Neither end, nor means, but both—why the modern university ought to be responsive to different conceptions of the good

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that universities ought to account for the diverse conceptions of the good employed by their students. The complex nature of the good of education, which has both instrumental and intrinsic aspects, means that the modern university should be impartial between students who consume this good for itself or as a means towards more fulfilling goals. The discussion on the intrinsic nature of education follows the line of the Humboldtian perspective. The instrumental benefits considered are the better democratic outcomes reached by having an educated population, the autonomy-facilitating character of higher education and the improvement of marketable skills. I put forward the view that achieving a balance between satisfying the needs of students valuing education intrinsically and those of students valuing it instrumentally is a strategy that should be employed by universities if they aim at regaining their imperiled legitimacy.

Keywords:

• Academic capitalism
• conception of the good
• impartiality
• instrumentality of education
• legitimacy

Notes

1. Throughout the paper I will refer only to the good of higher education provided by universities, thus leaving aside other higher education institutions.

2. The other moral power individuals are endowed with in Rawls’ conception is the capacity for a sense of justice (Rawls, 2001, pp. 18, 19).

3. Although the approach is inspired by Rawls, I do not believe that the Rawlsian definition of legitimacy fully applies. Rawls discusses about legitimacy in the context of exercising political power. He considers this to be fully proper ‘only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason’ (1996, p. 137).

4. One could wonder whether this is truly something that students are interested in. I shall assume that at least a small number of students (those enrolled in political science programs, for instance), want to find more about how they can vote better in elections. I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this issue.

5. On the other hand, see Freiman’s (Freiman, 2014) opposite argument. According to him, ‘economic growth generated by increased education can improve the instrumental value of the education of the less educated without altering their relative positions in the distribution of education’ (Freiman, 2014, p. 354). This could be interpreted as follows: economic growth leads to more jobs, which can be accessed by those who are less educated. That is, goods like education alternate between being positional and not quite positional, since they can also produce gains ‘without altering the relative position of those with less of it in the distribution of the good’ (Freiman, 2014, p. 353).

6. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this formulation and for urging me to clarify this aspect.

7. I thank an anoynmous reviewer for raising this provocative issue.