Has there been a change in the status of the University in the past fifty years?
My personal metric says “yes.” And the change in status has been negative. Decidedly so.
What might be going on?
First, there has been the radical shift....
First, there has been the radical shift from a class elite in the U.S.
that had disproportionate access to Ivy League schools, used them as a
screening tool for elite membership and consequently supported them as
instruments of respectability. That has been gone for forty years.
Second is Gresham’s Law. Such a large proportion of our society has college diplomas that their value has been diluted. The term “union card” indicates the declining significance and the consequent declining importance of the diploma granting institution.
Third, for twenty years there has been a ceaseless series of stupid
statements by academics that make the high status intellectual title of
“professor” less status worthy. I distinctly remember Prof. Leonard
Jeffries, of City College NY, circa 1989, of the “ice people” fame,
clearly a rabid racist black professor (read his text to see that I am
not exaggerating). He is still mumbling his stupidity but the press is
ignoring him.
Then there was University of Colorado at Boulder professor Ward
Churchill of “people in the Twin Towers were little Hitlers” fame.
Aside from having fraudulent credentials and a history of academic
deception, the U. of Colorado ignominiously bought Churchill off for a
quarter of a million dollars.
Fourth, the political position of academia is so far to the left of the
American public and their own student bodies (all the Ivy League
campuses and 85 other campuses have grown conservative campus
newspapers in the past 25 years) they are bound to lose status and
respect. Certainly because the Left is anti-commerce, much of the
business world is faced with a growing disdain for academia. Major
corporations no longer seek new BA level employees from Ivy League
schools.
Fifth and most importantly, the relative position of academia and commerce have reversed. At a social gathering, nearly everywhere in America, even the upper West side of Manhattan, an entrepreneur or a CEO of a mid-sized company will attract far more attention than any ordinary professor.