Education: At What Cost Success?

Sylvia Lavin, chairwoman of UCLA's department of architecture and urban design, has dramatically boosted the school's reputation. But is the cost too high?

1 minute read

April 14, 2003, 7:00 AM PDT

By Chris Steins @planetizen

"[Sylvia Lavin has] brought the program -- which even its former leader recalls as solid but provincial -- into step with the latest critical theory, and with the sophisticated and flexible computer design pioneered by Lynn.... But as she's built prestige, some charge, Lavin has torn down the department's civility, its intellectual balance. Her critics describe a place where students are publicly humiliated in reviews, where professors wax rhapsodic about the high dropout rate, where a didactic and dismissive tone reigns, where professors offer ultimatums instead of an education. And where, they say, the woman in charge is an 'intellectual bully.'"

Thanks to Chris Steins

FULL STORY: Lab for discontent?

Sunday, April 13, 2003 in The Los Angeles Times

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