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The Academic Life series
Article · May 2013
DOI: 10.17613/5yj5-pt82
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What is the Academic Life? series:
1. General Answers to Essential Questions
2. The Idea of the University
3. Upholding Professional Standards and Ethics
by Steve McCarty
Professor, Osaka Jogakuin University
President, World Association for Online Education
What is the Academic Life? 1.
General Answers to Essential Questions
Original Source: McCarty, S. (2012). What is the academic life?
1. General answers to essential questions. Education India
Journal, 1 (3), 6-12.
[Articles reprinted by permission of the Editor; 2023 update]
Series Introduction
What is, or should be, the academic life? After many years of thinking about
academic ideals to live by, and seeing where academic standards and ethics
are not upheld, this series is offered, for a journal interested in the idea
of the university (Sharma, 2012).
Questions Definitive of the Academic Life
The following questions are proposed to point to the universals of the
academic life. What is a university? What is a professor? Who are the
colleagues of a person in higher education? What should be learned in
graduate school regardless of the field of specialization? To what extent
can a human being live by academic standards and ethics?
General Answers to the Essential Questions
The author addressed some of the key issues earlier as follows:
The essence of the university is its universality, as represented by
academic standards, ethics, and meaningful subject matter that
transcends cultural boundaries … Liberal arts requirements for all the
students unify the university, lest its purpose be narrowed to
vocational training in separate departments … When atomic weapons and
other scientific advances posed potential hazards to civilization,
those with a well-rounded education pointed out the dire necessity for
ethical responsibility, encouraging initiatives such as bioethics and
disarmament. (McCarty, 1995, p. 43)
What is a university? – The essence of a university is its universality. All
true universities have this quality in common. There can be a universal
academic approach to any subject matter. Thus, the curriculum can include
pure and applied fields, theoretical and practical approaches, education and
training, but not solely the latter elements. A true university does not
yield to contemporary societal imperatives, otherwise education is
sacrificed to vocationalization or whatever trend rules the day.
In one sense a university is a unity in itself, as cited above. General
education or liberal arts subjects that round out higher education for all
students provide a commonality within the university as well as an interface
toward the world. The liberal arts are thus essential to all specializations
and provide a practical world-view as well, for example in foreign policy
studies (Walt, 2012).
A university is situated in a certain community, era, and culture, but it
shares the universality of the academic life in common with other
universities in the world. All universities should be inviolable by forces
that devalue or corrupt scholarship. An institutional culture where the
university ends at the gates of its campus displays a grave misunderstanding
of what a university is. True universities are fit for regional and
international academic exchanges. Provided languages are translated, true
universities have such commonalities that they are interpermeable and
interconnected.
A university should be a sanctuary from the surrounding society with its
corrupting influences of nationalism, violence, materialism, utilitarianism,
exclusivism, and so forth. The university should provide sanctuary to well-
reasoned critical thinking (cf. Hornedo, 2012) and proposed alternatives to
the status quo of the society. Faculty members must be free from retaliation
for provoking students to think or for publishing any conclusions reached
conscientiously by objective analysis.
A university does not yield its objectivity to unquestioned assumptions or
prejudgments of the truth. Newtonian physics governed everything that could
be perceived in the 19th Century, but it had to give way to quantum physics
and relativity theory when a greater scale was examined. The academic life
was introduced by Socrates through Plato as the relentlessly examined life.
The idea of the university will be examined further in subsequent articles,
considering the views of other scholars. The rest of the questions also aim
to clarify the universal qualities of the university and academic life.
What is a professor? – This question is raised because a professor
personifies the university. How to be professorial clarifies the academic
life most succinctly. Thus the intent here is not to exclude scholars of a
different rank or at an earlier stage of their careers, but rather to
encourage scholars and especially teachers to be professorial. By living up
to academic ideals, one is pointed toward the role of a professor, and
suitable recognition may naturally follow.
To clarify what a professor is in the most direct way, it must be
distinguished from surrounding professional roles such as being an
instructor training specific skills, or being solely a classroom teacher.
Although a professor is partly a teacher, classes are fewer because of the
other roles a professor should play in Academia and society. Professors need
to be available to profess in areas where their expertise applies. For
example, there is the blind review of papers, with little or no recognition
for such work. A news program or a court may need the expertise and
established credibility of a professor to arrive at an informative
perspective or a sound judgement.
The academic process may be corrupted by the purchase of an academic
position in some way, or by a careerist, publish-or-perish mentality of
academic opportunism, which can be incited by credentialistic hiring
practices and rigid rules such as point systems for promotion. Then what is
more difficult, complex, interdisciplinary, or important is not researched,
and publications in many fields are clogged with statistics that contribute
little to knowledge or society because it is safer to stick to what can be
quantified (McCarty, 2008, p. 3).
Of course there must be accountability, but in a context that assumes a love
of learning and the priority of discovering things that truly advance
academic fields. Often the bar is high for credentials in appointments but
low for scholarly accomplishments after promotion.
Professors should have the time and tenure to rise above superficial
concerns, to keep up with educational technology and advancements in their
fields, to be active in academic societies, to give presentations at
conferences, and to engage in all sorts of scholarly communication including
but not confined to publications that ‘count.’
Who are the colleagues of a university person? – They are the worldwide
community of scholars connected to all true universities. Wherever the
universality of the university manifests in shared academic standards and
ethics, scholars belong to this worldwide community. Thus, beyond language
barriers and cultural differences, they can readily communicate, collaborate
or cooperate with other scholars sharing the academic way of life.
Because of the universality of the academic life, a regional or
international academic project or association can be specialized,
interdisciplinary, or pan-disciplinary when it involves expertise auxiliary
to all fields such as educational technology. Thus, the question of who is
involved in the world community of scholars can provide another perspective
on what is essential to the academic life.
While everyone on the staff of one’s institution may also be considered
one’s colleagues, educators and researchers imbued with academic standards
and ethics have more in common with scholars at other institutions and in
other countries than with nearby colleagues not engaged in scholarly
activities. As can be seen at international conferences or in international
academic organizations, scholars in the same fields have much in common and
much to share with colleagues from different cultures but similar
disciplines. Scholars from countries or religions that are currently in
conflict can maintain collegial relations and cooperate in academic
endeavors.
If scholars in some countries or regions cannot thus interact, either they
are not true scholars or, more likely, their institution is impoverished,
corrupted, or politically oppressed. Cut off from the lifeblood of academic
exchanges in a global age, excellence would be unlikely, and such an
institution might be a university in name only.
If professors are loaded with classes and campus duties that are not
professorial, then scholarly activities and academic exchanges outside of
the institution are in effect blocked. On the other hand, professors who
hardly teach but are urged to bring in grants represent another distortion
of the university by sacrificing its educational mission.
What should be learned in graduate school regardless of the field of
specialization? – It is the academic way of life, the standards and ethics
of the world community of scholars, which should be internalized through
intense graduate study and thesis committee supervision. There is a
qualitative difference or leap from high school to university, and then
again to graduate school. Just as higher education should not be an
extension of high school, an advanced degree represents more than an
extension of undergraduate studies. There can be exceptions where an
individual internalizes the academic life before graduate school, or without
it, because most learning is informal or through self-education. But a
graduate degree from an accredited university means that such attainment is
certified, and the individual is recognized as a peer in the academic
community.
Because of the difficulty of surpassing the level of informational
knowledge, often an academic person does not emerge without the cauldron of
a thesis and the fires of vetting by professors. No amount of memorized
information, formulae, citations, classes or conferences attended, or
content produced in itself constitutes a qualitative leap into the academic
life. But in the process of graduate school, it is the mental discipline of
standards and ethics that apply to all fields which may turn a person into a
scholar.
Supervising professors can catch common errors of unscholarly thinking and
suggest rigorous approaches to a certain investigation. The rigor itself is
the discipline, and it should inculcate both rationality and ethical
conduct. Common ways of thinking among lay people that scholars must
overcome include overgeneralization from a few instances, certitude despite
incomplete information, seeing and valuing only what is within one’s
purview, perceptual errors, logical fallacies, oversimplifying the
complexity of interdependent causal factors, and so forth. Ethical errors
include plagiarism, improper attribution, purchasing of papers or
credentials, altering of inconvenient data or results, exploitation of
others for academic advancement, and all other kinds of misrepresentation.
Thus, while difficult to specify, there are academic standards and ethics
that are common to all disciplines and recognizable throughout the world
community of scholars. It is academic rigor that is internalized through the
discipline of a graduate education. What is to be acquired is not
informational knowledge but rather expertise in an academic field.
To what extent can a human being live by academic standards and ethics? – In
a holistic view of the human being, there are natural feelings such as love
that motivate educators to share. Yet although there are phenomena seemingly
beyond the grasp of scholarly methods, one could ask what affective or
metaphysical domains exist where academic standards and ethics would prove
unhelpful or contradicted.
It could take a lifetime to explore the great extent to which a scholar can
live by academic standards and ethics. The scholar never wishes to stop
learning, enquiring, experimenting, teaching, researching, publishing,
mentoring, openly sharing and communicating. Academic methods are applicable
to daily life, and academic ethics are applicable to moral conduct. The
rigor of the academic life stays with the scholar after hours, an examined
life of reason that applies to daily life in cognitive, and in some ways,
affective domains.
When the idea of the university lives within a person, the academic life can
provide plenty to live by personally as well as professionally, without
contradiction. Such is the universality of the university.
References
Hornedo, C. (2012, August 20). Professor's email warning students of
'bigotry' goes viral. Central Florida Future.
McCarty, S. (1995). Practitioners of the liberal arts. The Language
Teacher, 19 (11), 43-44.
McCarty, S. (2008). The bilingual perspective versus the street lamp
syndrome. IATEFL Voices, Issue 203, pp. 3-4. Canterbury, UK: International
Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.
Sharma, R.P. (2012). Some thoughts on the idea of a University. Education
India Journal, 1 (1).
Walt, S.M. (2012, August 23). Top ten things that would-be foreign policy wonks
should study. Foreign Policy.
What is the Academic Life?
2. The Idea of the University
Original Source: McCarty, S. (2012). What is the academic life? 2. The
idea of the university. Education India Journal, 1 (4), 52-65.
Introduction
The first article in this series ventured general answers to questions
definitive of the academic life. This article spirals back to the first
question about the nature of the academic life, what a university is or
should be. But universities today are under siege, threatening to compromise
the ideals that scholars have upheld for generations if not millennia.
Recently the direction of universities is constantly being contested, so
only some representative arguments can be presented here. This article will
also turn to other authors to characterize the classical idea of the
university that is always worth reconsidering.
The Mission of Universities Contested
It will be seen that the article by R.P. Sharma in the inaugural issue of
this journal reflects similar struggles East and West to defend the original
idea of the university from unscholarly societal pressures:
To what extent and measure can we allow the cosmos of knowledge to be
inhabited by positive sciences and technologies only costing a
pervasive impact on the lifestyle, attitude and values… eclipsing the
very survival of humanity based disciplines? The pitch is queered by
the market forces which call all the shots. Social sciences, with the
exception of economics have to adorn the mantle of sciences to acquire
respectability, with an articulate disdain for disciplines which raise
questions of the first order, such as philosophy which has and in its
essence still can, mother natural sciences. Aristotle has upstaged
Plato and Socrates. (Sharma, 2012)
The first article (McCarty, 2012) expressed quite similar concerns. Academia
and particularly the humanities are threatened from without by market forces
and in a way from within by positivism, reductionism, a quantitative turn in
both studies and evaluation, ethical relativism, business models, and
vocationalization of higher education.
Positive (or positivist) analysis or theories … only attempt to
describe how things 'are', as opposed to how they 'should' be.
Positive means also 'value free'. In this sense, the opposite
of positive is normative … Positive statements are also often referred
to as descriptive statements. (Wikipedia, 2012c)
One can accept descriptive studies without placing normative values off
limits. While Aristotle narrowed the intuitive scope of Plato, his teacher,
to a more empirical approach, Aristotle was an ethicist as well as a
scientist (MIT, 1994). Academic ethics must also be unapologetically
normative, though scholars of goodwill can disagree on some gray areas.
Higher education [in the U.S.] faces stark challenges: the ravaging of
public universities’ budgets by strained state and local governments;
ever rising tuition and student debt; inadequate student achievement;
the corrosive impact of soaring inequality; and the neglect by some
elite institutions of their core mission of teaching undergraduates.
[John] Dewey had a different vision [of] what education is primarily
for: the cultivation of freedom within society. We should not think of
schools as garrisons protecting us from enemies, nor as industries
generating human capital. Rather, higher education’s highest purpose
is to give all citizens the opportunity to find ‘large and human
significance’ in their lives and work. (Roth, 2012)
The purposes and goals of universities have been expressed in many ways by
educationalists of every era, yet the universality of the university shines
through them all. Dewey is echoed from India in terms of humanistic
psychology:
Useful learning is that which pervades the whole person and which is
relevant to one’s personal style, needs, and human development.
Teachers have the major responsibility of helping students to become
more fully developed human beings. (Kasinath, 2012, p. 94)
Humanists … contend that it is far more important for the student to
learn how to find new knowledge and to cope with a changing world than
merely to absorb the information of yesterday and today. Here the
focus is on creating the kind of emotional and intellectual climate in
which the student can grow intellectually and affectively. (Kasinath,
2012, p. 95)
But there are also many ways to undermine the distinct mission of
universities where they interface with a contemporary society and are thus
vulnerable, for instance, through the need for funding in an economic
system. However, it is on a level of ideology beyond necessity where the
mission of universities can be legitimately contested. Somehow the stakes
have grown higher, perhaps as opportunities diminish for many just as their
expectations are raised by higher education. Market forces leave many
educated people feeling exploited or excluded. As the rich press their
advantage, the mainstream mass media outlets seem to side with their fellow
elite class, leaving especially struggling young educated people with a
sense of betrayal.
[Among] institutions that are intended to safeguard against this ease
of inducing blind trust in and obedience to authorities[, the] most
obvious one is journalism, which, at its best, serves as a check
against political authority by subjecting its pronouncements to
skepticism and scrutiny. [Another] is academia, a realm where tenure
is supposed to ensure that authority's most sacred orthodoxies are
subjected to unrelenting, irreverent questioning. (Greenwald, 2012)
The above American lawyer seems to imply that academics are also following
the path of least resistance and selling out to authoritarian power in their
society. While it may be true of faculty members who are not really
committed to the academic way of life, tenure itself is one of the pillars
of Academia being undermined by market forces and administrative business
models. Part-time teachers have increasingly replaced professors and are
among the ranks of the working poor. One embittered American part-timer, an
anonymous whistle-blower, makes a cogent argument in the following passages:
[In the 1960s] universities were the very heart of intense public
discourse, passionate learning, and vocal citizen involvement in the
issues of the times. It was during this time, too, when colleges had a
thriving professoriate, and when students were given access to a
variety of subject areas, and the possibility of broad learning. The
Liberal Arts stood at the center of a college education, and students
were exposed to philosophy, anthropology, literature, history,
sociology, world religions, foreign languages and cultures.
From the 1970s until today, as the number of full-time faculty jobs
continued to shrink, the number of full-time administrative jobs began
to explode. As [the] faculty was deprofessionalized and casualized,
reduced to teaching as migrant contract workers, administrative jobs
now offered good, solid salaries, benefits, offices, prestige and
power. In 2012, administrators now outnumber faculty on every campus
across the country.
[T]hey have not saved money by hiring adjuncts — they have reduced
faculty salaries, security and power. The money wasn’t saved, because
it was simply re-allocated to administrative salaries, coach salaries
and outrageous university president salaries. There has been a
redistribution of funds away from those who actually teach, the
scholars – and therefore away from the students’ education itself —
and into these administrative and executive salaries, sports costs —
and the expanded use of ‘consultants’, PR and marketing firms, [and]
law firms.
Academia once celebrated itself as an independent institution.
Academia is a culture, one that offers a long-standing worldview which
values on-going, rigorous intellectual, emotional, psychological,
creative development of the individual citizen. It respects and values
the contributions of the scholar, the intellectual, to society. It
treasures the promise of each student, and strives to offer the
fullest possible support to the development of that promise. It does
this not only for the good of the scholar and the student, but for the
social good. Like medicine, academia existed for the social good.
Neither should be a purely for-profit endeavor. (The Homeless Adjunct,
2012)
Such an exposé in an anonymous blog post by a downtrodden academic is not
ordinarily publishable, but it basically rings true. The search for truth
has to go wherever the facts lead, however uncomfortable to established
parties, not merely shining light where the terrain is already bright. Many
scholars have expressed similar concerns about bloated administrations that
may sacrifice educational excellence by hiring adjuncts and using PhD
candidates to teach or interface with undergraduates. “The PhD used to be
about offering a unique research contribution to the field; now it's about
paying tuition and being exploited as a TA” [Teaching Assistant] (Downes,
2012).
In Japan some similar trends have been observed, with most foreign full-time
teachers on one to three-year contracts, often not renewable, and the
percentage of classes taught by part-time teachers or even outsourced is
growing. Many Japanese as well as foreign lecturers are evidently struggling
amid shrinking budgets and institutional inequities. At some point the
quality of education also begins to suffer, and various stakeholders
including the general public increasingly lose sight of the raison d'être of
higher education.
Thus, it behooves each generation to reexamine the classical idea of the
university and see why it has stood the test of time. If academic ideals had
been discarded every time they proved inconvenient for social acceptance or
career advancement, then today the qualitative difference between academic
degrees, or between education and training, would be indistinct. Instead, in
every generation, mostly unsung heroes have upheld the academic standards
and ethics that make the university universal.
The Origin of Universities
Universities trace back at least to Plato’s Akademia, founded about 2,400
years ago. Less well known in the world is Nālandā, the “greatest center of
Buddhist scholarship in medieval India” (Harris, 2000, p. 918), founded over
1,500 years ago:
Nalanda was one of the world's first residential universities … it
accommodated over 10,000 students and 2,000 teachers. The university
was considered an architectural masterpiece, and was marked by a lofty
wall and one gate. Nalanda had eight separate compounds and ten
temples, along with many other meditation halls and classrooms … The
subjects taught at Nalanda University covered every field of learning,
and it attracted pupils and scholars from Korea, Japan, China, Tibet,
Indonesia, Persia and Turkey. (Wikipedia, 2012b)
What made Nālandā a university was that it “covered every field of learning”
then known. Starting around the same time, Benedictine “monastic schools
were designed for the religious training and general education of students”
(Turner, 2000, p. 1131), a tradition that continued through, for example,
“the foundation in the mid-17th century of the University of Salzburg”
(Turner, 2000, p. 1131) in Austria.
The word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum
et scholarium, roughly meaning ‘community of teachers and scholars’.
The term was coined by the Italian University of Bologna, which, with
a traditional founding date of 1088, is considered the first
university. The origin of many medieval universities can be traced to
the Christian cathedral schools or monastic schools which appear as
early as the 6th century and were run for hundreds of years as such
before their formal establishment as university… (Wikipedia, 2012a)
From the above examples it can be seen that the development of universities
historically has been inextricable from religious aspirations.
The Idea of the University
Thus, in the 19th Century, Cardinal John Henry Newman could conceive
of the university as a place of 'universal knowledge', in which
specialized training, though valid in itself, was subordinate to the
pursuit of a broader liberal education. These ideals, later developed
by other Victorian apostles of culture like Matthew Arnold, became the
basis of a characteristic British belief that education should aim at
producing generalists rather than narrow specialists, and that non-
vocational subjects - in arts or pure science - could train the mind
in ways applicable to a wide range of jobs. (Anderson, 2010)
These are points that seem to have stood the test of time.
The phrase 'idea of the university' was not invented by Newman, but
goes back to a seminal period in modern university history, the
reforms of Wilhelm von Humboldt in Prussia. Starting with the
University of Berlin, founded in 1810, the 'Humboldtian' university
became a model for the rest of Europe, and by 1914 German universities
were generally admired as the best in the world. It was the
Humboldtian model that shaped the research universities of the United
States, which head the international league today. The Humboldtian
university can be seen as the characteristic form of the university
idea until the growth of mass higher education in the late twentieth
century. It had a number of interlocking features, some new, some
inherited from the past, and was inevitably marked by the deep forces
of the age, including nationalism, secularization, the growth of the
modern state, and the shift of social power from aristocracies to the
middle classes, on the basis of merit, intellectual expertise, and
professionalism.
The central Humboldtian principle was the 'union of teaching and
research' in the work of the individual scholar or scientist. The
function of the university was to advance knowledge by original and
critical investigation, not just to transmit the legacy of the past or
to teach skills. Teaching should be based on the disinterested search
for truth, and students should participate, at however humble a level,
in this search. Hence the classic view that the university was a
'community of scholars and students' engaged on a common task.
Humboldt's influence is still felt in the assertion that research must
be an integral part of every university's activities. (Anderson, 2010)
Harking back to the Socratic method, Karl Jaspers also represented the
classical view of the university, with a focus on the process of education
(the pronouns “his” and “himself” presumably refer to women as well):
[T]he university does not have a mere teaching function; the student
must also ‘learn from his professors to engage in personal research
and therefore acquire a scientific mode of thought which will colour
his whole existence’ … Communication with the researcher and
participation in the research process can stimulate a scientific
attitude in the student himself which Jaspers characterizes as
‘objectivity, a devotion to the subject, reasoned balance,
investigation of contrasting possibilities, self-criticism’… It is
‘education in reason’… (Horn, 1993, pp. 7-8)
Without agreeing with such authors in every respect, amid the complexity of
changing times, these passages can still serve as a beacon of ideals to shed
light on the idea of the university in the contested arena of education
today. For example, there are ample reasons to maintain university autonomy
and academic freedom (Anderson, 2010). While the particulars of studies
change, a look at the heritage of Academia can inoculate readers against the
conceit that the latest trends in society are the greatest ever for
education. To eclipse these academic ideals would mean uprooting the
universality that serves as a North Star guiding the direction of academic
enquiry.
[S] ince their earliest days universities have been international
institutions. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they did not
escape the powerful force of nationalism, and politicians looked to
them to shape national identity and serve national interests. Yet the
cosmopolitanism of science and learning survived. This would not have
happened if the model did not possess some inner vitality.
[I] ndividual scholars and scientists should be free to pursue the
truth, and to teach and publish their findings; objective science,
following rigorous intellectual criteria and subject to what is today
called 'peer review', would immunize universities from religious or
political interference. The professionalization of science and
scholarship, and the organization of knowledge through specialized
disciplines, created internationally accepted standards and gave
scientists and scholars wider loyalties. In democracies, academic
freedom came to include the right of academics to be active citizens,
and to pronounce on political questions, making universities the home
of public intellectuals, and a creative and independent cultural
force. (Anderson, 2010)
Conclusion
In order to understand the academic life, the initial question examined in
the first article was, what is a university? This article has provided more
specifics and historical depth. The academic standards and ethics
constitutive of the academic life, but contested in societies today, are
reflected in the heritage of universities, demonstrably worth preserving.
While scholars aim for objectivity, and academic standards are scientific,
constantly tested, and hence generally agreed upon worldwide, it is in
ethical issues where controversy tends to arise. If academic ethics can
encompass the kinds of realizable ideals or best practices alluded to above,
then the way is clear to define the mission of the university in terms of
upholding universal standards and academic ethics.
References
Anderson, R. (2010). The 'Idea of a University' today. History & Policy.
Downes, S. (2012, August 27). New forms of assessment: Measuring what you
contribute rather than what you collect. Half an Hour.
Greenwald, G. (2012, August 26). Film highlights the temptations and perils
of blind obedience to authority. The Guardian.
Harris, I. (2000). Nālandā, India. In W.M. Johnston (Ed.), Encyclopedia of
Monasticism, Vol. 2, pp. 918-929. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn.
The Homeless Adjunct (2012, August 12). How the American university was
killed, in five easy steps.
Horn, H. (1993). Karl Jaspers. Prospects: the quarterly review of
comparative education (Paris, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education),
vol. XXIII, no. 3/4, pp. 721-739.
Kasinath, H.M. (2012). Teaching strategies based on humanistic psychology.
e-Reflection, Volume I, Issue III, pp. 93-104.
McCarty, S. (2012). What is the academic life? 1. General answers to
essential questions. Education India Journal, 1 (2).
MIT (1994). Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (W.D. Ross, trans.). The
Internet Classics Archive. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Roth, M. (2012, September 5). Learning as Freedom. New York Times.
Sharma, R.P. (2012). Some thoughts on the idea of a University. Education
India Journal, 1 (1).
Turner, D. (2000). Schools and Universities, Benedictine. In W.M. Johnston
(Ed.), Encyclopedia of Monasticism, Vol. 2, pp. 1131-1134. Chicago: Fitzroy
Dearborn.
Wikipedia (2012a). List of oldest universities in continuous operation.
Wikipedia (2012b). Nalanda.
Wikipedia (2012c). Positive sciences.
What is the Academic Life? 3.
Upholding Professional Standards and Ethics
Original Source: McCarty, S. (2013). What is the academic life? 3.
Upholding professional standards and ethics. Education India Journal,
2(2), 4-14.
Introduction
Previous articles in this series [above] ventured general answers
concerning the nature of the academic life, the time-honored but contested
mission of universities, and the interconnected world community of
scholars (McCarty,2012a; 2012b).
This article will apply the previous principles to further clarify the
nature of education and the exemplary life of the educator. Ethics will be
distinguished from values and morals, with professional ethics added to
academic ethics. The role of educators in society is suggested, with
examples given of how professional ethics are upheld or violated. In order
to clarify standards and to uphold ethics in the real world of experience,
it is necessary to challenge unethical practices, because there is quite a
difference in outcomes in each individual and society depending on whether
educators live the academic life or not.
The role of Educators in forming Cultural Identity
Parents start to impart humanness to infants, but then education becomes a
strong force of enculturation, steering students onto a certain track in a
society. To illustrate the process of enculturation, pre-school children in
Japan, wearing the same uniforms, their back pushed if necessary to bow
before a shrine, start to become Japanese. With every act of communication
in their ethnic group, their membership in a culture deepens. A culture is a
distinct set of implicit expectations to behave, think, and communicate in
certain ways cumulative of the history of the group.
If the social environment changes and a person encounters a different
language and culture, an acculturation process of accommodation to the other
culture can be observed. When the individual’s first culture is well
established through education, the process of becoming bilingual, and
bicultural if desired, or multilingual and multicultural, can be entirely
additive, with cognitive benefits. Regardless of the outcome in terms of
career or enlightenment, there was a certain prior education, and each
educator in the process held a great responsibility for the future of each
child.
Provided educators are treated with due respect by decision-makers in
schools and governments, then educators can serve not as nine-to-five
workers but exemplars of cultural identity and the educated life. In higher
education, where foreign teachers widen the scope of learning, a collegial
faculty can represent multilingualism, multiculturalism, and peace where
reconciliation between cultures currently in conflict is sorely needed. Thus
educators are stewards of cultural identity and bridges for enquiring minds
to a more global outlook.
Education as a Meta-Profession
Having seen how education and the living example of educators influence the
cognitive development of young people, education continually influences the
shape of society for adults as well. Majors in higher education, vocational
school courses, continuing education, or self-study with educational
materials largely determine the kinds of professions that exist, and
influence their professional ethos. That is, a kind of education took place
prior to each formal manifestation of the professions in a society.
Moreover, what is learned in liberal arts or general education can apply to
many if not all professions. Thus the educator is a meta-professional whose
responsibility extends to the occupations that exist in society, the quality
of work performed, and the level of professional ethics generally upheld.
The Professoriate as Stewards of the Professions
Focusing on professors and the worldwide community of scholars sharing
academic standards and ethics, higher education is a meta-profession in
various ways. American academics use the term meta-professional to describe
the roles and skills expected of a professor besides the content area
knowledge that they teach, particularly “scholarly or creative activities
(including research), service to the institution and community, and
administration” (Theall & Arreola, n.d.). The Kardia Group details the
typical contemporary American faculty career trajectory, stating that
“[f]aculty careers are considered to be a meta-profession: a complex
collection of responsibilities, skills, and demands for which there can be
no uniform training or preparation” (n.d.). While that is true as far as it
goes, the formulation has been criticized as applying almost equally well to
other professions. Gemma (2011) points to IT as an example of a meta-
professional skill that is needed now by nearly all professions. The term
“meta-professional” and the phrase “stewards of the professions” have also
been used too narrowly to aggrandize a certain discipline such as management
or some aspect of health care.
The above sources seem to completely miss the meaning of education as a
meta-profession suggested here. Education is the ultimate meta-profession
that sets the standards and ethics for the occupations that constitute each
society, and as a global scholarly community, thus guides the world. Higher
education particularly shapes and upholds the standards and ethics of
professional occupations. It stands above other professions in providing
their education, guiding principles, methodology, and ethical
responsibilities.
That is, in real life the professions tend to function autonomously and do
not necessarily respond ethically to issues outside of their technical
expertise. For example, expediency may prevail regardless of the
environmental impact. Across professions, doctors do not instruct lawyers or
economists to follow the Hippocratic oath to do no harm. Doctors themselves
may be corrupted by the profit motive to perform unnecessary tests or to
cover up their mistakes, as nurses well know. The military is actually a
profession that maintains standards well at most levels, but it relies on
obedience, so it must be pointed in the right direction by global ethics.
Only the professoriate plays a role in society that can plausibly uphold
professional standards and ethics across different fields. This makes it
crucial for professors to exemplify the highest academic standards possible
in their own conduct.
Values, Morals, and Professional Ethics
While the professoriate is best placed to guide society on global issues
with reason, the proper scope of interventions in professional ethics needs
to be clarified. Educators can speak out when other occupations go astray
ethically, or when everyday practices are harmful and could be improved.
Values may be part of an inviolable culture or interpretation of a religion,
what is considered good or bad, to be embraced or avoided, and what is more
or less important when it comes to priorities. Individuals may also refine
their own values. Yet there are customs in certain cultures that are
harmful, for example to women’s health. Their values reflect good
intentions, so it is the practices, how they impart their values, that may
need to be questioned, or education in alternative ways to accomplish the
same goals may be offered.
There is some overlap among values, morals, and ethics, but morals tend to
be widely accepted socially, and based in belief systems or ideologies.
Morals are often codified in proverbs or narratives, where the conclusion is
sometimes explicitly framed in English as ‘the moral of the story.’ Morals,
however, tend to result in strong judgments that others are good people or
immoral. To moralize would tend to just pit one cultural value system
against another. Effective interventions would be constructive and probably
indirect. For one thing, morals of individuals suffer under socio-economic
duress, so the root causes may be treated, such as the lack of human
dignity. The scope of peace-making may be limited where morals differ,
except for educators to appeal to underlying common values and good
intentions.
The concern of academics is more toward professional ethics, where being
unethical is unprofessional (cf. Changing Minds, n.d.) and vice versa.
Professional morals or values are not the issue but rather the ethos of a
profession in the normative sense. Ethos or mores refer descriptively to the
prevailing values practiced in a certain time and place. Academic standards
and ethics apply particularly to professional ethics. For example, academic
honesty versus dishonesty, where falsified research can be dangerous or
misleading, can be readily applied to other professions.
Standards, as distinct from ethics, in an academic sense are scientific or
mathematical signposts, statistical measurements or accepted practices to
ensure quality, academic honesty, methodological reliability, and
objectivity. To avoid subjectivity or emotionally laden value judgments, the
quantitative paradoxically becomes qualitative as standards quantify
quality. Conversely, to fall short of standards is considered poor quality,
and to deliberately violate the standards of a discipline is considered
unethical.
Upholding Professional Standards and Ethics
Thus far, this article has pointed out the great responsibility of educators
in shaping the ethos of each society and the world, as each individual is
educated either fairly or unjustly. Educators belong to a meta-profession
that stewards the standards and ethics of professions that might otherwise
devolve into self-serving occupations insulated from global ethical issues.
While the scope of educator activism has limits, nowhere is critical
thinking more justified than in academic professions and within educators
themselves.
Previous articles in this series suggested that academic standards and
ethics provide ample guidance for the educator to live by. That is,
educators ought to play an active role upholding professional ethics in
their society, but this mission would be undermined if they did not live it
themselves. That is what the title of this series, the academic life,
ultimately means. Not to privilege the professoriate, but professors are
uniquely placed in society to publicly and credibly uphold professional
standards and ethics, and, provided they have academic freedom, to speak
truth to power. The responsibility to positively influence society has been
entrusted to scholars through the centuries, represented by the idea of the
university.
Unfortunately it is all too easy to make an endless list of betrayals of the
academic mission, though it may sound judgmental to venture into specific
examples. There are general problems such as economic and political
pressures from society pushing universities toward vocationalization.
University administrations and staff have swelled (Berrett, 2011) while
part-timers teach more and more of the classes that students and families
are hard-pressed to afford. Besides general problems there are institutional
issues that go against Academia as a meritocracy, such as factionalism,
nepotism, bribery, cronyism or favoritism. There should not be one set of
rules for rank and file teachers, while insiders can abrogate the rules with
impunity.
Universities lack universality either when their activities do not extend
beyond their gates, or when opportunism and careerism determine what faculty
members research and publish. When teachers find romance in the student
body, even if they marry a former student, what began as an unequal power
relationship was in effect exploited, and the non-physical social contract
of trust in a credentialed authority figure was betrayed. Since the academic
life does not end when the bell rings, the examples here simply apply
academic standards and ethics to the conduct of professional educators.
In Japanese, ‘salaryman professor’ is a derisive expression understood by
the general public. Whether male or female, there are expectations of
academic and voluntary activities that distinguish a professor from a lower
paid teacher. This also applies to side jobs, taking advantage of a lighter
teaching load to supplement one’s income. Or when academic activities are
actively pursued only until entering the desired position or promotion to
full professor, that is not the academic life.
A similar notion in Japanese is the ‘salary thief,’ a sort of “free rider”
(Hardin, 2003) who does the minimum necessary. For accreditation reviews or
university rankings, the aggregate of faculty academic accomplishments is
measured. The professor with seniority or connections may have little
incentive beyond social activities on campus. Of course to cut corners, to
vanity publish, to use graduate students and take credit for their work, to
list an author who did not write part of a publication, to list authors in
order of rank rather than the amount contributed, or any other
misrepresentation would be unethical.
Nowadays many Westerners can get advanced degrees insofar as their socio-
economic background affords, but if their research day or free time is spent
on hobbies and so forth, perhaps their character was not really suited for
Academia. Professors are given time for self-motivated initiatives,
research, mentoring, community involvement, and so forth, not so that they
can moonlight, go bicycling or water their lawn before dusk. Colleagues
ought to be collegial, not to gossip or withhold cooperation out of
professional jealousy. Professors should be professorial and able to
profess.
Educators are vulnerable to exploitation through excessive campus duties,
classes at branch schools, or student recruitment activities. Such
economically motivated duties are not justified insofar as they block
scholarly activities and academic exchanges outside of the institution.
Administrators from a high school background or who did not deeply
internalize graduate education may overlook academic activities. Junior or
community colleges may excuse faculty from research but assign them many
classes, in some cases calling all teachers instructors, democratically
equating them with driving school trainers, and then paying them
accordingly.
A more positive notion seen in Japan is that of ‘Ph.D. or equivalent
(accomplishments).’ While a degree is finished or terminal, graduate school
is preparation for a career applying and building upon that concentrated
study. A credential received years or decades ago is not an entitlement to a
living without academic accomplishments having continually grown. An
academic with a Master’s degree could be on a doctoral dissertation
committee at a major university because of expertise in the area of the
thesis. Peer-reviewed publications or reviewing such manuscripts, along with
other such demonstrations of expertise can be taken as equivalent to
terminal degree training. Some institutions are merely swayed by impressive
titles or credentialism, but the notion of ‘Ph.D. or equivalent’ is closer
to proven scholarship. Also the notion of a specialization ‘or related
field’ takes into account the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary
scholarship, where a related ‘cluster of specializations’ can be more
comprehensive. Narrow-mindedness is the antithesis of the academic life.
In conclusion, the question is what each person in the world community of
scholars can do to uphold academic and professional ethics, to improve
society while conducting an honest search for truth in their own lives. By
working hard and upholding professional ethics, the educator or professor
merits recognition for being responsive to the needs of society and the
world. If that sounds idealistic, so be it. Academia is or should be a
meritocracy, so those who live the academic life should become leaders in
some ways in their institutions, exemplars of professional standards and
ethics to their societies, and, with global networking, guiding lights to
the world.
References
Berrett, D. (2011). The fall of the faculty. Inside Higher Ed.
Changing Minds (n.d.). Values, morals and ethics.
Gemma (2011). The Meta Professional – like everyone. Gemma’s Reflections on
Education.
Hardin, R. (2003). The free rider problem. Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.
The Kardia Group (n.d.). Professional and Organizational Development in
Academia.
McCarty, S. (2012a). What is the academic life? 1. General answers to
essential questions. Education India Journal, 1 (3), 6-12.
McCarty, S. (2012b). What is the academic life? 2. The idea of the
university. Education India Journal, 1 (4), 52-65.
Theall, M. & Arreola, R. (n.d.). The multiple roles of a college professor.
National Education Association.
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