culture
philosophy
The State of the Modern American University
Physicist, Author
Philosophy, Mount St. Mary's
0
0
Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
September 22nd, 2020
With vivid examples, Dr. Krauss describes a key problem of American universities: a “climate of censorship, cancellation, and fear.” This has become a familiar lament (especially from conservatives and classical liberals, but in principle non-partisan: progressive and radical views are often framed as responses to exclusion and silencing). Members of higher education communities should feel free to inquire and argue, without fearing reprisal for honest self-expression.
I agree, but isn’t the state of the modern American university even more dismal? Dr. Krauss’s own examples of “policing” of thought hint at a few other problems: corrosive ideology, administrative bloat, virtue signaling, and a bureaucratic management culture.
And we could list so many other dysfunctions: low standards and grade inflation, cultural amnesia, a focus on employment and material success, proliferation and fragmentation of disciplines, ballooning tuition costs and rising student debt, a student-services arms race, prestige-envy and rankings games, distracting and meaningless assessment requirements, endowment hoarding, increasing dependence on low-wage adjunct faculty, careerism and neophilia, and worthless research (including citation rings and an embarrassing “replication crisis” in the social sciences).
Readers may add their own pet peeves, but clearly the modern university shows plenty of signs of illness!
Of course, a litany of symptoms is not a diagnosis. We must discern and treat the cause.
Some offer an economic explanation: all these trends are subsidized by market distortions creating an unsustainable “education bubble.” A disillusioned public is increasingly unwilling to support the debased currency of higher education, and the pandemic only adds pressure to deflate the system, with some colleges already cutting or closing.
My own view is that the “education bubble,” like any asset bubble, is not merely a financial crisis. It is a moral crisis: a misallocation and distortion of value. The underlying problem of the modern university is a crisis of integrity and purpose.
What is a university for? Dr. Krauss indicates the answer includes “free inquiry and free speech.” Freedom is essential, but of what sort? Is it primarily a “negative” freedom, leaving the faculty alone to do whatever they want, and only prompting students to “question beliefs”? Or must we identify specific “positive” freedoms, intellectual and social qualities empowering faculty to collaborate in intellectual practices – including cultivating habits, and even forming beliefs, in students?
By posing that question, I’ve already suggested my position. The university, a long-proven cultural form, was never conceived as a protected space of non-interference for arguments among a collection of individuals, an undirected “marketplace of ideas” challenging prejudice and convention. A university was a cultivated community of discourse, embodying a shared vision of the pursuit of wisdom.
The problems of the modern American university – including those problems Dr. Krauss describes – are real. To address them, we need to renew the old idea of a university with a clear and confident purpose, whose faculty collaborate in a common project, inviting students to participate in a distinctive and worthy way of life.
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