Goodbye, Columbus. Hello, Mr. Chips

By Roger Rosenblatt

"Tomorrow we start tearing down the college." "But Professor Wagstaff, where will the students sleep?" "Where they always slept. In the classroom." --Horse Feathers

Well, it certainly sounds promising, but I worry about all those traditions being lost. I refer to the spate of online universities that are being planned--cyberspace institutions that will compete with, possibly replace, established schools such as Harvard, Yale and Bob Jones. Skeptical of their efficacy, Stanley Ikenberry, president of the American Council on Education, said that higher learning means more than mere mastery of content. "It involves judgment, analysis, synthesis, communication, creativity and innovation," he noted. That may be so, but fortunately such achievements have never been associated with the college experience. My concern is what else will be forfeited if these ventures are successful--those elements of college life that have come to characterize so much of American culture. I don't wish to sound 20th century about this, but could the country survive the eclipse, nay the elimination of the following?

--The tawdry yet elevating professor-student affair. This has been an ancient and honored practice, and it is difficult to imagine a college without it. In an online program, one still may picture the virtual leering in the lecture hall and the virtual invitation to the professor's home to discuss the student's work in virtual privacy. But how will one re-create the moment when the professor's wife, who never understood him, suddenly does, and the affair is over, and the student--sadder but wiser--realizes that she is no longer a girl but a woman and that the world is a big old crazy wonderful place?

--The undergraduate novel of self-discovery and education, or Bildungsroman. I suppose it is possible to retain this tradition by writing the autobiography of a life parked before a computer screen. But how much flavor would be missing without the scene of the hero walking across campus alone on a winter night, his head uncovered, his jacket collar drawn tight about his neck, alone, hearing a violin play You'll Never Walk Alone in a practice room somewhere, alone, in the snow that turns to rain.

--The rumpled, crusty yet beloved classics professor who has served the college selflessly for more than 50 years, which were filled with personal tragedy, and yet he was always so witty, so secretly kind. Will the endearing tale of his silicon replacement be called Hello, Mr. Chips?

--The answer to the essay question. It is unthinkable, perhaps, to imagine the disappearance of this genre, which, having so much to support it (as Hegel, or was it Schlegel, pointed out, perhaps), represents problems both in the general and in the specific and yet leaves ample room for doubt on both sides (Schopenhauer's no less than Eisenhower's), perhaps.

--Appearance? Will it still not be reality? Or will virtual appearance not be virtual reality? Discuss.

--The faculty whining, backbiting and petty betrayals. So essential are these activities to college life that online universities ought to plan on finding their equivalents rather than doing away with them. A video could be created consisting of a generic professor who complains (sotto voce) about the stupid administration, the moronic students, his awful colleagues and the fact that one of them is paid $100 more than he is; then he could wind up by telling what he overheard someone say to someone else about someone else. A video like that would mean a lot.

--To eliminate undergraduate haiku stinks like a dead horse.

--The course given by the sensitive teaching fellow who wants to bring some feeling back to this goddam heartless place. In an online program, who will teach Interdisciplinary Gender Studies 201: "Gay, Female, Korean and Living: Where Is the Love?"? Who will teach Social Protest and Profit: "Capitalist Swine: A Guide to Applying for Government Grants"?

--The dissertation that has a very good chance of becoming a book. Who will write The Colon: Punctuation or Body Part?

And so much more--the racially offensive college nickname; the all-night fraternity binge-drinking, sex and hazing orgy; the appearance of the local idiot who turns out to be 10 times as smart as the Nobelists on the faculty; the commencement speech that is different, I mean, really, really interesting; the old-boy and -girl network--how will anyone expect to get a job, especially in journalism?

Finally, the 1960s. What will become of the 1960s--the most sensitive, politically aware, human, moral, caring decade in American history? The most dangerous thing about an online university is that it may allow for, indeed encourage, the formulation of opinions different from those cultivated in the 1960s. Who came up with this idea? Fascists?