What we teach are ways of thinking, even ways of feeling, and what the students learn often surprises us as much as it does them, which is as it should be. If you want information, go to an encyclopedia or to the World Wide Web, not to college. The task becomes difficult indeed when the university is equated with a shopping mall, something that fundamentally undermines the teacher-student relationship. Students who come to school with a consumer mentality have difficulty accepting, even provisionally, instructional authority or the authority of their professors. This consumer attitude that the university is a place to meet preestablished needs tempts some to say that we need to emphasize learning rather than teaching.
Technical expertise can receive a justification of sorts when it has a practical payoff.
But I can envision a university of the future in which every field that lacks practical payoff will have been jettisoned. I am afraid that if we do not mount a better defense of our own intrinsic purposes than we have for quite a while, even a good education for the few may not survive for long. I am reasonably confident that finding the courage to do that will enhance our self-respect and strengthen our capacity to fulfill our calling.