Henry Walbesser

Integrity and Higher Education: Three Monographs Henry Walbesser

Institutional and professorial integrity were the hallmarks of the greatest intellectual institution of our time, the American university. Both forms of integrity are now under daily attack by forces more concerned with the business aspects of a university. Sports programs have become more important than academic rigor. Universities are unique social institutions with the two responsibilities: 1) teaching adults how to think and reason in a variety of disciplines with the goal of becoming a functioning problem solver and 2) to create the next generation of knowledge makers. In the great universities, these responsibilities are accomplished by active researcher/teachers organized around intellectual guilds called departments. Administrators are drawn from faculty who are well-established scholars. In the past two decades, this structure has been under attack by those who view a university as a business. Faculty have become employees. Under the business model, the very essence of a university as a place to explore all sides of an idea has been gradually replaced with a corporate uneasiness with controversy of any kind. The result of changing from the collegial model to the business model has been a dumbing down of academic programs and an ever increasing number of breaches of integrity. A theory for the renewal of institutional integrity is advanced and its implementation discussed within a university setting.