Almost from the day I returned to the academic world in 1987 after a 10-year absence, it has been obvious to me that the academy has major problems. Many of them, perhaps most of them, are "only" continuations and worsenings of problems that already existed in the 1960s and 1970s. Some others are new.

Many of the problems were particularly borne in on me over the years because in 1988 a few of us started a new law school. As a legal institution, the Massachusetts School of Law was ultimately subject to the accreditation regime of the American Bar Association-or so we thought for several years. ABA accreditation represents and enforces the worst shortcomings, and the worst excesses, generally afflicting American higher education. And, because the ABA has a state-sanctioned monopoly on accrediting law schools in nearly all the states, it is very effective in imposing the shortcomings and excesses of academia on nearly all law schools outside of California (which has its own alternative state accrediting system).

MSL ultimately decided, in an uncommon action for a law school, to ignore ABA accreditation, so that we would not have to accept at our school the deficiencies afflicting the academy generally. Yet our long study of ABA accreditation, and our concomitant study of accreditation and education generally, made us realize that what happens under the ABA's regime is only the general deficiencies and shortcomings of higher education writ large. 

Among these general deficiencies and shortcomings are, I think, the following:

* An overwhelming emphasis on research results in a lack of concern for and an absence of good teaching, and in a grave mismatch between the interests of professors and the needs of students. The lack of concern for teaching injures students at major research institutions. But it harms the students and the faculty at less prestigious non-research schools, too, where good teaching and attention to students are particularly necessary, but professors want to spend their time doing research so that they will be able to move up to more prestigious schools. The overwhelming emphasis on research also results in massive amounts of time and energy being wastefully expended on worthless research and writing, at least in the liberal arts, the social sciences, and other fields outside of the hard sciences and mathematics. Students who would benefit greatly if the time and energy were instead expended usefully-by giving them close individual attention-are again the losers.

* There is utterly no sense of the need for productivity in the ordinary sense of accomplishing a lot with relatively little. Instead, there is a constant demand for ever-more resources, for ever-more money. The result is ever-increasing tuitions for students.