V. Lakshman is an electrical engineer whose mathematician friends now refuse to talk to him.For those not in the know, the University of Rochester decided to downsize its mathematics department. It is closing the mathematics graduate program, throwing 12 of its 22 faculty out and hiring temps to teach calculus. This is in spite of the support the department has received from Nobel laureates and other gentle souls. Don't be shocked. The regents ought to be lauded for their efforts. All rationale is on their side.
Why did the university decide to shut down four graduate programs including that in mathematics? The graduate program is small and low-rated. Graduates could not find jobs. The department had no joint research with the other departments. Faced with this litany of very valid criticism, all the mathematics department could come up with was vague statements about the validity of math and the oft-repeated statistics about the math skills of Asian kids vs. American ones. None of which is to the point.
The entire mathematics community, led by the American Mathematical Society, has been at pains to point out that even though the department does very theoretical work, work that is of no practical use to any potential donor, and even though freshman calculus courses can be taught by practically any engineering senior, mathematics is important.
While mathematics is important, the kind of mathematics done by most university math departments is not. To their credit, mathematicians recognize the threat to their community and hence all the vague hullaboo.
Engineering, medical and scientific disciplines all explain their existence on the basis of their ultimate benefit to society. An electrical engineer working on coding theory can point out the increased capacity of telephone lines that is a result of the work by people like him. A cardiologist can show the increasing success rates of non-surgical methods. If the mathematicians at Rochester cannot explain how their excellence in algebraic topology helps us, they ought to throw in the towel, quit talking about their department in scientific terms and join the liberal arts community.
Mathematics research, with its emphasis on publishing papers with 200 incestuous references to the papers of other colleagues, has more in common with liberal arts than engineering or science. Put simply, the reason the program had to be closed was because there was nothing applied about it. Mathematicians look down on applied research as "junk research." This attitude ensures that mathematics Ph.D.s are unemployable outside of academia,(another reason the program is being shut down).
Rather than trying to appeal to authority (Nobel laureates and the like), mathematicians should rethink the gist of their research. They will rea lize mathematics is important and if they attempt to integrate theory with applications in engineering, physics and medicine, they can continue to haunt wary freshmen with visions of calculus.
V. Lakshman is an electrical engineer whose mathematician friends now refuse to talk to him.