The current direction of BYU Provo
 

discourages me.

I long for the days of Oaks or Lee. I know eventually this too must pass, but the days of academic retrenchment are horrifying, as BYU treads water, becoming nothing more than a glorified seminary.

Agreed. There's a lot more emphasis on living the honor code than on learning.

Well said, and I can't improve on these posts, and I doubt anyone else could. Mike, lock up the thread.

Interesting. Are there any specific recent events to which you are refering?

We should start our own quasi LDS university/college. Like the one in Virginia (?). Not because BYU is terrible, but because it would be fun. I wonder how the hierarchy has handled the Virginia thing. I mean, are they working behind the scenes? Would they put pressure on the trustees to do things in certain ways?

On second thought, what a mess. You couldn't pay me enough to do it.

I'm an outsider. But for starters I can tell you, from an outsider's perspective, that while Oaks and Lee were world class academics and administrators, with world class resumes, since Lee seemingly this has not been a criterion for BYU's president. Seemingly ideological purity has been the key. The fact that Michael Young is Utah's and not BYU's president says it all. He should have been Lee's heir apparent; that was the trajectory of his career. Ultimately, I doubt it ever was a possibility, by mutual desire. This philosophical divide at BYU has been well known, of course. The Taliban has seized control of the place. BYU has a lot of very bright and consciencious professors for whom I feel sorry.

I'm ruminating while discussing matters with professors, seeing no vision from Samuelson, remembering my discussions with Rex Lee, and reviewing the rankings of BYU departments. BYU Provo deserves better.

I feel better right now about BYU Idaho with Kim Clark than I do about BYU Provo. The attitude conveyed to me by the few profs known to me is that living the Honor Code is more important than academic scholarship. Geeze, for the most part, the HC should be an afterthought that nobody speaks about, with focus being on academic development and research.

I agree that there is too much emphasis on the Honor Code. I got my undergrad at the Business School, and felt like it was a different environment from the rest of the campus, for what its worth. I was pleased with my experience in the Business School.

I'm not sold on Samuelson either. It almost seems like he didnt really want the job.

the job shouldn't be a calling. it should be a job. I agree, I haven't noticed any particular enthusiasm from Samuelson. He's dutifully serving his time.

Samuelson is triage from the absolute wreckage that was Bateman. I'd say more, but I'm on the market this year...

Send me a message and we can back channel.

I had no doubt Bateman would be a disaster the first time I heard him speak. He struck me as not-so-bright, and quite pretentious.

Later events only confirmed this. I understand he was a good fundraiser however.

I guess the key question is whether the BOT considered him a success. Hence the desire for another water-carrier?

Lot's of Sky Room catered dinners with wealthy alumni. He was great at eating dinner.

Sky room stunk. My wife used to work there.

Of course, I didn't realize back then that almost all food in Provo/Orem is bad.

I am not sure who your professor friends are, and everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, but I think you have been misinformed.

Yes, Kim Clark is a great addition to BYU-Idaho (I am still puzzled as to why they would pull him from his former job - but that is a different story), but things are far worse (academically) for BYU-Idaho. Their honor code is even more strict than the one at BYU-Provo. They pay their faculty a small fraction of what they get in Provo and there is almost no opportunity for scholarship. It is simply a glorified junior college. If you think that having Clark at the helm is going to substantially change things, or that they are now in a better position than BYU-Provo, you are naive.

I am not sure where your dept. rankings are coming from. The law school, accounting program, and business schools are still quite strong. The college of engineering was recently given their highest rating ever. Far ahead of the University of Utah and (IIRC) ahead of USU (which has traditionally had a strong engineering program). BYU still has a long way to go, but I have a hard time believing that things are getting worse.

One of the best and most standard methods of measuring scholarhip is the annual number of publications in peer-reviewed journals. I can state with confidence that the publication rate at BYU is higher than it has ever been in history. Mainly due to the fact that older (dead-wood) faculty are retiring and being replaced with younger faculty who have been given higher expectations for scholarship.

Finally, the notion that the honor code has supplanted focus on research and scholarship is laughable. What do you envision? Faculty being asked to give up research time to patrol the halls looking for coeds whose skirts are too high? Faculty being ask to spend substantial class time lecturing on honor code compliance? Other than the athletic program (which has absolutely nothing to do with academics), there has been no "academic retrenchment" at BYU and certainly no honor code jihad that has had any effect on scholarship.

The oversight of scholarship is primarily accomplished at the dept. and college level. That is where the pressure comes from, and it is largely tied in to the advancement in rank process. The university president has lots of power, but his impact on the day to day operations is limited. Yes, Oaks was a good president. Rex Lee was not so great, IMO. His main initiative was a multi-year "self study" that required a substantial amount of effort by the faculty and staff. He promised that he would cut dead wood and redistribute resources as a result, but almost nothing happened. Massive waste of time. Bateman was clearly the most controversial of the recent presidents. He was an intellectual lightweight in many ways and made several errors, IMO. But he raised a ton of money and his impact on the day to day scholarship of the faculty (as a whole) was neglible. The faculty were enthused about Samuelson when he came, but he hasn't done anything so far to warrant that enthusiasm. No major change of any significance.

BYU needs to decide what its mission is. Perhaps it is to be a funnel for LDS to kids to excel elsewhere. That's what it is now.

Of course my opinion is that the church should divest itself of BYU. I don't know why it should be subsidizing secular education for the wealthiest Mormons on the planet.

They have decided. It is to be an outstanding undergraduate institution with a few areas of strength in graduate education.

what is an excellent undergrad institution? I guess that means you have great teachers, who are not leaders in their field and don't do research, but somehow despite that have gained a great understanding and are able to teach it.

And oh well, if there is no exposure to good research experience when you are an undergrad.

I just don't buy the model. You are either after excellence or you are not.

There are plenty of great universities in the country with institute programs. You get the best of both worlds. A diverse faculty that is allowed to think on their own, smaller religion classes and you don't have to live in Provo!

Regards,
Brian

I agree with you Mike. I think one of the church's primary functions should be education, but not secular education. Too many inherent conflicts. Not the least of which is the poor of the church subsidizing the education of the elite of the church.

Imagine a world where the church pours the money currently going to BYU into institutes and all of those bright LDS kids go to a university near where they grew up, building the church there. There ought to be an institute at every major university. They will never put me in charge, but if they did one of my first acts would be to pull the trigger on that idea.

Here's my program:

http://www.cougarboard.com/noframes/...html?id=812210

BYU would enter a golden age were it to cease its role as the linchpin of the Church's program for indoctrinating youth and divest itself of all institutional relationship with the Church. The occasional squabble between BYU's secular president and the First Presidency, after BYU refused to fire a heretic professor, would, for me, evince healthy tension.

If I graduated from BYU, does that make me part of the Church's elite?

If you are posting on this board, you are likely among the financially elite of the church.

i.e. you have a computer, you have electricity, you likely live in the USA, you are college-educated, and have leisure time.

It just means that the board of trustees has decided that the church does not have the resources (or that it would not be a wise use of resources) to build BYU as a top-tier research school. Instead, they are attempting to get a quality educational experience to as many students as possible.

I have known faculty who have come to BYU from other schools and commented that the focus on pedagogy and excellence in teaching is truly refreshing.

Also you seem to have a pre-conceived bias that there is little or no research at BYU. That simply is not true. While BYU doesn't pretend to be MIT, it does expect each faculty member to excel in scholarship. Some of the older faculty were hired under different expectations, but they are retiring now and being replaced with young faculty who must "publish or perish". And many of them are doing quite well. How can this happen at a primarily undergrad school? BYU has a high student to faculty ratio but they provide strong funding for TA support so that most faculty shouldn't need to spend all their time grading papers. Also, in recent years there have been millions in new funding for supporting undergraduate research. You can't build a strong research program solely with undergrads, but you can staff labs and do a lot of the "grunt" work associated with research by involving undergrads, who often have a rewarding experience. And given the high quality of undergrads at BYU, there is typically a big pool of strong candidates for the few grad student positions that are available.

Once again, BYU doesn't pretend to be a top-tier research school. But you simply cannot survive at BYU anymore without doing some scholarship and research. I have known a few pretty decent faculty at BYU who have been sent packing at their six-year reviews due to poor performance in research. I have also seen a few professors given the door due to poor teaching, in spite of decent research; something that is quite rare at most schools.

The idea that just because someone is a great researcher or a "leader in their field" means they can be a good teacher is laughable. I've had professors that were brilliant researchers and leaders in their field but had the communication skills and teaching skills of a gnat. The corollary (i.e. the idea that just because someone that isn't a "leader in their field" or isn't a great researcher is unqualified to teach undergraduates about the basics of a subject) is also fallacious.

Excellence in research does not necessarily equate to excellence in undergraduate education. The traits of being a great researcher and a great teacher are neither mutually exclusive nor mutually inclusive.

I'm of the opinion that the concept of "The Academy" is pretty much bullshit. Hmmm, perhaps that's why I was largely unsuccessful as a student. ;)

I'd like to be the first to welcome SeattleUte and Non Sequitur back to the fold. :)

appreciate your insights as well.

why emphasize undergraduate research? because lack of research puts undergrad students at BYU at a competitive disadvantage. I applied for some kind of undergrad research grant. I can't remember what it was. I didn't get it. But if that's the kind of thing they are focusing on, it's nothing but particle board where you need strong oak.

I don't think schools will be veering towards the BYU model. It's failed model. Rather BYU is creeping towards the standard model. This is evidence that eventually they will adopt the standard model, or give up on any sort of excellence whatsoever.

Looking back, I had some really terrible professors. They were nice guys, they could teach the material (largely straight from the textbook). But they in no way could prepare the students or even really advise them for success in academia. I've looked at some of the credentials of the new hires in my dept. They look to be mid-tier folks. Actually doing some research, but not top-tier stuff. Of course, this is a big improvement over the deadwood.

I guess if the current leadership continues, BYU will be the place where the faculty read the textbooks and try to catch up, rather than writing the textbooks. Meaning they are increasingly peripheral in the pursuit of knowledge. Which is kind of sad. But then again, I don't think the church should be in the decision of designing bridges, researching antibiotics, or building the next buckyball. But who am I?

If I could do it over again, I would not have picked my major (microbio), and might not choose to go to BYU. BYU's true resource are the overqualified students it receives. It's too bad they can't capitalize on it. And it's too bad the Mormon movers and shakers know from the outset that BYU is not the ideal place to practice their craft, due to lack of institutional support.

btw BYU could pretend to be MIT as well as a Frenchman could pretend to be Genghis Khan.

Cool. I never thought of myself in this way before.

So they have a mission of obeying the honor code and providing a good education.

What a travesty.

And yet BYU grads tend to be highly successful in top-notch grad schools. And every year BYU has to turn away a larger and larger number of students. It's not nearly as dire as you portray it.

Obviously, you believe that the only legit model is the top-tier research school model. In reality, there are only 30 or so truly top-tier research schools. Then there is a huge middle. According to US News and World Report (I figure you won't take my word for it), BYU is somewhere in that middle.

That's too bad. Like I said, it varies a lot from dept. to dept.

You seem to be a bit schizophrenic here. Which is it? Should BYU try to be a top-tier research school, or fold up the tent and quit?

I will agree with you there. BYU gets better students than they deserve. At the same time, they let in 30,000 students and turn away many more. There is a big demand.

This comment makes me chuckle. These "movers and shakers" are among the best and brightest and yet they are too stupid to know what they are getting themselves into. They know exactly what they are getting into, and many of them choose to be there anyway.

That's precisely why they never pretend such a thing. What's your point?

Sounds like low standards.

Obey 1950s Honor Code, and provide "good education" whatever that is, but not research.

Yeah good education and living the honor code. What crappy standards. I hope if I ever have kids they don't aspire to a good education and living the honor code.....

I think BYU should strive for excellence at all levels.

I also think the church should not own or subsidize BYU.

I don't see how these are contradictory.

I've already posted on CB what sort of federal research funding BYU gets. I don't know what you define as mid-tier, but triple digits isn't mid tier in my book.

I hope my kids don't aspire to live just the temple entrance standards, but rather that that is second nature, which so far it is.

No, if that is all they aspire to do, they are doing poorly. It shouldn't be an aspiration but a fact of life.

And they should strive to be the best students within their fields of study.

I don't know where you guys are going with this. BYU is a fine institution. It is designed to be a great undergraduate institution that prepares people for graduate work elsewhere (with a few exceptions, like law).

It does its work well. Its students are in HIGH demand. They are well-prepared for graduate work at other universities, and routinely fill out many slots in the elite university graduate programs. Indeed, they are overrepresented in such programs.

They go overboard with the honor code, yes. But people go there knowing what they are getting. I would like to see them be more open to opposing ideas in the classroom, but I think they do very well with what they are trying to accomplish.

I guess what I may be getting to is the hard sciences. Maybe BYU is just fine as a liberal arts school. That's not a terribly difficult standard. Many schools do just that with zero research.

But when it comes to science, I think that's where the lack of research hurts the undergrads. There are fewer research opportunities, and in my experience, many of these are token opportunities. Not the kind that really exposes you to what you may eventually do. I was lucky enough to get outside research experiences during the summer, that BYU could never have provided. These led to two undergrad publications that would have never occurred had all my research experience occurred at BYU.

Do many BYU students go on to great schools and success in the hard sciences? Yes. But I think it is because of the quality students.

And then when these quality students succeed in graduate school (in the hard sciences), are they going to come back to BYU? Not likely. Is this good for BYU? In my opinion, no it is not.

Is it good for Mormondom that they dont' return? Maybe yes. Broaden and strengthen the diaspora.

Maybe there really is a method behind the madness. Keep BYU mediocre to deepen and broaden the diaspora, LOL.

As to BYU being mid-tier.

BYU is ranked 242 in federal research dollars, and 212 in overall research spending.

I don't think I could even tell you the names of more than 150 universities.

Sure, it's a fine institution. But it could be even better.