In speaking of the elite university it would seem that we speak of a compounded idea: that such institutions are of a heightened, ‘elite’, quality and that they serve as, in addition to being repositories of knowledge and incubators of new ideas, rejuvenators of the intellectual elite from which our future leaders will be drawn. As such they are doubly tainted with the opprobrium of the term elite in popular discourse, by those who would deny legitimacy of hierarchical distinction or, from benevolent misguidance, lower standards to those of the common denominator, or those who take umbrage that their own sense of elevated worth is not properly acknowledged and rewarded.
The pursuit of excellence is the proper role of an institution that would aspire to elite status. What otherwise might justify the distinction? The public duty of the university is a patriotic duty to the integrity of the civic enterprise, that has long been recognized as best served by the sovereignty of institutions serving the cause of intellectual excellence; that ideas are most powerful and most vulnerable to correction when abstracted from the narrow ends of politics or popular agendas. The university is both the systematic organizer and keeper of knowledge and an incubator of insights that may challenge those carefully constructed systems. To do its work requires a degree of insulation from the din of public conflict, a sanctuary from popular currents, the tenured professor as the epitome of academic independence—not in the absence of conflict, but intellectual conflict at a more measured pace, arguments between those long practiced in the art of thinking and inured of the rules of logic; rather than an extension of the public arena, a place set aside for the practice of high-minded inquiry.
To the extent that the private university remains free of public funding, relying on tuition, fees, donations, and its endowment fund, the private institution retains sovereignty in defining its mission. To the extent it is beholden to the public dole, that sovereignty is diminished. Much of the current debate would seem to rise from a conflicted duality regarding identity, between institutional sovereignty and a growing dependence on public funds, entwined as the latter must be with public policy directives.
By accepting public money, the elite university strikes a Faustian bargain that favors the interest of administrators, over scholars and students, by justifying administrative expansion: larger salaries, larger staffs, larger budgets, income and career enhancing speaking engagements, under the rubric of ‘social justice’, the mi culpa of the privileged for their sin of being special. If administrative numbers and individual enumeration are functions of the size of their budgets, there is a strong incentive for growing the size and reach of the institution by the expansion of its mission beyond the ivied walls of contemplation. What will be seen approvingly by some as an opening of the institution to broader community inputs, will be seen by others as an opening to a dilution of academic integrity, government largesse inevitably imposing external political and bureaucratic restrictions on academic freedoms formerly imperfectly controlled by traditions of intellectual integrity and peer review.
The institution will see the world through the lens of its own identity, enshrouded as it necessarily is, in traditions supportive of cultural continuance. But such perspective will be mitigated by the purity of that vision, bound as it is to the pursuit of excellence. For the private, elite university, public money constitutes a corruption of that vision, corroding the traditional wall between government and the elite institution—elite by virtue of quality and independence. Amplectere excellentia.
Faustian elitism-
In speaking of the elite university it would seem that we speak of a compounded idea: that such institutions are of a heightened, ‘elite’, quality and that they serve as, in addition to being repositories of knowledge and incubators of new ideas, rejuvenators of the intellectual elite from which our future leaders will be drawn. As such they are doubly tainted with the opprobrium of the term elite in popular discourse, by those who would deny legitimacy of hierarchical distinction or, from benevolent misguidance, lower standards to those of the common denominator, or those who take umbrage that their own sense of elevated worth is not properly acknowledged and rewarded.
The pursuit of excellence is the proper role of an institution that would aspire to elite status. What otherwise might justify the distinction? The public duty of the university is a patriotic duty to the integrity of the civic enterprise, that has long been recognized as best served by the sovereignty of institutions serving the cause of intellectual excellence; that ideas are most powerful and most vulnerable to correction when abstracted from the narrow ends of politics or popular agendas. The university is both the systematic organizer and keeper of knowledge and an incubator of insights that may challenge those carefully constructed systems. To do its work requires a degree of insulation from the din of public conflict, a sanctuary from popular currents, the tenured professor as the epitome of academic independence—not in the absence of conflict, but intellectual conflict at a more measured pace, arguments between those long practiced in the art of thinking and inured of the rules of logic; rather than an extension of the public arena, a place set aside for the practice of high-minded inquiry.
To the extent that the private university remains free of public funding, relying on tuition, fees, donations, and its endowment fund, the private institution retains sovereignty in defining its mission. To the extent it is beholden to the public dole, that sovereignty is diminished. Much of the current debate would seem to rise from a conflicted duality regarding identity, between institutional sovereignty and a growing dependence on public funds, entwined as the latter must be with public policy directives.
By accepting public money, the elite university strikes a Faustian bargain that favors the interest of administrators, over scholars and students, by justifying administrative expansion: larger salaries, larger staffs, larger budgets, income and career enhancing speaking engagements, under the rubric of ‘social justice’, the mi culpa of the privileged for their sin of being special. If administrative numbers and individual enumeration are functions of the size of their budgets, there is a strong incentive for growing the size and reach of the institution by the expansion of its mission beyond the ivied walls of contemplation. What will be seen approvingly by some as an opening of the institution to broader community inputs, will be seen by others as an opening to a dilution of academic integrity, government largesse inevitably imposing external political and bureaucratic restrictions on academic freedoms formerly imperfectly controlled by traditions of intellectual integrity and peer review.
The institution will see the world through the lens of its own identity, enshrouded as it necessarily is, in traditions supportive of cultural continuance. But such perspective will be mitigated by the purity of that vision, bound as it is to the pursuit of excellence. For the private, elite university, public money constitutes a corruption of that vision, corroding the traditional wall between government and the elite institution—elite by virtue of quality and independence. Amplectere excellentia.