Prestige Anxiety
In Pursuit of Knowledge: Scholars, Status, and Academic Culture
Deborah L. Rhode. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006.
Reviewed by Jeffrey R. Di Leo
Prestige or notoriety . . . conduces in no degree to the pursuit of knowledge.
—Thorstein Veblen,
The Higher Learning in America
Status and prestige are instrumental in shaping the American university. Alumni compete for social status on the basis of the prestige of the universities they attended; faculty base their status on the prestige of the university at which they are employed; and administrators often believe that increasing the prestige of their university will necessarily improve its value.
In his 1918 book The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men, Thorstein Veblen reflected on the uses and abuses of prestige or notoriety by higher education in America. For Veblen, the pursuit of prestige by university administrators aimed at “a growth in the material resources and the volume of traffic” of the university, not the growth of knowledge. Veblen thought these aims were not only misguided, but also of questionable success: “So far as the acquired prestige is designed to serve a pecuniary end it can only be useful in the way of impressing donors—a highly speculative line of enterprise, offering suggestive parallel to the drawing of a lottery.” His ultimate conclusion was that “whatever will not serve the end of prestige has no secure footing” in the American university.
In some ways, In Pursuit of Knowledge simply continues and updates the Veblenian line on prestige, namely, that the pursuit of prestige derails the pursuit of knowledge. In other ways, Deborah L. Rhode’s book is a qualified embrace of the pursuit of prestige by higher education today. Her qualification charges us to temper the pursuit of prestige to—as Veblen says—“conduce” with the pursuit of knowledge. Either way, one finds in Rhode’s book a strong sense of anxiety concerning the ultimate value and real costs of the pursuit of prestige in higher education today.
At heart, In Pursuit of Knowledge is a cautionary tale about the “overvaluation of prestige by academics and their institutions.” As the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law and the director of the Keck Center on Legal Ethics and the Legal Profession at the Stanford Law School, Rhode’s perspective is that of an insider. Working at one of the most prestigious universities in America in a named professorship understandably puts her in an excellent position to speak to these matters based on direct experience. Nevertheless, her book will still speak volumes to those at universities that strive for, but have not established, the level of prestige of Stanford.
Rhode opens with a series of observations about the challenges facing higher education today and the way they affect the academic mission. While many of these challenges have been well rehearsed by others (flaws in university-ranking methods, increasing cost of education, increasing student debt, declining state subsidies for higher education), her tactic of examining them through the lens of status and prestige is revealing.
Rhode provides a wealth of evidence that the mission of higher education in America today is becoming increasingly focused on the achievement of status and prestige. For her, this results in a shift from academic-focused missions to prestige-focused missions. One of the results of this shift in university mission is increasing pressure on faculty to produce higher levels of scholarship, particularly at institutions seeking to raise their status. Rhode terms this shift “upward drift,” commenting that “an increasing number of schools have sought to enhance their reputations by supporting research.”
However, this “upward drift” or “mission creep” is not without its costs. Rhode contends that “institutions lower on the prestige pecking order” tend “to imitate rather than innovate and replicate the priorities of more prestigious universities than to develop distinctive strengths.” For her, imitation (as opposed to innovation) as a means of achieving status sets up many members of the profession for failure and frustration. “There are, after all,” laments Rhode, “so many ways of falling short.”
One form of “upward-drift imitation” (that can lead to faculty frustration) involves increasing the emphasis on research and scholarship. Rhode is quite cynical about the value of more research and scholarship in itself, noting that “estimates of pointless publications run as high as 90 percent.” In addition, a repeated charge in her book is that the writing style and the highly specialized topics of much contemporary scholarship contribute to its pointlessness. “Too much academic writing is unnecessarily unintelligible and inconsequential,” writes Rhode, “directed at too narrow an audience and too insignificant a set of topics.”
Rhode’s comments on the style of scholarship appear to be more in line with conservative critics than progressive ones. In fact, she even quotes Lynne Cheney, who charges that these stylistically difficult publications serve “no purpose beyond expanding the author’s c.v.’s.” Nevertheless, Rhode aims to distance herself from the conservative charge that highly specialized and stylistically difficult scholarship is in itself without value. Her belief is that “more attention should focus on quality rather than quantity.” Moreover, the energy and time devoted to producing specialized academic writing “could be usefully redirected to work that has direct application to societal needs and concerns.”
Rhode recommends that scholarship be written in a style that is accessible to many potential audiences and not just specialists. This is especially important for scholars who want more public attention for their work. One of the virtues of In Pursuit of Knowledge is that Rhode practices what she suggests: her book is written in a style accessible to a wide audience.
The downside of her plea for more accessible writing will, however, also be quite evident to most scholars: “Writing for a general audience does little to advance a scholarly reputation, and in some ways works against it.” Rhode calls for more rewards “for work that reaches general audiences on matters of social importance.” She is admirably concerned with the quality and quantity of material that those within the academy share with those outside of it. “It is, in essence,” she writes, “hard for public intellectuals to remain intellectual.”
Rhode also argues that research and scholarship must always be conducted with integrity and shows how research integrity can be compromised in the quest for status. In one of the richer sections of her book, Rhode outlines numerous serious recent problems concerning research ethics. Bias and conflicts of interest, fairness in paper refereeing, and authorship credit top her list of ethical concerns. Of the more disappointing research concerns she discusses are the ways in which professional and financial affiliation can bias research results. For example, she cites cases where articles were accepted for publication when submitted by authors affiliated with prestigious universities but were rejected when resubmitted by authors affiliated with less prestigious institutions. She furthermore reminds us that “seldom do institutions prohibit researchers from holding economic interests that would be affected by their results.” These and other ethical concerns lead Rhode to conclude that “more research on research ethics and policies should be a high priority.”
Rhode contends that teaching is also often a casualty in the pursuit of prestige. While “an institution’s ratings typically reflect its relative prestige,” this “is in turn affected by its U.S. News and World Report ranking, thus creating a somewhat circular process.” Given that the U.S. News ratings are not reliable gauges of instructional quality and that “academic administrators rarely have reliable information on the relative effectiveness of teaching,” Rhode believes that institutional prestige is an imperfect indicator of teaching effectiveness.
Furthermore, she wonders, “Why does a profession committed to the search for knowledge know so little about the effectiveness of teaching, which it claims as one of its primary missions?” She calls for institutions to do more monitoring of teaching and to take advantage of initiatives such as the Collegiate Learning Assessment and the National Survey of Student Engagement. By assuming more responsibility for learning outcomes and being more accountable for educational performance, Rhode argues, universities will be able to rescue teaching from the shadow of the pursuit of prestige.
While some charge that an increasing emphasis on research and scholarship necessarily detracts from teaching quality simply by redirecting faculty energy and effort, Rhode disagrees. She argues that research and teaching complement each other. “Just as teaching can enhance skills essential for research,” maintains Rhode, “research can enrich teaching.” For her, “the best way for teachers to demonstrate how knowledge is advanced is through their own participation in the process.” Her arguments here are crucial, for they address a central concern regarding the pursuit of prestige: namely, whether increasing research will result in a decline in teaching quality.
Rhode’s observations about academic administration are sobering. Overall, she is fairly critical of administrators, wondering, “Why does higher education rely so heavily for managerial work on faculty members who are not trained for that task? And why do teachers and scholars who prize the intellectual life take jobs that allow so little scope for its pursuit?” Her most direct response to the latter question is “the desire for status and influence”—something that she says “few academics want to admit.” Another response is that administrative service is “a way of eventually sidling into that once elusive faculty position.”
Yet Rhode seems also to be sensitive to the notion that not only do administrators view administration as a way of achieving status and prestige in the profession, but many of the problems with which administrators have to contend are the result of status and prestige issues among the faculty. She notes that “dealing with unpleasant colleagues and unreasonable demands is part of the job description” of an administrator, and quotes a saying attributed to William Sayre that “academic politics are so bitter because so little is at stake.” Still, her analysis of the dynamics of status and prestige among faculty and administration feels underdeveloped, particularly given the importance of this topic. Moreover, her suggestions for attending to status issues between faculty and administration seem half-hearted. For example, suggesting fewer faculty committees or changes in faculty governance bodies (senates and councils) is pragmatic, but does not directly address the internal status dynamics of faculty-administration relations.
By far the most memorable parts of the book deal with the presentation of the academic self in public life. These passages are full of interesting observations ranging from what to wear at a conference to how to respond to criticism in public. Each observation connects public appearance with the quest for status and addresses the general question of how academics “fashion” themselves in order to achieve status and prestige.
In Pursuit of Knowledge is a highly readable, thought-provoking, and accessible insider’s account of the state of higher education. It is meticulously researched, well organized, and a pleasure to read. What most sets it apart from the many other books on this topic is its constructive focus on the role of status and prestige in the academy—a topic of immense importance for all with investments in the future of American higher education. However, while Rhode does an excellent job in drawing out many of the problems associated with the overvaluation of status and prestige, one is still left uncertain about the distinction between a healthy pursuit of prestige and an unhealthy one.
Jeffrey R. Di Leo is dean of arts and sciences at the University of Houston–Victoria. His books include Affiliations: Identity in Academic Culture and If Classrooms Matter: Progressive Visions of Educational Environments (with Walter R. Jacobs).
|