Customer Reviews

The University: An Owner's Manual

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The best thing that I can say about this book is that it's highly readable. Rosovsky has written what is essentially a defense of higher education in the face of increasing impatience over everything from curriculum to tenure. He takes the reader through a Dean's eye view of higher education and he concludes that criticisms are mostly a matter of misunderstandings and that things in the academy are mostly humming along fine.

I agree with Rosovsky that much criticism of higher education is based on misinformation; however, he never really turns a critical eye on his own institution. For instance, he dismisses questions about the emphasis on publishing over teaching by blithely saying, nobody who isn't a good teacher would get tenure. This is a startling statement--one that Rosovsky never backs up, and one that, frankly, just isn't true. Nor does he examine deeper questions about publishing--like whether the pressure to publish doesn't produce a lot of garbage--articles that are driven not by the urge to say anything but by the fear that the writer won't get tenure if he doesn't find something to say. Rosovsky's complaceny on these and other issues turns what might have been a searching, intelligent book into a collection of easy reflections. The book is certainly not empty but neither is it entirely satisfying.

This is an interesting and informative book. Written by the former dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, it is a useful introduction to research-university and research-college culture. It is written with grace and humor and includes sufficient data to support its authority and sufficient anecdotal material to support its wisdom.

It is also a very limited book. It offers a sense of the `feel' of administration, the daily life of a dean, the nature of university relationships, principles and values. It is an account of university `culture'. It has almost nothing to say about the external forces that impinge on universities and the individuals (and share of the budget) devoted to dealing with them. It acknowledges the presence of university critics but opts for optimism rather than pessimism, even as it notes that some of the critics' claims are legitimate (grade inflation, trendy curricula, e.g.). Rosovsky's personal impulses are `old Harvard': moderate/liberal, northeastern and boosterish with a dab of sherry here and a love of crimson, silk robes there. The fact that he is an economist with an Asian area studies emphasis adds both rigor and breadth to some of his insights. The thrust of his comments is one of reassurance. "Here are the reasons for our procedures; they are rational and both tried and true."

The book should be of great interest to keepers of the Harvard flame. He describes the book as an `owner's manual'; it is actually a stakeholders' manual. Stakeholders are not the same as owners and the stakeholders here (Harvard students, Harvard faculty, Harvard alumni/ae, Cambridge residents and so on) will be interested in how the academic core of this particular University functions.

The problem for the rest of the reading public will be that Harvard is such an exception to the experience of nearly all other American institutions, including those whose stature approaches Harvard's. Its endowment, for example, offers it opportunities which few others enjoy; at the same time its dependency upon its endowment makes it subject to far greater threats when the market tanks. Its tenuring procedures are similar to a tiny handful of other institutions but markedly different from nearly everyone else's, including the 60+ members of the Association of American Universities--the top private/public research universities in America. Harvard does not tenure associate professors; nearly everyone else does. Harvard thus has a longer probationary period for junior staff, but then it requires candidates for tenure to compete with anyone and everyone outside of Harvard in the field in question. Harvard's every-tub-on-its-own-bottom budgeting is enormously expensive because it is duplicative. Its traditional `section man' teaching format, with large lectures presided over by tenured faculty with breakout sections managed by graduate students makes for larger class sizes than its cost and reputation would lead one to expect. Its size is relatively large and the number of professional students there creates an ethos that is not only vastly different from that of research colleges but also differently-proportioned than, e.g., top public institutions.

These are more descriptions of the book than criticisms of the book. I believe that nearly all of the author's values, instincts and principles are solid ones. He has actually written a superb book, but one whose title should have been something like "The Culture and Governance of the Arts and Sciences at Harvard University--A Stakeholder's Introduction."

I enjoyed the book immensely. I found it to be a very good introduction to the fundamentals of the US university system. I would recommend it to anyone who is considering higher education either for study or as a career.

In "The University---an Owner's Manual," Dean Rosovsky of Harvard states that

"The chances of having courses taught well---with verve and imagination---are greatly diminished when content and structure are imposed by "outsiders" without debate and discussion. Anyone who has attended schools run by our armed forces will have little difficulty in appreciating this point."

I beg to differ. The teaching staff at every military school that I have attended (Infantry, Airborne, Amphibious Reconnaissance, SERE, Ranger) was, in a word, outstanding. True, the curriculum was imposed from outside and taught by "teachers" largely without voice in either structure or content, but the instruction provided by the non-commissioned officers staffing the intructor's rolls could be characterized by the very words "verve" and "imagination"! These dedicated men and women took their responsibilies seriously, and went to great lengths to ensure that <i>all</i> students mastered the material presented. Granted, most military subjects are not rocket science, although guiding missiles from a forward observation post may arguably come close.

Perhaps the guiding force behind military education is an assumption that a single failure to learn may make or break a military operation, and very likely will cause needless casualties. This is in sharp contrast to, say, the "Harvard" model of education. At Harvard, indeed (one hopes) in the university in general, one may assume that students are independently motivated, that they are "burnin' to learn." Or if they aren't, they ought to be. Not so in the armed forces. Students may require external motivation, both positive and negative. I firmly believe that a large majority of veterans of the US armed services will agree with me when I say that, for the most part, military instruction is delivered with "verve" and "imagination!"

On a separate note, I heartily concur with the Dean's assessment that the academy loves pomp and titles nearly as much as the military! Further parallels, such as the extraordinary amount of "idle time" enjoyed by service members (growing directly in proportion to length of service...), or the intense dedication and commitment to service practiced by typical military professionals, are better left unexplored...