The Ideal of the University

by Robert Paul Wolff

The Ideal of the University is a lucid, comprehensive analysis of the rationale, principles, and presuppositions that make contemporary universities what they are.

The book begins with four sharp, carefully delineated models of a university. After analyzing such controversial issues as the role of grading in the university and the "myth" of value neutrality. Wolff turns to the crucial question of how the university should be governed. He argues for a radical reconstruction based on a "social contract" that would place ultimate authority in the hands of the faculty and students. The book concludes with a series of "practical proposals for Utopian reform," including such provocative recommendations as a variable-length, ungraded undergraduate program and elimination of the Ph.D. degree.

In his introduction to this new edition, Wolff expands upon his original speculations to argue in substantive detail for the liberating potential of the liberal arts. Drawing upon Freud and Marcuse, Wolff proposes that literature, art, and philosophy embody a promise of gratification that engenders a negative critique of the social and cultural status quo. The rationale for the liberal arts university is society's need for a reservoir of critical thinking that is the motor of social, economic, and political progress. Elegantly written and passionately argued; The Ideal of the University is essential reading for educators and sociologists.

Genres: Philosophy

202 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 1971

About the author

Robert Paul Wolff was an American political philosopher and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Wolff has written widely on topics in political philosophy, including Marxism, tolerance (against liberalism and in favor of anarchism), political justification, and democracy.

Reviews

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although penned in 1969, Robert Paul Wolff's Ideal of the University has logical and emotional resonance for our struggles with higher education in the twenty-first century. His book tackles problems at the heart or essence of the university.

For one, the university does not mean the same thing to all people. Those professors in the human sciences are likely to see the university as a sanctuary for scholarship, but those professors whose work is more in engineering are likely to see the university as a training camp for the professions. And then there are university presidents for whom the university is some porous entity that collects endowments and receives funding and which has this fluid relationship with economy and society. These conceptions don't sit well with one another.

In spite of his idealism, as an educator himself, Wolff is keenly aware of the practical problems that arise in the university. In his delightful chapter on grading, which breaks down the various functions that grading serves, he says naturally we have to work with the institutions we have and adapt the functions of grading to best serve students, however difficult it is to work within these constraints.

And even though he acknowledges that there are plenty of problems with the university as an institution, he still sees the university as a beacon of hope for society and therefore must be fought for. Universities, he writes,

are the only major viable institutional centers of opposition to the dominant values and polices of society. The churches are weak, the unions have long since made peace with the established order. Many students now feel so great a revulsion against contemporary society that they cannot mobilize their emotional energies for anything less than a total, revolutionary transformation of society. I sympathize with them. Their condition is is no way dishonorable, and if I were younger, less settled in a career, and less entangled in the intense personal relationships of marriage and parenthood, I think I might share their feelings entirely. But the fact remains that only next steps are ever possible; final steps can never be taken. So those of us who can still sustain a concern for the partial amelioration of social evils must rely upon the actual institutions which offer us the most assistance. The university clearly heads that list.

[Charlie Huenemann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wolff is an intelligent thinker and fun, clear writer. He wrote this short book during the campus revolts of the late sixties, and so much of it is dated, but sections are very worthwhile and relevant today. Wolff describes four models of a university - as a Sanctuary of Scholarship, as a Training Camp for the Professions, as a Social Service Station (that is, the Clark Kerr multiversity which accepts "the goals and values of whoever in America has the money to pay for them"), and as an Assembly Line for Establishment Man (what the hippies would charge). Of course, the Kerr model has prevailed, and everything Wolff said against it is now commonly praised as a virtue. He closes with some radical ideas for reform - basically, he suggests turning college into a three-year program without grades or degrees, into which students are accepted by lottery, followed by separate and optional professional training schools.