critical review of “Why I Am Not a Professor or The Decline and Fall of the British University”

姜涛Advanced English WritingLi Jie2014/10/21Review of “Why I Am Not a Professor or The Decline and Fall of the BritishUniversity”As society develops, people pay more and more attention to education. An important measure that the government has taken is widening the access to university to let in more students attend colleges, but people merely seek the speed and the quantity rather than the quality. Dr.Mark Tarver who once worked in school of Computing at Leeds has given his understanding according to his experience. Tarver expresses the reason of the decline and fall of British university and the influence on teachers and students after the expansion of education, but in his essay,some of his opinions hold extreme bias and because of the limitation of his experience many of his views lack of adequate evidence and appropriate analysis. What’s more, in his essay he only refers to the disadvantages of expansion and no advantages are available.In his essay “Why I Am Not a Professor or The Decline and Fall of the British University”, Tarver combines his own experience with the decline of British universities and corruption of academic ideal. He quits his job because he couldn’t bear the false life. He states that the widen access to university has lowered the educational quality and the modularization system makes few students choose hardsubjects. He also presents that universities have become profit pursuers. In order to make money, they pass students by “scaling”their marks. Teachers will give some easier titles so that students can “waffle or crib off other sources”. Both teachers and students are living in a lie. Tarver also claims that teachers became more and more concentrated on the quantities of the essays. In the end, he says that there will be fewer native lecturers so that universities have to hire some immigrants whose language skills are worse than native speakers. He concludes that the teaching quality of British will suffer from it and it leaves the same desolation as the Culture Revolution did.In his essay, Tarver points out the expansion of education is the main cause of the decline of British education and it alarms people to notice the current crisis of education. As an experienced professor, he vividly exposes several problems of current British university system, such as the copying papers among students, the scaling of marks, the commonplace of teachers’papers and the widening access to university which leads to the lower educational quality. Besides, the author’s logic and reasoning is explicit and the language is also authentic. Seeing from the whole structure, it is well organized. However, some of Tarver’s views are biased towards his personal experience. In the final part, he declares that “Though some of these people are quite able, the language skills of an immigrant are on the whole worse than those of a native speaker. So the effects on the quality of teaching can only be bad.”(102) in some terms, his prejudice on immigrant and pessimism can be seen. Language is not the eternal obstacle between teaching and studying. It should notover-emphasize the teacher’s function. They are just a guide to lead students to learning rather than force them to study.Secondly, Tarver associates his experience to illustrate the decline and fall British university while using personal experience can be vivid, it’s not persuasive and representative. He should use more evidence which can represent most people’s stand to support his opinions.In addition, there are some views that Tarver hold are too absolute. Only discussing the disadvantages of expansion and failing to concentrate on the advantages of it makes the whole passage one-side. He says that the widening access to university has “watered down”the education quality. While it is true that the expansion of education sometimes brings declination of university, it also has advantages when consider it all-around. For example, if the university has not widened the access, some students have to give up study. To some extends, it could offer more people an access to learn and also to keep the society stable. On the whole, it can improve the quality and educational level of the whole nation. Universities are not founded only for these elites or talents. They are founded for all the people who want to acquire knowledge and improve themselves and founded to benefit the whole nation.Although Tarver’s understanding of the cause of the decline of British university is generally reasonable and credible, his opinions hold a little bias,his way of showing evidence is limited and some of his views are one-side. So I think this essay should not remain in our writing book.Works CitedMark, Tarver. “Why I Am Not a Professor or The Decline and Fall of the British University”Advanced English Writing. Ed. HeiYuqin, GuoFenrong, and LiYang. Xi’an: Jiaotong UP, 2011. 96-102. Pint.。