IT IS HARDER AND HARDER TO ESCAPE THE FEELING that the founding ideals of the university — the preservation, pursuit, and promulgation of learning; the free play of the creative intellect; the incubation of a public-spirited elite — are slowly vanishing in a morass of managerialism, careerism, and ideological capture. Pessimists find comparisons between tertiary education and highly efficient immigration agencies or assembly lines for a cosmopolitan class as hostile to the country’s past as it is indifferent to its future.
There isn’t a consensus about the proper purpose of universities, not least because the benefits they bring to those who pass through them are as many and various as those they contribute to our common life. Yet the two foundational vocations of the sector — the formation of a reflective, informed, and capable citizenry, and the incubation and diffusion of higher learning — have been and should remain the primary justifications for their influence on public life.
ARE THEY DISCHARGING THESE FUNCTIONS? IN CRUDE economic terms, the value of a university degree is the signal it sends to wider society about the degree-holder. The signalling function is twofold: admission to a degree course is a test of cognitive ability while completing it is a mark of conscientiousness. Both of these signals have grown
