I get that he thinks like industry and academics in computing shouldn't mix, because they have very different time horizons and goals.
But what's the strength of the academic enterprise aka the title? The only part I saw in the entire essay was:
The explanation is that, with all its aloofness, the
university has an essential role to play, viz. to explain
to the world the foolishness of its ways.
Precisely. And Dijkstra seems to take great offense at the critiques traveling in the opposing direction. To wit:
Did the writer not know that the use of the term "the real world" is usually interpreted as a symptom of rabid anti-intellectualism, or did he not mind?
As a PhD candidate in political science, a good 90% of my colleagues could use a daily injunction to think more about the problems of "the real world," rather than the abstractions of Deleuze and Guattari.
The university is at the other end of the spectrum: it is the professor's task to bring the relevant insights and abilities into the public domain by explicit formulation. (...) openness and honesty are characteristics that touch the heart of the academic enterprise: a university that hides or cheats can close its doors.
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The University with its intellectual life on campus is undoubtedly a creation of the restless mind, but it is more than its creation: it is also its refuge. (...) on campus, being brilliant is socially acceptable.
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If academic research is often astonishingly successful, it always is because the researchers had the wisdom and the opportunity to avoid both the trivial and the impossible, and to follow the very narrow path in between. It is that narrow path in between that defines the intellectual autonomy of successful scientific research. The major strength of the academic enterprise is that in a very technical sense scientific progress is unique in a way that neither political nor commercial interests can change.
In other words, "shut up and cough up, you ignorant plebs, so I can go on sneering at you from the luxury of my ivory tower".
FWIW, finance bigwigs live in actual luxuirous ivory towers.
When did you last see a professor working for free?
"The strengths of the academic enterprise"
Also keep in mind that such courses do address serious issues, and sometimes such courses aren't BS.
The last thing to keep in mind, is that sometimes a person will encounter information which is vital to them, but they won't have the expertise to recognize it as such.
Keep this in mind if you ever find yourself trying to explain why automated tests or source control is important to pointy-haired bosses with glazed-over eyes. Even in 2011, this happens in the real world all the time.
That said, the stuff that's really important in a course like "Topics in Software Management" isn't likely to be taught well by a college professor. Few college professors have to succeed in their jobs by managing a group to produce good software, and if they used to do that stuff, the environment they worked in might bear very little resemblance to the place you'll work. Learn that stuff from people you admire who produce awesome results.
My attempts to disambiguate at wikipedia and google leave me still feeling out of the loop on this one.
Lacking other options, universities must (and do) provide business-skill-education, whether or not one likes it.
The ideal ratio between "academic endeavors" and "skill-teaching endeavors" is not known, and we will probably go many wrong ways before we find something that actually satisfies the participants, if ever.
However, a very fine piece of text, as, plus or minus some points, it reminds us of different goals of different institutions, and the complex interdependence of our culture between all those different parts.
Academic computing science is doing fine, thank you, and unless I am totally mistaken, it will have a profound influence. I am not referring to the changes that result from computers in their capacity of tools. Okay, the equipment opens new opportunities for the entertainment industry, but who cares about that anyhow. The equipment has enabled the airline industry to make its rates so complicated and volatile that you need an expert to buy a ticket, and for this discouragement of air travel we can be grateful, but the true impact comes from the equipment in its capacity of intellectual challenge.
> The original Oxford Colleges were buildings fortified in order to protect the students against the rabble, and if you think that that is old hat, I refer you to the DDR or the People's Republic of China of only 25 years ago. It is a miracle whenever, these days, the academic world is tolerated at all; personally I am convinced that what tolerance there is would completely disappear, were the academic world to become secretive.
"The strength of the academic enterprise imo is doing hard-to-monetize basic research: developing the ideas and techniques that after several more iterations will produce or enable interesting things. I tend to think of tech-heavy startups as essentially mining ideas and results that are promising but have never been made practical; academia's job is to keep restocking that mine."
and this:
"The explanation is that, with all its aloofness, the university has an essential role to play, viz. to explain to the world the foolishness of its ways."
Are the purpose of academia, then that's fine for academics in the sciences and math. However, that still gives little justification for academics specializing somewhere deep in liberal arts.