You are both right. Good universities are vital social institutions. When they work, they preserve and transmit the culture and promote our enlightenment values. They debase their purpose by seeing their role as purely economic, and they embarrass themselves when they make highly dubious claims about their “economic” impact.
Thanks Steven, another really valuable reminder of why we need to support our universities. To paraphrase Robert Kennedy, economics can tell us everything we need to know about the value of the education system, except the value of what it means to learn. Cheers, Andrew
I didn't read that as a need to support our universities; on the contrary. It suggests that unis see themselves as money-making institutions rather than their traditional role of transmitting and developing values and understanding - which many unis seem to have abandoned,
I was thinking more about supporting our universities to rediscover their calling - to be institutions of "light, liberty, and learning". They've been placed in the uneviable position of having to chase research dollars, usually at the expense of teaching, while having to deal with the fallout of endless political tinkering with student funding like the failed job-ready graduate program. So I suspect we're in agreement. Apologies, if my hastily penned response didn't convey that.
You are both right. Good universities are vital social institutions. When they work, they preserve and transmit the culture and promote our enlightenment values. They debase their purpose by seeing their role as purely economic, and they embarrass themselves when they make highly dubious claims about their “economic” impact.
Thanks Steven, another really valuable reminder of why we need to support our universities. To paraphrase Robert Kennedy, economics can tell us everything we need to know about the value of the education system, except the value of what it means to learn. Cheers, Andrew
I didn't read that as a need to support our universities; on the contrary. It suggests that unis see themselves as money-making institutions rather than their traditional role of transmitting and developing values and understanding - which many unis seem to have abandoned,
I was thinking more about supporting our universities to rediscover their calling - to be institutions of "light, liberty, and learning". They've been placed in the uneviable position of having to chase research dollars, usually at the expense of teaching, while having to deal with the fallout of endless political tinkering with student funding like the failed job-ready graduate program. So I suspect we're in agreement. Apologies, if my hastily penned response didn't convey that.