11. Rethinking the Purpose of Higher Learning: A Conversation with Chad Wellmon

From EdUp Provost · 46:06

Show by Association of Chief Academic Officers (ACAO)

In this EdUp Provost episode, host Dr. Gregor Thuswaldner sits down with Dr. Chad Wellmon, a UVA German professor, about his latest book After the University: Higher Education and the Future of Intellectual Work. Dr. Wellmon explains that the book grew out of the 2012 protests over the ouster of UVA’s president, which left the university feeling alien to him. His central argument is that universities are institutions that pursue external goods (money, prestige, power) alongside the scholarly and educational practices they are meant to support. Historically, that tension was productive, but it has hardened into contradiction. The two discuss rankings and scarcity-driven competition, the return-on-investment pitch to parents, and the “skills” language used to justify the humanities. Chad traces the job-market framing of higher education back to 1830s Prussia and notes that universities only recently monopolized intellectual work. They also cover the decline in foreign language enrollments, the extremely challenging position of provosts, and the book’s value as “good friction.” The episode closes with Dr. Wellmon recommending Daniel Mendelsohn’s new translation of the Odyssey. Takeaways Practices vs. institutions: Scholarly and educational practices need universities to survive, but universities also chase money, prestige, and power, which can undermine those same practices. Rankings and prestige are scarcity games: Unlike excellence in a discipline, which has no ceiling, rankings are exclusive, so every system of winners requires losers. The job-market promise is shaky: The idea that a degree maps directly to a job dates to 19th-century Prussian state bureaucracy, and Dr. Wellmon is skeptical that institutions can honestly keep it. Skills language misses the point: Dr. Wellmon prefers “discipline study,” which builds broad intellectual and moral capacities, over narrow skills tied to fixed ends. He sees declining humanities enrollments as a chance for smaller, more intensive classes rather than a reason to fight over seats. Honesty about contradictions is the first step: Colleges, including provosts, should name when external goals override the educational mission. That includes admitting that universities are not the only home for intellectual work and that language study fell partly because institutions stopped claiming what knowledge is worth valuing.

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