How universities measure up

How universities measure up

Gil Troy And Reuven Brenner
Freelance
Montreal Gazette
June 6, 2004

Are universities intellectual hothouses, nurturing ideas and civil discourse? Or do they worship sacred cows, demonize iconoclasts and deem other people untouchable icons?

I t is commencement time. This month, McGill University's faculty toasts our graduates and their achievements. We enjoy seeing students not solely as a group of learners, but also as sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, carrying - and sometimes fulfilling - family aspirations, celebrating graduation as a milestone in their lives.

We have finished challenging, testing, grading and evaluating these students. Now, we should turn our critical faculties on ourselves. After asking "How do they measure up?" it is time to ask "How do faculties measure up?"

Are universities intellectual hothouses, nurturing ideas and civil discourse? Or do they worship sacred cows, demonize iconoclasts, deem other people untouchable icons. Do faculties reserve their communications organs for happy talk? Do we seek the truth, wherever it might lead, impervious to faddishness? Or have universities become mere bureaucracies handing out diplomas, with faculties mindlessly celebrating "diverse" opinions and buried in producing statistical knowledge?

By "statistical knowledge" we mean endless streams of articles in thousands of subsidized journals and thousands of "conference" proceedings sitting on subsidized library shelves, all gathering dust.

It is not accidental that what passes for "academic knowledge" now often appears as the butt of jokes. Last weekend, philosophers and theologians gathered in Nashville for a conference on - hold your breath - Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The keynote speech on this "life-and-death" topic, as posted on the conference's Web site, was on the "philosophical consistency of season seven." James B. South, a philosopher at Milwaukee's Marquette University, asked whether or not the "lessons" conveyed during the show's seventh season are philosophically consistent, and whether it took too long to get to the final confrontation with the First Evil and his race of uber-Vampires.

South's concluded that there is a compelling philosophical account justifying the producers' narrative strategy.

Wonderful. More than 300 professors listened to that and 190 papers on "Buffy and the new American Buddhism," "postmodern reflections on the culture of consumption," and "slayer slang." David Lavery, an English professor, talked about Buffy studies "as an academic cult." He had a point.

How many subsidies did governments offer to get these papers written and to subsidize travel to this conference, to sustain this cult? Government counts such spending as "investment," and the output as contributions to "knowledge."

Parents and politicians are then surprised when kids are bored to death or drop out. Students are startled when a degree fails to lead to a good job. Businesses complain that they have to train university graduates in basic reading, writing and arithmetic.

It is time for universities and responsible media to examine - or at least quote word by word- what is produced by academics in the so-called "social sciences," business, history, religion and economics. These fields of study deal with facts and events of everyday life. Why cover reality with jargon? If they have anything to say - show it. And show it to the taxpaying public.

Exposing the "business of publications" for what it has become would reveal that what is passing for scientific publications and expertise in many fields has become little more than generating self-perpetuating credentials and claims on government subsidies. To reform such practices would require self-criticism, internal accountability and outside pressure - all three utterly lacking in academia today. In business and politics, fears of default, bankruptcy and anachronism have been the mothers of invention. The present ways of financing universities shelter them, to various degrees, from such pressures.

The taxpaying public should be invited to drop in randomly to lecture halls. Are professors acting as educators, challenging students with thought-provoking assignments rooted in sound analysis and encouraging clear thought and expression? How often do professors succumb to pontificating without thorough preparation, providing only the illusion that they are covering something timely and relevant?

Is the vicious divisiveness characterizing much public debate today, in Canada as well as in the U.S., related to the fact that by subsidizing universities, society ended up with a huge output of excessive, obscure, polarizing jargon? The study of liberal arts and business is supposed to encourage analysis, not foment passions, and it teaches that a person who keeps his learning to himself or a small group of insiders has not gained any wisdom.

The word "education" comes from the Latin "educere," to lead out. It matters little what academics know if they cannot communicate it and do not even take the trouble to try.

Airing diverse viewpoints is important, but not when these viewpoints are unfounded - or artificially inflated. Thomas Jefferson said: "State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules."

At the same time, while vote tallies might win elections, they matter little in intellectual discourse. We have no problems with, say, professors of finance, marketing or management - though please don't ask how someone who never solved any problems in these domains for any businesses, ever, gets such a title - presenting their views not just on economic and financial issues, but on the Middle East.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion and to raise questions. Problems start when they use academic credibility, based on obscure publications, and suggest that such credibility backs their opinion even in unrelated domains. They might bring a diverse opinion to the public and the classroom. But it sure isn't backed by any knowledge, by proof that they ever found any solution to any problem.

The modern god of diversity is a false idol. Variety for variety's sake is not just pointless, it wastes time. In his 1859 primer on political thought and debate, On Liberty, John Stuart Mill championed the free marketplace of ideas, the vigorous clash of opinions that should be the lifeblood of a modern society, and of a university. But while warning of "the deep slumber of a decided opinion" and endorsing iconoclasm, Mill did not fear to use the word "truth." To him, the clash of ideas was not solely to air out opinions, it was to sift, assess, judge, decide and find truth.

We don't have today a "free marketplace of ideas" - not by any stretch of the imagination. What we have is a heavily subsidized production of "obscure jargons" - much noise, that is - with academics carving out, then jealously guarding, their turf.

Pompous wording, circuitous sentences and flaccid prose protect prerogatives and bamboozle students with buzz-words, elaborate models and unverifiable theories, leaving a trail of confusion that mediocre followers - in academia, media and politics, too - either mistake for profundity or just misuse when convenient.

Society still perceives being a professor as an honour. But a few more conferences on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a few more policies relying on economic and tribal jargons leading to decline, and don't be surprised if heavily-taxed citizens, paying through the nose to provide their children with a better life, will suddenly scream out loud that the "emperors have no clothes."

It would be not a moment too soon.

Reuven Brenner and Gil Troy teach at McGill University. This article draws on Brenner's books, Educating Economists and Force of Finance, and on Troy's forthcoming book on the 1980s.

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