Wilf Cude

Our Academic Fin de Siècle

"The wider social role of the University is up for grabs." With this cool pronouncement in The University in Ruins, the late Bill Readings brushed past all our angst over the decline in teaching or the uncertainties of research, focusing instead on the university entering a perilous phase of transition within an era of social upheaval. Readings, a professor of comparative literature at the Université de Montréal, died in an airplane crash as his book proceeded through the press: so his words have a haunting poignancy, warning of institutional mortality from the unexpected desolation of his passing. "It is no longer clear what the place of the University is within society nor what the exact nature of that society is," he declared: "and the changing institutional form of the University is something that intellectuals cannot afford to ignore."(p.2) Pointing to economic globalization as forcing intellectual transformations of unprecedented magnitude, he accepted as an obvious symptom the evergrowing and irreversible reliance on part-time instructors everywhere in academe. "Atlarger research universities in the United States," he remarked, "the number of such part-timers can be expected to rise as the collapse of the job market causes the graduate student teaching assistants of the old apprenticeship model to be increasingly replaced by part-timers." (p.195) According to Readings, however, this is merely a secondary phenomenon: of far greater consequence is the possibility that "the production of knowledge within the University is equally uncertain."(p.1) The existing dominant system of "Americanization," evolving out of a complex blend of nineteenth-century German and British cultural visions imported into the colleges of the United States a century ago, has now moved into a stage where further development within the prevailing traditions might prove impossible. This is, in truth, a contingency everyone should consider.

Like many others, Readings traced the theoretical underpinnings of our university structure back to nineteenth-century Germany. Kant "defines the modemity of the University" by posing the central academic problem for emerging nation-states: "how reason and the state, how knowledge and power, might be unified." The major German Idealists, from Schiller to Schlegel, devised an answer embodied in Humboldt's proposals for the University of Berlin. "For the German Idealists," Readings explained, "culture is the sum of all knowledge that is studied, as well as the cultivation and development of one's character as a result of that study." The university thus serves as the instrument of a country's cultural selfdefinition, expanding knowledge through research and disseminating it through teaching: "as such, it becomes the institution charged with watching overthe spiritual life of the people of the rational state, reconciling ethnic tradition and statist rationality." Noting that this has been "the decisive role accorded to the modem University until the present," Readings wenton to argue that successive British and American adaptations have significantly altered the nature of that role. Newman and Arnold "carried forward the work of Humboldt and Schlegel by placing literature instead of philosophy as the central discipline of the University and hence also of national culture." Slowly across Europe, "the study of a tradition of national literature" became "the primary mode of teaching students what it is to be French, or English, or German." Not to be outdone, American scholars took matters a step further, introducing "the study of a canon rather than a tradition." That distinction mattered, because "the autonomous choice of a canon, rather than submission to the blind weight of tradition, parallels the choice of a government rather than submission to hereditary monarchy."(pp. 14-16) And here, with this last, most typically American innovation, coinciding with the extraordinary sociological turmoil of economic globalization, an intellectual environment emerged rendering further such adaptations highly improbable.

At first glance, the American innovation didn't seem much of a variation: after all, American universities had simply followed the British in using the canon to define national character, thereby establishing a claim to public funding. "The role of literary study in the formation of national subjects is consequently what explains the massive institutional weight accumulated by literature departments, especially through their traditional control of the University-wide 'composition course' requirement in many American universities." But the revolutionary insistence upon choosing the canon, as opposed to just passing it on, intensified debate on the nature of the culture being defined: and so, beginning in the United States and replicating rapidly beyond, "we are now seeing a decline in national literary studies and the increasing emergence of 'Cultural Studies' as the strongest disciplinary model in the humanities in the Anglo-American University." This marks a fragmentation of the university's traditional purpose, since "everything, given a chance, can be or become culture:" and "Cultural Studies thus arrives on the scene along with a certain exhaustion."(pp. 1617) In ranging beyond nationhood, as in Women's Studies, AfricanAmerican Studies, or Lesbian and Gay Studies, the proliferation of Cultural Studies weakens the link between culture and the state: and this is occurring precisely when, in economic terms, the forces of globalization are subverting the powers of national governments. "Cultural Studies attacks the cultural hegemony of the nation-state," Readings reported sombrely: "and the question of its politics becomes troubled when global capital engages in the same attack."(p. 102) This conjunction of events must have enormous implications for the universities, hitherto largely sustained by public funds, but increasingly looking for support from private capital.

"He who pays the piper calls the tune." Though Readings couldn't bring himself to introduce such a trite truism into the elega nt sophistication of his analysis, the idea hovers mischievously behind everything in his book. "We have to recognize that the grounds on which we used to make large claims for the humanities have been undermined," he insisted. A compelling instance is the decline of humanistic studies in Great Britain, suffering from "Thatcherite cuts" when the professoriate relied upon "vague appeals to 'human richness'," oblivious to the cultural implications of "a world in which leisure has already become the primary site of capitalist penetration (as Disney and the Olympics attest)."(p.90) If philosophy, history and literature have all become overshadowed by a vaguely-defined yet all-inclusive Cultural Studies, and if Cultural Studies continues to drift away from reinforcing the national character, why should a national government pay to support such activities? Moreover, why should multinational corporations, intent upon investing in schools of business, engineering, medicine, applied science or computer technology, even consider underwriting activities so remote from any profitable return? Nor are the humanities the only disciplines at risk of chronic underfunding in our bright capitalist tomorrows. Citing the cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider project as proof that "the U.S. government is no longer concemedwith superpowercultural rivalryfortheb'lggesttoys,"Readings argued that the second of C.P. Snow's two cultures is in as much difficulty as the first. "The natural sciences are no longer able to write their own research ticket, to presume an infinite investment of the national will in the production of scientific knowledge."(p.130) Commercial viability today determines academic destiny, much as it determines everything else in our society. And so, "information technology combines with the drying up of funds to suggest that there may no longer be an open market for graduate students educated in the pure sciences, while vocational engineering schools seem more adapted to the market."(p.172) He who pays the academic piper is increasingly the master of the multinational corporation. Perhaps the pop group ABBA phrased it best: "money, money, money, don't you think it funny, it's a rich man's world."

What this means is that there is no longer anything at the center for the university. With culture losing its grip as sociological glue, and with international business demandingredevelopmentpredicatedon maximizing commercial returns, the outcome Readings predicted is rapidly becoming reality: thetraditional university is literallytumblingintoruins, shatteredinto fragments that cannot cohere around a common social purpose. "The center was once occupied by the institution of the nation-state, which embodied capital and expressed it as a culture that radiated across the field of the social," Readings summarized. But "capital no longer flows outward from the center, rather it circulates around the circumference, behind the backs of those who keep their eyes firmly fixed on the center."(p. III) Within the centuries-old departmental structure, professors of every discipline still assume the concept of culture will endure, be it the culture of literature, history or nuclearphysics. Nonetheless, as Readings contended, "the stakes in the game have changed:" and "the center actually does not speak, the privileged position of enunciation is not that of the subject who participates in culture." Over the past few decades, unwittingly we have all become "homogenized in mass culture," swept up sociologically in economic globalization, becoming "consumer subjects instead of traditional, productive subjects of the public sphere or civic society." The all-pervasive ethos of consumerism, currently reaching into every aspect of community life, serves as "a major index" of what has occurred across the planet. "We like to shop, although we know it is a mode of self-victimization, not a free and autonomous act: we buy what we are sold, not what we want, and then we end up wanting it." This is the social dynamic most fundamentally altering the higher leaming throughoutthe westernized world, and our most pressing academic need is to deal directly with that fact. We must somehow proceed towards "a way of discussing the contradictory and multiple ways in which relations of desire (for commodities and other things), power, and knowledge flow among individuals, without having to suppose that there is a stable, natural, or logical order of such relations that we have lost and to which we should retum." (pp. 114-16)

For Readings, the least desirable outcome of all this intellectual discomposure is unfortunately also the most likely: the rise of universities fashioned elaborately around a nebulous concept of "excellence." Once the fog of academic bafflegab has lifted, the university of excellence stands revealed as the university of accountancy. "Excellence," as in the annual Maclean's magazine relative ranking of Canadian universities, has become exclusively a matter of numbers. Numbers of students enroled, courses offered, faculty members with impressive degrees, research grants and publications; numbers of dollars allocated to various scholarly endeavors; numbers of books per student in the library; numbers of alumni and other influential persons supporting the institution. And the numbers are all calculated to sell the university to the government, the public and the corporate, world. Today, "the University is not just like a corporation," Readings lamented: "it is a corporation."(p.22) The administration is a business administration, the organization a commercial enterprise, the main product some variant of technical instruction, and the student (most revealingly, even in official pronouncements) the consumer. As used tirelessly among academics nowadays, "the notion of excellence" functions primarily "to permit exhaustive accounting," to ensure that the university assesses itself "solely in terms of the structure of corporate administration."(p.29) While Readings does not use the phrase, his Administrators of Excellence are the latest avatars of Thorstein Veblen's Captains of Erudition: however, today's lot is busy adapting to the global economy, looking far beyond the constraints of national culture. Hence, the culture remaining under study, the vaguely-defined multiplicity of Cultural Studies, merely ends up "providing new marketing opportunities for the system." Trendy social phenomena "such as punk music and dress styles" might well attain "self-consciousness in academic essays;" nevertheless, "the dignity they acquire is not that of authenticity but of marketability, be it in the cinema, on MTV, or as a site of tourist interest."(p.121) What is lost, and the loss can only prove seriously detrimental, is any significant exploration or understanding of human values.

That loss will mean much to the university "as it abandons its role as the flagship of national culture but before it embarks irrevocably upon the path of becoming an excellent bureaucratic corporation." The movement towards an essentially technocratic operation would only be a form of subsidence into something lesser, a diminishment by resigning all pretense to leadership in leaming. Literature collapses into the communications of commerce, history dwindles into market analysis, philosophy contracts into the twilight zone of business ethics: and science, pure science, gets twisted and attenuated in a rush to patent every conceivable fiscal spin-off. Einstein, as it were, transposed downwards into Bill Gates. "The University has to find a new language in which to make a claim for its role as a locus of higher education," Readings warned: and he added, almost ominously, that this is a role "which nothing in history says is an inevitably necessary one."(p. 125) Finding that new language, for Readings, involves separating the ideas of "accountability" and "accounting." The former is concerned with values, the latter with finances. "It is imperative that the University respond to the demand for accountability, while at the same time refusing to conduct the debate over the nature of its responsibility solely in terms of the language of accountants (whose currency is excellence)." This is a matter of survival, not alone for the university, but perhaps also forcivilized human values. "I want to argue that accountants are not the only people capable of understanding the horizon of contemporary society," Readings asserted almost fiercely, "nor even the most adept at the task."(p. 1 8) Yet the reconstituted professoriate he envisions is rather forlorn, dwelling uneasily among the ruins of a recently dominant social institution. Unable to draw upon consensus as a viable methodological constant, they must resort instead to a sort of "dissensus," a recognition that education is always provisional, with each answer to every question formulated tentatively ratherthan authoritatively. "The University will have to become one place, among others," Readings suggests, "where the attempt is made to think the social bond without recourse to a unifying idea, whether of culture or the state." Still, there is an understated nobility clinging to this vision, postulating acommunity of thinkers renouncingintellectualpretension while stubbornly pursuing "the question of whether and how thoughts fit together. "(p. 19 1) The next couple of decades will determine whether or not we might achieve anything like such steely professional serenity.

At this stage, though, the most likely reinvention of the university to prevail short-term seems to be the technocratic model - for the very good reason that it is already virtually in place. Its most persuasive proponent is Martin Anderson, author of Impostors in the Temple, yet another new book arguing for university reform. With a doctorate from M.I.T., a professorship at Columbia, extensive service as policy advisor in domestic and economic affairs to the Nixon and Reagan administrations, and a Senior Fellowship at the Hoover Institute, Anderson has experienced the academic community from within and beyond: and he makes the most plausible case possible for a university structured along corporate lines. In rehearsing the intellectual and organizational deficiencies of the now-weakening North American academic system, he acknowledges the kindred thinking of many others, from the pioneering essay by William James on "The Ph.D. Octopus" to the more extensive contemporary studies by critics like the journalist Charles S kes or the established scholars Bruce Wilshire and Page Smith. After hammering away at those deficiencies from his own perspective, Anderson offers a number of often-proposed recommendations, ticking them off with a precision that admits of no hesitation. First, he suggests, abolish tenure: "in a nutshell, professors who are good don't need tenure, and those who need tenure usually aren't very good."(p. 121) Second, end "the contempt for teaching"(p.46) in higher education and return teaching to the heart of the academic enterprise. Third, drop "the pernicious myth"(p.121) that the main pursuit of the professoriate is advanced research, and assign the bulk of university research to specialist research fellows. Fourth, increase "the paltry amount of financial support"(p.76) for graduate students, and simultaneously eliminate the exploitative practice of teaching assistantships. Fifth, reform graduate education by conceding the "terrible waste and abuse"(p.75) of the existing excessive attrition and needlessly prolonged programs in doctoral studies. Sixth, abandon the "glass bead game"(p.1 12) mentality of assessing research ability by number of publications and/or citations of publications, relying instead on somehow recognizing genuine quality of achievement.

But it is with that implicit "somehow" in recognizing genuinequality, whether in research or teaching, that Anderson's training as an economist and profession as political advisor converge to determine his preferred recommendation. He proposes the restructuring of every university's Board of Trustees along the lines of a corporate board of directors, in order to introduce market-style discipline into campus affairs. With more than a little justification, he despairs of attaining significant change through any of the other principal academic participants. The professors, whose "list of transgressions is long and growing," have "failed miserably" at selfpolicing: hence, there isn't any reason, "given theirpersonal hubris and their strong vested interests in the status quo," to expect they will behave differently in the future. The administrators, despite their trappings of power, are mere figureheads: they can only "cajole and persuade" the "professorial dukes of academia," snug in "their own little fiefdoms," secured against reform by "the near invulnerability of their tenured posts." And the students, "the chief victims of the intellectual decay," have absolutely no way of countering the manifest abuses on campus. That leaves the trustees. "Tbey have fiduciary responsibility," Anderson accurately observes: "they have the authority to set policies that deal with teaching and with research and publication."(pp. 194-9) Hence, trustees should be paid a salary commensurate with their responsibilities, then encouraged to exercise those responsibilities, first through public pressure and thereafter (if necessary) through the threat of litigation. Under such incentives, trustees will increasingly be recruited from the nation's most prominent educators, and will formulate remedial policies and judiciously select the best instructors and researchers. Through thereby establishing a tough love center of academic govemance, necessary reforms can be implemented.

Well, maybe. Despite its plausibility, this recommendation does sound suspiciously like Bill Readings' Administrators of Excellence: and perhaps a measure of his scepticism might be healthy, if only to highlight the manifold obstacles to any proposal for reform. The main difficulty, as Anderson acknowledges, is thatthe university organization has no equivalent to the business corporation's shareholders: who, then, will have a vested interest in overseeing the Board of Trustees? With a publicly-funded institution, government officials who appoint trustees nominally have that role: hence, "there is public accountability, a bow to the will of the people." Yet the temptation for politicians to turn such appointments into just another mode of patronage is always present, reducing the effectiveness of any Board of Trustees derived in that fashion. Even so, there is far less accountability with private institutions, where "there is no discipline that flows from ownership" because "there are no owners to answer to." Some trustees at these institutions may be elected by alumni, others appointed by faculty: but most are selected on a replacement basis by the serving trustees themselves. The result is invariably a governing board whose major decisions often come down to "a demonstration of group-think."(pp.197-8) Transmuting any of these gaggles of well-meaning but docile appointees into something akin to a dynamic corporate directorate would be a formidable job. "At first," Anderson admits, "the task may seem quite hopeless." The fundamental tactic must be informed public pressure, provided by independent scholars and investigative journalists. "Trustees need, and deserve, a merciless scrutiny," he contends. "We need to make them as accountable to us as the most public of public figures." Transfixed in "the hot beam of the public spotlight," college and university governing boards might finally "have the wit to see what is wrong, the wisdom to figure out what should be done, and the courage to do it."(pp.201-6) Those stubbornly insisting that this remains a forlorn hope, however, are nonetheless stymied by Anderson's underlying contention: nobody else on campus has the will or the clout to do the necessary. Which must bring us back again to the technocratic model, increasingly dominant more or less by default.

Resistance to the technocratic model is little more than a wellintentioned delaying movement, based on appeals to preserve elements of value within the traditional university. Humanists and social scientists are by training and temperament generally inclined to support this movement: however, they realize the economic currents are setting against them, they recognize embarrassing faculty frailties are crippling their cause, and so their contributions to debate on reform often seem fuzzy and inconclusive. Both qualities are apparent in Zero Tolerance: Hot Button Politics in Canada's Universities, a panegyric to the university as "an oasis of serenity and mystery in the midst of the technological dynamo."(p. 173) Peter C. Emberley, who took his doctorate at the London School of Economics and teaches political science at Carleton University, wrote to counter "the demand that the university acquire a new and crisp efficiency, and be transparent to the economic and social priorities of society." He voices concerns similar to those of Bill Readings, publishing at almost the same time; but, unlike Readings, he persists in maintaining the viability of the culture-centered higher education of Newman and Arnold. "The university is an institution with the bedrock of over seven centuries of maturation and refinement," he asserts: it nurtures intangible riches that society cannot do without, "intellectual and spiritual passion, discerning moral judgment, imagination and the methodic discipline associated with scientific research." The most vocal critics of this splendor are technocratic zealots, fixed on short-term solutions and intolerant of "the imperfections, uncertainty, freedom, leisure, withdrawal and authority of university culture." Such single-minded folk just don't get it: the academic world is one of "natural (and healthy) ambiguity and free play," where "the scholarly culture thrives on an unending series of rejoinders of 'Yes, but...' to every answer offered to any question." Tamper recklessly with that culture, Emberley wams, and risk denying society "a higher idea of itself," risk forfeiting an institutional endowment of "decency and grace."(pp.13-14)

Yes, but... haven't we heard all this before? These generalities on the wonders of academic life, so inspirational on the pages of Kant, Arnold and ewman, are a trifle shopworn by now. And they remain generalities, sadly tattered, frayed away by awkward contemporary specifics that Emberley is too honest to overlook. His concessions to candor, however, merely emphasize the equivocations undermining the defense he strains to put into place. That insistence on the academic "Yes, but..." is quite revealing, for the phrase remains a keystone of professorial temporizing, prefacing subtle quibbles that deferjustice and reinforce privilege. Consider the indignation simmering within Emberley's reaction to an op-ed piece in the Toronto Globe and Mail by Professor Jackie Stalker, entitled "The Chill Women Feel at Canada's Universities." Stalker likened universities to harems, where "men are in the positions of authority, as tenured professors and senior administrators, exerting their will over women who are students, staff and even a small number of colleagues." She objected to "entrenched and prolonged systemic discrimination," a product of "rules, regulations, curriculums, language, cases and support" devised "with the best of intentions, but by men and for men:" this has led to "the 'chilly climate' condition," exposing women to "hostility, discrimination, harassment, inequitable treatment, violence and sometimes silent terror" on campus. Emberley is offended by Stalker's language, but still devotes over two pages to statistics reinforcing her argument. While Canadian women in 1995 constituted 45 percent of the workforce and occupied 43 percent of managerial and administrative positions, women constituted only 21 percent of Canadian faculty and remained clustered at thejuniorranks: men held 88 percent of tenured full professorships, and were presidents at 83 of the nation's 92 colleges and universities. Moreover, while women constituted 54 percent of the Canadian student body, female doctoral candidates still streamed into educational enclaves: 60 percent in education, 46 percent in the humanities, 45 percent in social studies - but only 18 percent in mathematics and the physical sciences, and 10 percent in engineering. "Such statistics can be duplicated ad nauseam," Emberley grumps: "but the questions of what they mean and what should be done to change the situation are much more ambiguous." Regrettably, that's a professorial "Yes, but..." too far. To most observers, those statistics mean pretty well what Jackie Stalker said they mean: and it is past time faculty old boys stopped fantasizing about an "oasis of serenity and mystery" that never was, and got on with some meaningful reform.

Sadly, though, meaningful reform is just not compatible with many proposals to sustain the existing system. Almost inevitably, when support for the status quo is debated, tenure becomes the flashpoint issue. The establishment faculty cling to it, while those intent upon reform single it out as a costly anachronism frightfully open to abuse. Reluctantly, Emberley itemizes many objections to tenure. He notes how some tenured faculty flaunt "academic freedom" as "licence for misanthropy, stereotyping, innuendo, prurience and vicious griping about students, women and those who have chosen alternative lifestyles." He concedes some tenured faculty flagrantly disregard their responsibilities, and protests that "many are, as feared, laughing their way to the bank, with paycheques that add up to $90,000 annually." He acknowledges these people are skilled poseurs who flimflammed and schmoozed their way through the system: "once the magic wand of tenure had passed over their heads, however, they abandoned all subterfuge."(pp.64-5) And he recognizes that the greatest threat to valuable scholarship now comes from academics themselves: "however vocal and ardent the chant of freedom and scholarly independence appears, the truth is that received opinion and approved methods of investigation exert powerfully conformist pressures."(p.69) But oddly enough, these objections cannot shift him away from the received faculty opinion: echoing every North American faculty association, he insists tenure must be retained. He begins reasonably, contending that many fine scholarly innovations have been "driven solely by curiosity, or by the ,useless desire' to understand the world, rather than by their economic possibilities or specific applications:" and he writes effusively but fairly of "the scholarly culture" as "an antidote to the haste of the world, its hesitations and uncertainties acounterpointtoprecipitancy andeffor."(p.68) And then he leaps to the now-standard academic linkage of tenure with that scholarly culture: "it protects those who work outside the approved canons of scholarship, who avoid the company of the in crowd and orthodox career paths."(p.70) This is an astonishing non sequitur, given everything he earlier said about how tenure has been repeatedly and systematically mishandled. Contrast this innocently befuddled line of thought with Martin Anderson's crisply terse summation: "professors who are good don't need tenure, and those who need tenure usually aren't very good." The technocrats will eventually win on this issue, because they should: tenure must go, because it is expensive, inefficient, and just plain wrong.

Emberley cannot yet see that his tenacity in upholding some form of tenure is symptomaticof the flaws in his entire defense of the "imperfections, uncertainty, freedom, leisure, withdrawal and authority of university culture." Tenure, chief among the indefensible privileges of today's faculty, can be isolated as a fundamental contributing factor to abundant abuses. For example, Emberley complains bitterly, as many members of the tenured professoriate do, about academic administrators as shameless rip-off opportunists. Remarking that "conservative estimates" suggest about 2,200 Canadian faculty are "cuffently in middle-management academic administrative roles," he grouses: "at an average salary of $90,000, the cost is at least $176 million per year, not taking into account the staff and budgets they command." Without question, this constitutes "a serious indictment of a general malaise." Such a gratuitous overproliferation of institutional waste, a squandering of fiscal resources that a small nation simply cannot afford, is recklessness none can deny: but these rip-off artists are all, to a man (and, in effect, as Emberley also concedes, it really is "to a man"), products of the tenured old-boy net. After all, what opportunistic system produced these predatory characters, anyhow? Business? The military? The civil service? The political patronage web? No indeed, as Emberley confesses, they are all "mid-career academics," most of them "top-level associate professors and full professors," moving with determination into the last, greatest, most snug and profitable tenure haven on campus.(p.95) These are collectively the latest incarnation of Chaucer's lusty fat monk, opulently comfortable in the repudiation of all they should represent: and, like him, they will be swept aside in turn, displaced by ethical forces intolerant o f such licensed opportunism.

Emberley and his fellow traditionalists can't win, though they will fight a stubborn rear-guard action. There is simply too much that is redundant, wasteful or even disgraceful attainting what they hope to preserve, and too many social and economic pressures dictating some form of sweeping change. Bill Readings grasped that, far more firmly than many academic commentators today. There is little point in reiterating at length the now-exhausted ideology concerning "a stable, natural or logical order" of academic life "that we have lost and to which we should return." It is Emberley who doesn't get it, not the technocrats like Anderson he so resolutely opposes. Whether we like it or not, the inescapable reality remains exactly what Readings predicted: there is nothing in history that says the university's role as "a locus of higher education" must continue, must remain "an inevitably necessary one." The community college, the professional school, the corporate training center, the independent research foundation, all are encroaching on territory the university once claimed as its own. Emberley sees all this happening, to be sure: but he stubbornly clings to the centuries-old self-serving institutional image of the university as a haven of civitas, a refuge of "understanding and friendship," of "leisurely dialogues and meditative withdrawal," of "time invested in future gains to society."(p.257) But this remains a pathetically cloistered vision, colored by an overly idealistic appraisal of the past, dismissive of the excesses and abuses of the present, and tenaciously insistent on the retention of tenured privileges: it is recklessly out of touch with our world of downsizing in commercial operations and the civil service, of cutbacks to primary and secondary education, health care, social assistance and aid to the impoverished nations. Like the vision of monastic communities in Europe's distant past, it has had an era of dominance and must now yield to something more attuned to the dynamics of the age.

That reality, though, as the "three blind mice" somewhat wearily report, has yet to have much impact on the senior professoriate. The "three blind mice" are Professors David Bercuson of the University of Calgary, Robert Bothwell of the University of Toronto, and Jack Granatstein, recently retired from York University. Joint authors of Petrified Campus, a sombre reappraisal of contemporary Canadian academic performance, the triumvirate of historians acquired their unflattering collective designation well over a decade ago. They were then tagged with the epithet by their learned colleagues, as the mildest and presumably most printable of the professorial responses to their monograph The Great Brain Robbery: Canada's Universities on the Road to Ruin. Tenured faculty, Bercuson, Bothwell and Granatstein grimly note, don't have much stomach for honest criticism. Never mind all that guff about academic freedom and the duty of professors to present society with important yet unpalatable truths: tenured faculty only prattle on about such matters when their own competence or integrity is not at issue. The Great Brain Robbery had the audacity to assert that "tenure is a protector of lazy and incompetent professors" and to argue that "grade inflation is eroding the value of a university degree." Guess what? University professors are no different from army colonels, civil servants, unionized trade workers or corporate executives when their powers and privileges are challenged. "We did not mean The Great Brain Robbery to be a litmus test of Canadian academia's allegiance to the principle that free inquiry begins at home," the three historians assert in Petrified Campus. Nonetheless, the ensuing barrage of "highly personal" attacks, directed at them for "telling tales out of school," led them to conclude: "that's the way it turned out. And, we're sorry to say that, for the most part, Canadian academia failed."(pp.2-3) No surprise there, surely. Bercuson, Bothwell and Granatstein were undeniably, as they now admit, "naive" to expect anything else. It is therefore to their credit that, undeterred by their nasty reception among the nation's custodians of higher leaming, they could muster the courage to try again with this newer and more detailed version of the same analysis.

Central to this expanded argument is the view that innovation must prevail overentrenched thinking, if universities are to survive with anything remotely resembling their current privileged educational role. The process begins with a recognition of institutional strengths and weaknesses. Forget the unworkable assumption that all universities and colleges have equal importance and value. Under the pressure of Thatcher-style cuts to funding, Canadian institutions of higher leaming are being forced to sort themselves into a "multi-tier" system. At the top will be "research-intensive universities" probably "the Universities of British Columbia, Alberta, Western Ontario, Toronto, Queen's, Montreal, and Dalhousie," all located in major cities and receiving the massive funding necessary to sustain specialized high-quality academic programs. In the middle will be a range of varied institutions, compelled by fiscal restraint to adapt to particular educational niches: "boutique universities, like the University of Waterloo with its engineering and math, and Oxford wannabes, like Peterborough's Trent; big, second-rank schools like York, serving the northern Toronto suburbs; and regional institutions, likeLakeheadUniversity inThunderBay, meeting the needs of far-flung parts of the province." At the bottom will be institutions "recognized as 'ambulatory care' universities:" schools such as "Lethbridge, Laurentian, Chicoutimi and Cape Breton," minimally funded overload campuses designed to "cater to the Canadian penchant for accessibility," where staff "will primarily be teachers, their research interests. given short shrift as they face higher teaching loads, larger classes, and receive lower salaries." Everywhere, financial necessity will most assuredly mother the invention of experimentation. The formerroyal Roads Military College in Victoria, for example, was closed in a recentbout of federal cost-cutting but re-opened as aprivate university. "Charging high fees" and "using adjunct and visiting faculty heavily," the revived Royal Roads University now struggles to establish itself as "a small and elite institution."(pp.64-6) This sort of upheaval can be expected to accelerate, as globalization forces national universities to compete internationally.

Experimentation, of course, won't stop at the organizational level. Inevitably, it will embrace the latest communication techniques, since the resources of electronic technology cannot fail to reconfigure educational procedures in fundamental ways. "Canadian universities are beginning to offer distance education programs," Bothwell, Bercuson and Granatstein remark, "especially in fields they think will generate immense new revenues."(p.84) The development of degrees such as the "Executive MBA," offered through distance education at fees "in excess of $15,000 per semester," has proven a temptation that institutions will find irresistible. As the trend intensifies, it must raise questions about the traditional role of campus and instructor. And it is a trend of most concern to faculty in the humanities and social sciences, since education in the physical sciences and in certain of the "soft" sciences, such as geography, archaeology and psychology - will continue to require costly and elaborate campus facilities: laboratories, computer networks, highly specialized libraries, and the instructors and technical support staff essential to conduct the team studies so characteristic of those disciplines. But in the humanities and social sciences, "much of the requirement for the old-fashioned style of face-to-face leaming will disappear." Distance education means it is even possible for a humanities instructor "to lead a seminar of real students" who will never be closer "than several hundred kilometers" to their instructor. "It is possible," Bercuson, Bothwell and Granatstein add, "but is it desirable?" With some caution, they conclude that the question is irrelevant. The needs of mature students attending to work or family, or of students isolated in remote geographic locations, cannot be served in any other way. Universities, desperately scrambling to recruit students, will develop programs to satisfy this new clientele: and those programs will in turn influence what is done on campus. "Canada's universities are at a crossroads," the three historians wam. "They will either learn how to adapt to new times while preserving their ancient heritage or they will abandon their true vocation in search of perfecting the art of administration and the use of new delivery techniques."(pp.86-9)

Adaptation means the acceptance, grudging or otherwise, of measures currently deemed unthinkable on campus. Above all else, though the established professoriate will bitterly resist, adaptation will kill tenure. On this key issue, Bercuson, Bothwell and Granatstein have been right all along. Highly gifted scholars, they justifiably argue, "have the best kind of job security, the kind that comes from accomplishment." The most defensible solution to academic hiring and job security is that which has already evolved in Great Britain, following the Thatcherite cuts: limited-term contracts for everyone, subject to renewal. Properly administered, the approach can grant flexibility to the institution and restrict job security to the competent. And it seems to work in Great Britain, as the three historians point out. "There is almost no indication that academic freedom was jeopardized," they marvel: "even by the Iron Lady."(p.149-50) Their prescience on this issue should finally compel respect for several other controversial pronouncements, including those involving the most sacrosanct twins of academic endeavor, research and publication. Narrowing their discussion to what is now on offer in the humanities and social sciences, the three historians regretfully concede that "the academic fads of the 1990s as embodied in books and articles offer a rich field for ridicule." Not only is the content and general impression of these purportedly intellectual ventures largely confined to "trivia and trivia's first cousin, tedium," the style is uniformly dismaying as well. "Indeed, it is arguable that the standard of prose in Harlequin Romances is higher than the norm among academic authors." If that doesn't stir things up on campus, the suggested remedies most assuredly will. Cut out the scholarly review processes required by funding agencies, and instead give block grants of subsidies directly to the most viable academic presses and journals, letting those organizations make their own decisions about what and how much to publish. Forced by fiscal restraint to limit production, the academic publication system will have to define and produce quality work, as opposed to the dull products of "ritual professionalism."(pp.172-5) The reaction to all this on campus is bound to be undisguised outrage. Elsewhere, perhaps, the reaction might well be the considered reflection these authors maintain they have always sought.

Having said much to infuriate their traditionali st colleagues, Bercuson, Bothwell and Granatstein almost nonchalantly irk many others by boldly questioning the technocratic consensus. Above all else, beware of reshaping the universities with "a narrow and doctrinaire devotion to the notion of the market," they advise. While it is true that there seems to be some correlation between "higher income and higher leaming," that is probably because "the credential rather than the essence of knowledge determines the level of reward;" moreover, with the proliferation of institutions and programs, "as supply outstrips demand the value assigned to the credential will likewise decline." That has already transpired with many arts degrees, and some professional degrees are showing similar signs. Academics, students, and society at large, therefore, should all develop a realistic attitude towards what the institutions actually accomplish. The oft-trumpeted link between degrees and achievement undoubtedly reflects two basic factors: "bright, active, energetic and imaginative people gravitate to universities and universities ratify rather than confer these qualities."(pp.185-6) Perhaps the most honest thing to admit about higher education, particularly at the undergraduate level, is that "social considerations" are also "important" and "have always been part of the university experience."(p.196) When students elect to seek a university education, they should juggle all these considerations: the cost of the program, the quality of the instruction in their discipline, the market value of their degree, and the social benefit of the entire experience. And they should go open-eyed into the entire enterprise, and become increasingly wary as they contemplate proceeding onwards into graduate study. "If students are interested in university teaching, they should think long and hard about the gamble they are going to take,"(p.207) given the paucity ofjobs in many disciplines over the immediate future. The three historians, in summation, do not presume to predict how higher education will continue to evolve: but they insist the aim of such education must always entail "teaching and leaming, in a spirit of free inquiry, with the object of bringing human minds to their full potential."(p.208) Here, at least, there should be full consensus. And no doubt Bill Readings would have approved.

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