It’s now rather old, but I wanted to note this piece by philosopher AC Grayling about the ways assessments are forcing universities to focus on measurable productivity at the expense of contemplation:

According to Wordsworth the world is too much with us; “getting and spending,” he says, “we lay waste our powers.” He reminds us that we need opportunities for reflection-a place apart, to think and to enquire. One might say that Sunday afternoons offer individuals a prosaic remedy for what Wordsworth laments: a chance to step aside from exigencies to consider the larger matters.

Societies likewise need their places apart, and for the same reasons. The reflective enterprise is not divorced from practicality; it offers a calm space to seek ideas, solve problems and make discoveries. What Sundays are to individuals in these respects, universities are-at least in part-to societies.

Or so they should be. They were not always so, and are at some risk of ceasing to be so, especially in the humanities, where the effects of new ways of financing universities is hastening changes that are undesirable-making it harder to realise the ideal of a liberal education.

The question this raises for me is, are there new contemplative spaces? My (admittedly small number of) friends in the clergy worry that shorter attention spans make it harder for people to listen to sermons, and more troubling, to reflect fully on moral questions or think through the often-tricky lessons of Scripture. Libraries are busy reinventing themselves as places more given over to collaboration and group work, which is rarely reflective or contemplative. So are there places that are emerging that take over some of the contemplative functions that used to be central to schools, houses of worship, and libraries?