"The death throes of the university are upon us"

 

That's the headline of an article by Joanna Williams.  She writes from a British perspective, but precisely the same issues are visible in American tertiary education, with a trans-Atlantic flavor.

Perhaps most significantly, the financial crisis in England’s higher-education sector is coming to a head ... The thorough-going marketisation of higher education has also affected the quality of the education on offer. Many popular institutions have expanded by lowering standards. Indeed, entry requirements for international students, whose fees are uncapped, have virtually disappeared at some universities. Even the lecturers’ union has noted that the ability to speak English is being discarded in the dash for cash cows. One professor told the BBC that 70 per cent of his recent master’s students had inadequate English, making it difficult to teach anything but the basics. Now, after decades of growth, international recruitment has fallen this year, adding to the sector’s financial woes.

Universities’ response to the cash crisis reveals their deeper crisis of purpose. Up to 10,000 university jobs are reported to have been cut this year. Yet diversity, equity and inclusion teams seem to have been largely spared the axe. Instead, universities are cutting core academic disciplines ... Once, it would have been unthinkable for a university not to offer degrees in major branches of learning, such as literature or philosophy. These subjects were taught not because ‘the market’ made them ‘viable’, but because they contributed to our understanding of the word and what it means to be human. That they can now be so readily discarded speaks to an impoverished intellectual climate that universities themselves have helped to create.

. . .

The rot at the heart of universities in the West goes beyond expecting very little of students. It also shows up in the politicised nature of what they are asked to do. Engineering students at King’s College London complained after they were set the task of creating ‘a product for LGBTQ+ people focussed on providing education or safe spaces’. Students, not unreasonably, questioned what relevance this task had to engineering, and why it was worth 70 per cent of their module grade. Previous cohorts of engineering students apparently got to build a Mars rover.

Another insight into the politicised nature of higher education came when the thesis topic of an unfortunate PhD student at Cambridge went viral on social media. Ally Louks’s research into ‘Olfactory Ethics’ – essentially, linking descriptions of bad smells to prejudice and oppression – prompted a ferocious backlash. But, as one shrewd observer noted, on many undergraduate courses ‘the study of structural oppression in its various forms is the degree, and primary texts and historical context and linguistic and subject knowledge become “nice-to-haves”’.

There's more at the link.

I suppose a large part of the problem can be ascribed to defining the purpose of higher education.  It used to be the case that education was at the service of society, teaching us where we came from and giving us the aspiration - and the tools - to progress further.  Now, it's become yet another tool of indoctrination, discarding (even vilifying) the past when it's no longer politically correct, and trying to actually change the course of society by making us feel guilty about the way we live and the attitudes we hold.  The message of "woke" is, at its heart, a message of hatred for the human condition that exists, and a drive to remake that condition into something entirely foreign to human nature.

There's also the question of whether education is to equip us to work in our society, or to live in our society, or to impose different models (e.g. business, or technology, or world view) on our society.  Education is no longer seen as valuable for its own sake, but as a tool to help us accomplish things.  This is in stark contrast to earlier generations, who saw education - serious, challenging education, not frivolous, valueless courses - as something to create a well-rounded person.  My parents encouraged me to get a generalist Bachelor of Arts degree as my first tertiary qualification for precisely that reason.  After that, they assured me, I could "specialize" in whatever took my fancy.  I followed their advice, and I've never regretted it.  After my B.A. (English, History and Philosophy) I did a post-graduate diploma, and then a Masters degree, in Management;  and, after the good Lord changed my career calling, I studied Theology and related subjects.  My generalist education and business experience, plus some military background, all came in very useful as a pastor and chaplain, and I think made me more approachable to my parishioners.

As part of this conundrum, I think the concept of a residential University education has come to be little more than a self-indulgent, hedonistic existence.  Every one of my four University qualifications was earned through part-time and distance education, because I couldn't afford to attend full-time and live in a residence with other students.  Frankly, I think that's proved to have been an asset.  I had to learn right from the start that I was responsible for my own expenses, my own needs.  If I didn't do what had to be done, nobody else was going to do it for me!  I wish more tertiary students today could learn that lesson the hard way.  I suspect it would make them better human beings, cutting through self-indulgence and forcing them to confront reality.

Finally, I find myself wishing that more of our leaders, in politics, business and academia, had enjoyed a generalist education, to broaden their horizons before they'd climbed the ladder of success.  Too many of our leaders have a blinkered approach to their work.  They see it from one perspective only, through a single set of lenses, ignoring the fact that there are many other aspects to which they're giving no weight at all.  It's a bit like the "Fair Witness" approach described by the late, great Robert A. Heinlein in his novel "Stranger in a Strange Land".  We need more "Fair Witnesses" in our midst, IMHO, but also more "Fair Leaders" who can be similarly accurate in their assessments.

Oh, well.  My university days are far behind me, so perhaps I'm no longer qualified to judge contemporary institutions.  Is there a post-graduate qualification in Curmudgeonhood?

Peter