Valedictory Address

“Professionalism and the University”(15 May 1967): 1-6. (UA Case 68, Box 1)

“It is an extraordinary era in which we live. It is altogether new. The world has been nothing like it before. I will not pretend, no one can pretend, to discern the end; but everybody knows that the age is remarkable for scientific research into the heavens, the earth what is beneath the earth, and perhaps more remarkable still is the application of this scientific research to the pursuit of life. The ancients saw nothing like it. The moderns have seen nothing like it until the present generation ---. The progress of the age has almost outstripped human belief.”

These words were spoken by Daniel Webster one hundred and twenty years ago, yet they hold great significance in our own age.

Science and technology have grasped the world. Knowledge and events are moving so rapidly that man grows less aware of reality every day.

In the last twenty-five years we have seen the invention of the atomic bomb, transistors, computers, the laser rocket ships and countless other scientific and technological discoveries. Not only have great discoveries been made, but there has also been an extremely rapid development of these discoveries. As a result, man has in one generation, seen events which will prove to be turning points in history. The significance of these discoveries on societies and the impact of instant history has yet to be analyzed however.

Marshall Mcluhan, perhaps one of Canada’s greatest intellectuals tells us that the electronic age is reverting us to a global village. Everybody is a part of the events that are shaping the world. There is no time-lag because of the communication field. As a result, we have entered a new era where human relations on all levels are of the utmost importance.

Arnold Toynbee in an interview with Playboy says “Nationalism is the big enemy of the human race in present conditions, because technology has made the world one, while the habit of Nationalism tries to keep it apart. Technology can be used to better mankind, but if we can’t get over nationalism, technology will be used to smash up mankind.”

These great advances in technology have brought with them many changes in our pattern of life. Perhaps one of the most startling has been the rapid change to specialization. Specialization in every field. Industry demands computer analysts. The day of the general practitioner in medicine is gone, high school and university professors become more and more specialized everyday.

What has been the chief result of this change on the universities? I think, there are two obvious results of this encroaching specialization and I would like to talk to about them for a few minutes.

The first change, has been the gradual but efficient evolution of our universities to trade schools, technological schools. That is school where truth and thought are not sought, but whose sole purpose is to train.

Professor Graham, our Founder’s Day speaker said “…the possibility of Canadian Universities becoming professional trade schools, to the neglect of broader studies, that encourage intellectual curiosity and foster the spent of zealous enquiry, is certainly a growing fear.

The second change has been a change in the student. He has become a professional. He has accepted the strict, professional ethic. He has fallen in behind the university in its adjustment to the technological age. He has given up freedom, the founding purpose of the university and has done so in such a manner that he no longer knows what freedom is, either intellectual freedom or individual freedom.

It is as John Bradford, a PhD. Candidate in psychology at the University of Toronto says: “The students’ freedom and choice come in his ability to choose which of the many paths to professionalism he will take.”

First, let us look at the change in the university. Is this change to the apprentice type of education the proper approach? We all must realize that it would be impossible for the university to return to the “ivory tower” days of the middle ages. The university is an integral part of society, it owes something to society and cannot be completely separated from it.

Clark Kerr, past president of the University of California certainly believed the university served an important and vibrant purpose in our society.

Perkins in his book “The University in Transition” says that today government and industry look to the university for the way of professionalism in many fields. The university forms the leadership in the acquisition, transmission and application of knowledge.

But all this leads to a fragmented compartmentalized man who serves society in his small professional way.

Although we cannot deny the need and necessity of the university to serve society surely the university geared to the lowest common denominator, a university which does not challenge students but only trains them, a university that places more emphasis on quantity than quality is not serving society as it might.

How have the universities come to this end? I think it is our technological, professional, efficient twentieth century corporation that has brought about this end.

Robert Merton of Columbia University said in an introduction to Jacques Elluls”. The Technological Society” that “We are a civilization committed to the quest for continually improved means to carelessly examined ends.” How true this is? Bigger buildings, bigger care, bigger salaries, bigger enrollments, longer vacations, less work, less thought; they all add up to our present day corporation universities.

Administrators, faculty and students are selling the university out, the buyer is government and industry, both segments of our society not noted for their open-mindedness. As a result, the university is no longer a beacon of truth, but like the moon, reflects rather than emits light and truth.

This is not surprising, however, considering the environment the North American university has matured in. It has had no model. Ideas of the old country have been rejected. As a result, the only model for our universities was, as Doug Ward, president of CUS said, the corporation, efficiency counts.

But as you may ask, why was the corporation not a good model, at least, if used as a Framework, a management structure. Hasn’t it made us one of the most prosperous countries in the world.

The answer lies in this statement. The university of today is being run structurally like General Motors – Personnel and management are very important. Democracy is unheard of. It is ironic, but true. Our great western democratic society has been built on the autocratic structure of the big company.

The university following this model could not help but fall short of its ideal role. The reason, there was and is no academic community in the university, oh, perhaps there are some communities within its structure but there is no one large, unified, single-purposed academic community in most universities today.

Who is to blame for this situation? I blame administrators, I blame faculty, I blame students, anyone who has a vital interest in the university is to blame.

Administrators don’t want an academic community. The reason is simple. As presently constituted they rule this empire, they and the businessmen. All they have to do is keep the faculty and student in line. In other words, all they have to do is separate the university from itself, for what is a university if it is not the faculty and students. Surely it is not fund campaigns and huge buildings and pretty scenery. The administrators are protecting their vested interests.

What of the faculty? They are the hard ones to fathom. It appears that belief in the university as a place of liberty and truth disappears with old age. Money becomes more important, all they are required to do is lecture 10 hrs a week and sit back on their fannies the rest of the time. The faculties in North American universities have abdicated their throne. Their interest in the university seems to be becoming superficial.

And the students. They are either too lazy or too smart to be sucked in. University life is great. In one sense, it is a place of liberty, yet they have never taught that with liberty comes responsibility, and having not been taught how to think, they ask no questions.

As I said earlier, the university has a place in society, it owes something to society. But it owes the best it can give. It cannot and will not give its best until the academic community is constituted, until the university is a place of liberty run by and for the constituents of that community, the professors and students. Participation engenders interest. What we need are faculty and students, interested in the university as an institution, an institution worth worrying about.

Now, for the second change in the university. This, I think, if you recall, was the change in the students. The result being the professionalism among students today. Although this change is certainly related to the change in the university as a whole, mentioned above, it bears special significance for the future; especially when we realize that 50% of our population is now under twenty-five.

Why have our students turned professional and what do they see in the future? It would appear that they have turned profession in response to the demands of industry and society on the university. Specialization, as I said earlier is a necessity, even if it is a specialization based on loose grounds.

As to their hope for the future, most students see themselves as fitting in to one society, the only question is where.

This, in itself is fine and certainly to be desired. It is impossible to even think or hope that today’s graduates would reject the world they live in. The problem is, however, that few of them will ever question it. It is here that the universities have failed. They do not promote freedom of thought, they do not teach thinking. They only train technicians.

The Robbins report in Great Britain recognized this need when it said: “The essential aim of a first-degree course should be to teach the student how to think. In so far, as he is under such pressure to acquire detailed knowledge that this aim is not fulfilled, so far the course fails of its purpose.”

Students are certainly a far cry from the students who left the University of Paris in the twelfth century and established a freer university at Oxford. They are not very similar to the students in Italy who fired professors, dictated the curriculum, and insisted that the professors talk rapidly so they could get their money’s worth.

What is wrong with our students? Where is that thirst for knowledge that led the medieval students to great lengths to get it? I think we could learn something from the happy ethic when they say “May the baby Jesus open your mind and shut your mouth.”

For, I think our society, which seems to have its mouth open continually, in many and surprising forms is part of the reason.

First of all, life is too easy. In this day and age we don’t have to worry about economic security. We are granted an ever lengthening adolescence and life span. We don’t have to worry about anything, life is easy, why shake the apple cart?

These settled kind of people aren’t going to create a very dynamic, or creative country. They are going to lead dull, standardized lives and let their values be dictated by the establishment.

Bobby Jameson of Los Angeles says: “The time it takes to hypnotize the young into standardization is called growing up”.

If he is right, I’d say that most of this graduating class has grown up. Another problem with the university and society as a whole is the lack of honesty and sincerity. Nobody shoots it straight anymore. Everybody is suspicious of everybody else.

It’s as Paul Simon says:

“ Its become out of style to lay yourself open, to approach people with your arms open. Everybody nowadays is closed – the put on, the put down.”

It is a sad commentary on our society and the communications systems we developed. Lyndon Johnson isn’t the only one with a credibility gap. We all have one – with each other.

If it’s true that we are not turning out educated questioning people, that we are cheating society, what is the answer?

I think there are two steps that could set us on the right track.

The first is to place the university in the hands of the faculty and students as I have already mentioned. Let the administrators become the bureaucratic servants of the academic community. Then and only then will students and faculty alike realize their responsibility. Then will the university once more become a place of truth and liberty.

The second one is to realize the importance of human relationships in the education process. John Dewey has defined the process of education as “that reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience and which increases ability to direct the course of subsequent experience”.

We must realize that experience is the most important part of education. Scholarship cannot be separated from the rest of life. Our universities must provide an environment where relevant experiences are likely to occur.

Then, maybe as Marshall Miluhan says “Education – in the sense of learning to love, to grown; to change – can become not the useful preparation for some job that makes us less that we could be, but the very essence, the joyful whole of existence itself.

Time has often been used as a measure of man’s genius. The ability to develop thoughts and ideas that bear continued relevance for eternity seems a characteristic of great men. With that in mind I would like to close with these words of Dickens.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”