Home
In this issue

July 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person

Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya

July 1, 2009

Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken

The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts

June 30, 2009

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?

Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief

June 29, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'

Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas

June 26, 2009

Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain

Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law

June 25, 2009

Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 24, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity

The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun

June 23, 2009

Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin

Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect

June 22, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm

N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?

June 19, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity

June 18, 2009

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 17, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …

June 16, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel

Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity …

June 15, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'

Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed

June 12, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner

June 11, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President

Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers

Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos

June 10, 2009

Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste

June 9, 2009

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?

June 8, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?

Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past

Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?

June 5, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams

Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth

June 4, 2009

Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock

The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette

June 3, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action

June 2, 2009

Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review May 23, 2006 / 30 Sivan, 5766

Quit protesting, profs!

By Niall Ferguson


Printer Friendly Version
Email this article

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It's exam time. I have spent much of the last week marking final papers written by undergraduates and graduates. I would guess I have been doing this kind of thing for more than 15 years now at four universities — Cambridge, Oxford, New York and now Harvard.


There have been times when I confess I haven't much enjoyed it. This year, however, examining has been a positive pleasure. This has been my first semester of teaching Harvard undergraduates, and I now understand why so many of them get A's. It's not all due to "grade inflation" by overgenerous professors, as critics have sometimes alleged. So many of these papers are outstanding that it's hard to impose a rigid distribution, imposing C's or worse on the lower third.


Returning to England, I had rather expected to find my British counterparts toiling under comparable circumstances. But no. In pursuit of a pay claim by the Assn. of University Teachers, a substantial proportion of the lecturers at British universities are refusing to grade examinations.


Now, I don't claim to be the perfect prof. But, busy though I have been in the last week, it would never have occurred to me not to get my final papers graded, whatever the circumstances. My students have worked hard this semester. Some of them are about to graduate and cannot do so if I don't deliver. Even if it means one more cup of coffee and one less hour of sleep, that last paper — all 21 pages of it — is going to get read and graded.


So I am frankly disgusted by the spectacle of dons downing tools. It's proof that those concerned are not professionals at all but merely a kind of academic proletariat who conceive of their institutions as nothing more than degree factories. If I were a student, I'd be furious. And many are, in a wonderful inversion of the late 1960s, demanding that their protesting professors get back to work.


This go-slow is more than merely irresponsible, however. It's also absurdly unrealistic. Professors are demanding a 23% pay hike over the next three years. Where do they think British universities are going to find this money? The fact of the matter is that British higher education is close to broke as a direct consequence of a massive expansion that has been systematically underfunded.

Donate to JWR


In 1979, the proportion of British teenagers who went on to higher education was just 12%. Today, the proportion is close to 45%. But because British universities depend overwhelmingly on the state for funding, the resources available per student have declined steeply.


In essence, Britain has a National Higher Education Service, and it is afflicted with many of the ills that afflict the National Health Service — among them, chronically underpaid staff. On average, professorial pay is less than half what it is in the United States, which is one reason why so many British academics have migrated across the Atlantic in recent years. But the idea that this problem can simply be solved with a whopping pay raise misses the point.


There is a reason why higher education expenditures in the United States amount to 3% of gross domestic product, while in Britain it is just 1%. The reason is private funding. Harvard's $26-billion endowment alone exceeds the assets of all British universities combined — by a factor of roughly two. Oxford and Cambridge, the wealthiest of British universities, would rank roughly 15th on the U.S. rich list if they were somehow relocated across the Atlantic.


Ah, I hear you object, but what about those enormous fees? And it's true that annual tuition and fees at Harvard total more than $32,000. But — and here's the key point — not if you can't afford it. Because Harvard is rich, it can follow a "needs-blind" admissions policy, based purely on academic criteria. If you get in and your family turns out to be poor, it's free. That can't be claimed by any British institution. Oxford and Cambridge scholarships were long ago so eroded by inflation that they are now purely honorific.


Does it matter that British universities are funded as badly as British hospitals? Yes. More than most people realize, higher education has become globalized. The number of foreign students studying in developed countries has doubled over 20 years to 1.5 million. In the academic year 2004-05, the number of international students enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions exceeded half a million.


This is beneficial in more ways than one. Not only do they generally pay, they bring talent to their host institution. In effect, there is now an international competition among the world's universities to attract the most able students, particularly at the graduate level. As Western economies depend more and more on brains rather than brawn — on minds rather than on manufacturing — elite universities have a vital role to play not only for those working within their walls but for the society that surrounds them. They are gold mines for gray matter, oilfields for ideas.


The truly remarkable thing is that in this global market for brains, Britain is the No. 2 player after the United States. More than one in 10 students at British universities are from abroad. Oxford and Cambridge are the only two European universities in the internationally recognized top 20 rankings produced by Jiao Tong University in Shanghai (all the rest, apart from Tokyo University, are in the U.S.). That's pretty impressive for a state-run National Higher Education Service.


But the question is obviously this: What kind of signal does it send to an ambitious young Chinese student when British lecturers go on strike at examination time? Let me see … how about — in big, red letters — "APPLY TO HARVARD"?

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


BUY THE BOOKS

Click HERE to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund JWR.).

Click HERE to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund JWR.).

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University. He is the author of "Empire" (Basic Books, 2003) and "Colossus" (Penguin, 2004). Comment by clicking here.


05/23/06: World markets' wild ride: Economic volatility is back with a vengeance
05/16/06: The Cold Wars are coming
05/09/06: Many commentators are missing dangerous political shift
05/02/06: Put some sugar in your tank
04/25/06: Hu and the dog that didn't bark
04/18/06: Should Americans be less optimistic?
04/11/06: Globalization's second death?
04/04/06: So many ‘special’ friends
03/28/06: Let's get it right about what has gone wrong
03/21/06: Congress is trying to give the world a globotomy
03/14/06: Lame ducks can still bite back
03/07/06: A 19th Century critique of a 21st Century president
02/28/06: The crash of civilizations
02/21/06: Not the president, but close
02/14/06: Want historic trouble? Look south
02/07/06: Greenspan advising Britain? It's housing bubbles, deficits and potential meltdowns all over again
01/31/06: Missing the Cold War
01/24/06: It's a sick, Thick World
01/17/06: Tomorrow's world war today
01/03/06: Scotland, it's over, but keep the accents
12/20/05: History, democracy and Iraq
12/20/05: History, democracy and Iraq
11/22/05: Ghost of Napoleon haunts Tony Blair
11/22/05: Can it happen in Britain too?
11/15/05: Red plus blue equals purple
11/10/05: The fires of disintegration
11/01/05: Triumph of an über-wonk

© 2006, Los Angeles Times Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Insight (Our Columnists)

 Mitch Albom
 Michael Barone
  Dave Barry
 Tony Blankley
 Andy Borowitz
 David Broder
 Stratfor Briefing
 Mona Charen
 Linda Chavez
 Ann Coulter
 Greg Crosby
 Rod Dreher
 Larry Elder
 Suzanne Fields
 John Fund
 Frank J. Gaffney
 Lloyd Garver
 Jonah Goldberg
 Julia Gorin
 Jonathan Gurwitz
 Paul Greenberg
 Lewis Grossberger
 Victor Davis Hanson
 Betsy Hart
 Nat Hentoff
 David Horowitz
 Laura Ingraham
 Paul Johnson
 Jack Kelly
 Ed Koch
 Ch. Krauthammer
 Jonathan Last
 Michael Ledeen
 John Leo
 David Limbaugh
 Kathryn Lopez
 Rich Lowry
 Michelle Malkin
 Jackie Mason
 Dick Morris
 Bill O'Reilly
 Jim Mullen
 Clarence Page
 Kathleen Parker
 Dennis Prager
 Wesley Pruden
 Tom Purcell
 Jonathan Rauch
 Celia Rivenbark
 Robert Robb
 Cokie & Steve Roberts
 Pat Sajak
 Debra J. Saunders
 Culture Shlock
 Roger Simon
 Michael Smerconish
 Thomas Sowell
 Mark Steyn
 John Stossel
 Cal Thomas
 Bob Tyrrell
 Diana West
 Dave Weinbaum
 George Will
 Walter Williams
 Byron York
 Mort Zuckerman

'Toons
 Robert Arial
 Chuck Asay
 Baloo
 Chip Bok
 Dry Bones
  Lisa Benson
 John Branch
 Gary Brookins
 John Cole
 J. D. Crowe
 John Deering
 Brian Duffy
 Everything's Relative
 Mallard Fillmore
 Jake Fuller
 Bob Gorrel
 Joe Heller
 David Hitch
 Jerry Holber
 Steve Kelley
 Jeff Koterba
 Dick Locher
 Chan Lowe
 Ranan R. Lurie
 Jimmy Margulies
 Rick McKee
 Michael Ramirez
 Kevin Siers
 Jeff Stahler
 Ed Stein
 Danna Summers
 John Trever
 Gary Varvel
 Kirk Walters

Lifestyles
 How 2
 Lori Borgman
 The Savvy Consumer
 Elder matters
 Fixit
 Dr. Peter Gott
 Marybeth Hicks
 GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
 Richard Lederer
 Tech Maven
 Every Monday Matters
 Nutrition Myths
 Bookmark These
 Bruce Williams
 How Stuff Works