Word: barzun
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Part of his book tries to describe in clear English the administrative routine, the departmental politics, the board of trustees, the foundations and the multiple demands made on the school by the neighborhood, big business, and government. Before he attempted this outline, Barzun apprenticed for twelve years as Dean of Faculties and Provost at Columbia. Since the "hero" of the book is naturally Columbia, his remarks on violence and student conceit have more than routine interest...
...Barzun considers the transmission of culture from one generation to the next a highly laudable occupation. But neither business leaders nor student leaders should expect the university to save the world, or even the community. "It is sufficient if it removes a little ignorance"--and, in the days of Nicholas Murray Butler, it did just that. America did not bother its universities, and vice versa. After the Depression and World War II, when a college education became the property of the middle class, so paltry a goal as the removal of "a little ignorance" would no longer do. Colleges...
CRITICS ON the outside conceived the "Utopian University" as an answering service for every social and scientific problem. That concept, according to Barzun, has destroyed what limited good the university could do by distracting its energy from teaching. And the notion that higher education should be open to all has skyrocketed the budget, drastically increased the teaching load, and made classroom chores doubly undesirable. The faculty responded by giving up and withdrawing to their offices or laboratories to write books and "do original work." The prevailing belief among scientists, agency heads, business vice-presidents, philanthropists, college publicity directors...
...undergraduates suffer. As the exploited outsiders in a system which encourages "research on the artificial flowers of learning," they have the right to feel neglected. They have the right, and yet they don't have the right. Mr. Barzun refers testily to "their arrogant pretensions and airs of holier-than-thou." If put into effect, their egalitarian slogans would destroy what remains of the teacher-student relationship...
...ignores the radicals to attack the "sensible students" who request participation in making curriculum, promoting instructors, setting fees, and vetoing investments. According to Barzun, their secret will is not so much to run things as to toss them around. Most of their half-baked reforms are "reactionary," already anticipated and found unworkable by administrators. Often the next class of student activists would decide to reform the reforms or bring back the status quo. He does not cite any examples in support of this view, but goes on to conclude that a large establishment like the American university cannot change itself...