Such thinking has gained ground in the business world, but while many companies want to operate more sustainably, they often do not know how, said Gail Whiteman, professor of sustainability and climate change at the Rotterdam School of Management.
Professors and heads of department as a group are far more likely to apply for grants than their humbler colleagues are, and we all know how few female professors there are.
"They know how to do school," Professor Arnold said.
"You can't teach them about evaporation if they don't know how water is constructed," Professor Klein said.
"If you ask a string theorist, 'Tell me how to formulate your theory in a way that doesn't involve any choice at all of a background space-time,' they throw up their hands and say, 'We don't know how to do that,' " Professor Harvey said.
We demand that plumbers and kindergarten teachers be certified to do what they do, but there is no requirement that college professors know how to teach.
But we really don't know how many," said Angela Cenarro Lagunas, a professor of modern history at the University of Zaragoza.
"We're going to take beef prices to levels we have never seen, and I don't know how that will play out," Professor Peel said.
"One of the fantasies of numerical ranking is that you know how you got there," said Professor Turkle, who is the author of "Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other" (Basic Books, 2011).
"It was a craft industry where the skills have been handed down from father to son, and stay within families, and we don't know how they did it anymore," Professor Collins told the Guardian.
