culture
philosophy
The State of the Modern American University
Physicist, Author
Philosophy, Mount St. Mary's
0
0
Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
September 23rd, 2020
Prof. Hochschild cogently wrote: "The underlying problem of the modern university is a crisis of integrity and purpose." and aptly described Universities as cultivated communities of discourse "embodying a shared vision of the pursuit of wisdom." He suggested Universities need to return to "inviting students to participate in a distinctive and worthy way of life."
I couldn't agree more.
Faculty, administrators and students should share a common purpose: nurturing knowledge and wisdom and building a community of lifelong learners. Only then can universities push forward the boundaries of knowledge and help society share in the benefits. The goal should not be to shape opinions but to inform them. We shouldn't enforce what to think but how to think. Access to centuries of knowledge as well as the creation of new knowledge, enabled through open discussion and debate, allow students and faculty to grow in common purpose in a way that can more broadly benefit humanity at large.
Both Prof. Hochshild and I have detailed challenges that obstruct this goal, to which he added corrosive ideology, administrative bloat, virtue signaling, and a bureaucratic management culture.
I focused earlier on the first issue, but the latter three impediments are equally serious and also strongly coupled. Universities have become big businesses whose chief goals include expansion and self-preservation, driven by the need for huge influxes of cash, and beholden to both donors and public opinion. As a result, university administrators are chosen based on fund raising and public relations skills rather than intellectual backbone.
They thus tend to be less inclined to buck the enormous pressures challenging academic integrity. As a recent op-ed put it: "It's much easier for a business or a school to avoid trouble, and potential liability, by shutting down discussion altogether." And that is what has happened.
One of the biggest pressures on administrators is the need to maintain bloated self-perpetuating bureaucracies. It is not uncommon for a university's administrative budget to exceed the budget for faculty salaries, or student support.
What can be done to reverse this slide? Fewer Universities, with far smaller bureaucracies would reduce competition for scarce funds and the need for administrators to focus on fund raising rather than academic integrity. Also, as the recent pandemic has made clear, many students would benefit more from going to community college rather than spending 4 years not being intellectual challenged at universities from which they may graduate with few practical skills. Universities should not be diploma mills, with budgets driven not by the demands of research and scholarship, but by, say, football revenues.
Openly reaffirming that Universities are communities of learning and research excellence, driven by free inquiry—no matter what—is a good first step, followed by promoting educational leaders who are up to the task of defending these communities. Students' intellects need to be challenged, at the expense of comfort, if necessary. We must not cancel Beethoven or Newton or Feynman, but instead freely debate and explore the full canon of humanity's greatest ideas and discoveries.
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