Summarized by J. T. P. Yao, 5/18/00

"Many discussions of higher education today attempt to balance 'freedom and responsibility.' … The autonomy we desire must be balanced by something we give in return, by responsibility toward our students, our communities, the public that finances our work, and the nation and world of which we are citizens. … But in this article I want to discuss a term much more troubling than responsibility, to argue that freedom must be balanced not only by responsibility, but also by authority."

"It is not only the state, however, that can coerce, but the market as well. When the market is not moderated by responsible government and other nonmarket mechanisms throughout society, then the market can become very coercive indeed, even totalitarian. That, I think, is what is happening to our society generally, especially higher education. … Authority, as I use the term, refers to a normative order, even to what has been called a 'higher law,' which provides conceptions of a good society and a good person, and sets limits on what kind of behavior is acceptable. …"

"Higher education has been a road to upward economic mobility from the beginning in America, and its expansion in the twentieth century, particularly after World War II, has enabled millions of young people from working-class backgrounds, often the first in their families to go to college, to enter middle-class occupations and better their standing in society. … We have come of late in America to identify freedom with the free market. … When money takes over politics, only a façade of democracy is left. When money takes over the professions, decisions are made on the basis of the bottom line, not professional authority. This issue is becoming acute in medicine as the dominance of for-profit HMOs grows. And in higher education as well, the bottom line is beginning to dominate decisions."

"Another negative consequence of the tyranny of the bottom line is the tendency to encourage, or at least not discourage, relationships between research laboratories, particularly in the natural sciences, and business. Such relationships blur the line between non-profit and profit-making concerns. … If we are simply supplying a market product, why shouldn't the consumer be sovereign? … While I am certainly not unsympathetic with concern for improved teaching, I worry that in stressing the responsibility of the teacher we forget the responsibility of the student. … I oppose the whole notion of outcome assessment, not only in the university but even in kindergarten, because it denies the essentially creative and unpredictable nature of the learning experience. … What we teach are ways of thinking, even ways of feeling, and what the students learn often surprises us as much as it does them, which is as it should be. If you want information, go to an encyclopedia or to the World Wide Web, not to college. College is supposed to teach you what to do with information, how to think with and about it, and there are no algorithms for doing that."

"The task becomes difficult indeed when the university is equated with a shopping mall, something that fundamentally undermines the teacher-student relationship. Students who come to school with a consumer mentality have difficulty accepting, even provisionally, instructional authority or the authority of their professors. They are, I would argue, coerced by their preexisting desires, and unable to take advantage of the freedom that openness to the intrinsic values of the institution would make possible. … This consumer attitude that the university is a place to meet preestablished needs tempts some to say that we need to emphasize learning rather than teaching. … I would argue, however, that only through the genuine interaction of teacher and student can the deepest kind of learning occur; conveying professional knowledge in a context of ethical responsibility requires such interaction. Only a teacher who can model that kind of knowledge in his or her own life and teaching can really transmit it to students; that can happen even in a large lecture course, but not, I believe, through a computer screen."

"Academic leaders - presidents, chancellors, and deans - can make a significant contribution to public understanding or our purpose and value, one that goes well beyond economics, and they can do better in this regard than many of them have been doing lately. … Few professors, however, see themselves as representatives of the academy as a whole, or even the institutions at which they teach. …"

"… Technical expertise can receive a justification of sorts when it has a practical payoff. But I can envision a university of the future in which every field that lacks practical payoff will have been jettisoned. … I think that we are already most of the way there. …"

"… Does our future promise a real education for the few and a little frosting on the utilitarian cake for the many? I am afraid that if we do not mount a better defense of our own intrinsic purposes than we have for quite a while, even a good education for the few may not survive for long. … I am reasonably confident that finding the courage to do that will enhance our self-respect and strengthen our capacity to fulfill our calling."

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