Re: Subordination to power: Follow the money
Quote:An intellectual might be properly defined as those who are primarily or professionally concerned with matters of the mind and the imagination but who are socially non-attached[/u]. "The intellectual is thought of not as someone who displays great mental or imaginative ability but as someone who applies those abilities in more general areas such as religion, philosophy and social and political issues[/u]."
These two sentences contradict each other.
Coberst wrote:We have moved into an age when the university is no longer an ivory tower and knowledge is king but knowledge has become a commodity and educators have become instruments of power; the university has become a privately owned think-tank.
Which universities do you have in mind, Coberst? You might get a more productive discussion going if you give specific examples of particular institutions and what, exactly, they're doing to make you think they have compromised their status as places of disinterested education.
Coberst wrote:Government funds are made available to universities and colleges not for use as they deem fit but for specific government needs. Private industry plays even a larger role in providing funds for educational institutions to perform management and business study.
A token example of selective reporting and confirmation bias. You may be correct that government private industry is providing more funds to institutions now than in the past (though you have not provided evidence of this, and I daresay you'll meet some resistance against the former from people involved with the University of California right now), but you have conveniently refrained from reporting that funds are also coming from individual donors and non-corporate entities, some of whom have explicitly not directed their contributions to any specific project or field. In the last six months alone, several institutions (including Harvard University, Brown University, and Bowdoin College) have announced contributions and endowments that have allowed them to replace student loans with grants and fellowships in an effort to widen, not isolate, higher education. Almost a decade ago, the Yale School of Music (which, I would think, represents exactly the kind of "disinterested" intellectual endeavor that you applaud and find sorely undervalued in American society) received an endowment large enough to waive tuition for all students entirely.
In other words, the picture might not be as bleak as you persistently make it if you reported all the evidence rather than just the negative stuff, Coberst.
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