Professional Education – Serving Two Masters

Educating professionals was not central to university life until the last part of the 19th century. It was, in a fashion, introduced through the Morrill Land Grant of 1863, and reinforced by Charles Eliot at Harvard as the 19th century turned to the 20th.

Professionals practicing a craft: teachers, physicians, nurses, attorneys, engineers, architects, and others in disciplines whose work is to some extent regulated by the state, have a special place in institutional life, and they create unique and welcome demands on the work of our university.

A person who studies literature has one set of constraints to which they respond: the demands of the discipline as promulgated and articulated by the people who profess and carry on the traditions of the field, usually university faculty and writers.

While there are many possible pains associated with the poor exercise of understanding early nineteenth century literature you will not get a ticket, or spend a night in jail, if you don’t. No one will sue you because you could not clarify the differences between the theism Herman Melville pronounced in Moby Dick, and the views expressed by John Stuart Mill in Nature and the Utility of Religion. Powerfully interesting works but ignorance of them is not punishable by anything other than ignorance, a crime thankfully not prosecutable in county court, and loss of pride – where knowledge of them would produce a sense of pride.

Here is the twist. Knowledge of Melville and Mill might create a better professional in any field.

Those who aspire to professional practice serve the state through the regulated profession to which they belong. In addition, they must serve the greater social good through the application of knowledge and insight that is not regulated by the state, but may influence the successful execution of their craft. This produces pressure in those who practice and regulate practice of the trade, and those who aspire to its practice. Two masters.

Our responsibility to people who want to become architects requires that we train people to be able to make a building that will stand up, that will protect the health, safety and welfare of those in the extended community, as well as those for whom we design the edifice. Otherwise, the practitioner might go to jail, be sued, or lose the right to practice…the right to practice granted by the state for the benefit of the state.

However, how short we fall if we are producing professionals, again I use the case of the architect, who can make a building stand up, but who have so misunderstood the desires of people, who have so misjudged the impact of the building on the community, who have so inadequately applied understanding of the relationship of people to each other, that the building while it stands, prevents people from becoming all they can be. Pruitt-Igoe, the infamous housing project in St. Louis met every aspect of the regulation of the profession of architecture. Completed 1951 – dynamited 1972. It was uninhabitable. The structure was sound but the human condition unattended to.

In professional education we serve to masters. We must ask can we do it and should we do it? When we answer both correctly, our university is a better servant to those who aspire to the practice of any grand craft, and the state.

Our University and Social Purpose

I had occasion recently to reflect on the social purpose of a university. Actually, this reflection took place as I held my grandson and thought a bit about this little fellow’s future. My life’s work is the university so my thoughts turned to what kind of university he might attend.

If I was a farmer I might have thought about how agriculture would change in the next generation, what would mechanization do that it had not already done? Would weather change or its control, or genetic engineering; have an impact on production and yields? Would farmers, as a lot, still pray a great deal for the complexities and difficulties that they face everyday? For the so many things over which they have almost no control? You have it tough? Try scratching at the ground to feed a family and pay the bills.

What would the world have in store for this grandson when he graduated from high school if he wanted to attend a university? Even as an expounder of the benefits of higher education, I know there are many opportunities in life absent a university education. I hope that never changes. The power of a craftsman at work is a joy to watch, and from personal experience, provides an uncommon variety of satisfaction.

Fright describes my emotional response though to what universities might be like. I see many changes now that are powerful and important in higher education, and some that weaken its foundation. So I reflected on the social purpose of the organizations that I have been a part of for nearly all of my life.

If the purpose of a university is to develop human potential so that people can improve their lot in life by their intellect and resourcefulness, bring insight and wisdom to bear on complex problems, and in so doing, be employable in a job that compensates for those skills, I have no concern about the future. On the other hand if it is seen as a trade school I am frightened.

If the purpose of a university is to be an environment where students have to prove themselves, and work hard to be successful in their studies, if it is like molten gold to cook out dross , or a furnace where annealing takes place, I have no concern about the future. On the other hand, if it is seen as a property right, where you pay and you get, like buying soap or going for a physical examination, I am frightened.

If the purpose of the university is to help students become people with ideas who take different views of the world, or if it tries to engender in a person a world view that values good ideas that are individual actions of a free and disciplined mind, then I am not concerned. However, if its function is to create a club that requires like mindedness, or social status tied to credentials, I am fearful of the future.

John Henry Newman in “The Idea of a University”, says that with a university education, “a habit of mind is formed which lasts through life.”

This is the social purpose of a university, it should be the purpose of our university, and it gives me some comfort for my grandson because I know this to be the case.