ABSTRACT

John Dewey’s Pragmatic hope for a democratic association of professionals was dashed principally by two interconnected developments in the Transformative Era — professional specialization and institutional expansion — and their outcomes. Faculty’s quest for autonomy melded with the intensifi cation of disciplinary specialization, resulting in a zealous autonomy that bred administrative distrust and public suspicion. University expansion amplifi ed the attention paid by industrialists, legislators, and other segments of the public to the research function of the faculty and brought to the university values ultimately antithetical to the liberal freedoms faculty had considered necessary. To Pragmatists like Dewey, these were ironic manifestations of the faculty’s illiberal judgment (their failure to communicate their liberal purposes to the public as the condition for their professional autonomy) and the acceptance of corporate capitalist values by institutional administrators (presidents’ and trustees’ desire for unfettered growth and institutional effi ciency). Dewey also recognized these forces as threats to academic freedom, arguing that the combination of the centralization of university administration, its increasing materialism, and growing faculty specialization would reduce communication between the faculty, administration and the public (Hogan & Karier, 1978 –9). Limiting communication would kindle distrust and suspicion. These forces, in Dewey’s Pragmatic view, endangered “the spirit of inquiry and expression of truth” that was essential to maintain the university’s public mission (Dewey, 1902/1978, p. 65). Together with their interrelated effects, faculty’s professional specialization and institutional expansion in the Transformative Era compose the foundational context of future accountability challenges.