A Philosophical Happy Hour on the ends and purposes of higher education, universities, and the needs of teaching and learning. —Reading Francis Slade’s “Ends and Purposes”
In the nearly two-years since Claudine Gay’s revealed plagiarism and subsequent resignation from Harvard University, familiar questions concerning the function and legitimacy of academic work—questions that, despite their familiarity are too-seldom given sufficient attention—have been boiling up from the depths. For most people, the academy exists somehow in the background. Even most college graduates pay little attention to the academic world. One, typically, enters college with the goal of exiting the other side as quickly as possible.
But cheating revealed at the highest level of academia exposes the whole institution—and it is little surprise that finding ways to prevent cheating, or addressing its consequences, has taken over the daily life of many academics. How could the highest authority in the most-prestigious of universities get away with a lifetime of dishonesty? If she can get hired to run Harvard, who else has gotten away with it? And at what cost to the ideals of academic integrity?
Again, most people do not pay much attention to academia. But these institutions remain in the eyes of all as powerful and influential. They have always had as their end the production of authorities, granting degrees to the people who make decisions for our states and for our country. How do these institutions function? What are they doing that gives them the power to produce more power?
In fact, much of the work done by academics consists specifically in striving after prestige. The most familiar mantra to any graduate student is: “publish or perish.” In other words: the success of your career depends upon publishing articles in highly-ranked journals. These journals are read—if at all—only by other academics. Most are never cited, and, if they are, not in any meaningful way. Successfully publishing in most of them requires not academic excellence, but navigating an atmosphere of editors and peer reviewers: saying what they would like said, in other words. With so many academics striving for such success, the number of journals and articles balloons year-by-year. What does any of it accomplish? Especially do we despair when it turns out that quite a bit proven “successful” is fake, false, or misleading.
Alternatives and Necessities
In light of its rampant fraud—for even when not plagiarized, much academic work is not only useless but meaningless—one may well be tempted to say: burn it all down! What good is a bloated, expensive, bureaucratically-choked institution? What does it produce other than ill-gotten and undeserved reputation? Statistically, it is undoubtedly an ideologically one-sided institution.
Frustrated by the roadblocks of ideology and bureaucracies, we see many abandoning the old institutions and striking out in new directions. Independent scholars are finding ways to disseminate their learning without playing the prestige games. One finds these thinkers spreading out through social media—X.com (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, etc.—or moving towards institutions like the Catherine Project, Albertus Magnus Institute, the Ancient Language Institute, or this very Lyceum and its efforts to do things differently. Much in the sciences remains the exclusive domain of well-funded schools. Experimentation requiring expensive equipment proves difficult to offer without large endowments. But the humanities—abandoned by the university in favor of STEM—appear poised for breaking free of the broken systems of yesteryear.
But is it time to abandon the university?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
The well-known line of Juvenal—who watches the watchmen?—we should have asked of academia long ago. The stewards and custodians of our intellectual institutions have engaged for decades (if not longer) in practices inimical to true intellectual development. Today, we face with a host of questions in need of answers:
- Do we—can we—still trust in our institutions of higher learning today?
- Does the structure of academic publishing—paywalls and peer reviews—enhance or inhibit the quality of their publications?
- What is the impact of academic work on the world outside academia? How does this work’s impact appear?
- Can the university be reformed for the humanities? Why or why not? Should we seek revolution instead?
To help us answer these questions, I would like to read this very short and very straightforward article by Francis Slade, concerning “Ends and Purposes”—and apply the lessons of these three pages to the simple question: what is the end of education, and what are the purposes of the university?