Impostors in the temple /

Two figures: 660,000 academic intellectuals exist on America's campuses, and in any one year, about 300,000 of their apprentices are inching toward the coveted doctoral degree. Furthermore, it is these teachers-in-training, not the qualified teachers themselves, who do the essential job of the university: teach, grade, and counsel young people. So what, Anderson asks, are the dons doing? Research, little of it original, all of it expensive, and the pursuit of which is a major cause of the institutional corruptions he incisively castigates in this take-no-prisoners philippic. An economist himself, his tales of obtuse research in his field will have to be accepted or rejected on faith, but they are embedded with the plain fact that any professor's career success is tied to the "publish or perish" syndrome, making these stories very disturbing. Due to the high social esteem of the professoriate, little odor of institutional decay wafts into the general public--until an undeniably big stink erupts, such as last year's financial scandal in which millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded "research" was revealed to have paid not for beakers and pipettes, but for yachts, flowers, food, drink, ad nauseam. Anderson's own ivory tower, Stanford University, absorbs much of his anecdotal ire, where institutional eulogizing, not condemnation, once met the death of a popular professor who had abused his power over his Ph.D. understudies by sexually suborning their male children: he committed suicide rather than face the charges. While extreme, the episode points out the guildlike authority professors can exert in running their departments. Coolly delivered with statistical support, this flagellating critique and proposals for reform might be the bomb that can shake a status quo that has deflected previous attacks in Tenured Radicals by Roger Kimball [BKL Ap 15 90] or Illiberal Education by Dinesh D'Souza. ~--Gilbert Taylor

Although he seems to be afflicted with a chronic sneer and often sounds as if he is addressing high school students, Anderson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, scores points as he takes on the administrations of American universities. He implies that there is a conspiracy afoot amongst faculty and trustees to grab power, prestige and tax dollars. His discussion is interesting and convincing when he talks about how many professors scorn teaching and pass on the responsibility to their graduate students, as well as making them do uncredited research. He also sensibly calls for shortening the time students take to earn Ph.Ds. For readers who want to take a position on higher education, Anderson provides the names and phone numbers of the governing board members of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and six other universities. Conservative Book Club main selection. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

After 35 years in academia, Anderson (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution) gives a cri de coeur about what's gone so dreadfully wrong with the American university: Academic intellectuals, he says, have ``betrayed their profession'' and, within the halls of academe, ``integrity is dead.'' Strong charges, but Anderson does nothing if not back them up with facts, figures, and plenty of common-sense observation. Part of the problem is simply in quality-control: Between 1960 and 1975, the number of those attending college ``almost tripled, an increase of some 8 million students,'' and in the rapid hiring of faculty to teach these hoards of new students, ``there has been a slow but significant decline in the average quality of academic intellectuals.'' Add to this what Anderson calls ``hubris'' (the ``unchecked intellectual arrogance'' that leads academics to believe themselves above the rules that govern other people); and add to that the transformation of universities from what were ``rather small, quiet, dignified institutions of rarefied scholarly pursuits and the teaching of a select few'' into huge and ``sophisticated megabusiness machines''--and the stage is set for deterioration and trouble. Like bound apprentices of medieval times, graduate students ``teach'' (Anderson calls it ``children teaching children'') so that professors can produce still more research for their own institutional gain--most of it ``inconsequential and trifling''--while real education lags. Academics, says Anderson, ``begin by lying to others, and end up lying to themselves.'' Empty research, padded budgets, poor teaching, tenure-protected faculty who claim academic impartiality but in fact judge politically, corporate-style image management-- all of this, overseen by boards of trustees who know little about education, makes for ``a recipe for disaster, a witch's brew of incompetence, timidity, and neglect.'' There may be bones to pick here, but few will be unimpressed by a veteran insider's faithful-oppositionist view of the intellectual shambles our universities seem to have become.