As tertiary education becomes more popular and marketable, and investment in human capital a topic of attention, education is today often equated to vocational preparation. As a result, a number of leading academics have raised the alarm. Professor Steven Schwartz, vice-chancellor of Macquarie University in Australia, lamented that universities nowadays focus too much on imparting knowledge and not wisdom. Living in the age of money, modern universities are trying their best to fit in, he said, so that university education is being reduced to vocational training. He urged universities to 'wise up'.
In a recent book, Not For Profit, Martha Nussbaum, a professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, observed that modern tertiary education has lost its way. She said that if society wants to produce graduates who can empathise as a 'citizen of the world', then it should reverse the current skew towards economic productivity and restore liberal and critical values at universities.
The late professor Bill Readings, a scholar of comparative literature at the University of Montreal, said universities are 'in ruin' because culture is no longer seen as an important legitimating reference, and excellence is measured only by technological and utilitarian criteria.
Indeed, with today's growing obsession with world rankings, which are often methodologically biased, there is a risk of our universities becoming one-dimensional.
For example, research assessment is driven more by citation indices than a balanced evaluation of the impact on scientific discovery and knowledge creation, as well as contribution towards social progress and the enlightenment of humanity.
Some eye-catching ranking exercises tend to measure tangible performance such as awards, research output and citations. But they ignore equally important dimensions of a university's role and mission, such as students' learning experience, the nurturing of students' social and global awareness, and the university's contribution to community and human development, because these are not easily quantified.