these areas if one has an understanding of the general structure and not the worn-out techniques. I think that it avoids narrow specialization and some later thinking type of approaches. I think that I followed this type of approach without actually articulating and has been useful in my research.

Somewhat related article Tenure and the Future of the University. Summary (need subscription for the full artcle):
"The fundamental rationale for the tenure system has been to promote the long-term development of new ideas and to challenge students' thinking. Proponents argued more than 60 years ago that tenure is needed to provide faculty the freedom to pursue long-term risky research agendas and to challenge conventional wisdom (1). Those arguments are still being made today (2) and are still valid. However, a 30-year trend toward privatization is creating a pseudo–market environment within public universities that marginalizes the tenure system. A pseudo–market environment is one in which no actual market is possible, but market-like mechanisms (such as benchmarking and rankings based on research dollars, student evaluations, or similar attributes) are used to approximate a market."
I think that the tenure system worked fairly well in USA. Howit works in each country may depend on the culture and institutions.