Monday, July 11, 2011 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 15 TEDDY PAPES Charity When Egyptians buried their deceased royals, they left all kinds of tools and items behind because they thought they would be needed in the afterlife - imagine if your family for- got something. And along with essentials like jewelry and fur- niture, they also buried a per- son with their organs, because if you need your tiara in heaven you certainly can't forget your spleen, right? Do you think you would die again if you didn't have your heart when you met Ra? I don't think this was a very carefully crafted religion. We can all recognize super- stition and absurd tradition in hindsight, but can we recognize it happening today? Contrary to our Egyptian ancestors, we've realized that furniture and jew- elry might serve the living bet- ter than the dead, but why are we still leaving organs with the deceased? I imagine some of this is done out of consideration for the worms, but there might be a better use for them. How about donating them to people who are still living, but won't be much longer without a new spleen? Besides the Anubis revivalists, I bet most people think we should donate organs upon death, but this requires some kind of agency on the part of an individual. I am pretty lazy and haven't regis- tered, just like I'm sure many of you and people you know haven't registered for equally legitimate reasons. Why do we leave people's lives up to the motivation of a lethargic populace? The U.S. currently uses an opt-in system, and it would make a lot more sense if we had an opt-out one. Rather than hav- ing to sign up and file a bunch of paperwork to assert that you are a conscious individual, we could simply assume that humanity is full of somewhat decent people and have everyone on the organ donation list. If for some reason JEFF ZUSCHLAG E-MAIL JEFF AT JEFFDZ(d@UMICH.EDU in death you think Anubis will bounce you at the door for not having your kidneys in the afterlife, you can opt out of this very reason- able policy. On the other hand, if you are like most people, ambivalent, or are one of the few who take selfish pleasure in the form of charity, you can simply do nothing and your organs will be donated to those who can use them after you croak. What's not to like? I'll tell you. This policy may be a good solution to our paucity of transplantable vitalities, but I think we can just skip all the libertarian-pleasing foreplay for a policy that does the most amount of good: mandatory organ dona- tion. I for one think it's a travesty to allow any viable organ to go into the ground if it could save some- one else's life. Perhaps we could have the illusion of an opt-out policy so that then when some- one tries to opt out we just take out their organs then and there as they aren't worthy of participating in the human race. But putting the manslaughter aspect of the policy aside, what would honestly be wrong with society claiming organs in the event of someone's death? The government already takes your income away in taxes. When you die the government can take money or property from your estate, and rightly so. So why don't we just bundle organs in with the estate tax? Your prog- eny can actually use the funds from their dead relatives, but they don't get anything out of burying a body with all its innards. Your loved one is going to be maggot riddled carrion at some point anyway, why not get the organs out while the getting is good? On the day you need a new kidney, you'll have wished you made this policy a reality. Teddy Papes is the editorial page editor. actually maybe we are actually living in and Rick santorum have both "parallel earth", and our universe signed a pledge calling for a ban i % Like, have you ever thought that In other news, Michele Bachmann is just a mirror-image bizarro on pornograpfihy. The pledge also No reason. version of a more sensible labels homosexuality as a choice, you world? health risk, and a threat to out? the institute of marriage. Not really. Why? 9-N- 94-1 College revan There has been much debate recently about the main goal of higher education and if universi- ties are current- ly achieving it. Louis Menand, a prominent aca- demic and writer of several books on higher edu- cation, recently ERIK offered three TORENBERG explanatory the- ories in a June 6 New Yorker article. The theories essentially respond to the following question: What should be the main goal of college? Theory1: College should be meri- tocratic. College should provide a metric to employers that explicitly delin- eates the most talented and hard- working students so employers can hire the most talented employees. But, as Menand notes, talent isn't so easy to evaluate: "There is no intel- lectual equivalent of a 10 yard dash. An intelligent person is open mind- ed, an outside-the-box thinker, an effective communicator, is prudent, self-critical, consistent and so on." That said, a student's GPA, Menand believes, is a fairly trustworthy indicator of "intellectual capacity and productive potential." Except it isn't. GPA doesn't mea- sure half of the skills he mentioned above. And, by omission, practices such as outside-the-box think- ing, self-exploration and effective communication are actually dis- couraged. College should be merito- cratic, but our current GPA system doesn't reward the skills most cru- cial to success. Creating metrics that incentivize such skills will become increasingly more impor- tant. Theory 2: College should be dem- ocratic. Menand first claims that college should enlighten and empower stu- dents by exposing them to mate- rial that they will not encounter otherwise. He then claims that the main goal of theory 2 is for "high- er education to be available to all Americans." These aren't mutually exclusive, but increasing accessibil- ity means that the barrier of entry has to be lowered, which can nega- tively affect the quality of students. Aiming to develop an enlightened citizenry and aiming to have a dem- ocratic one isn't exactly the same thing. As Menand elaborates, it's apparent Theory 2 is about wider accessibility, not improved quality. Theory 3: College should serve our economic interests. "Advanced economies demand specialized skills, and since high school is aimed at the general learn- er, college is where people can be taught what they need in order to enter a vocation." There are acouple problemswith such an approach. First, economies change. Jobs exist now that didn't exist 10 years ago. Second, recent studies suggest thatstudents in spe- cialized schools aren't developing critical thinkingskills. So Theory 1 (meritocratic) doesn't do what it's designed to do; GPA doesn't measure the skills most important to success. Theory 2 (democratic) isn't enough by itself; if the quality of education is so low, who cares if it's widely accessible? And Theory 3 (economic) is coun- ter-intuitive; economies demand new skills over time, so some spe- cialties may not even be necessary. In the age of Peter Thiel Uncol- lege, a website that is trying to reboot the collegiate system, when the cost of college is rising and the web is facilitating cheaper alterna- tives, universities need to reinvent themselves. This calls for a new theory, one that will reconcile and encompass elements from the other three approaches. Theory 4: College should pro- mote personal growth of individu- als with the intent to cultivate an enlightened citizenry. In NYU Professor Jeffrey Arum's book "Academically Adrift" he stated that students aren't learn- ing enough during college. There is debate over the validity of his study, but what hasn't been debat- ed - and what the validity of the study depends on - is whether we have a shared understanding of what learning is and what students should be learning. Arum's tests focused on analytical reasoning, problem solving, and clear commu- nication. But what about creativity? A Newsweek article claimed that it's the #1 sought after skill in the busi- ness world. Universities need to reinvent themselves. What about our self-knowledge? It's tremendously important that we understand how our narratives - biological and cultural - have affected us, and that we have the ability to reflect and change habits. What about our ability to empa- thize, connect with and lead others? David Brooks claimed that "master- ing these arduous skills is at the very essence of achievemen.t" An enlightened citizenry has not only mastered its ability to reason, but it has also mastered its emotions. Theory 4 will stress self-knowledge, social intelligence, independence in thought and action with the intent to change students' dispositions. It will aim to influ- ence how they think, not what they think. Perhaps Theory 4 will guide universities of the future. Menand would be happy to see students questioningthe importance of what they are doing. He wonders if stu- dents are still asking those often negatively received - but all too important - tough questions. Erik Torenberg can be reached at erikto@umich.edu. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: 4 Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor. Letters should be fewer than 300 words and must include the writer's full name and University affiliation. Send letters to tothedaily@umich.edu.