Why is the state of universities such an emotional issue for me?

It all about values!

Universities have changed dramatically over the course of my lifetime. Australian universities are receiving increasing media attention due to failures in management and governance. But there is a lot more to the story, particularly at the grassroots level, of the everyday experience of students and faculty. It is all about the four M's: management, marketing, metrics, and money. Learning, understanding, and discovering things for their own sake is alien and marginalised. I have stopped writing posts about this. So why come back to it?

I am often struck how emotional this issue is for me and how hard it is to sometimes talk about it, particularly with those with a different view from me. Writing blog posts (e.g. this one) about it has been a somewhat constructive outlet, rather than exploding in anger at an overpaid and unqualified "manager" or one of their many multiplying minions.

A few weeks ago, I listened to three public lectures by the Australian historian Peter Harrison. [He is my former UQ colleague. We are now both Emeritus. I benefited from excellent seminars he ran at UQ, some of which I blogged about].

The lectures helped me understand what has happened to universities and also why it is a sensitive subject for me. Briefly, it is all about values and virtues.

The lectures are nicely summarised by Peter in the short article, 

How our universities became disenchanted: Secularisation, bureaucracy and the erosion of value

Reading the article rather than this blog post is recommended. I won't try and summarise it, but rather highlight a few points and then make some peripheral commentary.

I agree with Peter's descriptions of the problems we see on the surface (bureaucracy, metrics, and management features significantly). His lectures are a much deeper analysis of underlying cultural changes and shifting worldviews that have occurred over centuries, leading universities to evolve into their current mangled form.

A few things to clarify to avoid potential misunderstanding of Peter's arguments.

Secularisation is defined broadly. It does not just refer to the decline in the public influence of Christianity in the Western world. It is also about Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotle, and the associated emphasis on virtues and transcendence. Peter states:

"The intrinsic motivations of teachers, researchers and scholars can be understood in terms of virtues or duties. According to virtue ethics, the “good” of an activity is related to the way it leads to a cultivation and expression of particular virtues. These, in turn, are related to a particular conception of natural human ends or goals. (Aristotle’s understanding of human nature, which informs virtue ethics, proposes that human beings are naturally oriented towards knowledge, and that they are fulfilled as persons to the extent that they pursue those goals and develop the requisite intellectual virtues.)"

The virtue ethics of Aristotle [and Alisdair MacIntyre] conflicts with competing ethical visions, including duty-oriented (deontological) ethics, consequentialist ethics, and particularly utilitarianism. This led to a shift away from intrinsic goods to what things are "good for", i.e., what practical outcomes they produce. For example, is scientific research "good" and have "value" because it cultivates curiousity, awe, and wonder, or because it will lead to technology that will stimulate economic growth?

Peter draws significantly on Max Weber's ideas about secularisation, institutions, and authority. Weber argued that a natural consequence of secularisation was disenchantment (the loss of magic in the world). This is not simply "people believe in science rather than magic". Disenchantment is a loss of a sense of awe, wonder, and mystery.

Now, a few peripheral responses to the lectures.

Is secularisation the dominant force that has created these problems for universities? In question time, Peter was asked whether capitalism was more important. i.e., universities are treated as businesses and students as customers? He agreed that capitalism is a factor but also pointed out how Weber emphasised that capitalism was connected to the secularising effects of the Protestant Reformation.

 I think that two other factors to consider are egalitarianism and opportunism. These flow from universities being "victims" of their own success. Similar issues may also be relevant to private schools, hospitals, and charities. They have often been founded by people of "charisma" [in the sense used by Weber] motivated by virtue ethics. Founders were not concerned with power, status, or money. What they were doing had intrinsic value to them and was "virtuous". In the early stages, these institutions attracted people with similar ideals. The associated energy, creativity, and common vision led to "success." Students learnt things, patients got healed, and poverty was alleviated. But, this success attracted attention and  the institution then had power, money, status, and influence.

The opportunists then move in. They are attracted to the potential to share in the power, money, status, and influence. The institution then takes on a life of its own, and the ideals and virtue ethics of the founders are squeezed out. In some sense, opportunism might be argued to be a consequence of secularisation. 

[Aside: two old posts considered a similar evolution, motivated by a classic article about the development of businesses.]

One indicator of the "success" of universities is how their graduates join the elite and hold significant influence in society. [Aside: ignoring the problem of distinguishing correlation and causality. Do universities actually train students well or just select those who will succeed anyway?]  Before (around) 1960, (mostly) only the children of the elite got to attend university. Demands arose that more people should have access to this privilege. This led to "massification" and an explosion in the number of students, courses, and institutions. This continues today, globally. Associated with this was more bureaucracy. Furthermore, the "iron triangle" of cost, access, and quality presents a challenge for this egalitarianism. If access increases, so does cost and quality decreases, unless you spend even more. It is wonderful that universities have become more diverse and accessible. On the other hand, I fear that for every underprivileged student admitted whose mind is expanded and life enriched, many more rich, lazy, and entitled students suck the life out of the system.

Metrics are pseudo-rational

Peter rightly discussed how the proliferation of the use of metrics to measure value is problematic, and reflects the "rationalisation" associated with bureaucracy (described by Weber). Even if one embraces the idea that "rational" and "objective" assessment is desirable, my observation is that in practice, metrics are invariably used in an irrational way. For example, managers look at the impact factor of journals, but are blissfully oblivious to the fact that the citation distribution for any journal is so broad and with a long tail that the mean number is meaningless. The underlying problem is that too many of the people doing assessments suffer from some mixture of busyness, intellectual laziness, and arrogance. Too many managers are power hungry and want to make the decisions themselves, and don't trust faculty who actually may understand the intellectual merits and weaknesses of the work being assessed.

The problems are just as great for the sciences as the humanities

On the surface, the humanities are doing worse than the sciences. For example, if you look at declining student numbers, threats of job cuts, political criticism, and status within the university. This is because science is associated with technology which is associated with jobs and economic growth. However, if you look at pure science that is driven by curiousity, awe, and wonder, then one should be concerned. There is an aversion to attacking difficult and risky problems, particularly those that require long-term investment or have been around for a while. The emphasis is on low-lying fruit and the latest fashion. Almost all physics and chemistry research is framed in terms of potential applications, not fundamental understanding. Sometimes I feel some of my colleagues are doing engineering not physics. In a similar vein, biochemists frame research in terms of biomedical applications, not the beauty and wonders of how biological systems work. 

Are universities destined for bureaucratic self-destruction?

Provocatively, Peter considered the potential implications of the arguments of historian and anthropologist Joseph Tainter concerning the collapse of complex societies. On the technical side, this reminded me of a famous result in ecology by Robert May, that as the complexity of a system (the number of components and interactions) increases, it can become unstable.

I don't think universities as institutions will collapse. They are too integrated into the fabric of modern capitalism. What may collapse is the production of well-educated (in the Renaissance sense) graduates and research that is beautiful, original, and awe-inspiring. This leads naturally into the following question.

Is the age of great discoveries over?

Peter briefly raised this issue. On the one hand, we are victims of our own success. It is amazing how much we now know and understand. Hence, it is harder to discover truly new and amazing things. On the other hand, because of emergence we should expect surprises.

There is hope on the margins

Peter did not just lament the current situation but made some concrete suggestions for addressing the problems, even though we are trapped in Weber's "iron cage" of bureaucracy.

• Re-balancing the structures of authority
• Finding a place for values discourse in the universities
• Develop ways of resolving differences with a sense of the rationality of Alisdair MacIntyre in mind

On the first, I note the encouraging work of the ANU Governance Project.

Peter also encouraged people to work on the margins. I also think that this is where the most significant scholarship and stimulus for reform will happen. A nice example is the story that Malcolm Gladwell tells in a podcast episode, The Obscure Virus Club.