Oct. 31, 2006

‘In Pursuit of Knowledge’

Deborah L. Rhode has joined the campaign against the role of status in defining what matters in higher education. Her new book, In Pursuit of Knowledge: Scholars, Status, and Academic Culture (Stanford University Press) questions why excellence is defined as it is today, and explores the impact that prestige has on the choices made by academics and scholars. Rhode, a professor of law and director of the Center on Ethics at Stanford University, responded to questions about the themes of her book.

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A: One of the more disturbing developments in contemporary higher education has been the growing importance of reputational rankings. The most influential surveys, like U.S. News and World Report, depend partly on subjective perceptions of top administrators, which depend more on prior rankings than first hand knowledge. Past recognition creates a halo effect that perpetuates prestige even if the evaluator has little current information. This explains why MIT’s law school and Princeton’s professional schools always rate so highly even though they don’t exist. Rankings also affect the applicant pool and alumni giving, which are part of what rankings measure, and which adds to their self-reinforcing impact.

Q: How does the quest for status shape academic careers these days?

A: Pressure for recognition has led to an undervaluation of teaching and an overproduction of scholarship that is inconsequential and unintelligible except to a few specialists. In many fields, the pursuit of status has put a premium on esoteric theory and sophisticated models, and diverted attention from potentially more useful empirical and policy-oriented publications. Faculty subject to these pressures may have too little time for advising, mentoring, administration, and public service, as well as writing for general audiences. Self-promotion also leads to unattractive behavior in many academic settings, such as panels, conferences and meetings. Academic novels delight in parodying professors intent on proving to each other just how smart they really are. Life too often imitates art.

Q: You note the difference between accountability and status, and yet many academics fear accountability measures being proposed by some will have as little value as status. What sort of accountability would be positive?

A: Accountability needs to be based on a broad set of criteria, both quantitative and qualitative, that are widely accepted as relevant gauges of performance. Too often, state-imposed requirements focus on a narrow range of measures such as graduation rates or test scores, which depend more on the quality of entering students than the quality of the learning environment. More useful systems include other factors including scholarly productivity, teaching effectiveness, student engagement, diversity, and contributions to the university and community.

Q: If a college president wanted to move away from status obsession and toward quality, what would be the first things to consider doing for his or her institution?

A: In partnership with the faculty and governing body, the president should develop evaluation systems, reward structures, and strategic planning processes that have widespread support and are responsive to the institution’s distinctive mission.

— Scott Jaschik

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Comments

Correction of an implication

Author implies that U.S. News has incorrectly published ratings that imply that MIT has a law school and Princeton has other professional schools that don’t exist. In both cases that is 100% not true.

Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News, at 7:30 am EST on October 31, 2006

Not again

Yet another allegation that we devote our lives to meaningless research for one reason or another. I consider my work to be important, and the reason I became a college professor was to enable me to spend my life thinking about mathematics, both discovering new mathematics (i.e., doing research) and communicating mathematics to others (i.e., teaching). But this is just like big time college sports (also reported on in today’s IHE). There is just about as much chance of people ceasing these repetitive and mindless attacks on faculty research as there is of college presidents getting control of big time athletics.

math prof, at 7:45 am EST on October 31, 2006

This book itself appears to be scholarship that is inconsequential, presenting a solution in search of a problem. Even if some of the things she describes are true, how does she know how things ’should’ be done? There are thousands of institutions of higher education in this country all competing for a niche; some will act as she describes and deplores while others will go their own way. There are places for students and faculty with all sorts of views. For some that will include the pursuit of the bubble reputation; others will eschew it. So what? This represents the real and valuable diversity of higher education, rather than the often-praised shallow diversity based on appearance. If you don’t bother with the prestige contest the prestige contest won’t bother with you, and you can choose perfection of the life rather than the work.

Real Diversity, at 8:45 am EST on October 31, 2006

Good article, old question

It’s interesting that a book by a professor at Stanford garners an IHED headline, while the decades-old writings making the same case by bell hooks are often questioned as too “subjective.” hooks wishes to address the social assumptions behind the academy’s focus on status, which may be more challenging for academicians to read. In the end, though, this sounds like a good read; I just hope credit will go to pioneers like hooks who insisted this conversation needs to go forward.

Kirk Baker, PhD Student at Syracuse University, at 8:45 am EST on October 31, 2006

How we legitimate status and prestige

“The more I read, the more it seemed that an arms race in reputation was distorting the priorities of both individuals and institutions.”

Unfortunately, this is precisely the mechanism of competition for status-degrees that is fueling the credential inflation spiral that we are now caught up in.

The only way to end the competitive spiral for prestige and status is to change the symbolic universe — the very symbolism of success and failure — out of which we construct our institutions and exeriences. As long as we fail to make this assumptive world visible, there is no way any of this will change. The competition for status will only get worse, until, heaven forbid, the credential spiral collapses.

Glen McGhee, FHEAP, at 8:55 am EST on October 31, 2006

Outcome measurement

As point out by Glen McGhee, the thing is going to continue until something happen.

My view is that students/parents are driven by reputation because there isn’t much other information. This is just a common practice in commercial world. When things are based on brand, consummer pay what ever it takes. Without enough information, people also develop the believe that you got what you paid for — which is only partially true in my view.

In the case of well developed consumer market like DVD player, the price are very low and you can always get exactly what you want with the right price if you do the research.

To re-set our goal, we need objective measurement of the outcome — be it the student learning or the research result — How to measure it is a different question. The current accreditation system is in faul because it does not measure the outcome directly but measuring the resource instead.

Duncan, at 1:10 pm EST on October 31, 2006

This book points up a problem with public higher education that has been with us since the end of WWII, when the largest of the state universities identified themselves as “flagships” entitled to more state dollars and prestige than their lesser lights. The institutions exhibit what Robert Fuller, in his book “Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank", calls “rankism". Rankism iis defined as the ac t of “nobodying” people and institutions to make them feel insignificant. In its worst form, rankism leads to war and genocide. Inn its milder forms, it seeks to establish hierarchies within which people are “nobodied” to various degrees that reflect the hegemonies of a power structure. Fuller points out that rankism is stupid because it doesn’t allow you to harness all your assets.

This is precisely what the “flagship” public institutions are all about. They define excellence in terms of quantity of resources and snobbish trappings of pomp and power that have become image-making ends in themselves, rather than what they deliver to students and other constituents. They are different from private institutions, however, in that their “nobodying” is supported by state tax dollars. This might be alright, if these institutions did not have so much power to suppress the development of other state university campuses, particularly their branch campuses. But they do, and this negatively affects state economies, cultures, and intellectual endeavors, because state assets are obscured and are underdeveloped.

I don’t see a cure for this situation. We do not have the visionary leadership in academe or state legislatures that understands that “somebodying” is a better approach. Image is everything these days. More me equals less you. Dismissiveness is quality. Perhaps the best we can hope for in U.S. public institutions is that some other country doesn’t wake up and reorganize its public higher education system such that each institution is in charge of its own destiny and its campuses are free to develop themselves according to their ability. Then we can be the followers instead of the leaders.

David Stocum, at 1:15 pm EST on October 31, 2006

I think the article makes good points about one aspect of the professoriate, but does so at the cost of oversimplification. We all construct our identities, often very creatively and in the face of contradictory evidence, around some notion of service and the pursuit of knowledge, and that construction can co-exist with a search for prestige and affirmation.

I think most of us are driven some days by the noble purpose of teaching-as-service, and other days by the prestige that comes with being perceived as pursuing that noble cause. Some days, we are driven by our interest in research questions, while other days we are driven by the prestige of publishing that research in a top journal.

Simplifying our identity by focusing on one or another of these facets doesn’t do justice to our complex, contradictory, changing nature as people and as professors.

QuakerProf, at 2:20 pm EST on October 31, 2006

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‘In Pursuit of Knowledge’

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Comments

Correction of an implication

Not again

Good article, old question

How we legitimate status and prestige

Outcome measurement

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Education, Faculty Member Tenure-Track, Fall ‘09 Monroe Community College

Director of Technical Production James Madison University

Assistant Professor — Plant Physiologist University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

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Faculty — Library Science — 7PELIS01/7PELIS02 Texas Woman’s University

Dean of Undergraduate Studies University of North Carolina—Greensboro

Lecturers Ithaca College

Research Assoicate NC State University

Assistant Professor Eastern Kentucky University