The Fall of the Utilitarian Model

Abstract

Although only a new generation of scholars can get the current system to decline and fade, there are at least three factors showing that the twilight is not that far away: jobs, technology, and stupidity. The exclusive job-oriented approach of “modern” universities is the basis of the pact between customers and suppliers, but this Faustian bargain will no longer survive if new jobs cannot be predicted and the training requirements anticipated; thus, the transmission of notions, methods, and protocols becomes irrelevant. Information and communications technology (ICT) is the second lethal weapon against the “modern” university model because it will jeopardize the system. The third issue deals with human nature: the stupidity of all bureaucratic universities. The corporate attitude has infiltrated every choice and discussion in the everyday life of universities. The management practices produce multifaceted levels of bureaucracy that simply tend to be worse than the sum of its parts. The cybernation of interpersonal relationships, the dematerialization translating every rule into an ITC procedure, and the primacy of representation over any other value can escape from the control of the supreme controllers, as in a science fiction novel where an automaton becomes an individual and the individual is no longer distinguishable from an avatar.

It is the education which gives a man a clear, conscious view of their own opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them.

John Henry Newman

Cardinal Deacon of San Giorgio in Velabro