President Crow's Article

I really enjoyed reading this article out today by President Crow, William B. Dabars, and David B. Rosowsky. Here is the link. I wrote the following reply and sent it along to them on email. I’ll keep you updated.

A Response to “It’s Time for Universities to Redesign Their 75-Year-Old Contract”By Dr. Owen Anderson, Professor of Philosophy, Arizona State University

To President Michael Crow and Professors William B. Dabars and David V. Rosowsky,

I was very encouraged to read your article, “It’s Time for Universities to Redesign Their 75-Year-Old Contract.” I believe you are right in identifying a fundamental flaw in Vannevar Bush’s vision for the American university as articulated in Science, The Endless Frontier. Your critique is grounded in strong empirical evidence showing that the benefits of higher education have not been equally accessible to all Americans.

Like you, I have argued that we are witnessing the end of an era in American higher education. While you trace its decline to a model of science disconnected from society, I have focused on the infusion of harmful philosophies into the humanities. I believe our assessments are complementary and reinforce one another.

If I may, I would respectfully suggest that there is an additional element essential to the success of your vision—one that, if neglected, could render even the best reforms vulnerable to the same kind of failure that afflicted Bush’s framework.

That element is the human need for meaning and the transcendent.

Let me explain. Near the beginning of the 75-year period you critique, Aldous Huxley warned of a society that, even amid technological progress and material comfort, could not offer its members transcendent meaning. Neil Postman renewed this concern midway through the period. Today at the end of that period, we see it in the rising rates of depression, anxiety, and disaffection among our students.

In other words, even if we succeed in creating a completely equitable system of material distribution through science and technology, we still will not have addressed our deeper existential need. We will have left our students without what they needed the most. 

Historically, the classical university placed wisdom and virtue at the center of education. These values are difficult to quantify and have been displaced by metrics more aligned with economic pragmatism. Yet they remain essential to any serious understanding of education.

I do not believe our current humanities programs are sustainable. The damage caused by ideologically one-sided hiring will take at least a generation to repair. Many of these departments are also financially unsustainable and lack a unifying vision beyond their personal political agendas, like “decolonizing” and “whiteness.” The public perceives this, which contributes to the erosion of trust.

My proposal is that we pivot from humanities programs shaped by personal political agendas to ones committed to teaching the skills required to lead a meaningful human life. It is rare—perhaps extinct—to find a program that clearly promises, “You will learn to lead a good life by pursuing wisdom and virtue,” let alone one that fulfills that promise. 

This pivot can be implemented in a modular, integrative way that benefits all students regardless of major, while also preventing insular programs from promoting partisan goals at the expense of universal human concerns like meaning and wisdom.  It will have a unifying purpose that allows for efficient delivery and avoids the waste of chaotic systems. 

The core question is this: Did their university education help them grow in wisdom and meaning by connecting them to what is transcendent and ultimate? The students sometimes say, “I got connected to something bigger than myself.”  But what is it?  If what they mean is they got involved in a project of some kind to reduce material suffering, then are they moving toward the dystopia Huxley foresaw—one of comfort without transcendent purpose? We want to help them know their ultimate purpose and not just a series of temporary purposes. 

These outcomes can be measured. The senior thesis, for example, was once a space where students demonstrated growth in wisdom and virtue. Today, I suspect most members of the public would snicker if asked whether a university education makes students wise and virtuous. That skepticism is telling. I have ideas for how this growth could be more intentionally cultivated and measured in our setting.

You closed your article by quoting Braden R. Allenby: “Forget about ‘solutions’; expand option spaces... encourage questioning and continual learning.” These are thoughtful aspirations, but they are incomplete. Dialogue is not an end in itself—it is a means. The goal of dialogue is to seek and gain wisdom.

Here is a simple way to test whether a given initiative points beyond process to ultimate purpose: ask, “We do these things in order to gain what?” If the answer is just another procedural good—say, “equity”—we ask again, “In order to gain what?” The final answer to such questions is the highest good: the transcendent, which gives human life meaning and anchors the university’s mission.

President Crow, at the celebration lunch for those of us promoted to full professor, you asked each of us to share our research. I said that I study the transcendent good that gives human life meaning. You asked how that can be applied. This letter is another example of my answer.

The 75-year period that you correctly diagnosed is ending. Let us lay the foundation for the next 75 years on truths that will not fail us. I would be glad to meet with you to offer more concrete ideas. I am at your service as a humble professor of philosophy.

Sincerely,

Dr. Owen Anderson

School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies

New College,

Arizona State University