What is a University Education For? Leo Mercer

Leo Mercer, University of Manchester

What is a university education for? This question makes two assumptions which reveal a very current conception of a university education. First, it assumes that a university education is for something, that it has a concrete objective and purpose. Second (allowing myself a bit more creative license in interpreting the question) is that it seeks a sort of knowledge which is of the 'what' category. I shall show that these are indeed characteristic of the contemporary understanding of the university, and argue that though is room in the university for disciplines with a pragmatic end and of the what category, a broader vision would see the liberal arts 'questions of the why category' as the apex of the university. This, I will show, would be in keeping with the historical ideal of a university and is conceptually more appropriate and constructive for contemporary society.

The Historical Narrative

Though it has roots in various Greek, Roman and Arabic academic institutions1, the university as we know it has gone through two broad stages of development and is now in its third. First was the medieval university. According to Allington, the medieval Europeans saw it as immersion in the abstract worlds of mathematics and music, in law, and in the literature of Greece and Rome. A typical medieval curriculum included the seven liberal arts, divided into the trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic and the quadrivium of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music2. Minogue suggest that, for them, this was seen as valuable for its own sake; nor need it have any very determinate bearing upon what an educated man might do with the rest of his life3. Second was the Romantic idea of a university, whose purpose was to cultivate in the young a heightened sense of aesthetic and cultural appreciation4. At its heart was the primacy of teaching, and great teaching requires the interaction of great teachers with involved students. Newman's Idea of a University came towards the end of this period, and can be seen as representative of it. For him, knowledge should sought for its own sake. Education must influence both the moral personality of individuals and, in turn, on the entire society. This is a highly simplified history, for the sake of space, but it is evident that these periods shared a vision of the university as a humanising influence.

The Contemporary Conception (What do most people think a university education is for?)

The modern university is different. A number of broad distinctions can be made within the range of disciplines typically offered. The first is between pragmatic subjects and intellectual ones. The primary purpose of the former is professional training to a concrete end. The latter seeks to increase a more abstract understanding, and in this there is a further distinction between the sciences and the humanities. It appears to me that it is the pragmatic subjects are being emphasised at the expense of the intellectual disciplines, and that any emphasis on the latter is on the intellectual-scientific, at the expense of the intellectual-humanities. First of all, we can look at how university is being advertised. Both Directgov and Aim Higher offer three reasons: the cultural/social scene, studying something you love and, the most emphasised, it will lead to increased earning potential.5 Furthermore, it is this latter point which is advertised on the website informing parents about reasons to let their children go to university: When your child finishes a university course, the qualification they get will improve their chances of getting a good job.6

Secondly, we can look at statistics about university enrolment. Statistics7 show that in American universities between 1966 and 1993, the number of university places almost tripled, from 525,000 to 1,200,000. In the same time, the increase in the sciences and humanities was only slight. This means that, proportionally, the number of people doing such degrees increased. The rest, presumably, were doing degrees of the pragmatic sort. Thirdly, we can consider the impact of current cuts of university funding. By 2013, according to recent news reports, university funding would be decreased by 12 per cent.8 Under the Browne review, it would be the sciences and maths alone which received teaching grants.9 The London Met, for example, is reducing its 557 courses to 160, and it is the humanities most affected.10 Finally, we can look at the intellectual climate. Already in the 1960s, James Perkins, then President of Cornell University, suggested that rather than occupy two or more years of pre-professional study, liberal education may have to run on a track parallel with professional work.11 This, of course, is the corollary of his broader concepti on of the university, in which the success of a student in gaining a liberal education is... irrelevant to the immediate responsibility to provide the community professionally trained servants in the form of salesmen and technicians.12 In the same period, a distinction between the two cultures became common within academia. C. P. Snow claimed, in an influential lecture, that it was the humanities which were over-emphasised in British academia, and that the sciences should be given more attention. From these four angles, we have squarely illustrated that the university today is seen as having a primarily pragmatic function, and yet where it does take up its place in the intellectual realm, it is the sciences and their ability for research and tangible results that are promoted most.

The Why and the What (What is a university education for?)

The university, then, has been anything but a static idea. The current fight for its identity is between the new ideal of professional training and the old ideal of liberal education,13 and it seems that the former is winning. I now want to present an argument for a broader vision of education, in which each discipline is respected, in particular the liberal arts. Two arguments can be presented against this liberal ideal, yet I want to suggest how it can be made appropriate for the contemporary scene. The first argument is one of principle. The liberal arts have brought about their own demise, and no longer deserve to be at the centre of our education system. They once provided students with a moral authority, a humanising force for those it educated, based on the traditional humanistic teachers responsibility for the ethical and moral welfare of his students .14 However, the development of postmodernist theories, which undermine its own right to moral authority, has meant what once offered a clear moral message now brings a confusing moral maze. Now, a teacher may not even be able to relate his own discipline to the reality which his students experience.15 The second argument is a practical one. Universities were once for the elite, and they could sustain a liberal education. They could afford to have residential campuses with a small ratio and close relationships between teacher and student. Now, the university has been democratized. It is for everyone, and not everyone can afford such a vision of the university. These objections are strong, and a new theory of the university must take them into account. Accepting these points does not, however, undermine anything essential to the vision of a liberal arts education. Earlier in this essay, we distinguished academic disciplines in such a way that distinction between the pragmatic and intellectual was central. We can, however, offer an alternative categorisation which has a different focus. There are those disciplines which focus on the what and those which focus on the why. The what seeks to know about this world: how it works, how it can be used and bent to human will. It includes the practical why, which seeks to use current means for the best, and the cosmic why aiming to develop new means for human use. The why, however, seeks questions of meaning and morality; looks at how humanity have related to these question the passed; engages in creative ways to respond to them in the cotemporary scene. The contemporary narrative, we have seen, has focussed primarily on the what. The majority of people study pragmatic courses. The emphasis, for those who don't, is on the sciences. The primacy of the what over the why is not accidental. It is the mark of a society haunted by A. J. Ayers ghost, of materialists accepting meaninglessness. It shows a country in which angry atheists have claimed to killed God, yet forgotten to remind us where meaning can still be sought: in understanding humanity and through human understanding.

The liberal arts education is a protest against these trends. A university education is, fundamentally, for the why. It seeks to educate and inspire a generation of meaning-seeking animals, grappling with of what things mean, have meant, and will mean, struggling with existence and being human, passionate about developing those ideas. We applaud those who want the university to be a place where education and knowledge are pursued out of love for the pursuit itself. They are in revolt against all that is remote and impersonal in human relations. They want an educational community whose members will look at each other, not one in which relationships are defined by rules and treated as simple problems of order and compliance... It is these students who provide hope.15 This is not a vision of university as a study of the why alone. Only theology can look at the why divorced from the what. The humanistic why asks why about what. It is not only valid but necessary that a huge emphasis is placed on the university on those questions of what, because only then will we know what we are asking why about. But we need both. A world of technological brilliance may be wireless, but this is no comfort for the whyless. The what can never take the place of the why, and the university has the communal responsibility to seek and spread the why that is liberal education. This modern vision of education sees all disciplines as having a place in the university. We do not go as far as the 1963 Robbins report, which claimed that all should be entitled to an Oxbridge style education.16 Nor as far as Anderson, who claimed that it is better to see the idea of a university not as a fixed set of characteristics, but as a set of tensions... between teaching and research, and between autonomy and accountability...17 For us, university offers all (as Anderson) but sees it as part of an educational structure and a broader vision, with some asking what, and other using it as a basis to ask why. If so, we will be able to retain a vision of education with liberal arts at its heart, keeping a broader emphasis in tradition with earlier visions of the university, yet avoiding the two objections we mentioned. The liberal arts here will be made relevant to its adherents, as they are encouraged to go on a voyage of personal discovery. At the same time, it is a vision which can be sustained, as most people are studying for pragmatic degrees, in what is the equivalent of the old academies and polytechnics. A liberal education is for a minority, but a minority decided not by birth but by will and passion. A vision of this nature will allow us to sustain the democratization of knowledge and the university, yet keep the priorities of knowledge in order. With this vision, we can answer the question, what is a university education? Why is a university education for.

Endnotes

  1. A. B. Cobban, The Medieval Universities, (London: Methuen, 1975), p. 21.
  2. David Preston, The Idea of Education, (New York: Rodopi, 2003), p. 169.
  3. Kenneth Minogue, The Concept of a University, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), p. 5.
  4. Christopher Carlsmith, 'Review of Hofstetter, The Romantic Idea of a University', History of Education Quarterly 42:3, p. 418.
  5. Why go to university?: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAndLearning/UniversityAndHigherEducation/WhyGoToUniversityOrCollege /DG_4016998 and Why would I go to university: http://www.aimhigher.ac.uk/Uni4me/what_is_university_/why_would_i_go_to_university_.cfm [Both accessed 18th April 2011]
  6. http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/PKHSM11-PDF.pdf
  7. Alvin Kernan, What's happened to the Humanities?, (Princeton University Press 1997), p. 252
  8. Angela Harrison, Englands Universities face cuts: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12762556 [Accessed 9th May 2011)
  9. Hannah Richardson, Humanities to lose English universities teaching grant, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11627843 [Accessed 9th May 2011]
  10. Harriet Swain, London Met VC explains why he is cutting 400 courses, http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/03/london-metropolitan-gillies-course-cuts [ Accessed 9th May 2011]
  11. James Perkins, The University in Transition (Princeton, 1966), p. 38.
  12. Gordon William Rockett, 'The Humanities and the University Revolution', College English, 29:1, p. 17.
  13. Rockett, ibid., p. 15.
  14. Rockett, ibid., p 16.
  15. Rockett. ibid., p. 24.
  16. Robert Anderson, The Idea of a University Today, at http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-98.html#S3 [Accessed 2nd May 2011]
  17. Anderson, ibid.


Created on: December 20th 2011

Updated on: December 20th 2011