The Travail of the University

PERSPECTIVES IN BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE Volume 41 ¦ Number 1 ¦ Autumn 1997 THE TRAVAIL OF THE UNIVERSITY SAUNDERS MAC LANE* Today, American universities face a confusing collection of complex crises . These range from questions as to what to do about students and their education to the prerogatives of faculty and the future of knowledge and learning. It seems that everything about the university world has come in question—and this has happened at a time and place when the American universities have been famously successful. Their achievements have been of world class; they are admired and emulated everywhere. They constitute a model for what a university can be in the late 20th century: in most fields of scholarship and of science they have set the standard for high accomplishment . Students from countries all over the world come to study in the United States, while accomplished faculty members from many nations came to learn and to visit—and often to stay. And yet, in this time ofrousing university success, almost everything about the structure and the direction of the university appears to come in question and to be subject to calls for change. Why is this? And, more to the point, can these questions be treated in a positive way so as to be the source of further advance? What should we do? Here are some of the issues. Financial Issues Among the various pressures, the financial ones (balance the budget!) are often the most prominent. Perhaps this is because any viable solution to other university problems is sure to require added financial resources. *Department of Mathematics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637.© 1997 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0031-5982/97/4101-1045$01.00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 41, 1 ¦ Autumn 1997 1 Such resources are hard to locate. The major state universities find that their appropriations from the state legislature are held constant or cut; the major private universities find that income from endowments is no longer a sure support for growth. As a result, university budgets in both cases are cut or constrained. In consequence, the needed improvements in education are threatened and the advance of new knowledge is slowed. What are the components of these financial pressures? One cause is the costly repairs of venerable buildings. Many ambitious universities have constructed elegant classrooms, dormitories, and other structures, often in imitation of the gothic or in that variant of the gothic called collegiate. But their walls of stone crumble and their gargoyles tumble wfien the necessary repairs have been postponed, and as a result some university presidents have been tempted to put the repair of stone ahead of the repair of scholarship—with unhappy results. To be sure, it is notjust the repairs that cost much—other necessary university expenses inevitably increase. Indeed, it is reported that the cost of learning grows faster than the cost ofliving. And in the cost oflearning we must include the staggering costs oflibraries, especially those for the many new scholarlyjournals which start up, at high subscription rates, in nearly every scholarly specialty. Another major trouble is the increasing constraints in the government support of scientific research. After 1945, the startling success of the applications of science in the last world war led to generous federal support of all manner of scientific research. Vannevar Bush, widely experienced in the management of this war research, foresaw an endless frontier for the public uses of science. The universities were sorely tempted to assume that this could mean endless continuing federal support. But eventually, that could not be so: the government had other obligations and also had to balance its budget; meanwhile more recent political pundits have found profit and pleasure in unrestrained bushwhacking. They claim to know more than Vannevar did. Government largesse had extended the frontiers of knowledge to a point where acquiring new knowledge required ever more elaborate instruments and equipment. One result is that universities must now face many higher costs, such as the large initial costs of starting up a new laboratory for a new faculty member. In this way the rapid progress of science has led to rapid increase of the costs of science, and the...