Speaking of Universities

by Stefan Collini

The fact that in their actual lives most people act in accordance with various values other than that of maximizing economic gain, and the fact that they would in many cases like to see universities as natural homes of some of these other values, then gets squeezed out of public debate altogether. One outcome of this anxiety-driven deferral is that familiar and easily stated practical benefits that are by-products of universities’ central activities are latched onto to serve as substitutes for the unfamiliar and elusive values that are the true purpose of the activities in question. It is the kind of logic that leads us to say that the value of playing Beethoven’s piano sonatas is attested by the way it helps to make us better typists – a logic from which ‘impact’ in its currently required form is not wholly exempt. For similar reasons, we are led to connive in the fiction that an auditable paper-trail is evidence of the presence of the relevant form of quality. Out of the well-intentioned urge to exhibit to society the worth of the universities that society supports come these measures which only succeed in short-circuiting the most fruitful forms of relation between universities and society. In turn, this encourages both defensiveness and bad faith among academics who then attempt to conform to these measures, though they know that the true nature of their activities is thereby misdescribed, and out of this comes the familiar idiom of pious euphemism, the empty register ...