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C00002 00002 THE GOALS OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE GOALS OF ITS INHABITANTS
C00011 00003 1. The country needs more research in order to solve its
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THE GOALS OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE GOALS OF ITS INHABITANTS
Stanford University includes a variety of people pursuing a
variety of goals. Besides the goals of the individuals in it, the
University as an institution has its own goals and it is responsive
to the goals of other institutions such as the government,
foundations, etc. Until recently, it has been expanding rapidly, but
now the same kind of expansion of universities cannot continue,
because the expansion has outrun the resources available to support
it and the growth of the student population it serves. The purpose
of this paper is to explore the alternative futures available to
Stanford and to make some recommendations.
We shall consider the following groups of people:
1. Faculty. We shall further divide the faculty into those
who do research in order to live and those who live in order to do
research. Judging from the complaints of the various groups, the
former are concentrated in the humanities and the latter in science
and engineering, but certainly all departments have some of each.
2. Undergraduate students. We shall divide these into those
with specific educational goals, i.e. who would like to learn what
they have come here to learn as quickly as possible and then do what
they have learned) and those who are here because this seems to be
the most pleasant and interesting place to be for the time being.
They will leave when they get tired of the place or when the
institution forces them to leave.
3. Graduate students. We divide them in the same way we
divide the undergraduates.
4. Non-faculty researchers. We also divide them into
researchers to live and livers to do research.
5. Other employees. We consider them as wanting good wages,
working conditions, and professional opportunities.
Now consider the goals of the University as an institution.
The administration of the University are hired to pursue these goals,
the Trustees are supposed to pursue these goals as a kind of hobby,
and the faculty and staff are supposed to orient their careers toward
the fact that the University is pursuing these goals. Nevertheless,
we shall distinguish the goals of the University from the personal
goals of any of the individuals in it, and we consider that these
goals are at least as real as the individual goals, because we all
implicitly or explicitly pursue our individual goals in the context
of our idea of the institutional goals.
The University's goals are the following:
1. Giving young people a liberal education that will awaken
their intellects, refine their sensibilities, and teach them the
general wisdom of humanity.
2. To teach undergraduate, professional, and graduate
students what they need to know to pursue their professions.
3. To teach students what they want to know without regard to
what other social purpose it serves.
4. To advance knowledge as part of satisfying the collective
curiosity of the human race. I suppose this formulation is new, but
it seems to me to be the basis for support of pure mathematics,
humanities research and other basic research in proportions different
from those that might optimize potential applications. Admittedly
there is also an element of compromise between social goals and the
individual goals of the professors in determining this balance.
5. To discover facts that will help humanity live better,
i.e. will benefit people apart from the benefit they might derive
from learning the facts in question.
6. To be a pleasant place to study, work, and live.
It is customary for administrators to claim that these goals
all require each other. The most common example of this is that when
someone claims that the undergraduates are being neglected in favor
of faculty research, the counterclaim is made that research is
necessary in order that the faculty will know what the undergraduates
want to learn. The claim is surely true to an important extent, but
no one of the goals would in itself justify the proportions of
resources allocated by the University. If research were considered
valuable only in so far as it contributed to undergraduate education,
Stanford would do well to change considerably, and I would do well to
leave.
The balance among the goals is determined by tradition,
considerations of the needs of the country, the need to defer to the
goals of the subgroups that comprise the University in order to get
them to support the goals of the University, and direct bargaining
among the advocates of the different goals.
1. The government's goals are varied.
a. First of all, the universities are a political
constituency, and the government is somewhat responsive to its
requests irrespective of what other goals they satisfy. This is not
explicitly admitted, so its effect is mainly to modify government
programs rather than to provide the sole justification for them.
1. The country needs more research in order to solve its
practical problems.
2. The country doesn't need many more college teachers,
because the student population has stopped increasing.
3. The number of people who want to do research and are
qualified to to so will continue to expand.
4. Therefore, either the country is going to have to expand
and build research institutions other than universities or the
universities are going to have to increase the ratio of their
activities devoted to research.
5. The universities are good places to do research, because
they are here and because graduate students do research and should be
selected by research leaders for their ability to do it.
6. The government's current way of financing research does
not provide the stability universities are used to providing their
permanent employees.
7. Therefore, either the university should allow the creation
and disappearance of ephemeral research empires or it should raise
some resources for endowing the core of its research institutes.
Perhaps there should be senior research associates with tenure or
departments should be allowed to build faculty beyond their teaching
requirements. The latter is the simpler.
8. There is much less need to expand the faculties that do
research to live than to expand those who live to do research.
9. The real differences between the sciences and the
humanities with regard to research have been blurred by the need to
keep peace in the faculties. This blurring has had disadvantages for
both sides. In the sciences, "publish or perish" is a legitimate
doctrine. A scientist wants to do research and the research does
good only if it is published and can only be judged if it is
published. Moreover, all the good scientists want to publish. Of
course, quality counts more than quantity.
On the other hand, there appear to be many highly qualified
teachers in the humanities who simply don't want to publish; their
creativity takes different forms. Let it. Then they need other ways
of competing with each other.
10. At a given time, different fields have different
importances to the short term needs of humanity. Benefiting
humanity in the our own lifetime is important and justifies
considerable support. However, not everyone need do it. Those who
do it require more support but not exclusive support. Claims that a
given activity has a short term payoff should be made responsibly and
scrutinized carefully.