The study of politics

Bill Rauch, Mayor of Beaufort, South Carolina, has written a helpful work titled "Politicking: How to Get Elected, Take Action, and Make an Impact in Your Community." He writes: "While it can be good to be smart, if you can be only one thing, it's better to be a relentless advocate for your constituents."

Though Rauch's book doesn't appear on any reading lists and the politics department doesn't yet offer any how-to courses in getting elected, I wouldn't be surprised to see something comparable in the near future.

Courses like "Congressional Politics," "The Political Economy of Sports" and "National Security" all focus on the vocabulary and mechanics of contemporary systems, acclimating students to the current political environment. Good training for a politician, one might think.

These courses are taught for their relevance. And my fear is that we're following Rauch's advice: abandoning an intellectual pursuit for the sake of fulfilling a political function.

It is a widely held view that the economics department serves as a springboard for future bankers and traders. The Undergraduate Certificate in Finance website speaks of the "obvious practical relevance" of its field.

And there is a similar stigma attached to the professional nature of engineering. In making its case for general education requirements, the Undergraduate Announcement proclaims that it is nonetheless "important for a student in engineering to engage in disciplined reflection on human conduct, character and ways of life" — that is, to focus not solely on technical matters.

We don't often think of politics or the Woodrow Wilson School in the same light — as being equally vocational — but maybe we should. Are graduates from these two departments educated in "human conduct, character and ways of life?" Or are they educated in the mechanics of a political administration destined for irrelevance?

Interestingly enough, the Robertson Foundation has filed suit against the University in part because "Wilson School grads should be lining up each year to take the State Department's Foreign Service exam ... But they're not."

Again, like finance or engineering, this strikes me as being particularly vocational: educating students with a specific set of facts, in a specifically contemporary context, for a specific job function.

If the Lowenstein Foundation threatened to withdraw its $10 million grant from the Bendheim Center for Finance unless an explicit quota of graduates joined investment banks each year, would more people see a problem with this style of thinking?

It seems a tad more ridiculous to demand University output in bankers rather than ambassadors. However, both suggestions are equally dangerous and both hint at the growing trend of university vocationalization.

Perhaps it's old fashioned, but I don't believe a Princeton education should be geared to any distinct end apart from academic pursuit itself. What separates a university from a vocational school is the emphasis on learning for the sake of knowledge, not learning for the sake of information.

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If a student wanted to exploit his or her education as a guaranteed pathway to a certain profession, it would be much simpler and more fitting to attend Eastwick College in Hackensack and receive a degree in welding.

Yet, Wilson School students participate in highly specialized task force seminars, such as "U.S. Policy on Human Spaceflight" or "Making America More Secure against Radical Islamist Terrorism." My own junior seminar deals with the politics of China. Is this training or learning?

In an essay called "The Study of 'Politics' at a University," the English philosopher Michael Oakeshott questions whether "politics" can constitute a legitimate academic study. He writes: "The current state of our knowledge about voting habits, about the President, and about the propensities of trade unions are as tangible pieces of information as the current state of our knowledge about the properties of the materials and devices used in domestic plumbing."

Not surprisingly, the University offers courses in three of these four topics: POL 322 Public Opinion, POL 325 The Presidency and Executive Power and ECO 331 Economics of the Labor Market.

If you're interested, Eastwick College offers the fourth: Building Maintenance & Plumbing.

Oakeshott continues: "A part of the world has only to be often in the newspapers, a state has only to be new or powerful ... and its claim to be chosen as a 'text' for undergraduate study is believed to be irrefutable. But these, instead of being the best reasons for choosing it, are the worst: they are political, not pedagogic."

"It's a plus to look good," Bill Rauch also writes. Maybe we can get a course in that, too. J.R. Delara is a politics major from Ithaca, New York. He can be reached at jdelara@princeton.edu.