Re: The Fascinating Case of Marty Eisen

These are not the only signs that universities have turned themselves into
businesses over the past 50 years.

When I entered Stanford in 1946 the tuition was $500 a year. That's $4,261 in
year-2000 dollars. Yet Stanford's tuition for students entering in 2000 was
$24,471.

What are today's students getting that's worth 5.7 times as much? (Or, to take
a longer view, 21 times the 1920-21 tuition of $120, equal to $1,157 in 2000
dollars?) Stanford is not a special case: tuition at other leading private
colleges has followed a similar trajectory.

The unconscionable inflation of college tuition ought to be the country's Next
Big Scandal. Enron's misdeeds have hurt a lot of people, but they pale by
comparison to what the colleges have been doing, year after year, for decades.

---------\

Dear Colleagues,

Having heard so much about "revenue-based budgeting" and its cousin
"extra-mural grant support," I want to share with you some quotations that I
have collected over the years.

The first by Abraham Flexner directly addresses the misguided notion that
universities should be organized like businesses. The remainder address the
related theme of insulating (scholarly) research from various political
forces.

Please share these quotations with others.

One-half century ago, the administration was responsible for financing the
university. Today, that responsibility has fallen all too heavily on faculty
shoulders.

--Marshall (Lev Dermer/Associate Professor of Psychology/UWM)


                       Some Thoughts About Universities

         Haven't We Built Great Universities?

         Universities have with startling suddenness become big;
         having become big, they have lost plasticity; they are
         so big that in every direction they are pressed for
         funds; they have had to be organized as business is
         organized, which is precisely the type of organization
         that is inimical to the purposes for which they exist
         and unpleasant to the type of person needed to promote
         science and scholarship; they have been dragged into
         the market place; they have been made to serve scores
         of purposes--some of them, of course, sound in
         themselves--which universities cannot serve without
         abandoning purposes which they and no other institution
         can serve at all. . . . Instead of providing absolute
         independence of speech and thought for mature men
         conscious of their vast responsibilities, universities
         have frequently --though exceptions may be
         found--pursued two courses: emitted superficial
         utterances which only add to the existing Babel or
         avoided delicate and controversial issues, particularly
         in the social and economic realms.

         Flexner, Abraham
         _I Remember_
         New York, 1940, pgs.362-363

         Why Have Universities?

         As long as evolution proceeded slowly over centuries,
         men could feel their way and make adjustments
         imperceptibly on an empirical basis. But the restraints
         which for centuries slowed down or limited adjustments
         have been largely removed. Societies have to
         act--intelligently, if possible--if not, then
         unintelligently, blindly, selfishly, impulsively. The
         weight and prestige of the university must be thrown on
         the side of intelligence. If the university does not
         accept this challenge, what other institution can or
         will? . . . In this world rocking beneath and around us,
         Where is the theory to be worked out, where are the
         social and economic problems to be analyzed, where are
         theory and facts to be brought face to face, where is
         the truth, welcome or unwelcome, to be told, where are
         men to be trained to ascertain and tell it, where, in
         whatever measure it is possible, is conscious,
         deliberate, and irresponsible thought to be given to the
         task of reshaping this world of ours to our liking,
         unless, first and foremost, in the university?  The wit
         of man has thus far contrived no other comparable
         agency.

         Flexner, Abraham
         _The Idea of a Modern University_
         New York, 1930, pgs. 13-14


         Problems therefore abound and press upon us--problems
         due to ignorance, problems created by knowledge. They
         must be studied before intelligent action can be taken.
         Hand-to-mouth contrivance does not suffice. Who is
         going to study them?  Who and where?  There will be, of
         course, from time to time a lonely Mendel or a lonely
         Darwin, who may do epoch-making things. But more and
         more the worker needs co-workers and facilities such as
         the individual is not likely to possess; he needs, also,
         soil in which to grow. However deeply the flash of
         genius may penetrate, the bulk of the world's work in
         research and teaching will be done in universities--if
         universities are what they ought to be.

         Flexner, Abraham
         _The Idea of a Modern University_
         New York, 1930 pgs. 19-20


         Intensive study of phenomena under the most favorable
         possible conditions--the phenomena of the physical
         world, of the social world, of the aesthetic world, and
         the ceaseless struggle to see things in relation--these
         I conceive to be the most important functions of the
         modern university. We shall get further with the
         physical world than with the social world or the
         aesthetic world;  but the difference is only one of
         degree--all are important, all are worth while--worth
         while in themselves, worth while because they have
         bearings, implications, uses.

         Flexner, Abraham
         _The Idea of a Modern University_
         New York, 1930, p.23

         One of Einstein's last public statements was made in
         answer to a request that he comment on the situation of
         scientists in America. He wrote:  "Instead of trying to
         analyze the problem I should like to express my feeling
         in a short remark. If I were a young man again and had
         to decide how to make a living, I would not try to
         become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would
         rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler, in the hope
         of finding that modest degree of independence still
         available under present circumstances."

         Klein, Martin J.
         "Einstein and the academic establishment"
         In A.P. French [Ed.], _Einstein_, Cambridge, 1979

         The distortions in economic research, which I shall
         feature, are not a consequence of the reservations that
         the other social scientists have about economic
         research. The distortions on my list have come about
         mainly because of the economic policy biases of some
         foundations and of most governmental agencies in
         allocating funds for economic research because of the
         accommodations of a goodly number of academic economists
         to these biases in order to obtain research funds.

         It is my contention that most academic economists are
         complacent about their freedom of inquiry, about
         safeguarding their university functions and about the
         conditions under which research funds are made available
         to them by institutions other than the university. This
         complacency about the special and specific usefulness of
         inquiry that is free of outside intrusion is exemplified
         in their failure to challenge publicly private patrons,
         foundations and governmental agencies on their
         allocation of funds for economic research. But to do
         this competently requires firm knowledge of the utility
         of economic thought and research appropriate to the
         functions of the university. It also requires courage
         because it entails the risk of alienating the patrons
         and causing them to reduce further their support of
         university research. The risk is neatly avoided by the
         art of accommodation, by quietly and gracefully
         submitting proposals for research grants that seem to
         fit the demands of the patrons.

         Scholarly criticism of economic doctrines and society's
         institutions by economists is at a low ebb--criticism,
         for example, of the quality of the work of Jacob Viner,
         Frank Knight and Harry Johnson, and also of Thorstein
         Veblen, Henry Simon and Friedrich A Hayek, all of whom
         were members of the faculty of this university [the
         University of Chicago]....I find it highly unlikely that
         university economists of their caliber and with their
         scholarly interest could today obtain funds from
         off-campus sources. But what is also distressing is
         that the search for talent is for a different set of
         economic qualifications and as a consequence there is a
         lack of incentives for the on-coming generation of
         economists to acquire the competence that is required to
         pursue scholarly criticism of economic doctrines and of
         society's institutions.

         Schultz, Theodore W.
         1979 Nobel laureate in economics
         "Distortions of Economic Research"
         Address presented at the 50th Anniversary Celebration of
         the Social Sciences Building
         University of Chicago