the stupidity of university bashing

Music: Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life (1976)

Stupidity is commonly defined as "lacking intelligence or common sense." Bryan sent me a link to yet another editorial calling for the end of the university as we know it, demonstrating both a lack of intelligence and common sense, in equal measure. Let me address each in turn.

Elizabeth Young, on behalf of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, argues that "university research harms student learning." This is a claim of fact, and an implied causal claim. In support of her claim, she argues:

1. "Research" provides society with "very little, if any benefit."
2. Only "13%" of research occurs at universities; the rest is privately funded. (Corollary: this means that government "doesn't need to fund research at all").
3. Texas spent $9 billion dollars on research investment, with only 8.3 million return. (Corollary: research is a bad investment).
4. The average university professor spends 21% of her time with students; the rest is spent on research and administrative duties.

In sum: research provides little benefit to society, most of it is privately funded, there is little rate of return, and it distracts professors from teaching. "Let’s change the incentives at our public universities. Don’t increase funding for research; enact policies that will shift professors’ focus back to their original mission – educating university customers."

Hopefully with this description the problems of this argument are made obvious, but just in case, let's go for the lack of common sense first: what is "research" here? Presumably we're talking medical, biological, computer, and this sort of thing---since that's what the MSM usually mean by research (not, for example, what I do; again, the report she relies on specifies journal articles for limited audiences, but Liz is using a much broader brush). Poor Elizabeth could use a good university education in argument and policy-making, because she would understand that it's important to define one's terms.

Now, to say that there is very little, if any benefit from university research programs is patently silly. How many cures for disease would I need to mention before "very little" becomes "very huge?" I can imagine Lizzy responding: but that research was privately funded! I would respond: where did the researchers learn to do their research? Where are their labs located? Hmm?

Furthermore, one wonders where this "conservative" got her statistics. I don’t have time to research them, but there is a contradiction with her initial parenthetical assertion that university research is "largely taxpayer funded" and the fact that external funding makes the research at universities go, not taxpayer dollars.

We can easily dismiss Lizzy's argument if we go straight for its underlying reasoning: the university is a business that is designed to serve its customers. As a business, the university should be focused primarily on teaching. If we argue, however, that the university is not a business and that students are not customers, then her argument makes no sense. The "rate of return" isn't an index of success. Rather, innovation, expanding our knowledge, curing disease, solving social problems, teaching critical thinking---these are the goods internal to the practice of a university. Money is an external good, it is what allows the internal goods to thrive. Money should not, however, drive the university mission.

If you look at the warrant, here, we find Lizzy in quite the pickle. The good she emphasizes, teaching, is internal to the practice of university life. But without research, what would we teach? Universities need both good teaching and good research to support their missions. And isn't part of the university's mission to teach future, private sector researchers how to research?

Now, how about the "lack of intelligence?" Lizzy opposes house bill 51, on the grounds that it contributes to "more research." The bill passed by a landslide. Why was there little opposition, even from Republichristians? Perhaps because the bill had nothing to do with what Lizzy said it did. I actually read the bill this morning, which really was a baby-step in support of a bigger deal, senate bill 1560. That bill should have been the one Lizzy read.

What happened is this. Lizzy read Rick O'Donnell's opinion piece and bought it whole, without actually researching (doh!) the bills in question. O'Donnell, of course, is a senior fellow at her advocacy group, so she's citing her own group's research as evidence. Regardless, had she read SB 1560, what she would have found is that the our congress-people are trying to create a "National Research University Fund" to promote state universities that are on the up-and-up. The idea here is to encourage emerging schools like UT-El Paso, UT- San Antonio, UT- Dallas, UT- Arlington, the University of Houston, Texas Tech, and the University of North Texas to pursue a more prominent research status nationwide. Basically, the fund is an incentive for each of these schools to raise their own endowments (sort of like matching funds) and produce more Ph.D. students. It's sort of like the Corporation of Public Broadcasting: each school must meet a threshold before they are entitled to research funds. Much of these monies will be for infrastructure, too. Finally, although the fund will receive monies from the state, it will also be for private and charitable donations.

The irony of all this is that part of the forces behind the push to have more top-tier researcher institutions is financial: R1 institutions bring in industry, develop communities, and so forth. The same financial logic that informs Lizzy's editorial is behind the bill she critiques.

I don't think there is any way we can resist the increasing corporatization of the academy, and much of this is done in the name of business ("external funding," especially). I think forcing professors to teach more and research less, however, would destroy the university entirely. Some of us actually teach better when we teach less; we bring our research back to the classroom. One activity informs the other. Balance is key.