Higher Ed as a Public Good

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Higher Ed for the Public Good

Moshe Y. Vardi, Rice University

President Biden’s announcement in August 2022 of a plan for student-loan forgiveness has triggered a discussion about viewing Higher Ed as a public good, like clean water or public park. Furthermore, it is argued, if Higher Ed is a public good, then we should fund it as a public good.

But a discussion of Higher Ed as a public good must start with an agreement about the purpose of Higher Ed. This is a topic of much debate these days. Jonathan Haidt framed this debate as a choice between the purpose of truth and the purpose of social justice, putting himself solidly in the truth camp. Others have argued that the purpose of universities is not truth, rather it is inquiry.

Let me offer a different viewpoint. As a computer scientist, I am an active member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the oldest and largest professional society dedicated to computing. The Association’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct states: “Computing professionals’ actions change the world. To act responsibly, they should reflect upon the wider impacts of their work, consistently supporting the public good.” So ethical computing professionals, including me, as a professor of computer science, have a responsibility to support the public good. But why only computing professionals? Generalizing from the ACM Code of Ethics, I believe that the advocates of truth, inquiry, or social justice as the purpose of higher education, all got it wrong. I believe that the purpose of universities was best expressed in the American Association of University Professors’ influential 1940 statement on academic freedom: “Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good.” This is not to say that truth, inquiry, and social justice are not goals of Higher Ed, rather they are means toward an end, which is the public good.

Let me offer some further historical background. In 2020, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of “Science, The Endless Frontier,” a highly influential report submitted in 1945 to President Truman by Vannevar Bush, an engineer and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development. The report — which led to the establishment of the National Science Foundation — argued that scientific progress is essential to human progress — economic growth, healthcare, and national defense. Bush argued that this essential, new knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research. He concluded that it is the role of the Federal Government to support the advancement of science. His philosophy can be summarized in one phrase: “Science for the public good.”

Bush’s 1945 vision was revisited in 2020 in an article “Science Institutions for a Complex, Fast-Paced World,” by Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University. McNutt and Crow noted that, in the past 75 years, societal challenges — from nuclear proliferation to climate change to wealth concentration to social media’s impact on expertise and truth — ”that have resulted, at least in part, from society’s application of scientific advances, are now subjects that science itself must directly help to solve.” They concluded that the institutions that carried out much of the scientific progress over the past 75 years must reassess their mission and be committed not only to advancing scientific knowledge, but also to addressing the societal problems that technology, driven by scientific knowledge, has created. In other words, focus on the public good, but in a broader sense.

Consider, however, my own institution — Rice University. Rice’s Mission Statement declares Rice’s mission to be: “path-breaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contribution to the betterment of our world”. I like this mission, but I’d have modified it slightly: “path-breaking research and unsurpassed teaching for the betterment of our world”. In other words, betterment of the world, or contributing to the public good, must be the ultimate mission of Rice, I believe. In fact, even Rice’s branding phrase, “unconventional wisdom”, is part of a longer statement: “Rice is a community… who believe that improving the world demands more than bold thought and brave action. It takes unconventional wisdom.” Improving the world is the goal; unconventional wisdom is the means. My choice for Rice’s branding phrase is “Research and education for betterment of the world,” emphasizing the public good as the core mission. But I have yet to see many active discussions that engage the entire Rice community and focus explicitly on Rice’s commitment to the public good, and how education and research support that core mission.

The lack of focus on our responsibility to public good is not unique to Rice and is endemic in elite academic institutions. (For an exception, see, for example, Columbia University’s Fourth Purpose initiative.) There is a growing agreement that academic rankings are harmful to academia. Yet it is academic institutions who give such rankings power by cooperating with the rankers (with some recent exceptions) and taking such rankings seriously. I have seen too many strategic plans of academic units where going up in the rankings is a strategic goal, but promoting the public good is never mentioned. From where I sit, it seems that rather than pursue the public good, elite academic institutions are pursuing money and prestige. I am not arguing that money and prestige are unimportant, but they should always be considered means and not ends. The end should be to promote the public good.

But the most harmful consequence of Higher Ed’s failure to adopt the public good as its core value is the concomitant failure to transmit that value to students. The implicit message that students in elite institutions receive is “You received great education. Go have a great career, and be generous to us in the future.” If social responsibility is discussed on campus is it typically in the context of a business-school discussion of corporate social responsibility. Discussions of students’ personal social responsibility to the betterment of the world are quite rare, I believe. As described by a Harvard alum: “Many of my friends entered Harvard with altruistic plans for careers of service; they graduated with Wall Street jobs.” Indeed, in 2020, 61 percent of Harvard graduates planned to enter the workforce in their first year after graduation — 22 percent of those planned to take a job in finance.

My viewpoint here is not new. Jon Nixon argued this point in his 2011 book “Higher Education and the Public Good: Imagining the University.” Harry Lewis bemoaned the loss of purpose in America’s great colleges in his 2007 book “Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future?” Yet the current discussion about Higher Ed as a public good forces me to remake their point. Should Higher Ed be considered a public good? Absolutely, but only if it commits itself to the public good.