Carnegie Scholar issues
educational wake-up call

Conversations speaker says
universities must add to public sphere

Answer a wake-up call in these times of economic prosperity and you might mistake it for a wrong number.

But a wake-up call is exactly what William Sullivan of the Carnegie Foundation and La Salle University issued during his Jan. 27 guest lecture to a Kane Hall gathering of more than 100 people. And that very economic prosperity is partly to blame, Sullivan said. The lecture was part of a faculty-senate sponsored series in response to President Richard L. McCormick’s Conversations About the Future initiative.

“The university is a late 19th century creation along with big cities, corporations, railroads and telephones,” Sullivan said. “It is truly a modern institution.”

William Sullivan of the Carnegie Foundation greets a member of the audience after a Jan. 27 lecture in Kane Hall.

And Sullivan said that modern institution isn’t as successful in these postmodern times.

Sullivan said university presidents in the late 19^th century saw their institutions as three-pronged entities. Universities were a setting for research, an idea borrowed from European universities. They were also a place for undergraduate education, something very different from research and what we think of today as a liberal education. Finally, to unify those seemingly antithetical factors, they saw the university as a civic institution, a utopian concept.

“They saw it was possible to bring reason to bear on all facets of human life with the intent of improving human life,” Sullivan told the crowd.

Today, Sullivan described a university that has retained that format, but in a much different context.

Too much focus has been placed on economic development and the university as a tool for upward mobility, according to Sullivan. The result has been the creation of a “higher-ed industry” and a “fortunate fifth.” These fortunate fifth — the top 20 percent of American society in terms of wealth and wages — are different from the rest of the world and the rest of America. Their earnings and wealth have increased faster than the other 80 percent of society.

“They’ve separated themselves from others by wealth, by where they live and by where they educate their kids. They’ve abdicated their social responsibility,” Sullivan said.

Christine Distefano, a UW political science professor who commented following Sullivan’s lecture, largely agreed.

“The university has miseducated the ‘fortunate fifth,’” she said. The failure to create a public and citizens who see themselves as participants in the larger public realm is the fault of the university, according to Distefano.

To right the situation, and retain public legitimacy with society as a whole, Sullivan said the university needs to once again embrace its role as a civic institution. Until it does that, the university will be seen as an institution that’s failing consumers interested in becoming part of a public life.

John Palka, a UW professor in the zoology department, followed Sullivan and Distefano with an emphasis on what is working at the university. Palka said some role in economic development can be important for universities, depending on the situation of their surrounding society. In other words, depressed economies in third world countries should expect and encourage their universities to contribute to economic well being.

Palka also pointed to service learning activities, which develop a sense of social participation. He noted that many graduates are coming back to the university, an indication they were pleased with their initial experience. Finally, he pointed to the recent World Trade Organization conference in Seattle, noting that opposition came largely from people who are at universities or have been educated at universities.

Sullivan, Palka and Distefano answered questions for about 20 minutes following the presentations, then attended a reception with the audience in the Walker Ames room.