Re: Students and Tests - Kyle and business models

[palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer)]

> As much as we might like to think of education as an ivory tower where we
> teach the joys of physics, etc., we must remember who it is that pays our
> salaries. As we continue toward the 21st century, I'm afraid that we are
> going to be held more and more accountable to those who pay our salaries and
> provide funds for equipment. To think otherwise is wishful and naive
> thinking on our parts.

You'll go far, young man. With that attitude you should encounter no
obstacles to reaching the position of a Dean or a Vice President. The
rest of us won't ever get to be Deans in this climate. Too bad. When I
was a boy I was taught that I would have to "sell myself" when I grew
up, and "leadership ability" was important. Those aspects of the
business model have been with us for many years. It is too bad that
they intrude into the ivory tower, now a pejorative term for a place
where honesty and creativity and ethical standards and other evident
anachronisms are prized.

We must be just like those wishful and naive thinking folks at backward
institutions like Stanford and Harvard and Carnegie Mellon and Caltech
and Rochester and all those other privately funded and well endowed
institutions in the United States. Sure, they do get some of their money
from the government, and they are held accountable, but they also do
many wonderful things which their faculties can be proud of. State
institutions are under attack, and it is not a new thing. It started in
California thirty years ago when Ronald Reagan, followed closely by
Jerry Brown, in a popularly supported spell of antiintellectual fervor
tried to dismantle the University of California system, arguably the
most important publicly administered treasure in that state. Sixteen
years of constant assault left the university weakened, but the fact
that it survived at all with a semblance of its former distinction is a
tribute to some dedicated faculty who were willing to ride out the
assault on academic freedom and freedom of speech.

You are very fortunate to have philanthropically endowed institutions in
the US like those mentioned and many more. Little do you realize that
they are a uniquely American phenomenon. We don't have a single one in
Canada. England has Oxford and Cambridge, some colleges of which are well
endowed, but those universities are leaning ever more heavily on the
government which, to its credit, is lending support. Governments (and
especially that one) are ephemeral on a university timescale, however.

I consider the intellectual ideals of the traditional university to be
worthy of support. Crying that we've got to move with the times is not a
responsible thing to do. Our duty to our benefactors in state supported
universities is to give them the benefit of our best thinking. That's
what they are paying us for, or should be.

Knuckling under to the slightest political pressure, if it acts to the
detriment of the university's highest function in society, is the most
irresponsible thing we can do. Sure, we are responsible to our society,
but our highest resposibility is to conserve what we know to be good.

Well, I never did have leadership ability, I guess. I'm not even a good
follower because I tend to ask embarassing questions of my leaders. Is
there a place for me at Stanford or Harvard? I'm getting to be a bit
unpopular around here.

Leigh