Essay 3

Essay 3: The Fall of the University

I retired from University life at the end of 2019 after nearly 30 years as a full time academic. In the few years leading up to my retirement I began to reflect on the state of Academia. I was offered a package to leave, but it was my reflections on the worsening state of academia that led me to accept the package. In hindsight, it was one of the best decisions that I have ever made. I felt that I was lucky to get out of the university before it collapsed. In my view, the current system is unsustainable. Why? Colleges and universities provide three primary services: Socialization, Education, and Research. Each of these is declining in quality and increasing in cost while alternatives continue to improve. Let’s take each of these three services in turn.

Socialization takes teenagers and returns socialized adults. The College Experience is valuable and there aren't too many alternatives. However, the focus on “Student Experience” is inhibiting the growth process of these young men and women. Instead of producing mature adults who can think for themselves, we are producing indoctrinated entitled children who cannot.

Other ways this socialization can be done include camps (where they learn sportsmanship, teamwork, and useful job skills), conscription (where they learn discipline, duty, and commitment) or finishing school (where they learn social skills and social graces). These are suggestions and I wouldn’t rule out other possibilities. Given the excessive amount of alcohol, consumed, the claims of date rape, and number of students who begin school but do not finish (over 50%), it suggests that the Universities and Colleges are doing a poor job of socialization. Why is this? There are many reasons, but here are a couple of examples. First, socialization is a bit haphazard at a university. It is not intentional. It is, in fact, a byproduct of having young people living away from their parents with a guiltless pastime (education) that allows them plenty of free time to explore other things. I don’t think this exploration is a bad thing, but if it were a bit less organic, and more intentional, it might produce more reliable results. Second, it often conflicts with other goals of the university such as education, research, and meeting enrollment goals. The more that socialization requires effort and cuts into student’s free time, the less likely they are to want to come to your university. So, you provide upscale dorms, good food, easy classes, and lots of free time. In turn, they beat a path to your door.

Education is declining because the need for enrollments has pushed universities to emphasize “Student Experience” at the expense of education. While Student Experience has some value, it is grossly overpriced at current tuition levels. Further, real education will be available through alternative online delivery vehicles. So, education will slide out of the university or go to the Internet. Another reason why education has suffered is because newer faculty are more likely to be indoctrinated than educated. It is like making a Xerox copy of a Xerox copy of a Xerox copy. The quality diminishes on each round until the copy looks nothing like the original.

Research is the third service of the university. Some schools do produce valuable research, but most quality research is done in the private sector while most university research is worthless junk. In Isaac Newton’s day (late 17th century) scientific research was being done outside of the university. That is one of the reasons why the Royal Society was formed. We seem to have returned to that as most advances in information technology, biotechnology, engineering and so on are happening in private enterprises rather than universities. Unnecessarily producing worthless research eats up a lot of faculty time that could be better spent improving education. It is also interesting to note that universities did not consider math and science to be legitimate topics for the university until the late 19th century. So, they picked it up late, did poorly, and now it is time to drop it again.

Is the entire university system going to collapse? Probably not. Some schools, with large endowments, will weather the changes until they get around to changing as well. Some others will innovate and be part of the new model. Many will just go under, and their campuses will be repurposed, as they say. And the ones that survive will look very different.

The fall of universities is a very complex phenomenon and I have only scratched the surface here. There are many important facets of this which I did not cover but will pick up in future essays from time to time. I prefer to offer essays on a variety of topics rather than beating a single drum all the time. But there will be threads if you care to look for them.

This essay is about 850 words. And the recording is about 7 minutes long.

Send an email to me at drjohnartz@gmail.com if you have a comment on any of my essays. And please check out my website at DrJohnArtz.com to see other things I have written.