Professors and Their Politics

Conclusion

Conclusion From one point of view, it is something of a surprise that we find ourselves today in a new phase of conflict over the form and direction of the American university . After all, seen as an industry, American higher education enjoys an advantage over its international competitors that is rare in this globalized era. In the most recent Times Higher Education World University Rankings, eleven of the top fifteen universities were American. And in the Shanghai Jiao Tong index, American universities claim the top eight spots out of ten. The degrees offered by these schools and their faculties are highly sought after worldwide, and overseas branches of American institutions of higher learning are among the most prestigious in the world. This is true in oil-rich Gulf nations like Dubai and Qatar but also in less obvious places like Malta and Morocco. Far from being in crisis, American higher education seems to lead the world, much as the U.S. auto industry once did. A wag might claim that what is good for the American university is good for America. And yet, in the course of their ascent, American colleges and universities have picked up plenty of critics. Since Cambridge backed Cromwell, it has been a tradition in Anglo-American experience to criticize higher education from the right, but in the contemporary politics of higher education, one finds adversaries who are better organized and more energized than has been true for some time. A skeptic might retort that, again, things are much as they always have been. Conservative criticism of the university in the United States has been a constant, punctuated by episodes associated with William F. Buckley Jr.’s critique of Yale, the McCarthy scare, the Vietnam War rebellions, and the culture and canon wars of the 1990s. Few should be surprised that our era’s version of conservative anxiety might spawn organizations and efforts like the National Association of Scholars , the Manhattan Institute’s “Minding the Campus” initiative, and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, each of which objects strongly to the political 310 Professors and Their Politics climate said to prevail on campus. Criticism might also be expected as tuition costs soar at public universities, at rates often double the declining rate of state support. In a period of economic malaise, public sector services can reasonably be expected to come under closer scrutiny of the kind directed at higher education from websites such as CollegeMeasures.org, which are resorting to the most direct strains of American pragmatism by publicizing “cash value” metrics of dollar-out-for-dollar-in scorecards for colleges and universities in Arkansas , Tennessee, Virginia, and elsewhere. But it may be something of a surprise— and perhaps even cause for alarm for those who like the university as it is—that no less a figure than Barack Obama, in his 2013 State of the Union address, made a reference to higher education that showed little by way of defense of the American academy in response to criticisms and even advocated the use of just such pragmatic metrics to allow parents and students to compare “where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.” If a Democratic president who was once an academic lecturer is willing to cross the academy even in the midst of what has been described as a combative liberal mood, the nation must not have much practical faith in business as usual in the university. Just as a majority of Americans should be expected to think that little would be lost in gathering information on what tenured professors are doing in their enclaves of seclusion from recession-era market forces, so, too, they might support more vigorous oversight of the uses and even abuses of the advantages that professors enjoy relative to their professional peers. Competitive pressures on the traditional college lecture are rising as online alternatives—the so-called massive open online courses (MOOCs)—present alluring opportunities for credentialing outside the traditional model, and all American colleges and universities will soon be facing more stringent oversight through program review and assessments of their capacity to meet learning outcomes. If the signals from on high carry any predictive meaning, we might expect new political initiatives to gain traction that would advocate limits on publicly supported pensions, academic freedom in the classroom, and the institution of tenure itself. With respect to this last and, in many ways, defining feature of university life in the United...