“Over a decade ago Times Higher Education published an amusing essay on the academy’s seven deadly sins. This sins, which are certainly not confined to the academy, included sloth (or, in its academic equivalent, procrastination), avarice, malice, and pride.

Four of the sins that the essay described struck me as especially characteristic of academics, beginning from sartorial inelegance.  After all, frumpy, drab, scruffy, and unfashionable are, far too often, synonyms for professorial dress, and symbols of a deeper flaws, including a lack of concern for the sensibilities of others.

Here are the other three:

Snobbery:  Evident in the preoccupation with pedigree and institutional placement, and summed up with the phrase “all academics are equal but some are more equal than others.”

Pedantry:  What non-academics mean when they call someone “professorial”: Not just erudite or hyperintellectual, but affected, pompous, bombastic, arrogant, condescending, and didactic.

Bookishness:  In an academic context, to be bookish isn’t simply to be studious or learned, but unsociable, reclusive, taciturn, and detached.  Of course, there’s also its antonym: The overly zealous, the pushy, the self-promoter, and the overly ambitious.

Many of the academy’s worst sins, however, are not personal failings.  These vices are institutional or endemic.  As professionals who are supposed to be self-reflective and self-critical, academics should be especially attentive to these systemic shortcomings.

Nooruddin Merchant of Pakistan’s Habib University and The Learning Network wrote a delightful essay entitled the “Seven Deadly Sins of Our Educational System” that alerts academics to the institutionalized traps we often fall into:

• Knowledge without wisdom:  Transferring knowledge, but failing to reflect on its utility or broader significance and implications.
• Competence without morality:  Building skills, but failing to instill a capacity for critical reflection.
• Curriculum without relevance:  Failing to explain to students the value of the knowledge and skills they acquire.
• Teaching without compassion:  The unwillingness to attend to the emotional and psychological dimensions of teaching or to treat students with empathy and understanding, including the reasons that they might cheat or plagiarize or fail to actively participate in class.
• Competition without collaboration:  Favoring those students who are the quickest studies, while letting others struggle without encouragement and support.

Decrying higher ed’s flaws and failings is, of course, like shooting fish in a barrel – our shortcomings are everywhere.  But what should we do if we wish to atone for the academy’s sins?  Here are my suggestions.

Step 1.  Broaden your conception of the professorial role.

Step 2.  Strive to educate the whole student.

Step 3.  Remember why your students are in college.

Step 4:  Ensure that your classes are learning- and learner-centered.

Step 5:  Design and deliver courses that go beyond subject mastery.

Step 6:  Stand for equity.

Step 7.  Be utterly transparent about what you want your students to achieve – and why.”