Scott Walker as Jeremy Bentham

The Chronicle of Higher Education today characterizes the Wisconsin governor, who dropped out of college in 1990 to take a job, as a utilitarian with no appreciation for the more profound purposes of a college education and the mission of a great university.
http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Scott-Walker-Got-His/232803/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

This is a picture of Bentham's "auto-icon."  It's his skeleton, tucked into a stuffed suit and preserved in a cabinet at a university in London, where the board of governors trots it out every year for an annual meeting.  He is recorded in the minutes as present but not participating.  His actual preserved head used to a part of the auto-icon.  But students kept desecrating it in grotesque ways.  So now, if memory serves me, the head is wax.

Bentham believed that everything came down to a scale of pain versus pleasure.  As much as any 19th century thinker, he has influenced our notions of justice in America.  But, like the governor's notions of what a university's mission ought to be, Bentham's Utilitarianism fails to account for the sublime and the subtle in human behavior and human values.

While we educators absolutely must (1) graduate more students from our colleges and (2) make sure these grads get gainful employment, we also must (3) educate critical thinkers and thoughtful engaged citizens.

Our graduates must have more in their heads than wax.  They must be more than auto-icons in the workforce.  The alternative is the tyranny of the wealthy and powerful.