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LEO BERSANI
might suggest, and
The Idea of the University
has many good pro–
posals for university reform. Wolff recommends random admissions
to college, a three-year undergraduate program with no degree at
the end of it, and the replacement of the Ph.D. (and the Ph.D.
dis–
sertation) with "a professional degree designed to certify candidates
as competent to teach their subjects at the college or graduate levels."
Business and government would no longer demand the B.A. as a job
prerequisite, and, since merit can obviously exist in people without a
B.A., "quite possibly some of the sharp class lines which now divide
America would begin to blur." Also, anyone, and not just holders of
a bachelor's degree, could take the examinations and apply for ad–
mission to a graduate school. And graduate schools would drop the
"make-believe 'original contributions to scholarship'" and, like the
law and medical schools, prepare people for a professional career,
that is, college teaching. Here is Wolff's summary of his proposals
and their purpose: "by making high school performance irrelevant to
college admission, by making college performance irrelevant to grad–
uate admission, and by removing professional training from the
undergraduate curriculum, we can transform competition and certif–
ication from a way of life into a limited activity directly related to
the student's self-interest."
Wolff has great good sense, and his proposals deserve to
be
looked at more closely. He also sounds like a very decent man, and
I share some of the feelings which probably help to explain why
his
book, in spite of some daring suggestions, remains conservative
in
principle: a pride in one's own academic achievements, a sentimental
attachment to a few teachers and a stubborn sense of the superior
intellectual atmosphere of Ivy League schools. But, in the context of
what I've been talking about in this essay, his work sadly illustrates
the futility of even radical proposals for university reform without
more fundamental changes both of consciousness and in society. "In
describing my proposals as 'practical,' I mean to indicate that they
all fall far short of a revolution, either in education or in the eco–
nomic and political organization of our society." But revolutionary
changes
in
education and in social organization are clearly what is
needed, and
in
not proposing such changes Wolff proposes little
more than a postponement of the pressures and competitions which
he sees as the corrupting factors in education now. Or rather, even
