Skyfall

Universities around the planet increasingly are competing for more and better students, for the simple reason that their financial viability is dependent on growth.  Put simply, all universities must recruit ever larger numbers of students or else face budget cuts, and the better ones are more likely to be successful, an important factor in an era when we are measured, and punished or rewarded, based on factors such as completion rates and times.  And while it is easy to raise a quizzical eyebrow at the wisdom of this financial model, for the moment it’s the only one we have, and therefore must live with … at least until the day when all universities declare independence from government control, and hence taxpayer funding.  But that’s a topic for another day.  At the current rate of decline – the government contribution to our operating budget is now about 46%, and falling each year – I suspect that this will eventually happen whether we want it or not.  Just look at what is happening in Britain.

In the scramble to compete, many universities are trying to “re-invent” themselves, in large part by finding new and “sexier” programs that they hope will appeal to an “18-21 year old” demographic.  The problem is that this demographic isn’t growing, so we have all had to fall back instead on increasing the participation rate.  And while I don’t have a problem with trying to remain “current”, I do worry about pursuing a “flavour of the month” mentality, one that panders to passing fads in a mad scramble to attract bodies and tuition dollars.

I receive a fair bit of criticism for having a sort of “ideal” university somewhere in a remote corner of my imagination – one which emerges from time to time and breaks through to the surface of my consciousness, one rooted in time-honoured traditions of scholarship.  This is not to say that I oppose change.  In fact, to the contrary; and I have been at the forefront of trying to change my own academic discipline for some decades.  But nor do I believe in throwing out the baby with the proverbial bathwater.  There is a reason why some subjects – philosophy, for example – have been taught at universities for a millennium.  And I have a particular fondness for the concept of the B.A., the baccalaureus artium, which constitutes a credential recognizing achievement across a range of the liberal arts, including the development of skills in analysis and synthesis, in reading and writing, and in charting the path forward, whether one is tackling a contemporary social problem or, like me, attempting to better understand what happened in the Mediterranean region in the period we now call the early Middle Ages.  Perhaps I am a hopeless romantic in this regard, but these are the principles that I hold dear.

Yes, we need to change, and readers of these weekly musings will know my fondness for quoting Heraclitus.  We need to be nimble, and we need to be more entrepreneurial — but within certain parameters.  We need to change in ways that make sense, in ways that make us stronger, while remaining true to our mission of training minds for the collective activity of expanding the frontiers of knowledge and understanding.