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The Pursuit of Knowledge
The Idea of a University
Surely there is a better way to manage the transition from adolescence to adulthood than by spending the family savings on a four-year course in resentment.
The pope is about to visit England, and is expected during the visit to announce the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, the scholar, priest, and poet, who left the Anglican for the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, and who was to become the most important Catholic intellectual of his time. From 1854, for a period of five years, Newman was rector of the newly founded Catholic University of Ireland (now University College Dublin), and during that time he delivered lectures that were later published as The Idea of a University — surely the most serene and beautiful vindication that we have of the old ideal of the scholarly life.
For Newman a university does not exist simply to convey information or expertise. The university is a society in which the student absorbs the graces and accomplishments of a higher form of life. In the university, according to Newman, the pursuit of truth and the active discussion of its meaning are integrated into a wider culture, in which the ideal of the gentleman is acknowledged as the standard. The gentleman does not merely know things; he is receptive to the tone, the meaning, the lived reality of what he knows. Thus, for Newman, “the general principles of any study you may learn by books at home; but the detail, the colour, the tone, the air, the life which makes it live in us, you must catch all these from those in whom it lives already.” The university of Newman’s day was a place in which men (and it was then an institution for men only) lived for scholarship, and arranged their lives around the sacrifice that scholarship requires. It was not simply a repository of knowledge. It was a place where work and leisure occurred side by side, shaping each other, and each playing its part in producing the well-formed and graceful personality.
A reader of Cardinal Newman’s book today is likely to agree that the university, as he describes it, would be an institution of irreplaceable value. Newman’s university was to be an integral part of the social order. It was to set an example and to help young men to live up to it. It was not the antagonist but the completion of ordinary life, and the great rewards that it offered were to be purchased by social discipline. Newman’s university was to be eminently respectable: critical of society only because critical of itself.
I suspect that many middle-class parents, when it comes to deciding on their teenage children’s future, entertain a picture of university life that is not entirely at odds with that painted by Newman. They will recognize the gap between Newman’s ideal and the imperfect realities. But they will recognize that this gap does not necessarily represent a decline. Universities now admit women, and try as best they can to offer their benefits to people in all walks of life and regardless of personal connections or social class. Those changes will count, in most eyes, as improvements. And the resources available to a modern university are many factors greater than those enjoyed by the university described by Newman, which had next to nothing in the way of lecture halls, book-lending facilities, concert halls, and places of recreation.
The middle-class father, preparing to meet tuition fees of $40,000 or more, and board and lodging on top of that, will naturally dwell on all the ways in which this represents a good investment. But when his daughter emerges three or four years later with a degree in Women’s Studies, the main outward sign of which is a well-honed grievance against men in general and the last one in particular, he is likely to question the wisdom of throwing away a third of a million dollars on such an outcome. Finding that his daughter’s ignorance of the classics is as great on leaving university as it was on entering it, that she has graduated from her teenage pop idols only to immerse herself in more “advanced” forms of rock and heavy metal, and that her attitude to career, marriage, childbearing, and all the other things that he had hoped for her is entirely negative, such a father is sure to regret the use of his money.
OF COURSE that is an extreme case. But it has been apparent to many commentators, at least since Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind, that all is not well with the university today, and that parents have little or no guarantee that the vast cost of a university education will be rewarded with a viable product. If young James or Clarissa studies math and sciences; if he or she makes the right friends; plays viola in a string quartet; joins a theatre group; avoids drink, drugs, and promiscuous sex and holds on, against the odds, to the religion of the family home, then the experience will be worth the vast expenditure.
But I have just described an exceptional case, and certainly not the majority. Most students now graduate in soft subjects that require ideological conformity rather than intellectual growth, and most spend their leisure hours in ways of which their parents would not approve. This is often defended as the natural result of academic freedom. You cannot grant to universities the intellectual freedom that scholarship requires, it is argued, and also deny the moral freedom that enables students to adapt through their own “experiments in living.” Freedom is indivisible, and without it knowledge cannot grow.
The problem with that argument is that, outside the natural sciences and a few solid humanities like philosophy and Egyptology, academic freedom is a thing of the past. What is expected of the student in many courses in the humanities and social sciences is ideological conformity, rather than critical appraisal, and censorship has become accepted as a legitimate part of the academic way of life. “No platform” policies, forbidding people of unorthodox or offensive views from addressing audiences on campus, or speech codes that condemn unorthodox statements as “hate speech” are now widely accepted. This would matter less if the opinions and idioms condemned were those of some antisocial minority. But they are usually those of the “moral majority,” and are often condemned in order to appease groups (Islamists, gay activists, radical feminists) whose loyalty to the established order is questionable at best.
Under a president whose knowledge of life seems to have been acquired entirely from campus orthodoxies and who seeks to impose those orthodoxies on the American people, it is inevitable that ordinary conservative Americans should wonder whether a university education is quite the bargain that its defenders claim it to be. Surely there is a better way to manage the transition from adolescence to adulthood than by spending the family savings on a four-year course in resentment.
THE GREAT VIRTUE OF AMERICAN SOCIETY is that individual citizens have the scope, the freedom, and the habits of association that enable them to pursue their own objectives, regardless of the established institutions. We have seen this in the movement for homeschooling. We saw it in the growth of the liberal arts colleges in the 19th century, and in the continued founding of new colleges devoted to old and defiant ideals. Could we not envisage a wholly new kind of university, responsive to the wishes of parents, and liberated from the phony subjects and dubious social mores that have occupied the American campus? It seems to me that we can, and that modern technology has put this new kind of university within the reach of everyone.
I envisage an experiment in “distance learning,” in which students work from home, and attend lectures, receive tutorials, and engage in discussions through Internet connections. As the Internet becomes more interactive, the need for universities to establish themselves in physical space, rather than in cyberspace, is less evident. Virtual communities of scholarship might be more volatile than real communities of scholars. But they will be far more responsive to the demands of their customers, and far cheaper to run. They could provide most of what is provided by a humanities department, with the added advantage of choosing their professors from all over the world, and paying a proper market price for them. First-rate scholars could participate in such a project, knowing that they do not have to share their earnings with the second-rate colleagues who form the solid mass of humanities departments in physical space. And although rehearsals might be difficult, the cyber-university orchestra, when it finally comes together in the two weeks of summer devoted to real meetings in real space, would enjoy a range of talent as great as the National Youth Orchestra.
Already I have begun to encounter university colleagues, marginalized for their conservative views or for their dissatisfaction with the way things are done, who are looking for other ways of continuing the great tradition of higher learning, and of passing on to the next generation some of the knowledge that was passed on to them. Such is the prevailing spirit in America, that I suspect the cyber-university will be a day-to-day reality, long before the old universities wake up to the fact that they have priced themselves out of the market. And maybe future generations will look back on those dreaming spires in cyberspace with the same nostalgia with which Newman, lecturing in the bleak surroundings of the new Catholic University of Ireland, looked back on the towers and quadrangles of his beloved Oxford.
About the Author
Roger Scruton is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book, How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism, has just been published by Oxford University Press.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (109) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 9.17.10 @ 7:14AM
This is the sort of education I had, and it is still available, but not on the huge, expensive campuses where hordes of brats strive to be the top frog in the Popularity Pond, just as they did in high school. University (or college in the USA) was always meant to be an education in living, not in making a living. It was the sixties cry for *Relevance* from ignorant savages whose idea of Relevance was *Can I Get A Job Once I Have Learned This?* In other words, they were looking for a trade school -- and sadly, the modern *university* if it can teach them anything, will teach them a trade. People who want an education should investigate small campuses outside the big cities, and by all means they should visit these places with their families before they sign up.
In an international world, it is more important than ever that people have a common foundation of education, and that includes more knowledge and less information, and the ability to recognize the difference. Rhetoric, logic, classical literature and music, geography, Western history, American history, philosophy, Bible studies, great poets of England and America (so your darling will not hear a cogent quotation from Walter de la Mare and say admiringly *Did you make that up?*), and Latin and French (because it is highly likely a person can be bilingual and not speak English) would be my recommendation. I am handicapped with a math glitch akin to dyslexia, but I have studied science to the extent of my ability to understand it without same; and I figured out early on that the grade is not as important as what I had actually learned.
I stood on all 7 continents before I was 21, and throughout my life I have met and worked with people from other countries and social classes, and my classical education has served me much better than any education in Gender Identity in Rock and Roll (although I did take a course in cinematography that was heavy on analysis and criticism, not of its political message but on such things as the world view of the piece in its context, and the Authors Message, which flowed directly from my literature background and is equally valid in the dispassionate analysis of trash, by the way).
As for what parents spend on worthless educational *opportunities* for their Adult Children (what a stupid phrase that is!), why do the parents not investigate and visit these places and talk to people who go there, or read their literature? And if the place is a hellhole with a high price tag, why do the parents not refuse to bankroll this four year million dollar daycare? If the brat wants to waste her life paying for four years of getting drunk and pregnant and waving pre-printed signs and chanting focus-group slogans beginning with HEY HEY HO HO, let her do so. But do not participate in her ruin and tell her why.
In other words, stop worrying about whether your daughters friends think you are Hot, and start worrying about whether your daughter will show up on a milk carton or a post office wall -- or in a welfare office.
ENOUGH ROPE| 9.17.10 @ 7:59AM
The University of Dallas is an example of a Catholic university that is faithful to the Holy See and the pursuit of virtue and wisdom which is ensured by a rigorous REQUIRED core of about 26 courses in Western philosophy, literature, history, theology, foreign language, math, science, economics, and politics. It was the youngest university in the 20th Century to earn a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. Other examples are Thomas Aquinas College and Christendom College.
Melvin| 9.17.10 @ 8:41AM
Your education is what I admire Appleby. Not that I am blowing smoke up your backside mind you, but as a young lad who ventured onto college campuses, not for my own education but tagging along with my sister, there was a sort of reverence about the place. Something akin a monastery type atmosphere, as I walked with her I didn't want to disturb the sanctity of the place. Of course this was many years ago, but colleges now resemble social re-engineering centers of propagandist crap, most notable Duke University with it's infatuation in supporting Yasser Arafat.
I now reside in North Carolina within the spheres of Duke, UNC colleges.
Many young people today, don't seem to have the hunger or the desire to see what is on the other side of the horizon. They seem perfectly content in standing in front of the mirror, debating to themselves if they should ask mom and dad for the money for Botox or breast enlargement treatments.
Myself the further I went, the further I wanted to go.
Jeez, Appleby have we as a society become so utterly shallow that as a people, no longer desire to stand upon the Great Wall of China, and utter, "Damn, this thing is huge?"
Petronius| 9.17.10 @ 9:31AM
All too true. But it would not be so were it not necessary to have in hand that faux parchment proclaiming that the bearer has acquired the taste for excrement in order to darken the doorway of any human resources officer.
Eric Cartman| 9.17.10 @ 10:15AM
Appleby, you're trade school analogy stings a bit - you seem to be maligning them. Trade schools (culinary, aeronautics, welding, etc) I have found are much more difficult than the many reeducation camps calling themselves universities. They actually have standards the student must meet before they are qualified to call themselves chefs, mechanics, welders, etc. So let's not lump trade schools in with what has become of the American university - Jersey Shore Fantasy Camps. (If you're not, I apologize in advance).
I attended a boys college (prep-school) in Europe in my salad days, Unfortunately I had to return to America's public education system in the 8th grade. I would never again see the caliber of instruction I had become use to in Europe again - even in college here. What was expected from me in my prep-school would terrify the NEA union co-conspirators (teachers). I had to argue with my 8th grade English teacher that "colour" was an acceptable English word. She was a black girl (24,maybe) from Detroit and had never seen the word before. Nor the words labour, neighbour or savour - as in I savoured the chance to prove her wrong. Alsa, she didn't like my English and gave me a D. Don't even get me started on my pre-calculus teacher. He would always - ALWAYS - get sine and cos mixed up. Sine was always adj/hyp - LOL You ALWAYS had to correct it in your head - he was a black guy from Detroit, too. Needless to say, my year and a half in the Detroit school system was hell - if hell was run by incompetent affirmative action evil Hench-persons (must be inclusive, mustn't we).
For college I was fortunate enough to attend Texas A & M, where they still say sir and ma'am and standards are high.
I must say, however, even Graduate School has been disappointing. Many of my mates ct like Freshman undergrads - it's bizarre. Jersey Shore redux. So while I agree with you in the main, let's take it easy on the trade school dissing :-)
Appleby| 9.17.10 @ 11:28AM
EC, I have nothing against trade schools whatever, and urged many a young person to go to one instead of university, as it would be money better spent when money is in short supply, and especially these days there are many ways to get a university education of the proper sort once the thirst strikes. In fact, if I had kids of my own, I would urge them to go to school and learn to repair Xerox machines, having seen that these are the guys who find their paths strewn with rose petals and lined with bowing peasants.
My point was essentially that trade schools are trade schools, and universities are universities, and rarely, if ever, should one be mistaken for the other.
P.S. Before Doctor Doolittle was sanitized for the protection of the ignorant prejudices of the same Black people who thought "niggardly" was a racist word, one could meet in its pages one Prince Bumpo, the "negro" (so described by Lofting) son of an African king, sent by his father to Oxford University for the kind of education his father knew from having met and dealt with the British colonialists that his son would need to compete with them. Prince Bumpo was not mocked as an ignorant savage, but was portrayed as the country boy coming to the city, and would still be a good object lesson today if the bowdlerizers would allow you to meet him.
Eric Cartman| 9.17.10 @ 12:13PM
Points well taken, sir. Having gone back to school I have noticed that about half the undergrads there would do better with a trade school education. My father went to Henry Ford's trade school for electronics (he was first put in tool and die making, but thought the electronics guys were a higher status). He was an orphan living with his aunt in Hamtramak. He became a Master Electrician with Giffles and Rosetti and eventually the foreman on some of the largest construction projects in the world.
My first year in college (not A & M - another school) I tried the "my professor says . . . " BS on him. That was the last time I did that LOL. He had more real world knowledge and common sense in his flatulence than most of the professors I would come to know.
joli| 9.17.10 @ 9:31PM
That's ma'am to you, sir.
DG in GA| 9.17.10 @ 5:06PM
The most intelligent thing you said in your post was encouraging parents to refuse to fund the waste of time that many college degrees have become. Womyn's Studies, Feminist Philosophy, The Films of Woody Allen, Cinema, blah, blah, blah. Think I'm making this up? I know young people right now who have undergraduate degrees in these subjects from universities to which their parents paid good money. Jobs??? They don't need no stinking jobs!!! They live at home with Mommy & Daddy! Some of them have gone on to grad school and received yet ANOTHER useless degree. They never thought about the future, they were just majoring in something that interested them. How nice!
I hate to sound like my parents, but when I was in college and I told Mom & Dad that I wanted to major in Theatre, they told me to enjoy the experience, but they would not pay for it. So then I thought I'd major in Music. They said fine, but only if I received a Teaching Certificate at the end of the program. Otherwise, they would not pay for it. I finally settled on Economics and Business Administration, which they were happy to pay for. They figured at least I could get a full-time job while I tried to become an actress and a singer. Imagine their disappointment when I parlayed their investment in my education into a career as a bank executive.
And no, I do not think it is antithetical to the meaning of higher education to have there be some practical use to which you can put that knowledge at the end of the degree program. And I DO think degrees in stuff like Philosophy are pretty much a waste of time, unless you plan to be a lawyer and need to learn to spout BS all day long.
joli| 9.17.10 @ 9:35PM
I hope to sound like your parents someday. :-)
tony| 9.21.10 @ 5:51PM
Sounds like we have a bitter frustrated, ex-artist, turned banker, silly line of reasoning.
Alan Brooks| 9.17.10 @ 11:16PM
I'd send my grandkids to a school such as Thomas Moore College or to no college at all.
That way, no collegiate drugs, no herpes, and-- hopefully-- no alcoholism.
Jacobite| 9.18.10 @ 5:16PM
I agree with the author about distance-learning possibilities. But, between on-line lectures, somebody needs to burn down existing colleges, make the profs disappear, and sow the ground with salt. Swatting mosquitos is good, but draining the swamps and dousing them with DDT is better.
Mike Roughly| 9.22.10 @ 9:02AM
One of the clean little secrets of many of the for-profit online schools is the high quality of its faculty. Mixed in with the less pedigreed they themselves produce are many over-qualified ivy-league PhDs with sterling resumes as both scholars and teachers who can't get a decent tenure-track position, for various reasons well aired in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. One of those flukes of market and history that forms the rising tide that lifts the boats...?
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 6:24AM
I wonder if people realize that University in most places is not the "liberal arts" education that people in the U.S. think of it as.
Here in Israel, we work on the European system. This means that a University degree consists of a three or four year course ENTIRELY IN YOUR MAJOR. On the one hand, this means you do know a lot more about software or psychology or whatever. But Higher Education it isn't.
One interesting connection is that a "college" is never part of a university; it is a less prestigious school. A school of a University is called a "Faculty", not a college.
I understand that in the U.K. both sorts now exist.
This is based on what I have been able to learn fom talking to people. I would appreciate corrections from people wil recent knowledge of the European system.
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 6:41AM
Yes, I know I ended a sentence with a preposition. :-)
LB| 9.28.10 @ 12:06AM
It's a good point. The US system has to be understood as a mix of undergrad and postgrad. Much of the criticism in this piece is directed at the breadth of the former; but postgrad, especially professional degrees, need to be taken into account as well. In the EU it is different: you get one targeted shot at a subject, which is correspondingly taught in a more traditional way (at least at serious universities). There are of course many other differences and failings. One correction to this post: colleges in Oxford and Cambridge are still a critical unit of the system, and the word has administrative uses in other UK universities, eg London and Edinburgh. And finally, the Newman ideal does hold in Oxbridge: due mainly to the high quality of the students (there is some sophisticated affirmative action), the quality of the academic faculty and the method of small group college -based teaching and college life. And the knowledge that anyone with a decent degree from there will get a good job. A final point: distance learning is the antithesis of this. And I'm sure our newly promoted Saint would agree.
Ed| 9.17.10 @ 8:16AM
National Review has published a book: "National Review College Guide: America's Top Liberal Arts Schools" that discusses the few colleges (mostly private, church-related ones) that teach a traditional curriculum. These schools have teachers that range from center-left to conservatives and libertarians. As a college teacher in the hard sciences, I highly recommend this book for prospective students and their parents.
Alan Brooks| 9.18.10 @ 1:52AM
"left to conservatives and libertarians."
Libertarian professors? if a libertarian professor wants a student to stay after class, she (or he)
would do well to take the precaution of wearing a chastity belt.
danz| 9.21.10 @ 1:10PM
Say what?????????????
Emmanuel| 9.21.10 @ 2:45PM
I think you may be confusing "libertarian" with "libertine." I'm a libertarian professors and students don't need any protective gear to be safe with me.
Liv| 9.17.10 @ 8:32AM
I was nearly the young woman Scruton describes, though in the midst of all the vitriol directed against men and the patriarchy by my feminist professors, I kept a critical spirit. I could see, even then, that they were attempting to give me an indoctrination, rather than an education--but that experience, in and of itself, WAS an education--in the way the world works. In the meantime, I was prudent, studious. I feel my father got his money's worth. I easily paid back my small loans. I am at home with my children now, two sons. I think my father wonders whether I am a "viable product." However, with an education under my belt, I am confident of employment, should we ever need a two-income and in the meantime, I work to keep my mind alive even as my hands are busy.
Melvin| 9.17.10 @ 9:03AM
Liv, will it ever go back to the way it used to be? Why pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to have ones offspring minds filled with crap from a college professor, that can be obtained off the Internet for free.
Nowadays it seems its all about the race for money, and that aspect is important to makes a living, but as you noted in your last sentence, " I work to keep my mind alive, even as my hands are busy."
One night, while sitting around the campfire during the close of a training exercise in the Marine Corps, there was this young man who had received one of his degrees in philosophy, and took the time out to serve his country not as an officer but as an enlisted man and the group of us just sat there enjoying the fire with the cool evening air discussing everything and anything from a philosophical point of view. It was one of those you have to have been there moments to appreciate it, but Liv, this young man's mind was amazing. He was one of those rare human beings that you meet for a brief moment in time, that has an immense impact upon how each of us around the campfire viewed our world and the world around us. Even after all these seasons that have past I still remember that evening as if it was yesterday.
Ignorance is Bliss| 9.17.10 @ 8:49AM
If the result of a college education is a liberal view, I realize how fortunate I am never to have been indoctrinated. My education is largely self-inflicted, and for the first time in my life, I'm proud of that.
Petronius| 9.17.10 @ 9:21AM
Friend!
Oh that higher education would provide that which people need to know instead of what They want us to have. Off the hoop jumping and all the chickens***. Carry on.
Character| 9.17.10 @ 11:04AM
I, too earned my degree from life experiences and somehow managed to afford an excellent education for two children, one a doctor and the other an engineer. They are ungrateful, superior, snobs but I love them. I am patient. I am content in the knowledge life will teach them lessons the university holds in contempt. University experience can only go so far. Life builds character and that is something that truly deserves the pride of a parent.
Appleby| 9.17.10 @ 11:32AM
They will start that education the first time they encounter someone in the course of business or politics whom they wish to impress and mistake Lafayette for Lamartine.
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 6:28AM
The result of Higher Education is supposed to be a "liberal" view. The problem is that you are likely to get a leftist view, which is close to the opposite.
S. Ruger| 9.17.10 @ 8:54AM
Universities have always had a prevailing moral consensus and implicit restrictions on speech, teaching, and other forms of expression. These just change over time.
Does anyone seriously think that a truly Catholic institution back in more conservative times would have tolerated a series of lectures attempting to show that the succession of Peter was an illusory basis for the authority of the Pope? Or that any major university in the U.S. in the 1950s would have tolerated student organizations that openly advocated changing the country's government to a Communist one? Please provide examples of this kind of tolerance if you know of any.
In recent decades there has been a new orthodoxy, one that by any measure of reason, tradition, or societal sustainability sucks mightily. But things are changing. I'm heartened by how many of my students are conservative politically and deeply religious.
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 6:45AM
Student organizations, no. But the Left certainly had a certain romance about it back then.
Denver Todd| 9.17.10 @ 9:26AM
I hear all the time that going to college is the ideal. High schools are rated by how many students go to college. There are many aid programs that push people into college. Why is going to college the ideal? Could it be a prejudice against using your hands? For women, could it be a prejudice against getting married? Imagine the whole world educated, but nobody to unplug your toilet.
Erik Larsen| 9.19.10 @ 3:49PM
Agree 1000%. Not everyone deserves to go to college, and college is not a good fit for everyone. We as a society have forgotten what real work is like - and those that have "real jobs" - backbreaking, repetitive jobs, well, I feel like crawling on my hands and knees over broken glass to thank them.
Petronius| 9.17.10 @ 9:48AM
D.T. Where have you been? I was told many years ago that if I had no degree I couldn't possibly know anything. This pronouncement was spoken in company by an uppity bitch who proscribed her husband from speaking to me in the future. Sadly, he complied. He is now divorced and still in fear of her. For this type, snobbery isn't just about money. Who one attends any school with has much more cachet. And in this town, if you weren't "in" at your high school, you might as well be dead.
JeffT| 9.17.10 @ 10:41AM
Just compare the course catalog of a typical college or university from today and 40 years ago. We've gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. Colleges are negligent in caring for our kids safety and their brains. And they cajole kids into taking 5-6 years to complete this "education," at Mom and Dad's expense.
JP| 9.17.10 @ 10:56AM
The university in its original form had three goals: 1)transmit the vast resevoir of cultural knowledge to the student through rigoruous readings of classical text and lectures. 2)Humanize the student and 3)prepare him for further studies in either law, philosophy (theology), or Medecine. Most students attended lectures for a decade before they matriculated. All other "careers" were considered "vocations".
Of course this preceeded the age of the "professional". Many students with interests in mathematics studied under private masters; the same for physics and chemistry. Eventually, math and the hard sciences were taught within the school of philosophy. It was only after Kant that the universities as we know them were formed. His division of knowledge led the formations of schools for the arts, sciences, and philosophy (which later branched off into the Humanities. The German thinker Hegel made the study of History a rigorous subject. And later, another German philisopher made sociology a seperate area of study).
If the truth be know, few very few people should attend college. Most specialties could be taught in the same manner most vocations are taught. The MBA is one of the most oversold degrees around. And almost all students have no desire, the disposition, nor the intellect to take part in a truely classic education. But, the beast must be fed. Hundreds of thousands of tensure professors' jobs rely on the now dean Kantian model. No one believes in the truly humaine education of past centuries. But we are stuck with it. Freshman must suffer through classes like Gender Studies 101, or The History of White Oppression for no better reason than to ensure that Beardo the Weirdo keeps his six figure tenured position.
Roscoe| 9.19.10 @ 11:39AM
Spot on JP, thanks.
Polosail| 9.22.10 @ 6:54AM
In your concluding fantasy, you write "Freshman must suffer through classes like Gender Studies 101, or The History of White Oppression . . . ." You underestimate even the average such course, whose examination of e.g. Islam in that context is simultaneously humane (sic) and relevant.
More widely to all comments, raw dismissal of subject matter -- before having mastered it -- reflects prejudice or cognitive impairment.
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 6:53AM
If you are correct, then this is already happening in many parts of the world, where a University education is often just a very intense techincal education in a particular subject.
My university did not have room forthe sort of garbage mentioned above, but at the end, what it did for me was give me access to a computer to practice on, books on programming, and a piece of paper to take to HR.
Newman's description reminds me of a post-high-school Yeshiva.
Donna| 9.17.10 @ 11:00AM
Wow, this is a very well written piece and you can tell your education is well rounded. One observation is that my niece attended DePaul and that is a Catholic College and emerged with a degree in Women’s Studies. The very sad reality is she owes the federal government a lot of money through financial aid for attending that prestigious school and no skills to work to pay it back. She is being helped by family to return to Wayne State to get a nursing degree so she can support herself.
The taxpayers have lent over 27 billion dollars in financial aid to students who have nothing to show for the debt or experience except resentment like you said.
Appleby| 9.17.10 @ 11:35AM
Daddy always said a girl needed both a profession and a trade, so she could support herself regardless. Fortunately along with my classical education, I learned to type.
Sheila| 9.17.10 @ 12:27PM
Appleby, lots of excellent comments! I, too, was privileged to receive a classical education at a woman's college that today, had I a daughter, I would not dare send her to. I spent four wonderful years studying and thinking and learning at a beautiful campus filled with many fascinating and erudite people. Grad school was not nearly so idyllic and far more career-focused, and through it all my high school classes in typing and shorthand stood me in good stead!!
I don't know that I care to massively increase our debt to send our sons to any of today's universities. They've received/are receiving a solid Christian education (a great enough expense on its own), and the older one is attending community college while working to help pay his way. He frankly acknowledges that he's learned little since he left private school for public school after the eighth grade, and is going to college to get the mandatory ticket punch he may need in the future.
At best only a quarter of all of today's college students have the actual, inherent ability to do genuine college-level work, yet all these chumps continue to fork over their life savings to ensure that junior can sneer at senior. Meanwhile, ideologically hostile institutions continue to receive an abundance of applicants eager to sport the right bumper sticker and the right attitudes to join the ruling elites. If I cared to play their game, I daresay my assorted exam scores and degrees and awards would be judged more than sufficient; however, I escaped the East Coast long ago and now find I prefer the company of real people.
John II| 9.17.10 @ 12:41PM
". . . my niece attended DePaul and that is a Catholic College and emerged with a degree in Women’s Studies."
Not to put too sharp an edge on it, Donna, but your neice didn't attend a Catholic college; she attended a historically Catholic college.
After 20 years of investigating the matter, the Vatican finally published the apostolic constitution "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" in 1990. The document describes what the Holy See thenceforth and for the past 20 years recognizes as a Catholic institution of higher learning. Of the 240-odd historically Catholic colleges and universities in North America, fewer than seventy fit the description.
Some have exhibited sufficient integrity to discontinue advertising themselves as Catholic, but most continue to tout their "Catholic identity" partly to secure alumni support and partly to flatter themselves with assurances that their own secularized institutional dissent from orthodox Catholic teaching is no biggie.
Today most historically Catholic colleges and universities are no more Catholic than Duke is Methodist or Princeton is Presbyterian.
Among the latter historically Catholic institutions, count Notre Dame and Georgetown.
GG| 9.17.10 @ 12:00PM
and that her attitude to career, marriage, childbearing, and all the other things that he had hoped for her is entirely negative, such a father is sure to regret the use of his money.
You mean he sent her to college so that she would bear children and get married?
John II| 9.17.10 @ 12:45PM
No--get married and bear children. You got the order wrong.
Appleby| 9.17.10 @ 3:58PM
Sadly, this is what most of our fathers hoped for us in the Olden Days; a girl who had not managed to GettaMan in high school was frequently sent to college to gain the kind of polish that would attract a better class of man and ensure she didn't embarass him in front of his business associates. My college ring is a tasteful object I still wear, with the year of graduation tactfully engraged on the INSIDE, and was sized for my right hand, so that WHEN I got my wedding ring, I could still wear my school ring too.
Daddy was a feminist before anybody had ever heard of feminism; he wanted us to be moral, upright and happy. Still, as I attend my auntie's 100th birthday celebration next weekend, I am prepared, even at my advanced age, to hear hordes of relatives murmur, "What a shame you never married.........."
John II| 9.17.10 @ 10:05PM
Were you responding to me, Appie?
Anyhow, I don't know about the "sadly" part. I have only one daughter among my five kids. She's the youngest and she's now in college. She's very brainy and literate, a voracious reader and, according to campus rumor, a formidable presence in her seminars--all of which I expect from her.
I also expected her to find a good young man of clear ambition, intellectual and religious depth, and gentle demeanor (the kind of man who, on reflection, she'd want to be the father of her children): find him, I said, and then rope and hog-tie him. She's done that too. So I expect wedding bells right after graduation.
She wants to be a writer, but she also wants at least eight kids. So she expects her husband to support their family well.
Now aren't all those expectations ambitious enough? Who the hell needs feminism?
And now back to the original version of "Father of the Bride" (1950), starring Spencer Tracy.
RCV| 9.17.10 @ 11:42PM
She sounds like a gem. You must be very proud of her.
John II| 9.18.10 @ 12:57AM
Deliriously so, Roberto--but I'm good at concealing it. Her older brothers dote on her enough. No need to spoil her.
Jim O'Brien| 9.17.10 @ 12:53PM
If the Founding Fathers had been educated in the equivalent of today's universities, the Constitution would not have been written and our free republic would not exist. Fortunately for us most of them were either self-taught, or if they did attend a college, the focus was on the classics and history. Alexander Hamilton attended Kings College (now Columbia), and John Adams attended Harvard, but they certainly did not write theses praising income redistribution or "diversity" (the latter meaning exclusion of competing ideas).
Today's colleges are vastly over-priced and out of touch with reality. Their uncritical, collectivist ideology is being passed from one generation to the next, as the new educators learn blind political correctness from the old ones. One major step in the right direction would be the termination of all subsidies from the federal government (and dismantling of the entire Department of Education). Another would be if parents would vote with their feet and simply refuse to give junior or sis $200,000 for an undergraduate degree with little market value.
John II| 9.17.10 @ 3:06PM
Great suggestions, except I would stress that the undergraduate degree (techie for sure, but even non-techie as well) typically has more market value than educational value, and the dirth of the latter is the real trouble.
I think Mr. Scruton gives the hapless parents a bit more slack than they generally deserve. We are well into the third generation of this precipitate decline, so that the parents are very likely to have been almost as miseducated and culturally clueless as they propose to make their (few) children. They don't know anything else, so the emphasis tends to be on get-along-get-ahead careerism, and a majority of them don't care if their kids are doing drugs, cultivating an early alcoholism, or rutting in bawdy-house dorms--so long as the kids take this or that therapeutic precaution and are not jeopardizing their acquisition of the socially requisite sheepskin.
Yes, the Department of Education should certainly be dismantled, and the subsidies at least gradually cut back to a point that imposes serious financial accountablility and responsibility on the institutions.
But there are at least three other sources of corruption, less amenable to repair:
(1) Administrative bloat amid a culture that stresses fun and games and busybody activity and "service" over serious education and reflection. Where I teach, administration now consumes more than 60 percent of the annual budget (up from less than 40 percent a generation ago, when the decline began to steepen).
(2) Faculty corruption. The graduate schools now line-breed their students unabashedly toward career advancement through mindless publishing and busybody administrative service, with learning and teaching taking a distant third place in order of import. Result: an incalculable loss of talent because of drop-outs among potential scholar-teachers revolted by the graduate school culture, and the advancement of the worst kinds of hustlers and political cranks into the next generation of profs. (Think Professor Obama.)
(3) Corrupted students. In fact, only a relative minority of students are either stupid enough or opportunistic enough to buy into the lefty proselytizing now endemic to most campuses; the really serious corruption, I believe, is the impression left in the hearts of the other students, the majority, that the university, culturally, is largely designed to be a haven for circus freaks who would otherwise have no place to live and might even become a public nuisance.
So the standard survival technique for the normal students is to tiptoe through the imbecilities, tell the freaks what they want to hear, have a good time outside of class, and get that sheepskin.
The term "corrupt" when applied to human beings and their institutions designates a condition beyond the person's or institution's capability to recognize and correct.
The only possible answer I can see would require a well-nigh miraculous sea-change in the larger culture. Meanwhile, there ARE alternatives for the kids and parents still interested in serious learning and the cultivation of sound character: some 100 decent colleges and universities among a total of about 3000 in the US--not to mention honest trade and vocation schools, and the emerging possibilities of the internet.
Steve| 9.21.10 @ 6:15PM
Please don't forget, Jim, that James Madison was a distinguished Princetonian!
sangredulce| 9.17.10 @ 3:12PM
We're homeschooling NOT to prepare our kids for this education; Rather they ARE gettingit NOW, as was the case before late 1800's; Students only went onto unversity once they were versed in latin, rhetoric, grammer etc.
http://www.classicalliberalarts.com/
Pat| 9.17.10 @ 6:00PM
If William Henry (Bill) Gates III had written this article instead of Roger Scruton we could have learned what the education industry actually does and does not do. Gates, as most folks know, dropped out of Harvard to eventually join his childhood pal in starting Microsoft. As a child prodigy, Gates went to a private school on his parent’s dime. As a Harvard freshman, he didn’t need to put in much study time, his innate genius carried him through the regimented grist mill of freshmen classes with little effort. Conversely, Christopher Langan, even smarter than Bill Gates with an IQ estimated at between 190 and 210, had to drop out of a backwoods college due to his family’s poverty and spent years in manual labor jobs; as a construction worker, a farmhand, a firefighter, a cowboy and almost 20 years as a bouncer in a Long Island bar before Esquire magazine discovered his genius. So, Gates didn’t have much need for the benefits of elite Harvard and Langan’s fantastic potential was wasted due to his lack of funds and our system’s failure to identify his incredible intellect early on.
What our university system and, in fact, all of our public education hierarchy of institutions does best is to serve themselves. The university’s mission is to provide vast numbers of teens (primarily) with a basic higher education. And this higher education system is motivated to obtain the most in personal rewards for the industry’s insiders, much like any other industry. Parents, since it involves their kids, strive to maximize the benefits available to their beloved while allowing for the limitations of their personal financial situations. With a severe recession, the universities’ various invested endowments take it on the chin the same as your 401-K investments. State tax revenues fall as well, so available education funding among public universities also falls. Tuition rises proportionally so our educators won’t suffer any personal loss.
Maudlin thoughts on the meaning of education can’t mask the harsh reality. And that reality being the highly intelligent among us will rise to the top with or without a boiler plate education, money will determine how much and the quality of the education your child receives – and, finally, the Christopher Langans, the “severely gifted” among us, will continue to fall through the cracks because our education system serves only itself.
Mark| 9.19.10 @ 6:30PM
Gates may be clever doing marvelous things on a computer, but he is not a wise man. I have never once read anything said or written by him of a profound nature. It is interesting to me that there are so many urban legends about things that he supposedly said but didn't. I guess people just assume wisdom from him because he can write an operating system and steal ideas from Steve Jobs.
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 7:21AM
My understanding (from an article about him in the very magazine years ago) was that he is a shrewd and ruthless businessman. Microsoft actually became known because of their BASIC compiler. I don't know the internals, but MS-DOS 1.0 seemed to me to be a clone of CP/M, then version 2.0 added the UNIX stuff such as directories.
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 7:22AM
this very magazine
geokster from TX| 9.17.10 @ 7:36PM
@ Eric Cartman;
I had to laugh at your description of your Detroit school experience only because it rings so true here. My poor little wife is a graduate from a major European university where they still have strict entrance exams to get a seat in the freshman class, and need a certain GPA to advance thereafter year-to-year. She came out of university with the American equivalent of a double MS in physics and applied mathematics.
She teaches at the local junior college in the math and science department where the department chair is a black man. He is only capable to teach remedial level math, (basically arithmetic), and he shamelessly hires and promotes any black with a BA in education, regardless of a math/science minor. My wife, (she's white), has for 6 years now been denied tenure track, yet she has to teach all the; "hard stuff". She is amazed at the low level of what passes for college level work in this city college. And yes, she has been indirectly been accused of racism if a certain class of minority students don't pass the course of instruction.
I told her, "welcome to the world of affirmative action".
Denver Todd| 9.17.10 @ 10:09PM
I once did some temp work in a graduate department at a large university in Seattle, and the department head was (east) Indian, and it shocked me how many intelligent Americans were denied admission, while this guy admitted many from India.
Petronius| 9.18.10 @ 9:20AM
That's why he was hired. Large universities on the Left coast hate Americans just as much as the Ivy League, but except for U. C. Davis they're a bit more subtle about it.
J.C.Eaton| 9.17.10 @ 11:19PM
It would be nice if the diploma mills that turn out all these graduates like little sausages taught them to understand a bit of what they "know."
Elizabeth| 9.18.10 @ 1:09AM
So our hypothetical middle-class father is upset that, after college, his daughter's "attitude to career, marriage, childbearing, and all the other things that he had hoped for her is entirely negative." It seems that he has no objection to the indoctrination of his child; rather, he is disappointed that she was not indoctrinated with the "correct" values.
Or maybe he's just crabby because his daughter's mother apparently either died or left him. I infer this because otherwise both parents would surely be paying her tuition together out of their jointly held funds.
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 7:26AM
No, presuambly these always existed. They reversed the polarity.
I do appreciate your attitude to how funds should be held; to me this is a very traditional view.
Yosemeti Sam| 9.18.10 @ 2:48AM
Yep - them universities impart all the professed higher intellectual wonders of a higher education.
To wit, before, during and after their infusions - which way to the nearest hedonist sybarite hot spots.
Damn - how them dispensable 50 odd million were short-changed from the good life.
Petronius| 9.18.10 @ 9:38AM
Careful Sam
The jealous twits who lack the dosh to enjoy the good life during spring break while at college usually drop out and spend the rest of their days rioting at G20 summits in the attempt to deny good living to the rest of us.
EPIGONE73| 9.18.10 @ 12:44PM
I was privileged to study with Dr. Scruton at Boston University, and can assert, with a high degree of confidence, that the idea of the university was certainly alive and well at that institution, and that Dr. Scruton himself contributed, in no small measure, to the survival of the best traditions of scholarship and inquiry.
Sadly, though, the intellectual high ground of the academy has long since fallen to cultural enemies, who have made of the academy a training ground and boot-camp for the next generation of Gramscian traitors. Perhaps the best hope that remains is the creation of alternative and parallel structures (counter-cultural, as it were) to fulfill the traditional functions of the university.
John II| 9.18.10 @ 2:09PM
Hilariously, on the other hand, most of the current generation of lefty freaks in academia have never heard of Antonio Gramsci--and of course they've never read more than a smattering of Marx himself, the granddaddy of left gnosticism.
Mustn't get too traditional--it's all about striking the correct posture, you know.
Sam Wellesley| 9.18.10 @ 6:02PM
I really love the following question mentioned above:
"Could we not envisage a wholly new kind of university, responsive to the wishes of parents, and liberated from the phony subjects and dubious social mores that have occupied the American campus?"
I would really like to explore the possibilities of this thought.
By the way, in speaking with a friend who works in college admissions of a nearby competitive university, he told me the university likes to admit homeschoolers because they found "they've learned how to learn" and "know how to take responsibility for their own educations." I found the thought quite profound.
John DuBose| 9.18.10 @ 10:35PM
I studied physics and math in college. ( about 40 years ago ) I also took a few electives in "humanities". The math and physics was difficult, but I perservered and wound up with a good career. My second government class was PURE left wing propaganda. When I offered some ( even then I was mildly libertarian ) alternate views, I was basically shouted down by the teacher. Wound up with a C. Got an A in the first semester when all I had to do was learn about the mechanics of government.
I did not care much at the time because I was glad that that was not going to be my career. I expect that things are probably worse now.
All these things are problematic. How do we find a balance when many of the academic types are so dogmatic and so clueless about what it takes to produce the wealth that makes the world go round ?
Maybe the inernet will save us.
Bill| 9.21.10 @ 9:42AM
I sincerely believe that the private high schools and the military and religious colleges and universities will be the salvation of American education.
T1Brit| 9.21.10 @ 10:05AM
A student that goes to University to get an education yet leaves without having questioned the 'religion of the home' ? A student whose leisure activities are entirely acceptable to the parents? A University which allows itself to be governed by the 'moral majority' ?
What a rotten place that would be.
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 7:33AM
Sounds good. Feel free to pay for it with your own money.
While a lot of 18-years-olds ARE trustworthy, a parent who sends the average 18-year old child raised in today's culture, to live with children of both sexes at the height of their drives, far away from home to a place with no supervision - as the Rabbis said - "what shall the lad do that he should not sin?".
EdB| 9.21.10 @ 10:07AM
G-d, what a bunch of uncharitable, cranky egoists! And this rancor about daughters getting pregnant and ignorant or uneducated black teachers? It's a bit odd.
People are only trying to do the best they can for their children. I feel more sadness about the state of education than anything else, having, for example, witnessed the dulling, nay destruction of young minds in a high school I worked at in a certain US state I won't mention very recently.
If you want to pour vitriol and scorn on something, try the state of mainstream academic economics, particularly financial economics. Here's a group of people whose ideas nearly destroyed the world economy and yet still publish, get tenure, consult, etc. when EVERYTHING THAT THEY BELIEVE IN has been shown to be utterly without foundation.
Norman Crocker| 9.21.10 @ 10:29AM
There are universities that still deliver a good education, Texas A & M is one. There are also party schools which indoctrinate our children, if the do anything. Most professors are busy doing research. If you want your son or daughter to get a good education send them to a community college for the first two years. They'll be taught by trained teachers and you'll save thousands of dollars.
Urb Anwriter| 9.21.10 @ 10:42AM
Ah, yes, the Church will save us. This is the same church that honed its political skills in the 14th C? Or, perhaps, it is the Church that used the auto de fe in the era spanning the 13th - 16th Centuries that so many of you seem to adore. Or, a little later, for those of you who cannot spell, you'd have preferred to have been incarcerated in a really nice little Church-run elementary school. There you would have been beaten for the following; spelling 'latin' with a small 'l,' or 'grammer' with an 'e' rather than the correct 'a.'
Then again, you might have been one of the very lucky Australian transported; all criminals - well, by default, they were criminals, or they would not have been transported, eh? The Church of which you are so fond certainly served them well. But, or perhaps 'butt' you've been acquainted with the Church's response to cleric's sexual abuse of both female and male students - it is traditional - and it is equally traditional to deny, obfuscate, lie, anything but take responsibility.
Yes, I have a degree, from one of those terrible universities that have a long list of programs you'd hate. Courses that regardless of the individual subject matter demanded I think. And, contrary to a few of you, who must have been severely discriminated against, I never lost marks for a dissenting opinion, a well-written paper that was at odds with the prof's own views on a subject, or, oddly, for writing ideologically informed papers of any kind.
But I'd never write a paper on or about the Church and claim that the Church was not an ideology of its own. Nor would I suggest that many of the respondents that precede me could actually recognize the ideological position, or positions, that they inhabit.
Now, back to that kneeling position kids. Your priestly demons demand that you supplicate yourselves - oh, yes, just like Islam - and, just like Islam, women are to be kept 'barefoot and in the kitchen.' Just ask Cardinal Ratzinger...
Jupo| 1.12.11 @ 6:23AM
LOL - the low quality of the education you got shows plainly in your complete lack of historical information. Let me guess - you´re American, yes? Pray - what DID the Church have to do with the Australian prison colonies? They were - to my best knowledge - a) State run b) British. Many of the prisoners were catholic, that´s true. Gee, thanks for proving all the - to my European mind rather astonishing - claims on how worthless a mainstream American college is, true.
Dagwood| 9.21.10 @ 11:08AM
It's lovely to be reminded that the author of this article, unlike the heathens that run the universities today, is free of ideology. And how fine to learn that the millions of middle-class parents who are shopping for colleges for their children to attend all really want the kind of place that Cardinal Newman described, where the classics are studied and debated in a most civil manner. Y0u know, the kind of education that all those middle-class Americans had themselves and wistfully yearn that their children have as well. What claptrap. Why not just be succinct, "My idolized fantasy is superior to your straw man, proving my superior ideology, that being the whole point of writing anything here." Cardinal Newman, however he might feel about these sentiments, would certainly give this essay a failing grade on the basis of its cliches and ability to bore.
Dagwood| 9.21.10 @ 1:12PM
Mr Wellesley's anecdote about what a great job homeschooling does and how much universities prize these applicants is at odds with a lot of research. I mean let's think about this: are you so Palinized that you actually believe that a more or less random set of ordinary parents will just necessarily do a better job of preparing the youngsters for college and beyond than schools? That parents' lessons to their kids will be objective, ideology-free, stimulating, complete, and even classical? I say again: Good grief!
Rik van Hemmen | 9.21.10 @ 1:59PM
Sorry, any person who writes that a father spends $40,000 per year plus room and board on his daughter for three or four years, and have that total to 1/3 of a million dollars, is not sufficiently educated to make a complex argument about education. To argue that college costs $83,000 or more per year is a fabrication, not an example. Why would I continue reading after that?
Meanwhile everybody is commenting and arguing about an article written by a guy who can't even add.
James Martinez| 9.21.10 @ 3:40PM
The University of New Mexico is the perfect example of an institution which replaced education with politically correct indoctrination. A place of higher education where opinions are allowed only when such conforms to the campus orthodoxy. Unfortunately, it will be become irrelevant long before it dies of natural causes.
JM| 9.21.10 @ 7:40PM
This argument is so sadly far off the mark as to be irrelevant.
Scruton worries about the poor, innocent child (and note how he infantizes the college student who should be an adult, after all) who pursues a humanities curriculum and is soured by it.
That would be a great argument except that the lion's share of college students are not pursuing any kind of humanities curriculum. In fact, the majority of college students take away very little from the humanities courses that they are forced to endure because of the despised "core requirements."
Instead, the majority of students who are in college (and who leave without any of the finishing and refinement of character that Cardinal Newman hoped for) do so because they are more concerned with a good return on their investment. They pursue "practical" degree programs, eschew courses that could augment their knowledge with writing or critical thinking skills, and race out the door before anything they've crammed into their short-term memories has a chance to lodge in their consciousness.
And, to help insure that their studies have no lasting effect, they drown out the din of their professors with text messages, instant messaging, and a non-stop stream of superficial conversations that prevent them from having even a single moment of solitude in which they might seriously contemplate a difficult idea.
But despite this, Scruton offers a grand vision of distance learning, where all of the background noise of homelife will add to the din that drowns out significant or protracted thinking.
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 7:38AM
In what sense is an 18-year old, sent right out of high school to University, an Adult?
Michael| 9.21.10 @ 8:09PM
I went from high school directly to Enormous State University, where I joined Animal House, developed my skills in consuming vast quantities of alcohol and other substances, and learned very little. It was not until my senior year that I had a class small enough that the Professor remembered my name. It's 35 years later, and there is little I regret more than missing the type of education described here. My decision, made at a time when maturity was missing. Time has passed, but I question whether it is even possible to get an education when your introductory classes have 1000 students each. I'm optimistic on distance learning, but leery over the loss of personal interaction - the late night sessions where opinions were tested, honed, and strengthened.
James Kabala| 9.21.10 @ 8:46PM
For what it's worth, although there certainly have been documented cases in which controversial or merely conservative speakers have been denied the right to speak at American universities, the explicit "no platform" concept is British terminology largely unknown in the United States.
Jon Mountfort| 9.21.10 @ 9:21PM
The impracticality of our educational system is not primarily a result of ideological lockstep among the members of a decadent liberal intellectual elite. The roots lie elsewhere. First, the origins of the system in gentlemen's education and seminary education. The organization and ideals of the modern university have yet to escape from the aristocratic and theological perspectives. And complicating this is the advancement of idealism by the modern day progressive puritan. Second, the rapid expansion of scholarship as a result of the GI Bill. Third, the entrenched power of these vast boondoggles we call state universities. Only after taking these things into account is it possible to even imagine a few marxists in an English department as a force that exists and has to be reckoned with.
We need to come to grips with the fact that much of what our universities produce is valued only because of the brand name. Accreditation organizations and numerous other power centers conceal the truth and obstruct change. No one should have to shoulder the cost of physical plant, adminstrative overhead, sports facilities, etc..., so their son or daughter can receive lectures on politics, literature, sociology, etc... There is no rational relation here between price and cost.
A classical liberal education would be much easier to obtain and to provide if it was provided by freelancers. Let the old system be for scientists. They are in a much better postion to set objective criteria for tenure, they have large and legitimate costs to cover, and everyone benefits from the "clustering" function of the university.
Jacopone| 9.21.10 @ 10:37PM
The Idea of a University, still required reading in the late 50’s at my alma mater, University of San Diego. Alas, no longer, but it is still in the library. At one time it was required reading for all entering University of California, Berkeley, freshmen. Now it is banned as a religious relic. Huh, and we wonder what it was that pushed onto the cultural slippery slope. Now look where we are; electing a president who for twenty years sat in a church hearing such radical drivel as, “God Damn America”. Reading serious literature has been replaced to the advantage of gadget addicts armed with a Kindle claiming to hold 1500 titles. Bookmark, fold a page corner, scribble a note; insert a message into a Kindle. My two relatives owning Kindles have not read a single book. I have given away more than the remaining two thousand books in my library, yet nearing life’s end, I have no heir desiring to read books. I am proud to claim that my best move was to gut my TV to hold prized Jameson’s Irish whisky. Whatever I am reading rests on top when I am otherwise occupied.
Ana| 9.22.10 @ 12:24AM
A tendentious essay. Right away I could tell from the flavor and the tone. Is it not both parents who work together to help their daughter with her future college plans? And what's this with women's studies producing a grievance against men? Can it be possible to study womens history/etc. and still like men? Similar to how it is possible to write about Newman's idea of a "gentleman's" education and still include women 1.6 centuries later?
Polosail| 9.22.10 @ 7:11AM
The magazine's website states "The American Spectator takes pride in its history of providing meaningful experience to young conservatives." While that self-limiting rule undermines much content in advance, with this particular essay AS goes a step further, granting room to rant to an old one.
Someursault| 9.22.10 @ 9:01AM
It always slays me when someone writes a rant decrying the lack of tolerance for dissent in modern higher education, then displays a lack of tolerance for anything that threatens his/her particular Vision Of How The World Should Be According To Me. Certainly, the sarcastic "advanced" rock and roll comment displays the feeble-minded ignorance one expects from so many elitists.
My response to all of the righty whining about the lefty indoctrination in university is always this: Get a doctorate instead of lining up to become a mediocrity with a worthless MBA. Try to stem the tide against your precious values yourself instead of hoping someone else takes care of it for you - even if the playing field is not level.
Unfortunately, all of the God-bothering that goes on here leads me to conclude that most of you ma'ams and sirs don't have the critical thinking skills necessary to get that done - ouside of the intellectually claustrophobic halls of some third rate Christian enclave.
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 7:49AM
Yes, get a doctorate, and then what? If you have the wrong politics, you will be extremely lucky to get tenure, if you do manage to get hired.
There was a day when someone could put himself through college himself. Now that there parents pay literally what a house costs for tuition, they need to rise up and demand control. Approval of living conditions, the kid's schedule - the works.
maggie| 9.22.10 @ 10:35AM
The easy answer is to make the Classics mandatory and to have the student pay his/her own way through school. All three of mine did and thus wanted the education more than the party.
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 7:50AM
Can anyone afford to do that anymore?
Gyorgy| 9.22.10 @ 10:43AM
My son attends a small liberal-arts college deemed "most selective" by US News. Despite the near-total absence of required courses, students here do seek out courses that are quite traditional: the humanities core (ancient Greeks and Romans), the Shakespeare course, and others like these are all fully subscribed with waiting lists. I'm confident that, with common sense and some good advising, my son will benefit from a great education.
Roger| 9.22.10 @ 11:28AM
I've taught for many years at a large public research university and I've seen much of what Mr. Scruton is talking about. In my own modest way, I try to do what I can. I assign Richard Weaver, who, as it happens, was one of my teachers in the early 60s. I try to help students understand the difference between bringing Machiavelli to them and bringing them to Machiavelli. So, sure, Mr. Scruton is somewhat on the mark. I wonder, though, at his uncritical belief in the wonders of distance learning. Research findings coupled with my own common sense observations suggest that it's not all that Mr. Scruton hopes for. Where I part ways with Mr. Scruton is in his totally unnecessary attack on President Obama. Many parents can figure out whether higher ed is a bargain without having been browbeaten by the President. Where Mr. Scruton lands here is precisely where Nietzsche, in section one of Beyond Good and Evil, says: so-called "philosophers" . . . "are using reasons sought after the fact do defend a pre-existing tenent."
Susan Shwartz| 9.22.10 @ 11:44AM
There are a lot of false binaries in the comments here having to do with the liberal arts, work and politics.
I had intensive training in the classics and humanities starting with four years of Latin in high school and training as a medievalist at a women's college. I went on and earned 100% of my expenses at an Ivy League university, graduating with a PhD. I even studied for two summers in Newman's Oxford College, Trinity and held an NEH grant at Dartmouth.
I consider myself a feminist, a social liberal, a fiscal moderate and fairly conservative on defense issuers.
I have taught, published a great deal of fiction in about 10 languages and work in the financial services industry. I attribute my ability to manage these apparent contradictions to my liberal arts background, which taught me the most important things: to learn, to care, to work hard, and to maintain high standards.
I have occasion to work with interns and am distressed to see the short-sightedness of their approach. It -will- get them in the door. I don't know how far it will take them, which is going to create a problem, because their work ethic is good and their ambitions are high.
I don't know if I could do what I have done again if I were starting out now. I like to think I'd try.
James Fiorentino| 9.22.10 @ 3:04PM
What a collection frightening mass of hysterical, bigoted, and generally small-minded remarks. (I refer to the comments, for the most part; the lead article was simply elegiac conservative hogwash.) The most repugnant respondent, however, must be "John II." Who needs feminism???? His daughter.
James Fiorentino| 9.22.10 @ 3:07PM
Apologies for the broken grammar. Must have been shooting priests and burning flags; became distracted.
mzk1| 9.24.10 @ 7:52AM
I see your university training enabled to you to make clear, convincing arguments to convince others of the validity of your views.
Sue| 9.22.10 @ 9:47PM
Did anyone notice that Roger only mentioned Western forms of knowledge.
How provincial!
What about the vast body of non-Western forms of knowledge and philosophy?
Especially as we live in a time when the entire Great Tradition of humankind is now freely available to anyone with an internet connection or via Amazon books etc.
In this day and age of instantaneous global inter-connectedness, to be uniformed by the contents of the Great Tradition as a whole is to be culturally illiterate.
Plus speaking of John Newman, I much prefer the writing, and the life altogether, of his brother Francis William, especially his book Phases of Faith.
Perhaps too, Roger and the Spectator altogether prefers the world-view promoted by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, where know-nothing ignorance is considered and promoted as a virtue.
Jon| 10.1.10 @ 3:31PM
Of course, if we are going to be non-provincial, non-Western, then the word is actually 'barbarian' -- the word you were looking for was 'barbarian.' Now you can be understood in the non-Western world.
Sue| 9.23.10 @ 6:58AM
The entire human world is now in the hands of un-Spiritual and materialistic factions, that trap the mind with worldly knowledge, and the heart with worldly religion, and the body with worldly politics. Everyone is made by the constant propaganda of this power-seeking world-machine to toe the party line.
With no exceptions all of the pea-witted official thinkers and talkers of our day size up the universe with a standard rule, and find it always to be one inch short of infinity. And they all with no exceptions, measure the human form according to merely material weight - thus finding humankind to be worth no more than salt. Therefore, they all press the load of unrelieved mortality on the back of every man and woman, while the always-thinking mind that mounts and crushes the body is unwilling and unable to understand why we bother to lift a finger.
Philosophers without life. Politicians without love or pity. "Wisdom"-peddlers without a Master or integrated Way Everything they say is thus the product of their own self-consciousness and fear. They think that the ponderous language and the punishing powers of state and "official" religion grant the weight of Truth to their arguments. Everything they say, and everything they do, is merely another piece of effort to protect themselves from the anger and the passion of all of humankind, whose Master they pretend to be.
The "authorities" love to be honoured and awarded with public ceremony, unquestioning obedience, and tongue-tied respect. They line up in thousands, along with hypocritical priests, and they cock their ears, waiting to hear us name them aloud: 'Teacher, Doctor, Sovereign Head, Father, Mother, All.'
These all who are merely ordinary with gross life should not be given omnipotent names. The true Divine Teacher is the same as the Omnipotent Light that moves the world and drives the heart of one and all.
Grow up to adulthood's height and dis-enchanted calm. Serve one another, and understand that your True Source is One - and it is the Source of all. That True Source is the One and Indivisible Divine Spirit-Power that you inherit with every natural feeling breath.
Joe| 9.23.10 @ 12:23PM
I commend you for making the point that American universities have softened academically over the years--even the most prestigious schools offer "Gender Issues in Modern Vampire Fiction" and other such nonsense. This is an alarming trend (and one that will hopefully be reversed).
However, your moralistic evaluation of the modern campus is naive at best. Intelligent people can benefit from experimentation with sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. A true education in the humanities is a literary bus tour through lands of lechery, debauchery, gluttony, and intoxication. You can find each one of these vices on a single page of the Iliad.
Why not get off the bus every once in a while and stretch your legs? See the world through some lens other than that of uninvolved observer. Responsibly, of course.
Sharat| 9.25.10 @ 11:37PM
I'll let the master speak...http://www.ttivanguard.com/berlinreconn/creatingculture.pdf
R. Bishirjian | 10.30.10 @ 3:35PM
I'm very impressed by Roger Scruton's argument and even more impressed that so many Spectator readers have taken time to leave very good comments. I will renew my subscription and look for more such commentary.
Joanna | 6.6.11 @ 6:03AM
I agree with most of these comments too.
UTI Treatment
Christian Louboutin | 6.23.11 @ 5:35AM
For Newman a university does not exist simply to convey information or expertise. The university is a society in which the student absorbs the graces and accomplishments of a higher form of life. In the university, according to Newman, the pursuit of truth and the active discussion of its meaning are integrated into a wider culture, in which the ideal of the gentleman is acknowledged as the standard
Wes| 9.25.11 @ 1:37PM
Stop calling a spade anything other than a spade. 'Radical feminists'? Islamists? You have a problem with chicks, faggots and brown people, and bigots have always made up nonsense to justify it on Darwinian, nationalist grounds, or in this case their 'suspect loyalty to the established order'.
That kind of Orwellian crap scares me. Not everyone's a WASP and the greatest moments in Anglo-American history are when we overcame that narrow minded cultural paternalism.