Dave Weinberger links to this report on what may be an indicator of the future structure of academia:
Ninety-nine “top” Harvard professors are calling for the ceation of a new coordinating committee with the power to hire 75 science faculty for research that doesn’t fit comfortably within a single established discipline, according to an article in the Boston Globe today. The committee would also have the power to allocate funding for inter-disciplinary projects.
This reminds me of The Medici Effect, where the author shows how exponential innovations that can occur when examining one field through the lens of another field.
In the 1960’s we saw the rise of inter-curriculum studies, such as Canadian studies, combining courses from various academic disciplines, but no major changes in the major disciplines. With the Internet and easier connections to colleagues in other fields, or even outside an academic field, will interdisciplinary studies become the dominant mode for higher education? And if so, what happens to the traditional disciplines?
1 thought on “More inter-disciplinary projects”