Word: barzun
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...American University, Jacques Barzun lambasts the big colleges for betraying the cause of liberal education to money, prestige, and product oriented research. The new "multiversity" is not a university at all, but a large "industry, suitably diversified, whose members honestly believe it gives good service and should go on forever as it is. Teaching as an art has almost disappeared on campus. Infatuation with research has perverted the meaning of education. "Students do not act like students," Barzun writes, "because adults have confused them about what education really is." Barzun admits, however, that he shares the resentment of the student...
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...
Cultural Historian Barzun is a traditionalist who feels that "the university is an institution transcending time and geography." He is distressed because too many academic institutions have become too involved with contemporary problems, too influenced by a misguided zeal for community service. The trouble, Barzun says, can be traced to a "great shift to research after 1945." One inevitable result has been the student riots, the worst of which occurred at Columbia soon after Barzun completed his manuscripts. He is noticeably cool to student rioters, although he sympathizes with some of their protests. So many professors are busy with activities...
...Talent. Academic interest in research and problem-solving, says Barzun, has led the universities to undertake Government or foundation projects that other agencies may be better equipped to handle. "A dozen of the leading universities," he says, "are now managing large programs of urban renewal and race relations, engaging in the improvement of- housing and rehabilitation of moral derelicts, uplifting economically depressed areas, or supplying art to the community-all this without evidence that they are equipped with the talent, organization or experience to succeed." Barzun agrees with the late Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset that the university "has abandoned...
Ridgeway is particularly critical of Barzun's Columbia, because it not only is one of New York's largest real estate owners but also maintains a private Wall Street office to oversee investment of its endowment money. He takes a painstakingly detailed look at Columbia's involvement with the unsuccessful Strickman cigarette filter. As things have turned out, the filter has yet to make any money for Columbia. But the university's initial endorsement pushed cigarette stock prices so high that the University of Texas was able to sell 59,000 shares of R. J. Reynolds...