Dysfunction in Higher Education

The academy is currently embracing some generally dysfunctional trends. Such behavior is maladaptive and problematic because it fails to serve the highest goals of a person or a system. Colleges and universities are deviating ever further from the tradition of what becoming an educated person means. To advertise higher education as an ever-ready, technological product, or otherwise seduce students into taking courses for which they may be ill-prepared, reinforces the pathological narcissism that promises students what they want, when and how they want it. Many problems begin here as pragmatism ignores tradition and principle.

Cardinal John Henry Newman was, probably unwittingly, an early educational psychologist. His classic book, The Idea of a University, written in the 1850s, follows the path of his ideological progenitors in understanding education as liberating people from the darkness of ignorance through learning. Parmenides birthed the notion that the mind should engage in abstract thought independent of particular external facts. Socrates, at considerable peril, peripatetically asked questions whose responses demanded consummate cognitive complexity.

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From the tradition of profound concern about complex ideas, the university was born. For Newman, education’s goal is the development of the mind — thinking, analyzing, comparing, reasoning, and judging — as a worthy end in itself. If the mental faculty is developed, Newman thought, the person would be developed and then specific training in applied areas could occur. First, however, the person must be “liberated.” Both historically and for Newman, the liberal education interacted with but was superior to a “useful” education. This point is a contentious one today.

William James, writing slightly later, concluded that professors — whose responsibility is to carry on the traditions of the academy — have two essential functions: to be as knowledgeable as possible and to teach the truth. Neither Newman nor James heralded education as a fiscal, occupational, or mercantile advantage, since learning is its own goal. Basic skills were to be taught early in life so that, when students reached the university, they would be ready to grapple with lofty ideas.

Some contemporary psychology echoes these ideas. Psychologist James Maas advocates that we render technology secondary to the teaching-learning process. “I have sat through far too many sleep-inducing PowerPoint presentations that have had a lot of power and no point,” he says. Interestingly, even the effective use of the Internet requires an ability to generate heuristic problem-solving strategies for obtaining appropriate information.

Several major contaminants influence the academy today: the reduction of faculty, students, and ideas to monetary equivalencies, outcome measures, and computerism; the irrational fear of lawsuits; the administrative ignorance of human behavior and the learning process; and the devaluing of the academy’s traditions.

We live in a world in which academics are increasingly dependent on administrators, whether they are well- or ill-equipped to manage. These bureaucrats build budgets, allocate resources, and make decisions that directly affect the learning environment. Some of these decisions deviate significantly from the tradition discussed above and appear to be impulsively engaged merely for the sake of novelty itself. Newman had similar problems, and, when his antagonists argued that education should be “useful,” Newman countered that nothing could be more useful than for the mental faculty to be developed, since human development is a good in itself. All that is good is useful, he said, but not all that is useful is good.

Dysfunction is most probable when ignorance is fueled by the pathological power pursuits of those who, perhaps unconsciously, feel inferior to those whom they would control. Administrative narcissism and unconscious oedipal strivings, combined with résumé-building agendas and an underlying fear of failure, frequently ground overcompensations that manifest in intransigence and authoritarian leadership. In situations like these, professors are viewed as incorrigible cogs in a wheel who resist change and, regrettably, fail to see the “big picture.” This is not an environment in which the free flow of ideas is welcomed or central to the educative process. It is, rather, a world driven by rash judgments, money, current fashion, and teaching loads that stagger the imagination.

It is becoming increasingly more difficult to teach. Students, on average, are ill-prepared for college, so the university compensates by teaching basic skills. Still, many fail because they cannot read the texts and have not learned self-discipline. The culture subtly teaches students that they deserve to succeed in college, and the university reinforces that sense of entitlement. A degree has virtually become a “right.” When success eludes the “entitled,” the teaching may be scapegoated and responsibility displaced onto the faculty. The reality is that the ability to learn is both genetic and learned. Professors cannot negate the bestowals of Nature and all prior experience.

Money is literally being poured into online courses and degrees despite typically low enrollments in them and students’ relative inability to do independent work. We now have the “virtual campuses” that many assumed would remain apocryphal. They are convenient and trendy. Never mind that the research clearly shows that online time is strongly correlated with increased anxiety, depression, and inadequate social skill development.

Also, convenient and quick (the American way?) are so-called “mini-mesters” — several weeks to absorb an entire area of study. What about the research that tells us information is best remembered when spread out and studied in relatively small amounts? What of the role of incubation? Educational incubation is not so different from therapeutic incubation. Change requires time. But even though Nature is not kind to those who rush it, “popular culture” is in a hurry and the academy panders rather than leads.

Sometimes administrative decisions reflect

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fear of lawsuits, just as children’s behavior is motivated by fear of punishment. It is problematic when administrators fail to recognize even the most obvious manipulations and urge faculty to reconsider grades or teach differently rather than to confront real issues. To assuage threatening students, administrators may seek out faculty whose standards are relatively low and persuade them to teach complaining students. Unfortunately, some faculty members cooperate with the manipulation.

But some faculty leaders are equally problematic. Utilizing the “diffusion of responsibility” defense, they pretend egalitarian leadership styles while evading responsibility for decision-making. Other faculty, for whom complex thinking is a relative stranger and knowledge of human behavior and evaluation methodology are virtually absent, nonetheless assume administrative positions and feel comfortable evaluating others’ teaching and setting policy. Still others passively comply, sometimes for the sake of “peace.”

Just as blurred boundaries negatively affect families, they also impact organizations. Nonetheless, it has become fashionable, in some places, to include representatives from virtually every campus group on hiring and policy-setting committees. Frequently, members know little about the discipline for which they are hiring and are not necessarily skilled at the complex cognitive tasks required for making academic policy. We need to re-evaluate: support staff are not the faculty. Both groups play an essential but different role, with the faculty possessing the primary responsibility for student learning and academic policymaking, and the staff, literally, “supporting” that endeavor. When fiscal sleuths or other staff persons assume these responsibilities, role-blurring and demoralization ensue and dysfunction follows.

I urge a return to calm, clear thinking in the academy as an antidote to impulsive trendiness and poor administrative, and sometimes faculty, judgment, which create the climate for organizational madness. The race toward technological instruction together with the rush toward outcomes assessment clearly require reconsideration. Every clinician knows that some aspects of healing defy reduction to documented outcomes. Educators know the same thing: not everything can be measured. In fact, it is the very core of the process that defies this reductionism. No one can measure the “Aha!” effect or the “Wow! I understand!” phenomenon, both of which sometimes occur years after first exposure to an idea. One can measure increments of information, but higher education strives toward loftier goals — or should.

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