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Course Management Systems: Enhancing the Classroom or Displacing
the Professor?
Michael Margolis
Department of Political Science
University of Cincinnati
P.O. Box 210375
1110 Crosley Tower
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0375
USA
michael.margolis@uc.edu
Prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science
Association, New Orleans, January 8-10, 2004
Margolis/SPSA
January 2004
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Course Management Systems: Enhancing the Classroom or Displacing the Professor?
“I joined this College as a member of the faculty. I am leaving as a faculty line.” –
Remarks of longtime University of Cincinnati Economics Professor upon his retirement.
i
The Once and Future University: My colleague’s pithy farewell encapsulates two
rather contradictory views of higher education in the United States. The first emphasizes
the traditional notion that the American academy consists of a community of scholars,
who, supported by public and private endowments and shielded from severe economic
vicissitudes, endeavor to order, expand and pass on knowledge that ultimately will
benefit society. In this view, most American universities center upon their colleges of
liberal arts and sciences, places where students and faculty not only learn together but
also reflect philosophically upon how their knowledge can affect the broader society. The
second emphasizes practical aspects of higher educational institutions. It views these
institutions as profitable markets for private suppliers of goods and services and as
efficient training grounds for supplying intelligent malleable workers to private and
public employers. In this view, American universities sell knowledge and credentials to
diverse customers: their clientele includes not only students, but also private and public
institutions that expect to profit from their investments of tuition, contracts, or grants.
To be sure, aspects of both views have been present in most American universities
since the latter half to the nineteenth ce