The Idea and Ideals of the University: A Panel Session of the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies. ACLS Occasional Paper No. 63

In 1918, just one year before the founding of American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), Thorstein Veblin wrote, "In one shape or another, this problem of adjustment, reconciliation or compromise between the needs of higher learning and the demands of the business enterprise is forever present in the deliberations of the university directorate." In the early twenty-first century, forces in the political economy of higher education may be making that reconciliation even more difficult and straining academic ideals. Many see within the changes in the teaching force a transformed conception of the social role of the university. No longer conceived as a public good, the university is thought of as providing private individual goods to its students. In this view, a private, profit-making university may provide the most efficient service. The essays in this volume began as presentations in a panel session on "The Idea and Ideals of the University" at the 2004 ACLS Annual Meeting. Concern about the corporate culture defining the university invites scholars to reflect about the ideas and values that have traditionally constituted the university, evoking the questions discussed by panel participants: What is the role of the learned societies, of scholars, and of academic leaders in defining and interpreting the ethical components of a shared vision of the twenty-first-century academy? To what degree does the case for the university's autonomy carry a concomitant obligation for it to be self-policing? What will be the role of digital technology? Following an introduction (Rebecca Chopp), four essays are included: (1) Key Issues Currently Facing American Higher Education (Ronald G. Ehrenberg); (2) Humanities in the University: Retrospect and Prospect (Andrew Delbanco); (3) The Humanities: A Technical Profession (Alan Liu); and (4) What Do I Really Think About the Corporate University? (Catharine R. Stimpson). (Essays are noted and figured individually.)