Efficiency or curiosity? A few words on liberal education

University of Minnesota-Duluth, the library

 

A few days ago I read about a man I'd met at an event five years ago, a man who asked me why it was that education in the humanities wasn't more efficient? We were sitting at the head table at a luncheon to be followed by an award ceremony. I replied by asking him what he did for a living before he assumed his present position as Chair of the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota, my graduate school alma mater. He said he had been director of an electric utility company in Duluth. I replied, saying I understood how important efficiency was in electrical production, distribution and consumption. But in a liberal education, intellectual curiosity is the opposite of efficient. Curiosity takes time, time to formulate questions, time to explore, to go up blind alleys and then double back, ponder possible answers, pause among different interpretations of similar phenomena, to wonder at metaphor and leave room for feelings. I wasn't sure he agreed, but he didn't press the matter. We finished our lunch, and the event continued to a conclusion. 

Now five years later his photograph has just appeared in a news story in The Chronicle of Higher Education. I recognized him at once. The story was not complimentary. It seems that he was a candidate for the position of Interim Chancellor of the University of Minnesota at Duluth. He had resigned from the Board of Regents to throw his hat in the ring only a day before the deadline to apply. Five others had applied for the job, but he was the only one interviewed; and then the search committee recommended him for it. Apparently the President of the flagship Twin Cities campus (Minneapolis-St. Paul) had at the last minute urged him to apply. For a number of reasons, the situation seemed fishy to a former Governor of the state, another regent, and a law professor, who claimed that this man ought not to be confirmed as Interim Chancellor because of a conflict of interest. The situation has since escalated. It reminded me of the embattled Chancellor of the University of Maine system, recipient of three no-confidence votes from faculty at three branches of the university, including the flagship campus in Orono. As I write, no decision has yet been made. Interestingly, one of his defenders on the search committee argued that his experience as a utility company executive showed that he was well-prepared and qualified to succeed as the head of a university. As for the Chancellor of the University of Maine system, his contract was just renewed, but for one year only; and before being hired as Chancellor, he had served as Governor of the State of Connecticut.