What is the role of the University?

I was listening to a podcast from Australia the other day about the role of universities and whether they should be teaching a course on practical ethics, and while the discussion was interesting to me, the most interesting aspect was about the role and function of the university.
First, I find it really interesting to listen to these Australian podcasts which I do only intermittently, because they show that many of the same issues are being faced but seen through a different lens and perspective, which can often be enlightening. They also get a lot of good U.S. speakers so it’s not that different at times from listening to them speak on the CBC or NPR. The two issues that I find most interesting (and the ones where Canada shows up explicitly most often) are the constitutional stuff, particularly when they talk about having a charter of rights as Canada does, and Australia does, and Aboriginal issues, where they discusses issues such as their own apology for the stealing of Aboriginal children.
Back the main topic of universities. Despite being out of university, or perhaps at a point now where I can look back with a touch of perspective, I am interesting in questions about the role of the university. I am interesting particularly in the debate surrounding the difference between training and education. This podcast talked at length about the need for universities to play a role in educating people and shaping values.
It’s an interesting idea and one that I agree with but that some may find controversial. I find it interesting that the side of technical training is winning, especially as someone point out in the lecture, given the amount of technical change expected, how useful is it to have specific skills? Particularly as was brought up, given the fact that current students can expect to have a huge number of different jobs ( he suggested 29), in industries that don’t currently exist over their lifetime. I’ve heard often, but not sure where the data comes from that suggests that the specific technical learning an engineer goes through is obsolete five years after they leave school.
Where then does this leave the university? There is increasing pressure and funding for science research, for business schools, for engineering schools, for professional degrees. There is increasing focus on the need for commercialization, for patents, for research. This means there is less focus on teaching, and on the social sciences and humanities.
I would argue that there is some awareness that there is a need for a broader ‘education’ that goes beyond technical training, and that there must be way to combine elements of both. I have heard the president of U of A talk about how in her native India there is a need to reinforce the social sciences side of education, as there is such prestige attached to engineering and business schools it’s crowding the other stuff out, and that that is what is needed today in India.
One presenter who worked on legal policy, which he said encompasses tricky ethical issues at times, spoke of the fact that lawyers were no good at providing that synthesis, all encompassing perspective, that they focused on the mechanics to the exclusion of other elements, while economists were worse, retreating into their models which did not reflect the reality of the situation. He noticed that it was historians, those who deal with the study of people, who were often good at connecting the issues at the kind of analysis it required. This isn’t to say that we don’t need lawyers or economists (though I’m not a big fan of economists), but that in some situations it’s not technical specialists we need to think things through.
I was shocked and surprised (perhaps it’s my idealism getting in the way) at the level of indifference and frankly incompetence of other students I saw during my M.A. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I found a level of challenge and discussion below my fourth year undergrad courses, or even my third year undergrad. I saw the worst presentation (and several that were close) of my entire university career during those 2 years. Almost everyone was there for the credential alone. The grades were inflated beyond belief.
The university school had been given extra resources in that first year, based on signing up additional graduate students, and my specific program was targeted for an increased number of students. Coupled with the Ontario “Double Cohort” and you had classes bursting at the seams. Graduate level courses of 30 people, lowered standards and inflated grades, those were the hallmarks of my graduate experience. I don’t want to generalize too much, but if this is the case elsewhere than there are big problems.

For those after more info; after writing this I found an interesting article for Stanley Fish in the NYtimes here