Journal of Advanced Composition, Volume 14, Number 2, Fall 1994 Page: 343
viii, 316-612 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Critical Theory 343
education. It's an interesting question, but I don't know the answer: Are
the current cutbacks all across the country, both in private and public
universities, simply part of a temporary recession, or are they part of a
larger change that won't really go away? I don't know the answer to that,
but it's conceivable that for various complicated reasons it might happen
in the United States that there will be a change in the assumption about
what percentage of the population ought to get a higher education. The
United States is quite unique in the West in this; a much smaller percent-
age of the population goes to the university in Germany or England.
Relatively speaking, you still have to be chosen, and not as many people
are chosen. We've decided to make higher education almost universally
accessible. We think of it as part of democracy, but England, France, and
Germany are democratic countries too, and they don't give the same
access to the university. It's a democratic access, but not as many people
are chosen. Whether that will be the case in this country or not, I don't
know. Itwould be a major change. I hope not. But there's no doubt at the
moment that there is both a conservative attack on the universities and a
reduction in funding that gives people an opportunity to begin eliminating
things, especially in the humanities. It's already being used for that
purpose, particularly with the so-called peripheral programs, the ones
that are precisely the interdisciplinary ones. You say, "We've got to have
an English department, but it's not so clear that we have to have women's
studies," and so you just sort of phase women's studies out. Lack of money
can always be used as an excuse for making political and ideological
decisions, and one is made very uneasy about that; nor can one deny that
this might happen. I hope it doesn't happen. Moreover, I think the
transformation of the goals and purposes of teaching, particularly in the
people who are going to be doing it, will occur especially within a few years
when so many older people will have retired. The younger professors,
trained as they have been with these new interests, will for better or worse
be all there is to hire, and their ideas of what you do with an English
department are going to be different enough so that the changes will
happen in spite of attacks from the conservative right. I think that's why
the right is worried; they see this change as something that's really going
to happen and is already happening. So I'm very optimistic. I think there
will be a lot of interesting transformations. I'm sorry I'm not going to be
around another thirty years or so because I think it's going to be very
exciting to try to figure out how to deal with the possibilities of change in
a responsible way. That is, in many cases you'll have an English depart-
ment where within about five years forty percent of the senior faculty will
retire and an entirely new set of people will be in charge, with all the power
and responsibility to make changes; it's going to be both exciting and
interesting but also a challenge to do that responsibly.
Q. Over the years you've certainly had your share of intellectual disagree-
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Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition (U.S.). Journal of Advanced Composition, Volume 14, Number 2, Fall 1994, periodical, 1994; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28611/m1/37/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .