Universities: Their Decline and Fall

This past week I read an article about the current state of England's universities. I'm sure that an American author could write a similar article on some of what has been happening in our own universities. The article was published in The Unherd, which I've been periodically reading for a year or so. What I like is their in-depth stories and non-aligned views. That is, they publish articles that would likely annoy "both sides of the aisle" so to speak. That is what I like about Reason magazine as well. 

The article that caught my attention was titled How universities were corrupted. The subhead is: Vindictive protectiveness has re-shaped our institutions

The essay by Matthew Goodwin begins like this:

When are we going to do something about the state of our universities? We must surely by now be familiar with the symbols of this unfolding crisis. Philosopher Kathleen Stock, who was harassed by students and staff to such an extent that she was forced to leave her position at the University of Sussex. Noah Carl, the promising research fellow, who was chased out of Cambridge. Tony Sewell, the government advisor who oversaw the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities before suddenly finding his offer of an honorary doctorate at the University of Nottingham withdrawn. Tim Luckhurst, the Principal at Durham who invited Rod Liddle to speak at a dinner and was then suspended after students demanded he be disciplined.

The big concern, and what seems to be at stake here as well, is the pressure being put on schools to move away "from their founding mission to search for truth through free inquiry."

Maybe it has always been this way to some extent. Bertrand Russell's lecture and booklet Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Thought did address this last matter a century ago, but I get the impression that it has been exacerbated in recent years for a variety of reasons. One of these is spelled out in Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt's The Coddling of the American Mind.

* * * 

In a related critique of today's universities, William Deresiewicz sounds a wake-up call to American universities and institutions in an opinion piece titled American education’s new dark age . The subhead tells the story: Colleges have abandoned real learning for wokeism.

Deresiewicz's piece begins with his sharing his own wake-up experience teaching at an elite college in Southern California. "I assumed that they’d arrive with a fairly good idea of how to make an argument with an academic context and that I would be teaching them how to apply those skills to a very different set of rhetorical occasions," he writes. But he was wrong.

They not only didn't know how to construct an argument, they really hadn't learned how to read, or write or think. A little further along he realizes what led to this situation.

To understand how this predicament came to pass, one needs to understand how students manage to get into places like Harvard or the Claremont colleges in the first place. It is not by learning how to read, write, or think. It is by jumping through the endless series of hoops that elite college admissions offices have developed over the decades to winnow down their skyscraper stacks of application folders.

Not only are grades important, but involvement in a dozen extracurricular activities is essential to creating a solid, well-rounded candidate for the Ivy Leagues and other elite schools. In order to also get the sleep one needs, students learn to excel at skimming.

The author states outright that this kind of lifestyle does not produce intellectual engagement. Curiosity and passion must be suppressed, he states. The expertise students master has more to do with how to beat the system rather than learning anything.

Oh yes, they can pass tests. That's the new form of education, teaching to the test.  Don't surprise them by forcing them to think. They don't have time for that.

He goes on...

If that’s the kind of education students have received by the time they get to college, do things get better once they arrive? Not usually. Old habits die hard. Elite students, already competing for the next prize, continue to conduct their lives at the same frenetic pace. At the large mass of institutions below the level of the elite, the problem is less apt to be misdirected zeal than sheer indifference. Courses are a bother; campus culture runs to sports and beer.

 * * * 

The appeal of Wokeism is that it offers relief from the unsustainable emptiness of post-modern cynicism. Wokeism gives people something that appears to me meaningful to believe in. 

You can read the full story here: American Education's New Dark Age.

Comments welcome.

EdNote: I'm interested in your take on these articles. Are they overly harsh and critical, or fairly astute? Please share in the comments.

Related Link

Bertrand Russell's Free Thought and Official Propaganda Has Much to Say about the Current State of Cancel Culture

Delta Sky

Well, it’s official. Northwest Airlines has been swallowed by Delta. I know this because today’s in-flight mag offering is no longer the Northwest version. Today I am being introduced to Delta Sky.

Frankly, I've always thought in-flight magazines to be a pretty lame form of distraction. But maybe that’s because I've never flown Delta. I’ve done Eastern and Allegheny, but my primary transportation vehicle has been NWA, simply because no other airline wanted to have anything to do with these tiny airports ringing the outskirts of civilization known as "Up North."

So there it was, in the sleeve behind the seat in front of me, waiting for my curiosity to be aroused.

When I was a young wanna be freelance writer, I remember interviewing at a publishing house in St. Paul that produced some of these magazines. While sitting with my modest portfolio in a waiting room I talked with a woman who was on retainer to write for the company. She was paid six hundred dollars a piece, she said, which I thought was pretty good money considering my best paying gig had been about fifty bucks. (Do the math and you quickly see why I wasn’t quitting my day job painting apartments.)

The thing is, I wanted to write for these in-flight mags because they paid real bucks, but honestly found them so dry you could dip them into the Mississippi and they would still come out dry. Why is this? I’m sure the writers are trying to be interesting. I mean, some of those pieces I'd written for peanuts had lingo that really sang.

So I was on the plane this morning sliding my August Wired magazine into the pocket and there it was, Delta Sky. A smiling Serena Williams, tennis superchamp, graced the cover next to a large headline, “Got Game?” The subhead explains, “The Extra Mental Edge It Takes To Win.” OK, an article with celebrity sports stars telling their secrets.

After the plane is filled and we’re doing the runway thing I reach for my reading material, but instead choose SKY. First impressions can say a lot sometimes. I well remember my first impressions of the very first Wired magazine I purchased back in 1994. I’d attended a class at UMD on The Internet, and the instructor recommended it. So, like a dutiful student who was in awe of that first introduction to all things wired, I picked up a copy at Barnes & Noble…. And… whoa, wow, way cool. I mean, the ads were just so strikingly original. This was an incredible magazine. I hadn’t even reached the content yet, but had reached a conclusion. I was determined to linger on every page.

It think it was the sense of style that hooked me. To this day Wired strives for that occasionally elusive but hip stance. Elusive because styles have cycles and can you really hit the bulls-eye with every burst?

And as the first pages glide past, I immediately sense that Sky is not Wired. The ads have no continuity and are uneven in quality. Feeling a little ho hum already I stumble past pages of print ads that must be either selling the wrong products or just have become too cliche to bother stopping at. I realize it takes a little work to come up with a compelling concept and a little more to bring eyeballs to a standstill. My goal is usually to attempt cardiac arrest. At least I'm aiming high.

OK, we're reaching the real magazine now, and the first section, after the clutter of introductions, is called Wheels Up. It is a section with articles related to travel, business and lifestyles. At least the title has a little panache. The section has that USA Today feel of little entertaining snippets and infobriefs. Sports stars and their paychecks. A Guide to the new "Freeconomics". Getting your point across in a foreign country. Five minutes with..

Here's a page about Brussels for Road Warriors. And something about Bernadette Peters speaking out for the animals. (Not the rock band. Sorry.) Followed by a half page on how to craft the perfect cocktail.

On and on. Too cluttered for my taste. And it still feels so much like an in-flight magazine. I dunno how they do that.

OK, here's an interesting page. It's called August Citylicious. It's actually attractive enough that one could theoretically enlarge it, and frame it as art. Or make it into a poster. It lists cities all over the world and cool things that are happening there, like the Guy Expo in St. Paul this weekend, or the World Water Week symposium in Stockholm. I wonder if Woodstock would have made this list forty years ago. Alas...

The rest of the mag has features and ads, most of them so cliche I am zoning out and paging through to the end of the book. As is the custom, the very last section is airport terminal maps to help you get oriented when you finally get your feet on the ground again.

As for this month's Wired, I will have to savor it on my return flight this weekend. That cover shot of Brad Pitt alone is worth the price of my subscription. Cover stories include Unintelligent Design and Is Google A Monopoly? Is Google a monopoly? I'll find out Saturday.