WHEN noted scholar Zhu Shunshui (1600-1682) analyzed the collapse of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), he cited the decay of learning.

He bemoaned the neglect of classics, asserting that official appointments increasingly went to those expert at authoring topical articles in a bombastic and ornate style, with little reference to the classical fountainhead.

"When plagiarism is elevated to a consummate art and obtaining official titles becomes the only goal, who still cares about the true meaning of learning?" Zhu wrote.

Characteristically for a true Confucian scholar, he himself remained loyal to the dynasty he criticized so vehemently, to the end of his life, even after it was toppled by Qing (1644-1911) invaders.

After rejecting eight offers of official appointments from the next presumptive dynasty, an arrest warrant was issued for him. He escaped and joined the expeditionary forces led by Zheng Chengong (Koxinga) who tried in vain to restore Ming rule.

He fled to Japan, where he spent the last 22 years of his life.

Like many of the scholars of his day, true scholars at that time were held in great reverence not just because of their learning, but more because of their outstanding personal character. They believed in what they knew, and were willing to defend what they believed with their life.

The best educated Chinese used to take great pride in their integrity, loyalty, their humble circumstances, and their disdain for the officialdom.

Today our education is conceived exclusively of utilitarian principles, as it degenerates into an establishment expert at turning out good test takers.

From preschool on to graduate school, the best test-takers will win the highest recognition from the big-time universities and get the best jobs, as an investment banker, or promising bureaucrat.

Not surprisingly, the best universities today take pride in the number of millionaires and ranking officials among their alumni.

When our educational facilities are encouraged to finance themselves or to turn a good profit by monetizing their own resources, any talk about fighting against philistinism in the academia would sound hollow.

Derek Bok's "Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education" provides an insider's look at the extent of commercialization, but does not provide viable solutions.

As the former president of Harvard University and dean of Harvard Law school, Bok agrees that the incursion of big business puts universities' values of teaching and research at risk.

The drive to turn a profit is undermining academic standards, collegiality, trust, the university's reputation for honest scholarship, and the public confidence in experts.

At first, this drive proceeds from the intention to alleviate chronic shortage of educational funding.

When business interests become entrenched, research universities consider part of their mission to help the business world.

Values unprofitable

That's a mockery of university's former self, when go to university was to embark on a religion-like pilgrimage, a journey spiritually uplifting and fulfilling, where the content deserves our worship, and the instructors command our respect.

Then capitalism prevailed, and stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe, as Marx claimed. Every profession has to rationalize its existence in frank monetory terms in a world of the market.

It takes little imagination to see that moral values and philosophies do not generate earnings.

So liberal art specialties and courses languish with thin attendance.

Zhuanjia (experts) was once a term that evoked respect and connoted intellectual depth, critical perspicacity, and, above all, honesty.

More often today, it is used sarcastically, for those who prostitute their knowledge in the service of power or money.

For instance, a newly built bridge in the northeastern Harbin City collapsed on August 24, killing three and injuring five, apparently under the weight of four overloaded trucks. Everybody in their senses cried foul, except a select panel of experts.

After a prolonged investigation, they solemnly pronounced the four overloaded trucks guilty, and lauded the bridge designer, contractor and supervisor for their first-class work.

Their judgment stirred outrage, both online and in the media.

As Sima Guang (1019-1086) observed nearly 1,000 years ago, expertise not guided by the moral compass is worse than ignorance.

Today, students go to schools not for values and outlook, but for practical know-how that can help them prosper socially and economically.

For some lucre, universities allow businesses to use their discoveries, to name their sports arenas, or their teaching building. Last year, a teaching building at Qinghua University was renamed "Jeanswest Building."

Money prevails

According to Derek Bok's book, drug companies are also known to benefit from funding massive faculty research grants, to get the PR boost of being able to announce that Professor X of Ivy U finds that their new drug is effective. They also require researchers to publish only company-approved results, while keeping in secret results that do not support the efficacy of their products.

Here researchers are cleverly monetizing their assumed fidelity to the basic canons of scholarly and scientific inquiry.

"When rules are unclear and always subject to negotiation, money will prevail over principle much of the time," the author writes.

The author also mentioned the practice of universities forming partnerships with businesses to provide faculty members to teach profitable continuing education classes (often to the sponsors' employees) and design widely marketed web courses.

In China big-time universities also ply a brisk businesses of conferring upon incumbent officials master's or PhD degrees, since degrees can help promote them.

The tendency for universities to bow to business and politicians will undermine the core academic values of what to teach, how to teach it, whom to hire and what to research.

"Even those who support the university's ... economic growth worry about the side effects of profit-seeking and the unseemliness of institutions of learning hawking everything from sweatshirts to adult education," writes Bok.

He is at times unjustifiably sunny, as when he alleges that faculty members rarely guide students into work that promotes teachers' financial gain.

What we have seen in China is that supervisors, rightfully dubbed "bosses" by their students, seem to be concerned with little else.

Nor will many agree with his rosy assessment that it is yet not too late to reverse the trend toward commercialization, given how entrenched it is.

The author is getting near the truth when he observes, "The hazards of accepting corporate money and involvement seem sufficiently obvious and serious to warrant stopping such support altogether."