Yet this is difficult to do. What vexes Duder-stadt is that despite the need for major changes, colleges and universities are organized to protect the status quo. They listen to their own inner music and not to the trumpet blasts outside their gates. The pedagogy is ineffective and frequently boring. The feudal department structure inhibits interdisciplinary work and comprehensive approaches to problem solving.
Graduate study takes too long and includes no preparation at all for classroom teaching.
He wants universities to determine their own futures. But to do so, he feels that new patterns of governance, leadership, and strategic planning as well as more experimentation and a change in faculty dispositions are necessary. Presidents cannot lead, he claims, and attempts at strategic management or change often rile faculty. Today's research universities, says Duderstadt, are becoming increasingly corporate. Duderstadt is something of an alarmist.