Columbia University president Lee Bollinger is full of folly. First, he offered the world a troubling vision of the future of journalism schools that would render them more like ed schools. (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=20#179.) Now he has seized upon his university's 250th anniversary to discourse in the Wall Street Journal about what he, with nary a bow to Cardinal Newman, calls "the idea of a university" (http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106617939829836100,00.html). As Columbia is spending a full year celebrating its birthday, the world has eleven months left to argue with him. Allow me.
I quarrel not with Bollinger's grandiose claims about the contributions that his university has made to the well-being of New York City (including sewers, subways, and Lou Gehrig) and the United States (e.g. the Declaration of Independence, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg). I won't even fuss about his grander still promises of the immense good that Columbia will do the entire planet in years to come. What galls me is his hypocritical and one-sided explanation of why "universities have stood the test of time"-and the many things he leaves unsaid.
Bollinger trumpets five abiding strengths of the university. All have some merit, sure, but all are exaggerated. And each comes with its own evil twin.
First, he finds in universities "a distinctive intellectual atmosphere in which one is forced to live in a world of seemingly infinite complexity, while holding on to the natural but quixotic hope that someday it will all be resolved." This appealing quality is also described as "the desire to understand and to explain that understanding to others."
Once upon a time, a university president might speak simply of the "search for truth" as his institution's core mission. The problem is that postmodern intellectuals don't believe in truth. They believe in points of view, preferences, orientations, tastes, contexts, relativism, and the notion that one's worldview can best be explained by gender, race, class, etc. Hence the "quixotic hope" that truth will prevail. And the loss of nerve that truth is what the university is meant to, through its intellectual striving, help to reveal. Instead, we are to settle for "infinite complexity."
Second, Bollinger celebrates "the creation of a democratic personality" via "special communities like universities distinctly dedicated to the open intellect." Would that it were so. But the campus isn't very open any more, not if one's research points toward a politically incorrect conclusion, if one neglects to hail "diversity" as a supreme value, if one believes students might benefit from the works of dead white males, or if one favors a strong national defense.
Third, Bollinger hails academic freedom, the university's distance from government and its "decentralized structure." All in the beholder's eye, I suppose. What I behold is the eclipse of true academic freedom, the fact that universities favor an arm's length relationship only when government might expect something of them, not when they seek money (or other boons) FROM government. As for decentralization, on the modern campus it has come to mean the absence of strong leadership and efficient management. Everyone does his own thing-and somebody else pays for it.
Fourth, Bollinger cites "the fact that universities have become pieces of our identities that we carry with us through life." I suppose that refers to alumni/ae loyalty (and giving). It also calls to mind the sad old grad that one occasionally meets-often with a stiff drink in his hand-for whom those glorious days back at Ivy U were life's highest attainment and greatest glory.
Fifth and finally, he welcomes "the company of the next generation" because it's satisfying to discharge "the noble role of conveying to youth what we have come to know." Indeed, that's what teachers are meant to do. But proper postmodernists flee from "conveying" knowledge to youth, for that mandate implies that they "know" something or that what they know has greater value than what their students think. Perish forbid. Moreover, the campus youth culture has become its own source of dysfunction, with nonstop partying, not enough studying, ever shorter semesters, grade inflation, deification of big-time sports, and the college's impulse to compete for students not by teaching them more (or slashing the price) but turning the place into a quasi-resort that boasts spas, food courts, and high-tech entertainment options.
As Congress considers renewal of the Higher Education Act, instead of being lulled by self-serving sanctimony from the likes of big-name university presidents, it should focus on three problems that might be eased by imaginative public policy.
First, an empty, trendy, one-sided curriculum, taught by a one-sided faculty. (Senator Judd Gregg has begun hearings on this.)
Second, the absence of evidence that college students actually learn anything. Nobody denies that sheepskins bring better jobs and higher incomes, but how much of that is pure credentialism and how much is related to skills and knowledge gained on campus? No one can say, because there's almost no external assessment in higher education. Washington has come to demand evidence of learning and results-based accountability from primary-secondary schools. It should do the same with colleges.
Third, the academy's staggering inefficiency, soaring prices, and complete lack of productivity gains. No, universities aren't widget plants, but there are a thousand ways by which they could curb costs and achieve greater efficiency. In return for further federal aid, Congress should insist that they do so. So should the Wall Street Journal.
