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
Dr. Krauss generously identifies areas of agreement. Higher ed’s problem’s are great enough to create alliances even among those starting from different perspectives. Traditionalist critique of cultural loss, libertarian critique of ideological policing, and progressive critique of neoliberal power structures are remarkably resonant.
I’ll close with suggested lines for future conversation, highlighting a potential philosophical disagreement, and proposing some practical responses to agreed problems.
We apparently disagree about the university’s purpose. I don’t see it as delivering content, or providing “information” for students to develop personal “opinions.” The university provides a community of activity to help students develop good judgment: practicing responsible discernment and appreciating genuine value. Hence my previous invocation of positive freedom (virtue), and insistence on formation.
C.S. Lewis, drawing on Platonic psychology, warned of cultural forces creating “men without chests”: people who couldn’t negotiate between feelings and logic, thus incapable of making decent, honorable, and courageous choices. Ours is a system of “universities without chests,” institutions abdicating responsibility to propose what is worthy, instead bragging that students can do “whatever they want.”
Practically, many higher education problems boil down to distorted incentives, reflecting systemic lack of skin in the game. Faculty are free to theorize without consequence, experiencing no personal or professional stakes. Decision-makers have incredible power but little or no personal cost for bad decisions. Students feel pressure to collect credits, grades and degrees, but scant incentive to explore, learn, and take intellectual risks.
Fewer, consolidated universities wouldn’t solve – would probably exacerbate – these failures. But we could reconfigure the stakes with some practical changes:
1. Faculty on boards. A significant portion of trustees should be institutionally-invested academics. You wouldn’t have a hospital board with no doctors; there shouldn’t be university boards lacking professors. Rather than the labor-model of “shared governance,” academic-trustees would help establish a guild-model partnership, with faculty properly involved in institutional decision-making.
2. Itemize bills. “Tuition, room and board” is a joke. In addition to actual rent, meals, and direct instructional salaries, student bills should indicate costs for every major expense area: other academic resources; athletics; other student services; non-academic administrative salaries; marketing, admissions and development costs; third party vendors and consultants. Expose budgets through pricing transparency.
3. End accreditation monopolies. Instead of mandatory regional accreditation, colleges could choose accreditors based on vision and philosophy. The greatest strength of the American higher education system remains the diversity of institutions; accreditation, so far a homogenizing force, should reflect and support that strength.
4. Abandon AP. The College Board has no interest in educational culture. The SAT is often criticized, but the Advanced Placement system is psychologically more insidious: distorting learning incentives in high school, and training keener students to think of college in terms of “completing requirements.” Students who are good at something shouldn’t be treated as exempt from learning, but encouraged to venture farther.
Silver bullets? No, but philosophical differences might not matter if we seek some such concrete ways to change the stakes for students, faculty and administrators.
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