Let us not indulge in the illusion that joining a university automatically makes us academicians or intellectuals. But perhaps the most serious threat comes from within-from the formidable presence of people in our universities who are not academically inclined and almost clueless about Newman's "liberal education", "philosophical habit of mind" or "inner eyes"… who are not in search of knowledge and ideas, and whose eyes are rather fixed on immediate material rewards and lucrative positions. Since there are sustained attempts at valorising and legitimising bureaucratic invasions and reproduction of corporate values in our universities, we need to remain alert to diverse hegemonies hatched and launched by different establishments. The entire arrangement appears to be plagued by limited vision, greed for immediate material profits, and an unholy nexus of local political elements and academic opportunists, resulting in a steep decline in intellectual and research standards as well as an increasingly shrinking space for academic freedom. When we relate Newmanian insights to the present state of our university campuses, and the education and research climate there, we encounter things that are remarkably inconsistent or incompatible with the idea of a university. A practical end that he assigns to university courses is training good members of society/humanity their goodness, according to him, would bring with it a power and grace to every work and occupation which they undertake, enabling them to be far more "useful" than what the utilitarian capitalist market can conceive of them. Newman treats it as a danger when people become synonymous with their professions.
Rather than making students capable only of doing some particular job or producing mere professionals or technical hands, the university, according to Newman, produces "liberally educated gentlemen" (and gentlewomen) who are endowed with " cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life." The university trains humans to think, "to reason well in all matters," and aims at a general, comprehensive, holistic development-that is, formation of character-of a person, the value of which is often undermined in the prevailing social and market parameters. He conceives knowledge as an integrated whole, and recommends an interdisciplinary or "holistic" approach as a basic pedagogical principle. Newman emphasises the essential need for interconnectedness of diverse branches of knowledge.
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