ADMINISTERING THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE
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Bernard Avishai:
Kant said that things that are ends in themselves have a
digni ty and things that are means to other ends have a price. I think that in
the last two hundred years we have always been struggling with the ques–
tion of how things that have a dignity also have a price. Smith tried to get
at the distinction between use value and exchange value, and so forth.
People in educational institutions always have this ambiguous mandate and
so do the institutions themselves. On the one hand to invite people into
an experience which is an end in itself and on the other hand to qualify
them to earn a living. I'm trying to make the point that for the first time
in history the institutions that are inviting students to make a living are
inviting them first and foremost to enjoy the experience that's an end in
itself. Twenty-five years ago this was not so because corporations then
were big hierarchical structures in which a great many people were
required not only to leave their heads at home but to engage in highly spe–
cialized activities and were not required to exercise their judgment in the
ways cultivated people do. That's no longer the case. The line between the
intellectual and the manager is blurrier. It's important that we understand
that it is no longer a contradiction to worry about the cultivation of our
children in the context of the ways in which they will make a living.
Jon
Westling:Just a brief comment. I think we are very fortunate to have
had the papers we've heard in this session. We have heard from Professor
Deppe-Wolfinger what might be called the pure gospel of the welfare
state, the ethos that was characteristic of much of this century's advanced
thought about the way in which we ought to organize ourselves in groups;
and from Professor Avishai the pure gospel of the world of contemporary
business, the technozealotry that excites CEOs and increasingly stock
holders. But it's probably incumbent on us to remember that between
these two rather different approaches to the world, in education we must
always deal with the individual student. We have the almost-parental
responsibility to bring him along into the civilized order and, regardless of
whether one thinks that universities ought to be fully supported by state
funds and entirely protected from market forces or whether one thinks that
the way of the future is a market-driven competition between and among
universities and corporations and consulting firms, Kant's old questions
have to be addressed. What can I know? (What are the limits? What is the
area in which intellectual life can actually make true or plausibly true state–
ments?) What must I do? (What are the obligations that inhere upon me
by virtue of being human, by virtue of being a member of society?) What
may I hope? (What is our destiny as we can dimly see it?) Those questions
still have got to be addressed regardless of the new technologies. The indi–
vidual student must still be our central focus and, unless we succeed one
