Degrees in bootlicking

geez, if only most of the young folk I come into contact with thought they were training to be lackeys or flunkies, instead of being born to master the universe without paying in blood, sweat and angst like We have had to….

I didn’t think students paid tuition fees to join an apprenticeship. Sounds like being screwed twice to me.

“Or is it just a general distaste for the idea that people are learning trades to serve the very rich?”

I don’t know if such distaste is general, but it is certainly specific to this reader.

aaron_m: what I find distasteful about this case is that it’s a metonym for the attitude that the purpose of education, and in particular (my trade) university education, is just to ‘equip people with the skills necessary for the modern economy’. Education is or should be a mode of self-development, not just a process of acquiring in-demand skills. The skills of the flunky may be in demand, but I don’t think that becoming a flunky is a way to flourish as a human being.

Sam C has it right. It’s already bad enough that universities are asked simply to churn out Human Resource Products to satisfy the needs of the economy machine. And now the function of universities is to churn out Human Resource Products to make rich people happy?

People are not just a Resource, for Pete’s sake.

So novakant, what`s wrong with them just finding the right pilot and teaching him a few manners? Or wouldn`t that be elitist enough for the rich twats?

I remember the halcyon days of free education, when the only requirement to enter a degree was being smart, and you studied pointless subjects like science or history. Then, when you left university, your degree was worth something, even if you made jokes about wiping your arse with it or getting a job at maccas. Now of course, even a masters degree is just a worthless piece of paper, and you have to pay a shitload to get it. Funny how the more you pay the crappier it gets.

Sam C said:

“What I find distasteful about this case is that it’s a metonym for the attitude that the purpose of education, and in particular (my trade) university education, is just to ‘equip people with the skills necessary for the modern economy’. Education is or should be a mode of self-development”

And what about the risk of elitism here?

Does this mean that all people that just want to learn a trade like sailor, medical doctor, carpenter, accountant, landscaper, or service like waitress, travel agent, etc… and get a good job are not “educating” themselves?

“I don’t think that becoming a flunky is a way to flourish as a human being.”

Is the only kind of human flourishing that is worthwhile some kind of self-development through reading academic books? What is all this about anyway? Are you just trying to protect your own turf as the group of degree having enlightened ones, or do you really care about what the education system and market are doing for people?

If it is the later I would suggest that you should be much more worried about making sure that when people work that means that they can easily save enough money to own their home, afford a decent life for their children, have leisure time, etc… And you should be much less worried about the labels for different education programmes.

What you should avoid is all this nonsense that a trade or service job (i.e what is being referred to as non-flourishing for flunky idiots) is some kind of obvious bad choice of life plan. Flourishing can also mean, for many, having a nice family and making a decent living. Learning to think critically about politics, to write, or about history is of course very different from being trained in a technical skill. There should be real opportunities for both, which is certainly not the case for all today. But I have a hard time being automatically judgemental of those that are not drawn to the former path (one suspects that the worry over training being called a degree is in part because it devalues those with higher educational status).

bi said:
“And now the function of universities is to churn out Human Resource Products to make rich people happy?”

Well that would be a problem. But that is not what appears to be happening in this case despite what Chris insinuates.

I agree that it is a BIG problem when economic interests try to push universities to train students to match their needs at the expense of academics. Academics is something that we should invest in independent of economic benefits. But the case at hand does not seem to be even close to an example of that.

As for the class issue, why not focus on the inequalities, especially globally, that make this gap between the super rich and the rest possible. If that is really your concern then the fact that some school wants to sell degrees to yacht captains shouldn’t even register on the radar.

aaron_m, my concern with this process is that in fact yes, science is different to a trade or an art, and the university system has a long history of teaching things which don`t get you a job. Making them job-oriented does not improve the quality of education people receive, and anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. Trade school and all the other different forms of education available to people do not teach the same things as university and they shouldn’t be considered the same.

I think it’s in the interests of craftspeople and tradespeople to accept this. Where previously they had a difficult but accessible path to a decent job (through the apprenticeship system) now they have an easy but inaccessible path to a questionable job, through paying stupid amounts of money to go to a university. And probably the apprenticeship system taught them better (just a punt there, I don’t know how it worked then or now properly, but I suspect it was better suited to the task).

These educational institutions didn’t spring up overnight from some evil Social Democratic mind. They’re tied into the way our society handles knowledge. We can’t just crap on this from a great height and expect our society’s knowledge system to emerge smelling of roses.

A perfect lackey degree should include all of these things: skippering a yacht, flying a jet, driving, managing estates, the tax avoidance skill, bodyguarding and performing cosmetic surgery.

This is the kinda professional I would like to hire, but you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find good help these days. Well, one can dream, yes?

vavatch, just a few hours ago on American morning (CNN) I saw an article on surveillance cameras in US malls, with the title “Big Brother Keeps Cities Safe”, written without a hint of irony or any sense of what such a title should mean. These people are all “job-ready” journalists, and I am pretty sure they wouldn`t make the same mistake (and Americans wouldn’t fall for it) if they had an English literature degree.

The fact that demand for such services from the ultra-rich is rising again is, for me at least, something to deplore. Consequently, so is the rush from so-called institutions of learning to cater to that demand.

So were do you draw the line between what is acceptable for a college to teach and who’s a ‘boot-licker’. Should we stop giving out degrees in interior design, because due to the nature of the subject most graduates will cater to the upper-middle and upper class? Are hotel and restaurant management graduates ‘lackeys’ if they’d rather work at the Pierre or the Ritz than the local Wetherspoons or Travelodge?

We could give out degrees according to whether they involve some kind of higher learning… along the lines of critical analysis, research skills, specialist knowledge, and the ability to engage in collegiate debate. As opposed to, say, learning project management and buzz words.

I think universities had a model for this, and in the rush to “modernise” (i.e. stop producing graduates capable of independent thought) it’s been watered down. I don’t know that this is a good thing.

vavatch, I read in the Daily Yomiuri yesterday that America is now ranked 27th out of 29 in the OECD for maths ability. When Europeans are starting to learn trigonometry, Americans are still on addition and multiplication. By the time Europeans have finished 8th grade maths they have covered the entire US high school syllabus. So no, they aren’t learning those things in lower school at the moment and I suspect this has something to do with schools wanting to “facilitate entry into career preparedness” or some other weasel phrase. Who needs to know trigonometry to work at maccas?

Meanwhile the bridges are falling down, and the nation is trapped in a land war in Asia…

gdr, surely that is what corporation tax is for? or perhaps you think that business should not be taxed at all? That way your position would be consistent.

vavatch said:

Anyway, it is a common tactic of defenders of these courses to claim that, for example, if you don’t study English Literature at degree level you can’t be aware of common literary allusions, can’t read critically, or so on.

Funny, but this doesn’t alarm me at all. It is a common tactic of defenders of physics courses to claim that physics students should know physical laws, advanced mathematics, and have the ability to read scientific literature critically. But perhaps this is a just a trick being used by despicable ivory tower elitists to defend their turf…

we should indeed stop giving degrees in all kinds of subjects

places ridiculous barriers in the way of people who want to work in those sectors

I see you’ve stepped back from the boot-licking lackey argument and are now pushing the academic elitism in conjunction with the equal employment opportunity angle, very clever.

I don’t see what’s wrong with teaching people skills that make them employable in a formalized manner and certifying that they possess those skills. It is also worth noting the fact that many graduates with degrees in ‘proper’ academic subjects end up doing conversion courses or jump straight into jobs they know very little about, wondering how university has prepared them for the real world. That’s alright, since there is value in purely academic endeavors, but both approaches are not mutually exclusive.

I’m going to take a wild stab and guess that the folks commenting here who think it’s a swell idea for schools to start churn out an army of Jeeves and Odd Jobs don’t think it will be them or their children who will be so educated. So, how big is your yacht, Novakant?

gdr: Once upon a time businesses had to pay directly for the training of their own staff, through apprenticeships and so on. Now it turns out that universities, set up as homes of pure learning, in fact turn out graduates with skills and aptitudes for many kinds of business. This means that businesses have for some time been able to shirk much of the costs of training by hiring graduates educated at the taxpayer’s expense.

It’s even worse in the United States, where students must pay virtually all of the cost of education themselves (using loans rather than grants). Education financing in the U.S. is worse than in virtually any other developed country, and even many of the underdeveloped ones.

A bachelor’s degree has about the same value as a high school diploma did 40 years ago – i.e., it’s a baseline educational credential, and is required for virtually any job other than the most menial. Yet, while the high school diploma was free, the bachelor’s degree leaves most American students in debt for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

No doubt some enterprising new university will soon be offering degree courses in being a butler or in being some other kind of lackey or flunkey (indeed, I expect commenters will point out that they already are!).

It’s called, “graduate school”.

Aaron_M said:

Does this mean that all people that just want to learn a trade like sailor, medical doctor, carpenter, accountant, landscaper, or service like waitress, travel agent, etc… and get a good job are not “educating” themselves? … Is the only kind of human flourishing that is worthwhile some kind of self-development through reading academic books?

Of course not. What I’m objecting to is the attempted reduction of what, for all its faults, is a system aimed at helping people to flourish in a particular, important way, to a training camp for servicing economic demands. I don’t care whether the qualification someone gets at the end of a period of education is called a degree or not. I do care that the various kinds of education we operate are directed at human flourishing. I’m a teacher, after all, and concerned that education should be good for students, not just for their potential employers. I’m also a humanities academic, and think that the kind of study I do and teach is good for people. It wouldn’t be worth doing otherwise; but I’m not daft enough to think it’s the only good. My worry is about losing this particular good, not that the proles from Catering and Hospitality Management will devalue my BA.

More generally: those (e.g. Vavatch) distinguishing useful from useless degree subjects need to ask themselves: useful for what? I teach philosophy – not especially useful for increasing GDP, for instance; extremely useful for developing critical, autonomous thinkers. And being a critical, autonomous thinker is good for one: it makes one’s life better. Or so I think, anyway. What’s the alternative account of the good which your list of useful subjects are useful for?

what is elitist about claiming diffrent institutions should teach different things?

Well, there’s nothing wrong with it per se, but it can be a subtle way of ‘putting people in their place’ and reinforcing class structures – in a perfect world it wouldn’t matter. What’s wrong with a university offering a degree in tourism? Does it diminish the degree of a molecular scientist or philosopher at the same university? What’s wrong with a student majoring in literature learning some practical, job-related skills at the same university because he wants to go into publishing later on?

churn out an army of Jeeves and Odd Jobs

Oh my, the left has come a long way if people employed in the service, leisure and tourism industry (which by the way is one of biggest and fastest growing economic sectors) are regarded as boot-licking lackeys, flunkeys, Jeeves or Odd Jobs; but I guess that’s a consequence of snobbish, status-obsessed New Labour and whatever the equivalent in the US is.

So, how big is your yacht, Novakant?

Which one?

I would bet that the proportion of critical, autonomous thinkers who have philosophy degrees is a very small one. I would further expect that people who are drawn to philosophy degrees are already critical, autonomous thinkers. It is obviously absurd to justify philosophy by such a secondary effect – if it really does have such an effect (I have known plenty of blinkered philosphy graduates). All sorts of studies can be said to improve the ability to be a critical, autonomous thinker.

So why should philosophy be held at the same level as, say, mathematics? While philosophy is not particularly in demand in itself, we shouldn’t fund it to nearly the same degree as say maths. That is not to say we should abolish it, we should just scale it back a bit and reallocate public funds. If philosophy becomes useful in the future, then is the time to resurrect it.

These seem like sensible measures. At least as far as aollocating public funds go – those funds paid for in taxes by all those “butlers and servants” everybody is being so snooty about.

Well Sam, how does some non-university offering a degree in yachting challenge that value society places on philosophy. It may certainly be generally challenged but the link from this case to that issue is more than a little weak.

I’m not sure if anybody knows but I would guess that the amount of money invested in philosophy today is more than ever before and increasing quite strongly in relative proportion compared to its past share of social investment(It would be really cool with some data on this if anybody has it).

And you will have to forgive us of being suspicious about what the real motives at work here are given the kind of terms being thrown about like bootlicker and lackey in relation to complaints about calling something a degree. And for suspicious about elitism given statements like “The skills of the flunky may be in demand, but I don’t think that becoming a flunky is a way to flourish as a human being,” in relation to people training for skilled job.

vavatch, what is so snooty about saying that there are better jobs for people to do than being maids and servants for the rich?

and what is snooty about saying you would rather education money be spent on the foundations of modern knowledge (science, philosophy, literature) than on training up better maids and servants for the rich? Or that the rich should pay for it themselves rather than making their potential butlers pay?

sg

Oh and I agree that there is a problem with universities offering stuff like tourist management (a bad habit of only speaking up when I disagree)

Vavatch@46: I’d be interested in your answer to the question asked. You now say that mathematics ought to be funded more than philosophy, on the grounds that it’s more useful, but you still haven’t said for what. What is the value that mathematics usefully promotes? Is it the same as the value promoted by educating people to be servants, or to do whatever other job is in demand? In case I’m not being clear enough: calling something ‘useful’ is empty unless you can say what its use is. I think things are useful when they promote good lives for humans. What do you think?

Aaron_M@48:

Well Sam, how does some non-university offering a degree in yachting challenge that value society places on philosophy. It may certainly be generally challenged but the link from this case to that issue is more than a little weak.

It doesn’t, I haven’t suggested that it does, and I’m bemused both that you think I have suggested that, and that you think my point was a defence of the social status of philosophy. Did you actually read my post? As I’ve already said, I don’t care whether the qualification someone gets at the end of a period of education is called a degree or not. And as I’ve also already said, I think education is useful to the extent that it promotes human flourishing. I have a view about what a good life for a human is, and it involves more than learning economically useful skills. You’re quite right that it involves choosing one’s own career, supporting one’s family, having leisure time, etc. I think it also involves the skills that humanities degrees traditionally emphasise; I don’t think it involves being servile.

As for the charge of hidden elitist motives: my view is elitist in the sense that I think some activities are better for people than others, and that some people have better lives than others because they can engage in those activities. In that sense, Marx and Mill were both elitists, and both were right: reading Kant really is better than watching Eastenders, and someone who has the time, security and skills to read Kant is better off than someone who doesn’t. But it’s not elitist in either of two objectionable senses: I don’t think that some people are intrinsically more worthy than others, or that some existing elite deserves its privileges. In fact, I’m making an egalitarian claim: everyone should have a good life. And one mechanism to that is education, if education is not reduced to a service for the job market.

I’m confused over what we are arguing over here. Is it:

a) college & universities offer degrees and programs of study focused on post-baccalaureate careers, rather than learning in the liberal arts. Learning as such becomes devalued unless it has a monetary award. This lead students to say things like “why learn about ancient China? I’m going to be an [accountant, lawyer, etc.].”

b)there is a market for vocational degrees that didn’t exist before in order to cater to the needs of an increasingly wealthy supra-elite. This shows how concentrated wealth has become — such services were unnecessary before. (e.g., Vanderbilt or Trump would hire a steamship captain, not have youths trained to be a yacht captains).

c) the government is accrediting (b). If the wealthy need this service, firms can train them. It should not linked to higher education.

Brave New World

On sailing and motor vessels whose lengths range from 24 metres up to destroyer-size mega-boats owned by the world’s richest billionaires, it seems you simply cannot get the staff these days.

Fortunately, the situation relative to land-based staff seems more tractable, at least in some areas.

I am not sure what the point of the original post is, but the comments have highlighted an interesting question of: what is university for?

In the UK universities are being encouraged to engage in third strand activity and to be more market orientated. If the market is to determine the value of courses why is there a reported shortage of maths, science, engineering, etc. students since universities have been more exposed to the market?(not a rhetorical question) Also if university’s only role is to be economically useful what is the difference between a science department and an R&D firm?

Deciding on what is useful is very difficult as the benefit of research may not be recognised until well into the future. I also believe that students can gain from the courses themselves, and this is valuable whether or not it economically useful. I also believe there is a social benefit to university, informing debates and producing educated and informed citizens, although it is not the only way and does not guarantee it. Universities should provide skills that will be useful in the non-academic world, but it has other roles too, and research does not need to be immediately applicable.

“The winds may have shifted drastically by the time their preparation is complete…”

Ha ha…oooh the irony and the folly…

Akenfield?

Sam C only Vavatch has come close to arguing that ”the function of universities is to equip people with the skills necessary for the modern economy”. Although this can be one of the functions, and why not? The posts about humans flourishing seems very pompous to me, could you say more clearly what you think universities are for? And what is the link between your dislike of servitude and universities opening up to the market?

Here are some questions that vocational schools don’t feel the need to address:

Vavatch’s “doubtful usefulness.” – I don’t think anyone’s actually tackled this claim head on, although the question “useful for what?” is a start. From the comments here, Vavatch seems to think use is related to (a) gaining money, and (b) advancing scientific knowledge. These are clearly two different values: what, actually, is the use of either one? Gaining money includes working at McDonald’s, and requires very little education. Advancing scientific knowledge seems to be a free-standing value judgement: why do it? [I have my own ideas about this; I ask because I’m curious about Vavatch’s] Sophisticated arguments about the nature of utility can be found in the philosophy courses Vavatch has so carefully avoided. There is certainly as aspect of competitive display in all education. Such display also drives all aspects of the economy beyond the production of food necessary to the sustenance of life.

Vavatch again: “If philosophy becomes useful in the future, then is the time to resurrect it.” I’m trying to think who might have said this first. Maybe it was Pol Pot, or Mao. It’s tempting to credit Odoacer or another famous empire-destroyer with it, but for the most part such people have actually been quite well-educated. As we all know, popping things on dusty shelves and forgetting about them always helps them to grow: consider the US education budget.

Sam C:”things are useful when they promote good lives for humans” – this is succinct, but it raises so many more questions that I don’t think it explains anything. Dodging the obvious morass of “good lives,” I wonder: “what about non-humans?”

An even better piece of unspeak is ‘human flourishing’. So universities are good for helping individuals develop and flourish. Does this lead to a benefit to society, if so what and how? This is important as it relates to how higher education should be funded. I think university courses should be interesting, engaging, informative and provide students with useful skills – maybe this leads to humans flourishing. I can not see under any circumstances that universities would offer courses to train servants.

I think universities can have a role to play to help provide people with skills that are useful in the job market. They can also help regional economies develop through, for example, collaboration with private firms. However yes universities perform other roles and these can be undermined by solely market considerations. How to value the benefits of university is a difficult question that I don’t really have any answer to.

Does this lead to a benefit to society, if so what and how?

This leads to a benefit to society, society evolves. From cannibalism to vegetarianism, from slavery to political equality, from plutocracy to meritocracy. University degrees for personal yacht skippers and such obstruct this evolution, it’s a reactionary phenomenon.

Re: #70 I was told that ‘universities opening up to markets’ was unspeak. This seemed to me to be a reasonable to cover changes in universities in the UK and elsewhere. To me the term ‘human flourishing’ seems vague and ambiguous and indicates a romanticised view of what education is for.

No, rather a degree in boss-yachting degrades your degree in physics like a degree in, say, prostitution would degrade your degree in physics.

Re Vivian #80,

But most grad schools still do not train people that way. There is no course called “Academic Publishing” or “Workshop Organization and Management”. If there is a critique of many grad programs, it is that they do not train students sufficiently in the nitty-gritty of academic life, whatever the discipline.

Richard: you’re quite right that my ‘things are useful when they promote good lives for humans’ doesn’t explain much on its own, but it wasn’t the only thing I said. And of course, there’s a great deal still to be said, both about what counts as a good life and about which lives count. But aren’t you expecting a bit much from a blog comment? I just wanted to challenge the idea that utility is market viability. When my book’s finished, I’ll let you know…

Phil: ‘unspeak’ doesn’t mean what you think it means. The point of my aside about ‘opening up to the market’ was that it implies that universities are closed, insular, dusty places, in need of banging open the shutters to let in the winds of change, etc. It’s a stealth argument. ‘Human flourishing’ isn’t, it’s just a widely-used term for ‘human lives going well’. And as already noted, I’ve said as much as seems reasonable in a blog comment about what I think that is. You’re welcome to disagree with me, but calling what I’ve said ‘overly romanticised’ isn’t a counter-argument, it’s just name-calling (or, perhaps, more unspeak – we all want to be realistic and hard-headed, not romantic, don’t we?).

Okay, my mistake about unspeak. I didn’t mean to imply anything about universities, I just wanted use a phrase to describe the changes occurring in many universities.

I agree that utility of university should not be determined by the market. Although I do think that markets can have some role in university and this can lead to the knowledge created in universities being used in useful ways. And I don’t think universities are training people to be servants nor are they likely to.

…question about what is distinctive about serving billionaires, given the inequalities that characterise society in general

comment 72 has this:

…I don’t think the existence of a small overclass has all that much to do with the fortunes of a middle class, and, as the poster above notes, such an overclass has existed for a long time. Can we make peace with it?

Indeed, if we accept that owners of 24+ meter yachts will always be with us and it’s perfectly normal, then there’s nothing special about it; but if you think that this is an excess, temporary and highly undesirable – then it’s quite obvious what is distinctive about it.

Sorry, no can do. Gotta draw the line somewhere and 24 meters is it. You can file a complaint with the Standing Committee of the Seventh National People’s Congress.

“But here people are being trained specifically to cater to the needs of a particular social stratum (the super rich).”

And since when are schools for servants somehow new?
And what’s the model for the wait staff at any restaurant with 3 or even two stars from Michelin? And how much training do they undergo? And why is they say that the difference between 2 and 3 stars is not the food but the service? And what are the attributes of that “service”? The rule is that service should be invisible until needed and then arrive as if having read your mind. What is the sensibility that takes pleasure in being treated in such a way? Or behaving in such a way? I enjoy it too sometimes, but then again I’ve gone out with ballet dancers who liked to get tied up and fucked in the ass. What are the esthetics of power and service? Monarchism?
My god the ignorance on display here blows my mind.

The point, I suppose [I hope- since I’m not going to read it] of Nussbaum’s article is that we should be teaching people not what to think but how; to be able not just to read and write and count but to able and even more important to be willing to look themselves in the mirror and examine what they see; to say not only “I like this” but to ask “what might be the implications of my likes and dislikes?” Once again, as with the discussion of Doormen the questions you ask revolve around assumptions you already have: and being experts and prizing expertise above all else you assume what you don’t know must not by relevant. Like a discussion about the middle east which somehow manages not to include any arabs, it’s a discussion of servants not with them.
Who mops the floor and empties the garbage in the classrooms and faculty lounge? Do the people who pick up after you call you by your first name? And how do you refer to them?
Every taste, every manner, every action sends out ripples not only of effect but implication. What are the implications of the modern definition of the academy? And why is there nothing surprising, nothing, in the article that this post responds to?

re:93 – What is the sensibility that takes pleasure in being treated in such a way?
Regarding invisible service that anticipates your needs without exciting your attention, well, that’s the ultimate goal of user interface design, and I think we’re all familiar with having such expectations, even if they’re rarely fulfilled.
It might be informative to look at how we interact with machines, rather than getting into the murky area of sexuality, which is liable to raise many more issues (not least the question of just how many ballet dancers you’re talking about and whether this constitutes an addiction of some kind).

If it is wrong for Universities to train the staff working for Rupert Murdoch’s yacht, then surely it is also wrong for Universities to train the accounting staff working for Rupert Murdoch’s companies. What is the ethical difference between Universities teaching maritime management and them teaching accountancy or journalism or architecture or medicine, all professions in which graduates may end up working for rich private clients?

Is this debate really just motivated by a distate for practical work?

A degree in “accounting for privately owned businesses” would sound a bit odd, no?

What’s amusing is that this site is predicated on just the vulgarization of the academy that gave us business schools (and “creative writing” classes.)
By coincidence I got a hit today off the comments I made this post quoting C.P. Snow.
Same problem: who needs wisdom when you have expertise?

Well, Seth, professional schools have been a feature of university education for a very long time. In Shakespeare’s time, one went to university in order to train as a preacher or as a lawyer. It is the education-for-its-own-sake folks who are the latecomers here, not the professional training schools, so it is incorrect to blame the latter for “vulgarization” (whatever that may be).

One possible difference between the yachting butlers and the tenure candidates would be the dedication of the service involved. The yacht is here and now, a part of contemporary lives lived in present condition. The academy is vaguely but intentionally dedicated to a future humanity. It isn’t traditionally about serving the here and now, but the there and later. This is a distinction that’s being thrown overboard with no little frequency.
The idea of serving more than power is operating at the margin of this question, serving something that’s actually more helpless than the most helpless of present company – those yet to be, that thing yet to be that will come from what we do, or don’t do.
There’s no bright line between a topless waitress with hundred dollar bills stuck in her sequined g-string and a sommelier in the most exclusive private dining room in town. There’s no bright line between a “full-service” masseuse and a neuro-surgeon for that matter. There’s no difference, no real ascertainable in an immediate sense difference between porridge made from surplus from a bountiful harvest and that made from the last of the seed corn. The distinction’s in the long-term, where most moral and ethical attributes reveal.
It isn’t that Murdoch’s seamen are wrong to do what they do or be what they are, it’s that bending the academy to serve Murdoch’s needs and interests redirects the entire endeavor. Pretending that’s all there is is the flaw. The symptoms aren’t the disease.
A world in which Murdoch represents the sum of human aspiration won’t last – a point impossible to prove until it doesn’t matter – making the goals of the academy cheap and profane, and futile. when bent to serve only that. For the already cheapened and profaned this will seem ridiculous, and engender scorn, because either way they aren’t going. A world in which they prosper is doomed, and a healthy world has no place for them.

“It isn’t that Murdoch’s seamen are wrong to do what they do or be what they are, it’s that bending the academy to serve Murdoch’s needs and interests redirects the entire endeavor.” (#105)

But, historically, as I said above, teaching yachtsmanship at University is not “bending” its purpose at all. From medieval times, the purpose of the academy was, and has since mostly still been, directed towards the training of professionals, almost all of whom would work after graduation in the here and now. It’s the never-never navel-gazers, players of glass bead games all, who have bent the true purpose of the academy!