Our Higher Calling, Second Edition: Rebuilding the Partnership between America and Its Colleges and Universities

By Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein

This is an unmistakable time of crisis and confusion about the purpose, value, and sustainability of higher education in the United States. Data continues to show substantial benefits for students who complete a four-year degree, yet Americans from all backgrounds are losing confidence in the nation's institutions of higher learning, and political and economic challenges for colleges and universities seem greater than ever. How can faculty, administrators, governing boards, and other stakeholders address these challenges effectively? Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein draw on interviews with higher education thought leaders and their own experience inside and outside the academy to address these problems head on.

Now in paperback with a new preface by the authors, Our Higher Calling presents a forceful case for the enduring value of higher education along with pragmatic recommendations for how campus leaders can engage in constructive dialogue about necessary change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Feb 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9781469679198

Holden Thorp

Holden Thorp is editor-in-chief for the Science family of journals.

Book preview

Praise for OUR HIGHER CALLING

Clearly and appealingly written, this book is an important call for universities to reimagine their partnerships with society. Thorp and Goldstein combine the benefits of their own deep experience with interviews with key educational figures and offer insight on nearly every major issue facing universities today. I enjoyed this book from beginning to end.

—Christopher Newfield, author of The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them

American higher education has long enjoyed intricate partnerships with government and society, but in recent decades, those have frayed. Thorp and Goldstein offer penetrating insights about the challenges faced as well as a comprehensive prescription for a new and enduring compact.

—Mary Sue Coleman, president, Association of American Universities

For more than a century, a strong system of American higher education has been one of the greatest drivers for prosperity, not just in our own country but in the world. This thought-provoking book shows that our future depends on restoring a common understanding of the purpose of higher education. With a clear-eyed sense of challenges and failings in our colleges and universities, Thorp and Goldstein also show the elements of meaningful strategies to address demographic, technological, and other changes.

—Peter Grauer, chairman, Bloomberg L.P.

It is high time for fresh thinking and new urgency in how higher education is preparing students for careers after graduation. We must nurture people’s curiosity so they have the desire and ability to continuously develop their skills. This book shows how higher education and those seeking to employ college and university graduates can ensure they are pulling in the same direction as we seek a prosperous and productive future.

—Jonas Prising, chairman and CEO, ManpowerGroup

American higher education faces significant challenges, but they are not insurmountable. In this book, Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein dispel myths and recommend solutions that must be taken seriously. A degree from an American university is still the envy of the world. The ideas shared in this book show how that can remain true in the future.

—Gururaj Desh Deshpande, serial entrepreneur and life member, MIT Corporation

Thorp and Goldstein delineate with great clarity the set of issues that must be resolved to restore public confidence in America’s universities, and they offer wise guidance on how to move the conversation forward. University leaders, faculty, trustees, and legislators will find here much that is worthy of reflection.

—Richard C. Levin, president emeritus, Yale University

U.S. higher education critics complain that tuitions are too high, while students are terrified they will have too much debt without the twenty-first-century job skills to pay it off. Thorp and Goldstein argue convincingly that innovation and entrepreneurial approaches can reengineer, reenergize, and reposition the sector to be the undisputed best in the world.

—Michael L. Lomax, president and CEO, United Negro College Fund

Praise for ENGINES OF INNOVATION

"A growing chorus of voices is insisting that the world’s great problems will be solved only through innovative thinking and that such thinking can best be found at the research university. Right at the forefront of this group are Holden Thorp … and Buck Goldstein … and they lay out a persuasive case in Engines of Innovation."

—BizEd

Thorp and Goldstein have hit the mark. Promoting innovation in higher education is one of the best things we can do for our country’s global competitiveness and economic future, and this book points the way forward.

—Michael R. Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City

Universities have enabled the American dream and are among our nation’s greatest competitive strengths. However, the costs of a university education are unsustainably high, and there is pressure on virtually every traditional source of revenue. Universities must transform themselves, yet they face numerous barriers to change—starting with the tenure system. This book, by one of the new generation of innovative university presidents together with a leading venture capitalist, describes how universities can embark on a whole new path. The book is full of ideas for university leaders, trustees, alumni, philanthropists, and the business community.

—Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business School

Thorp and Goldstein bring an urgent and timely message: American universities must fundamentally transform in order to assure America’s global competitive leadership in the 21st century. Simply put, if colleges foster an entrepreneurial culture, innovation will flourish, both within our academic institutions and more broadly throughout the economy. This outstanding book paves the way forward.

—John Denniston, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

"Engines of Innovation inspires, guides, and informs universities on collaboration, structure, sustainability, cost, and practical details of designing and achieving maximum potential for entrepreneurship programs. This fascinating read is an excellent resource for helping universities connect with the world beyond their campuses."

—Deborah D. Hoover, president and CEO of the Burton D. Morgan Foundation

Packed with ideas about how to transform universities into wellsprings of solutions to global problems.

—David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas

It is widely recognized that innovative entrepreneurs play a critical role in the technical progress and economic growth of our society. With the help of this excellent book, colleges and universities can begin to design and more effectively to establish programs in entrepreneurship.

—William J. Baumol, academic director of the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, New York University

The role of universities as sources for entrepreneurial endeavors in information technology and biotechnology has long been appreciated. In this exciting book, Thorp and Goldstein propose an interesting thesis: the entrepreneurial characteristics of the top research universities will be critical to the efforts of these universities to play a major role in seeking solutions to the world’s biggest problems. This is a fascinating thesis and one that, after reading this book, I came to believe.

—John L. Hennessy, president of Stanford University

Our Higher Calling

Our Higher Calling

Rebuilding the Partnership between America and Its Colleges and Universities

Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein

SECOND EDITION

With a new preface by the authors

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS Chapel Hill

This book was published with the assistance of the Luther H. Hodges Sr. and Luther H. Hodges Jr. Fund of the University of North Carolina Press.

© 2018 Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein

Preface to the second edition © 2024 Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein

All rights reserved

Designed by Richard Hendel

Set in Utopia

by codeMantra, Inc.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Jacket illustration: Group of Diverse International Students Celebrating Graduation by Rawpixel, iStockphoto.com

ISBN: 978-1-4696-7918-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)

ISBN: 978-1-4696-7919-8 (epub)

ISBN: 979-8-8908-8754-2 (pdf)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the original edition of this book as follows:

Names: Thorp, H. Holden, 1964– author. | Goldstein, Buck, author.

Title: Our higher calling : rebuilding the partnership between America and its colleges and universities / Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein.

Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018008894| ISBN 9781469646862 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469646879 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Education, Higher—United States—Philosophy. | Education, Higher—Aims and objectives—United States. | Universities and colleges—United States.

Classification: LCC LB2322.2 .T48 2018 | DDC 378.73—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008894

For John, Emma, Katherine, and Max

Contents

Preface to the Second Edition

Introduction

1 Why American Universities Are the Best in the World

2 American Universities Are Challenged as Never Before

3 Strategy Is Critical, and Very Difficult

4 Students Are Not Customers

5 Faculty Are Not Employees

6 University Leadership—More Complicated and More Critical Than Ever

7 Academic Medicine—The Elephant in the Room

8 Economic Development Is No Longer Optional

9 The Case for Both Basic Research and Entrepreneurship

10 An Education and a Job

11 Framing the Conversation

12 Rebuilding the Partnership

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Preface to the Second Edition

When we first settled on a title for this book, we worried it might be naive to call it Our Higher Calling. Were we deluding ourselves by thinking that a university had a higher purpose? That transforming the lives of students and discovering new knowledge for the common good drove university decision-making? At the time, we embraced the belief that such a mission was so compelling, and the American university so enduring, that a set of practical initiatives could rebuild the long-standing relationship between higher education and the American public.

Times have changed, and practical initiatives alone will not be enough. As we write this, America’s colleges and universities are embroiled in a battle to remain the kind of value-driven institutions that made it possible to speak of them in terms of vocation rather than as a set of enterprises that look more like a typical business: entities dedicated to arbitrary metrics and utilitarian, even pecuniary, outcomes. In the world we live in today, money, power, and politics are central to the struggle to save the very idea of the American university.

Social turmoil ignited the smoldering issues we wrote about in this book and turned them into a bonfire. The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that we could effectively employ technology to teach at scale, but it also revealed that most students did not want to learn that way and had better outcomes in traditional classrooms. The sheer magnitude of student debt and the burden it creates were highlighted as the economy restarted after the pandemic. The Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements increased awareness of systemic inequities and challenged foundational concepts of free speech and academic freedom, while social media algorithms further separated Americans into political silos and echo chambers. The relationship between the United States and China deteriorated, cutting off a crucial source of talent and tuition revenue while raising questions about international collaborations that were once encouraged. The increased presence of guns on college campuses has led to lockdowns and tragedy. And the new era of the transfer portal and name, image, likeness (NIL) income in collegiate athletics killed the myth of the amateur student-athlete once and for all.

This turmoil unleashed unprecedented attacks against the institutions we wrote about, both large and small. Higher education has been framed as an elitist source of liberal indoctrination and arrogance, and public support for higher education among conservatives has cratered. Public universities, especially those in red states, have become battlegrounds in the culture wars. The topics we discuss in our book as being vital to the higher calling—academic freedom, shared governance, free speech, diversity, and tenure—are all under siege. State legislatures are introducing and passing bills that weaken or even eliminate these foundational principles.

Amid the turmoil, some things have not changed. By most measures, US higher education remains the best in the world, although our geopolitical rivals have exploited a surge in protectionism to create strong competitors abroad. Getting a degree without a significant amount of debt still pays off, but college sets students back when they fail to graduate or accumulate too much debt even with a degree. A two-tier system also remains, separating a hundred or so highly selective schools that shape the national narrative from the less selective institutions that the vast majority of students attend. Selective schools confer a huge economic advantage in terms of lifetime earnings, accumulation of wealth, and social prestige, yet highly affluent students are still much more likely to be accepted by such schools than their equally qualified peers from less advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.

Describing in detail all that has changed since Our Higher Calling was published would require another book. Instead, we discuss in the following what have become existential challenges to American higher education that must be addressed. We also highlight five themes in the book that are even more relevant today.

CHALLENGE ONE: EXPERTISE IS UNDER ATTACK

The foundational value of American higher education is the production and transmission of new knowledge. Traditionally, the public has celebrated scientific advances and literary and artistic works, but there has always been an undercurrent of conflict when new knowledge or modes of expression conflict with religious, political, or economic interests. Now, however, this conflict runs far deeper. Two examples illustrate the seriousness of what is fundamentally an attack on expertise. The COVID-19 pandemic brought a simmering antivaccination movement to a boil, with families and communities engaging in unimaginable warfare over the efficacy of vaccines and masks in mitigating the risk of serious illness and death from COVID. Similarly, a large fraction of the population refuses to accept the indisputable evidence that humans caused—and continue to exacerbate—climate change and that immediate action to reduce carbon emissions is a necessity. In both cases, critics follow the same playbook: accuse scientists of ulterior motives and of purposefully misleading the public in the interest of furthering their own careers while funneling money to support research that lacks both scientific rigor and peer review. Scientists have not helped matters. They have not explained the fact that science is a messy process of discovering what we know now and not the irreversible establishment of a set of fixed facts. Further, correcting the scientific record when errors are made often leads to drama and litigation, eroding confidence in the process for ensuring that science is free from bias in the long run. Rebuilding trust in science and matters of the mind must be the starting point for any effort to regain public support for higher education.

CHALLENGE TWO: STAKEHOLDERS ARE FED UP

College campuses have become ground zero for the discontent that has engulfed the country over the last five years. Nothing illustrates better the turmoil in higher education than the movement for better wages and treatment for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. For decades, graduate students have performed most of the federally funded research at highly respected universities. The universities have touted this research to enhance their reputations, have selectively rewarded professors who do the most research, and have even commercialized the findings for profit. But all along the way, conditions for graduate students have not improved, even as shiny new research buildings have sprouted up. Graduate students are not alone. Early-career faculty—including those on tenure and nontenure tracks, and especially women and faculty of color—are vocally advocating against structural inequalities that have existed for centuries. Hiring and promotion practices, publication in prestigious journals, and federal grant–making procedures are all under scrutiny; when needed changes are made, a backlash is often triggered in the name of reverse discrimination.

Policymakers, board members, parents, and taxpayers are also fed up. While the so-called woke culture is a favorite trope, the reality is that colleges continue to emphasize research over teaching and student welfare, which makes it possible for critics to shape the narrative. The exposure of the corruption in the college rankings cartel has shown that institutions prioritize rankings over the welfare of their communities. And an admissions process at selective schools that vastly favors the rich also undermines confidence in the idea that universities are committed to collective welfare.

CHALLENGE THREE: UNIVERSITY LEADERS ARE BESIEGED

We devote an entire chapter of Our Higher Calling to the almost impossible job of running a college or university. The task has become much harder. Although the situation is most dire in red-state public institutions, all presidents are under scrutiny from critics who blame them for a litany of societal ills, most of which are outside the scope of research and teaching. Among the high-profile targets are the teaching and study of critical issues related to identity and programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, even though American higher education clearly has contributed to inequality. Increasingly, there are demands from political and social conservatives to promote ideas that are unsupported by rigorous scholarship and to welcome unqualified faculty who cynically, and without basis in recognizable research, dispute established facts and theories.

This torrent of criticism, more often than not, is performative. The performances are often motivated by money, in the form of campaign contributions and the public assertion of power over what takes place on university campuses. Although these misguided attempts to fundamentally change the university will cause short-term damage as great professors and administrators leave for less hostile institutions or are terminated, they will ultimately fail because of a simple idea: leaders must have followers. A university composed of tens of thousands of people cannot be changed by emails from the president that very few people read or by speeches by trustees and politicians at meetings attended by a tiny subset of their constituencies. Changing institutions requires leaders to accumulate political capital and attract support. Forcing presidents to lead campuses in directions they don’t want to go is bound to fail.

Sadly, many presidents will flail away trying to appease their campuses, their trustees, and the public at large. Time after time, the conflicting promises that result from this approach has led to failure, and in the long run this nonstop cycle of appeasement will fail again. But in the short run, it will be harder for presidents to stay in place when boards conclude the right leader can wave a wand, turn back the clock, and return the university to the institution they think they love but that never actually existed.

We featured Gordon Gee in Our Higher Calling because of his many college presidencies and his skill at threading the needle that binds his various constituencies. He was successful for many years. But in recent months, at West Virginia University, his efforts have no longer allowed him to survive as a president. Championing politically popular initiatives outside the realm of teaching and research created a financial situation that undermined the university’s core missions, such as teaching foreign languages. The result was a faculty revolt and a vote of no confidence in the president. In classic Gee fashion, he quipped before the vote that if all he was accused of was actually true, he would also vote no confidence. More pain lies ahead in Morgantown.

CHALLENGE FOUR: ATHLETICS ARE HEADED TOWARD A TRAINWRECK

We avoided intercollegiate athletics in the original edition of Our Higher Calling, but it is clear now that a high-stakes arms race with almost no rules, coupled with a looming change in tax status and collapse of the current television environment, threatens to wreak havoc on the economic model of all collegiate athletic programs. Now that players can transfer more freely between schools and be handsomely compensated, Division I football and basketball have become professional sports dominated by billionaires willing to spend a seemingly unlimited amount of money to buy a highly ranked football or basketball team.

One immediate result of this unsupervised arms race is the collapse of the regional conference system driven by the siren call of increased revenue that can be used to pay sought-after athletes. The process began with the dominance of the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference, both in winning football games and, more importantly, in capturing television viewers. This destabilized the once mighty Pac-12, with UCLA and USC bolting to the Big Ten. The dominos kept falling as most of the remaining schools left, including UC-Berkeley, Stanford, and Southern Methodist University, who joined the Atlantic Coast Conference. Although this may enrich the schools in the two fortunate conferences in the short term, the move away from cable to streaming platforms—where television rights may be far less lucrative—may endanger the revenues even in the mightiest conferences eventually. To make matters worse, athletes in nonrevenue sports will be forced to crisscross the country on commercial flights while maintaining class schedules that classify them as full-time students.

The second likely result of the new athletic landscape is the potential loss of tax-exempt status for collegiate sports. The notion that a highly compensated player is an amateur is no longer supportable, but to label these athletes as employees threatens the tax-exempt status of college athletics, making gifts to athletic departments no longer tax deductible and revenue from athletics subject to unrelated business income tax. This change in tax status could reduce revenue from athletics by up to 50 percent, a hole that will have to be filled by institutional resources.

With billions of dollars at stake, what should university leaders do about athletics? Most of the usual survival tactics and rationalizations are starting to fail. A wise person once told Holden that when athletics comes up at a meeting of college presidents, everyone stares at their papers hoping they won’t get called on. That is likely to continue.

WHAT TO DO: FIVE PRIORITIES

This is a bleak picture. But to be clear, we do not believe the serious problems facing American higher education threaten its existence. Instead, what is at risk is its partnership with the public, codified in 1636 between Harvard and the state of Massachusetts, establishing foundational principles that make American colleges and universities a higher calling. In the introduction and chapter 1 of this book, we discuss the partnership and these principals, including academic freedom, shared governance, and a broad commitment to educating a thoughtful and informed citizenship. What follows are a set of high-priority initiatives that extend those we suggested five years ago.

Everyone Should Teach

Nothing is closer to the heartbeat of a college or university than teaching—and it simultaneously defines what the public expects. The failure of institutions to emphasize teaching is likely the largest driver of the collapse of public support for higher education. Faculty trying to reduce their teaching loads, the marginalization of teaching faculty and graduate teaching assistants, and the outsized rewards for prodigious grant seekers all send a message that the university does not prioritize students. As we argue in more detail in this book, one step that is easy to take is for university leaders to stay in the classroom and send a signal that teaching is a priority.

Technology Transfer Still Matters

We named our first book Engines of Innovation because we believe deeply that American universities generate enormous economic benefits to the communities that