The University We Need: Reforming American Higher Education

by Warren Treadgold

Though many people know that American universities now offer an inadequate and incoherent education from a leftist viewpoint that excludes moderate and conservative ideas, few people understand how much this matters, how it happened, how bad it is, or what can be done about it. In The University We Need , Professor Warren Treadgold shows the crucial role of universities in American culture and politics, the causes of their decline in administrative bloat and inept academic hiring, the effects of the decline on teaching and research, and some possible ways of reversing the downward trend. He explains that one suggested reform, the abolition of tenure, would further increase the power of administrators, further decrease the quality of professors, and make universities even more doctrinaire and intolerant. Instead, he proposes federal legislation to monitor the quality and honesty of professors and to limit spending on administration to no more than 20 percent of university budgets (Harvard now spends 40 percent). Finally, he offers a specific proposal for the founding of a new leading university that could seriously challenge the dominance of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, and Berkeley and attract conservative and moderate faculty and students now isolated in universities and colleges that are either leftist or mediocre. While agreeing with conservative critics that universities are in severe crisis, Treadgold believes that the universities’ problems largely transcend ideology and have grown worse partly because disputants on both sides of the academic debate have misunderstood the methods and goals of higher education.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

Published July 10, 2018

About the author

Warren Treadgold (AB Harvard, 1970, PhD Harvard, 1977) has taught ancient and medieval history and literature at UCLA, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Hillsdale College, and Florida International University and is now National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Byzantine Studies at Saint Louis University.

Reviews

[Curtis · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book should be subtitled "Bitter, party of one". While Treadgold does raise some legitimate issues with the state of higher education like administrative overhead, cost of education, and student debt, many of the philosophical concerns he raises just come across as, well, a bit whiny. Students have to undertake a broad education beyond just their major courses? Of course, as one of the key philosophical underpinnings of a university education is the preparation of informed and engaged citizens. Pluralism is valued on college campuses? It's called a UNIVERSity for a reason. Universities exist to broaden the horizons of society, so lamenting that they are doing just that seems both uninformed and a bit silly. It's clear he's not to pleased with the progress that American higher education has seen in the past several decades--but his raging against the machine is unlikely to have an impact on things that are so core to the industry. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

[Andrea · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. Where do I start? TW/CW racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, transphobia

The author makes a racist argument that it shouldn't matter he is racist and that academic freedom is eroding at colleges and universities. Except he uses almost every fallacy in the book trying to do so all the while saying the other side ("campus leftism") can't make a reasoned argument. If this book were not so chillingly racist, transphobic, and misogynistic, it would be laughable.

Some particularly glaring examples:

" In fact, in Ancient Greece men looked down on women, aristocrats looked down on commoners, free men looked down on slaves, and all Greeks looked down on foreigners. No one seems to have been bothered by the lack of diversity in race, class or gender among the largely aristocratic white male geniuses of the time."

"The University should resist legislative and other attempts to impose the new and bizarre view that the sexes are not significantly different, and it should not admit transsexual students who demand special treatment."

"Anyone who tells all whites they are racists is a racist of the worst sort, who condemns people for their race alone."

He also talks about getting fired for unmentioned political differences---yeah, dude. I can see why! This book was a hostile reading environment in which the first three chapters comprise an absolute nonsensical rant against whatever "leftist indoctrination" is. He never defines or explains that term clearly but throws it out whenever he wants to be dramatic about the "oppression" of conservative scholars. The middle two chapters are mostly free from vile garbage, and then he starts sinking into it again and concludes his final chapter lamenting the days of Greek life discussed in the white above.

Not worth anyone's time or money. I hope this man never finds another job again.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dedicated " to the many fine scholars who have left the academic profession over the past 50 years in disgust or despair" this book so candidly identifies the problems with learning institutions and teaching. I found his chapters on Good Teaching and Good Research were the most helpful.
I agree that a good teacher should know one's subject, have an active interest in it, and stay involved in it.
His critique of what passes for research, is dead on and devastating.
I agree that acceptance for publication is not scholarly excellence.
Research for Treadgold should be new, important, accurate, rigorous, and intelligible.
Ironically, all schools, going back to Plato's Academy, produce "less great literature and less original thinking..."
Most great scholars are "elitists, eccentrics, conservatives, disrespectful of academic orthodoxy, and too challenging as teachers to get good teaching evaluations..." Too few universities are like U. Chicago and encourage "freedom, excellence, and diversity in thought, teaching, and research."

[Sri Kolli · Rating 1 out of 5]

A disappointing book from a professor about the education system that needs to be reformed. There is much to be desired about the colleges but not how he goes about it. He paints a narcissistic and short sighted view of what’s wrong with the system nit picking on the certain groups of people, leftist students, Marxist professors, oppressed factions of society as they call themselves without a clue about who they are and what they are about. He has absolutely no sense of empathy since he expects Harvard to throw the red carpet for him when he ruins their plans to change funding to a program he was applying into. His selfishness is endless. He had no clue about what discriminates means. He ought to stick to Byzantine era where he is good at rather than comment about what is happening today.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another academic paper pusher coming with the same best idea: let daddy Government handle this. Of course, Treadgold expects that would happen soon enough so he will be alive and ready to take a well paid job of reforming the system. After all he has written a book about it, so he must be an authority.

[Abbie Morneault · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only read this because I had to. A Byzantine historian writing about the state oh higher Ed? No thank you. Lost count of how many problematic things were written.

[Coyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Much of Treadgold’s analysis of the problems contemporary universities face is spot-on. While admittedly I’ve spent the last decade primarily involved in small private and religious institutions, what he is describing certainly sounds like what we hear coming out of larger/public schools. There is a crisis in higher education that goes beyond—but is not completely separate from—mere declining numbers. And I think that Treadgold has properly identified key causes for the crises in higher education. That said, this correct identification will also be a weakness of the book. After all, I’m not the person he needs to convince. I already believe that the dominance of leftist ideology and right-wing anti-intellectualism is damaging to higher education. And I already believe that excising both (especially the former) is critical for the future of universities in the Western world. More on this below. Here it just needs to be noted that Treadgold has given a sound overview of what universities are going through in the early 21st century."


Read the rest here: http://www.christianhumanist.org/2019...

[Nick Swenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time is short

Reasonable survey of the challenges we face today. Good contrast with the higher-achieving cultures of other ages. Thought provoking yet short on dynamic insights.
New paradigm is needed, that’s clear.