John Haldane: Research consumes much time and money that could be better spent on teaching students

Published on Tuesday 16 February 2010 21:59

ONCE again there is talk of a funding crisis facing higher education and some are talking of cuts as swingeing as those enacted during the first Thatcher administration.

Certainly large economies have been made in funding for England and Wales and it is impossible to see how analogous economies will not be made in the Scottish higher education budget, with the difference that Scottish institutions are not currently able to charge domestic students fees.

During the last two decades, university managers, academics and others have become accustomed to increases in the level of income in support of teaching and research, and although the sources of income have been diversified, there remains a great demand upon the public purse to deliver increasing resources to universities. There are questions of justice regarding this – particularly in Scotland, given that students make no direct financial contribution – for many who pay for the provision of university education do not participate in it, and much of what is paid for may not be valued by the wider society, nor deserve to be.

Whatever one thinks about these matters and the question of justice arising from them, the obvious fact is that the state of public finances are now such that, far from getting more, the higher education sector can expect to receive proportionately less from central government budgeting. Indeed, I suspect that the situation is set to worsen beyond what is already announced, but such is the state of economic uncertainly and political obfuscation that this may not become clear for some while. At any rate, what is already known will occasion difficulties and there is much talk of crisis and even of destruction. Yet the fiscal contraction may also be viewed as providing an opportunity to think afresh about the value, aims and purposes of university education.

A decade or so ago, a national committee of inquiry into higher education across the UK, chaired by the late Lord Dearing, spoke of the sector's main aim as being to sustain a learning society. This was then elaborated in terms of "inspiring and enabling individuals to develop their capabilities to the highest potential levels throughout life, so that they grow intellectually, are well equipped for work, can contribute effectively to society and achieve personal fulfilment", with further mention of "increasing knowledge and understanding for their own sake and fostering their application to the benefit of the economy and society" as well as "playing a major role in shaping a democratic, civilised, inclusive society".

These purposes were widely welcomed, but within them lie once-familiar understandings most fully developed and articulated in the second half of the 19th century. As it happens, however, those reflections also pose a challenge to some of the directions in which universities have taken themselves – movements that would have been impossible but for the vast sums allocated to the system by successive governments.

That older understanding was most profoundly expressed in two texts, both of which originated in public lectures: John Henry Newman's Idea of a University, published in 1852 and John Stuart Mill's Rectorial Address to the students at St Andrews University, delivered and published in 1867.

From the perspective of the present, the most striking features of these two accounts of the nature and value of university education is what they exclude. Newman thought that it was not the business of universities to engage in research. He writes that "a university is a place of teaching universal knowledge. This implies that its object is the diffusion and extension of knowledge rather than the advancement of it. If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a university should have students."

Newman was not against research, but thought it should be conducted in special institutes. Mill likewise thought that the fact that certain activities are important for individuals and society does not mean they should be part of the university curriculum.

He writes that a university "is not a place of professional education. Universities are not intended to teach the knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of gaining their livelihood. Their object is not to make skilful lawyers, or physicians, or engineers, but capable and cultivated human beings. It is very right that there should be public facilities for the study of professions. But these things are no part of what every generation owes to the next, as that on which its civilisation and worth will principally depend."

To understand these passages it is necessary to remind ourselves of the distinction between knowledge and understanding, and between the promotion and enhancement of welfare and the cultivation of the mind.

Newman was concerned that, as well as coming to know about the particular and the temporary, human beings need to form an understanding of the general and the permanent. And to do that they need to develop powers of abstraction and analogy so as to reunite at an intellectual level what has become diversified at a scientific or technical or practical one. This yields understanding which is both an enduring constituent of human flourishing and an aid in various forms of practical life.

He writes: "When the intellect has once been properly trained and formed to have a connected view or grasp of things, it will display its powers with more or less effect according to its particular quality and capacity in the individual. In the case of most it makes itself felt in the good sense, sobriety of thought, reasonableness, candour, self-command and steadfastness of view which characterise it."

THE Newman/Mill view has implications for the present day. First, we need to distinguish within higher education between the business of cultivating minds and that of conducting research, and again that of training people for specific forms of employment.

Second, to specify more precisely and to implement that distinction in practice one needs to confront the claim that university education is for the sake of economic benefit. This is something that academics are generally keen to dispute, institutional managers less so. But to reject the idea that universities are for the sake of economic prosperity is not to exclude such benefit as an anticipated or even desirable secondary effect.

Next – and here academics are more likely to be divided – one needs to challenge the idea that good teaching is impossible unless teachers are also researchers. This notion is open to objection on several scores.

First, to keep abreast of one's subject requires scholarship, which is not the same as the pursuit and attainment of new knowledge, but may well take deeper learning and better judgment. Second, what is pursued under the heading of "research", at any rate in the arts, humanities and social sciences, is often of dubious worth, being merely the accumulation of knowledge (if that) without proper regard to the goal of integrated understanding. Third, the mass of it does not much benefit fellow researchers, since the more that is produced the less is consumed. Fourth, and in general terms, the more academics have the opportunity for research the less they wish to teach undergraduates, particularly in the early years, as contrasted with enlisting graduate students in their own expanding research projects.

To put the matter somewhat more boldly: the growing mass of researchers may have become a drag on and even an obstacle to the pursuit of the primary purpose of universities – namely, education. It impedes the effort to put students first and it consumes vast sums of private and public funding. How individuals and corporations choose to spend their resources is up to them, but how the state does is up to citizens.

As the situation in the public finances worsens, hard choices will have to be made. It is hardly plausible to insist that education should continue to enjoy levels of support, much of which is being consumed by researchers engaged in pursuit of their own interest without obvious benefit to the undergraduates for whose sake the universities were brought into being, and who increasingly will have to pay for them.

The fiscal contraction may yet be a blessing if it causes us now to engage in an overdue conversation about the value, aims and purposes of education. And whatever one may think about what I have said, or about what they wrote, an excellent preparation for that discussion would be reading the texts of Mill and Newman.

Anyone who might be inclined to respond by saying that their ideas are shortsighted or outmoded might hesitate to consider that it is a commonplace among scholars that these were two of the greatest English intellects and defenders of liberal education and liberal culture in the last 200 years.

• John Haldane is professor of philosophy at the University of St Andrews and the author of Practical Philosophy