The Studies and the Students

Cardinal John Henry Newman, in his immortal “The Idea of a University,” notes, “A University may be considered with reference either to its Students or to its Studies.” The observation is as true, and as double-edged, in 1992 as it was when he made it in 1852.

Considered with reference to its studies, a university is that institution in which the whole of human knowledge is gathered not as in a repository, like an encyclopedia, but as a continuing interpersonal enterprise. Considered with reference to its students, well, to be blunt, students need have nothing to do with it. A university without students has the coherence and integrity of a research institute. A university without faculty is nothing at all.

With this much conceded to the priority of the acquisition over the mere transmission of knowledge, it remains true that ours is a democratic and pragmatic society. To the extent that we honor the university of studies at all, we honor it in its function as the university of students.

The University of California, according to California’s Master Plan of Higher Education, is a research university; the California State University is a teaching university. But faculty members at UC are all required to teach, and faculty members at CSU are not entirely excused from research.

For this reason, we welcome the announcement of new rules intended to assign excellence in teaching, even at UC, a larger role in faculty promotion.

Teaching has never lacked formal acknowledgment in the review of UC faculty for tenure and promotion, but formal has sometimes meant pro forma.

Tales are told of junior faculty being warned against acquiring the reputation of an ace teacher or, worse, a friend of the students. The untenured were told to be ever on guard against the charge that they had elevated popularity above research.

The new rules should help make such warnings a thing of the past. So long as it is by teaching that professors win the public support that makes it possible for them to do research, it is right that they should be evaluated as teachers. Those who teach well should be prized, not penalized, for it is they who win for all the right to do research at public expense.

The studies and the students. For our kind of university, in our kind of society, both have to count.