Higher Education and the American Dream: Success and Its Discontents

CHAPTER 5. Academic disciplines, research imperatives, and undergraduate learning

CHAPTER 5 Academic disciplines, research imperatives, and undergraduate learning I would really like to teach one of the new interdisciplinary courses in the general education program, but my colleagues in my department would accuse me of betraying my academic discipline. (Summary of numerous conversations with faculty colleagues) For America’s professors, the great triumph of the post-World War II era lay in the dominance of the academic disciplines. The disciplines gave faculty intellectual authority as they searched for new knowledge, trained graduate students, and shaped the undergraduate curriculum. Organizationally, the disciplines were centered in academic departments, which overwhelmingly controlled their own hiring, promotion, and the awarding of tenure, as well as becoming the most influential entities in the governance of individual colleges and universities. If all of this was insufficient, the academic disciplines lay at the heart of the research enterprise. 5.1 Purposes and tensions After World War II, debates about the purposes of higher education came to the fore, with three themes receiving primary attention. The first came out of the immediate success of theoretical and applied research, as scientists who had been active during the war made an effective case for continuing federal investments in research on university campuses. Ultimately they were successful in creating the National Science Foundation and receiving substantially increased foundation support for graduate education and advanced research, preparing the next generation of scholars to expand the boundaries of knowledge. Indeed, it is safe to say, that university-based research took on an importance in almost every sphere of American life— what Roger Geiger calls, “research and relevant knowledge”—that had been barely imaginable before 1940 (Geiger, 1993, 1986; Graham , 2005). high 3 to?rdelt:Whats minta 1 4/8/10 10:14 AM Page 115 The amount of money that became available for research was mind-boggling and with the dollars came a dramatic shift in the distribution of power as a corrupt bargain—my label—emerged. Individual professors able to gain substantial amounts of research funds achieved independent status within the university. The American system of distributing research money was usually based upon a peer review process evaluating the worth of the research proposal . While the money was channeled through a particular university, in practice, it was being awarded to the primary researchers, with the university serving as little more than distributing agency, essentially delivering the checks to the researchers. In return for this, the university received two things it desperately wanted—money and prestige—each of which carried considerable importance. Money paid professors’ and staff salaries, allowed for graduate student fellowships , and bought equipment, but it also often came in the form of “overhead”—central administrative support, university libraries, heating and electrical costs—often amounting to an additional 50% of original grant. Money bought prestige and in turn, prestige made it easier to attract still more money. For the funded researcher, the university’s gains were a godsend, leading the universities to treat research professors as treasures, who could, if they so chose, sell themselves to competitors. The power of money and prestige was simply too much for university officials, who usually chose not to look too closely at such annoyances as how the money was actually being spent, the actual conduct of the research, ethical questions involved in the research, the treatment of graduate students, the quality of teaching, or even whether the research professor was regularly on the university campus. Research funding created a free agency world, like the free agency of professional athletes, in which individual professors had enormous negotiating power—over salaries, working conditions, extra travel and summer funds—creating a two tier faculty system, akin to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, in which all professors are equal, but some are more equal than others.1 116 Higher Education and the American Dream 1 Derek Bok (2003) makes a version of this argument with regard to intercollegiate athletics and expresses worry that the same thing is happening with regard to contract research. My view is that the research enterprise has already achieved the power that now resides in intercollegiate athletic programs. high 3 to?rdelt:Whats minta 1 4/8/10 10:14 AM Page 116 The second theme that emerged greatly expanded higher education ’s emphasis on vocational purposes, as more and more occupations sought to become professions through formal schooling, as existing professions extended the length of time necessary to enter them...