By Rory Fraser
Rory Fraser is Professor of Forest Economics and Policy at Alabama A & M University. He is a graduate of the University of New Brunswick, Canada, and Pennsylvania State University and has spent 34 of the last 38 years in the UK, Canada, Jamaica, and the USA either attending or teaching at universities and working in forestry related fields.
With the recent resignation of the Chancellor, and the expiration, on June 30, of its Governing Council, it seems fair to say that the University of Guyana is on the brink of the precipice, and revitalizing this institution of higher learning on the eve of its 50th anniversary will not be easy. But the current struggles at, over, or in the University of Guyana are not without precedent, and taking a bit of distance from the local situation may prove useful. This column looks briefly at the transformation of USA universities as they responded to social, economic and political changes since the American Civil War, as there may be lessons for University of Guyana stakeholders to learn from the evolution of higher education in that country.
In the highly acclaimed 2010 book “The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected,” Jonathan R. Cole wrote “The history of universities in America is inextricably bound up with the history of America itself. By fits and starts, they managed to work against forces of repression through the principle of academic freedom. Indeed, the protection of ideas and expression from external political interference or repression became absolutely fundamental to the university. This ideal and other core values also became fundamental to the production of the kind of new knowledge that drove the advances of the ‘American century,’ having effects in industry, government, and other areas of American life. Without these core values, the distinguished American universities could not have been built.” Cole also pointed out that despite the manifold increase in universities in the USA over this period, most of the top universities are the same. The oldest private and public universities have used their early advantage to reproduce themselves —better faculty attracted stronger students, stronger students meant greater alumni contributions, greater alumni contributions led to better research facilities, better research facilities drew better faculty, and so on. Such advantages enabled these universities to accumulate even more resources from individuals and institutional backers in order to create still greater advantages in competing for talent. Implementation of similar cycles has galvanized educational reforms in China, India, Japan, and South Korea over the past 30 years to the extent that they have become growing threats to the USA’s dominance in research, graduate training, and human capacity development.
In his book, Cole related the revolutionary transformation of higher learning in the United States that represented a fundamental paradigm shift. Starting with British training concepts and incorporating German academic apprenticeship approaches, disparate USA universities melded an amalgam of university structures and values shaped in part by trends in the larger society. One such trend was the general movement from elitism in the United States toward a greater focus on equality, with universities promulgating the idea that education, particularly higher education, was a key route to social mobility. A corollary of this trend was a movement from “exclusion” to “inclusion.” The doors of universities were increasingly opened to young people from various backgrounds, increasing the base for academic talent and allowing universities to grow in size and complexity as the U.S. population grew and became more diverse. At the same time, industrialization and increasing societal interest in the results of science and technology, required shifting the university curriculum away from “classical” training to include science, engineering, and other subjects relating to technological advancement. State and land-grant universities place a high value on meeting state agricultural and industrial needs. Previously rigid curricula offerings became more open and students were encouraged to explore a variety of subjects. Societal demands for more specialized knowledge led to the creation of postgraduate studies in many different fields. These degrees had to satisfy society’s need to assure professional competence and required the development of certified training and more uniform and rigorous professional standards. Along the way, USA institutions began to gain prominence on the intellectual world stage and many sought international prestige. Instead of recruiting exclusively from homegrown talent, they wanted to attract the best scholars, scientists, and students from wherever they might be found. Nonetheless, during the early years, universities had very limited budgets to support research. Initially, philanthropists such as the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Russell Sage Foundations, funded research, training, and travel in critically important ways for scholars and scientists until new streams of revenue to support basic and applied research, eventually came from the federal government. Meanwhile, the values of science rippled out to other disciplines, becoming key elements in the evolving idea of the university itself. The core values of the university system consisted of deeply held beliefs as well as principles that determined how individuals would act. They were organizing principles designed to support the institution in meeting its goals and mission, and influenced the types of social structures that developed to carry out the activities of the university. They were binding and constraining, in the sense that faculty and university leaders embraced these values, believed in them, and internalized them.
Cole identified a dozen ideals defining the culture, characteristic spirit and prevalent tone of the academic community, values that also shape many of the top universities around the world:
Universalism – the belief that new truth claims and assertions of fact are to be evaluated using established impersonal criteria, not based upon the personal or social attributes of the person making the claim.
Organized Skepticism – enjoins members of the academic community to hold a skeptical view of almost anything proposed as fact or dogma, applying appropriately rigorous methodological criteria to claims of discovery or truth.
Creation of New Knowledge – there are many different measures of quality when it comes to research universities: the scientific and scholarly productivity of faculty members; the impact of their work; the awards and honours they have received for discoveries and scholarship.
Free and Open Communication of Ideas – for knowledge to grow it must occupy public space. Within the academic community, knowledge becomes common property, placed freely in the marketplace of ideas for examination, criticism, correction, and further development.
Disinterestedness – members of the academy are expected to evaluate the scientific and scholarly contributions of their peers. In addition, they must at all costs avoid plagiarism and fraud in their own work.
Free Inquiry and Academic Freedom – truly creative scholarship and science can only take place in an atmosphere in which people with talent are given latitude to consider ideas, to push against orthodoxy, and to explore the unknown. Universities therefore place great value on the freedom to conduct research and pursue one’s academic interests—and to speak, write, and publish—without fear of interference by internal or external forces.
International Communities – the top research universities are part of an international community, with ideas crossing national borders in scholarly exchanges of various types.
Peer Review System – via this process, highly qualified experts in a field (one’s peers) are called upon to act as judges of the competence and quality of the work produced and to determine the types of rewards and recognition merited.
Working for the “Common” Good – university places a very high value on producing knowledge that can benefit the larger society. It is achieved in various ways, including by training graduates for a variety of occupations and producing professionals who will become leaders in business, industry, and government.
Governance by Authority – over the past century there has been a major shift away from the absolute power wielded by university presidents and trustees toward a “company of equals” model in which the faculty has significant governance responsibilities.
Intellectual Progeny – teaching and training the next generation of students is one of the two essential roles of faculty members at research universities.
The Vitality of the Community – since younger scholars and scientists produce a high proportion of the most innovative and revolutionary work, the academic community tries to maintain its vitality and excellence by recruiting the highest-quality new talent in the world.
Cole intimated that one of the remarkable features of the great universities is their ability to attract young people with exceptional minds who are capable of producing novel, sometimes disconcerting, ideas. That these institutions are willing to entertain new ideas—even those that threaten the relevance of older members of their communities—is a mark of their intellectual vitality. He goes on to say “Universities often welcome revolutionary and radical ideas and allow them to supersede the very ideas on which members of the faculty have made their reputations. Why? It is because it is the essential goal of these institutions and their members to make both incremental and revolutionary advances in knowledge. Not every new idea is valid—new ideas must be sifted through the peer review process over time—but out of a large pool of new ideas some will be worthwhile or even path-breaking.”
Cole suggests these values distinguish the modern American university from the traditions they inherited from Europe, which were based on hierarchical forms of authority and power. The American system is rooted in a more democratic structure and is dynamic — always in flux, always seeking ways of becoming a better instrument of teaching and research. These values and the structures that emerge are always under some sort of challenge from either internal or external sources. The university fends off these challenges only by maintaining a sense of what its structures are and why those structures optimize the growth of knowledge. Recent events at the University of Virginia, one of the oldest and most highly regarded American institutions, are testimony to this dynamic.
Cole acknowledges problems in American universities and reminds us that they are fragile institutions. If society fails to understand the role the (aforementioned) values play in promoting discovery, it becomes difficult to defend the university’s missions. When these values are undermined, then the structures become weak, atrophy sets in, and doubt begins to reign about the utility of those structures. He warns, “erosion of consensus on the core values of the university could easily lead to structural changes that would undermine the quality of these institutions as well as the pace of advances in the many different disciplines we depend on for our nation’s well-being. It is in fact striking that the idea of the modern American university—shaped around the idea of free inquiry and openness to talent and ideas, even radical ideas—emerged and stabilized during such a volatile period in American history. An idea that was derived in part from the research activities of German universities was gaining traction at a time when Americans of German origin were being prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts enacted by a former president of Princeton. That these institutions were being organized at a time when socialists and others who voiced opposition to American foreign or domestic policies were being jailed, is even more remarkable.”
There is a lot Guyanese can learn from this epic American struggle, particularly the value of working valiantly, even in the most difficult and challenging conditions, to create a culture that promotes and defends the values of tertiary education. Maybe, it is possible to benefit from the insights, of people like Cole, to conceive of The Great Guyanese University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected?
