ISI Faculty Resource Center

Problem #1 “Our society has developed in such a way that a college education is now open to an unprecedented number of people…As it is, a professor must hope to challenge these students as much as possible while fanning that spark of love for truth and the good, however small and however deeply buried, that surely resides in every one of these students. Similarly, the way to appeal to the second group (the pragmatists) is to work hard to show them Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, and hope they join the third group (the genuinely curious).”

Two comments: a.) Faculty need to be involved in admissions, because slight changes in admissions policies can have dramatic effects on a school’s ETHOS. If a certain proportion of students are in your third group (genuinely curious) you need to keep it there—with the aid of scholarship money. Those students are crucial to helping the pragmatists and the lost towards genuine curiosity. b.) It helps enormously if there is a clear sense of the One, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in the university’s mission statement and identity. I add the One to your list, because as MacIntyre says in his recent book GOD, PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITIES, “Subtract the knowledge of God from our knowledge, either by denying God’s existence or by insisting that we can know nothing of him, and what you have is an assortment of different kinds of knowledge, but no way of relating them to each other.” If faculty, students, and administrators are inhibited with regard to placing the intellectual endeavor in this crucial context, the possibilities of sparking genuine interest drop significantly. We cannot tiptoe around the question of the One and hope to have a genuine liberal arts education.

Problem #2 “The administration (who often are more concerned with a bottom line than education in se)… how does running a college like any other business, where the paying customer must be satisfied, affect the learning environment? The situation sketched above regarding grade inflation, etc., suggests that this may be a significant contributing factor.”

One comment: I think this may very well be Problem #1 and it is related to my comment above. If education serves no purpose but self-serving ends, education will never be the object of philanthropy, and schools will inevitably be run like businesses. Can a “culture of philanthropy for higher education” be revitalized in the United States? That will depend on the kind of higher education we offer.

Solution: Lehrman American Studies Program “Of course, it will never become the tool it could be without a critical mass of participants. I, for one, see extraordinary possibilities, and I hope that through our efforts, and perhaps more critically through your own, we will see the project bear much fruit.”

Perhaps we need to include university administrators in the participant list of the next program.

Your suggestion that faculty should be involved more intimately in the admissions process is an interesting one. This is obviously standard practice for selecting graduate students; why shouldn't this practice be extended to the undergraduate level? This might occasion resistance from a good many administrations, since undergraduates are the ones who "pay the bills," so to speak. Is this a practice that is effectively in place your university or any university you with which you are acquainted? It would be helpful to have more details about how something like this would work in practice. It also seems clear that such faculty-guided admissions would have to be limited to relatively small institutions.

Your point regarding the absence from my post of the fourth transcendental attribute of being is well taken, too.

These points taken together create an interesting dilemma, though, at least for us in ISI's University Stewardship department. What are we to say about those schools that are neither small enough to support faculty-guided admissions nor well-suited to create and sustain some kind of theological context for the study of liberal arts?

Put differently, this is a question that has, in one form or another, been on my mind a good deal lately:

Are only certain types of schools capable of sustaining liberal education? If so, what are the implications for ISI's "stewardship" efforts? Should we focus on turning more schools into small, traditional liberal arts schools?

Or is it possible to sustain a bastion of liberal arts even within a larger consumer-oriented, secular university (in the form of a robust liberal arts or humanities program)?

Is a core curriculum, which requires all students to take certain classes, and which is highly touted by many in conservative circles as the best solution to some of the problems in higher education, in fact doomed to failure at institutions without the proper ethos? Must liberal arts–oriented professors at such universities simply grin and bear it?

I don't expect answers to every one of those questions, but the point is significant, I think. Talk of higher education abounds in this country, most of all in conservative circles of one sort or another. But there are so very many questions that must first be answered—mostly regarding the purpose, the end, of education—before we can begin to determine how to best, or better, to reach that end at various levels, whether in individual classrooms, or university- or nation-wide.

That is a tall order, indeed, and I have noticed that many self-described conservative organizations have simply chosen not to wade into those theoretical waters. Thus, most talk about reform is itself consumer-oriented: there is a good deal of talk about how to lower outrageously high costs of higher education and how to better meet student demands and eradicate outdated structures, and almost no talk about what constitutes an authentic education. I often get nervous listening to the language being employed, and fear the possible results of giving the inmates even more control of the asylum (if a classics department, for instance, is non-self-sustaining due to low demand, does market logic deem that it be relegated to the dustbin?).

Your point about philanthropy and education may be salient here, if we are to conceive of education as something other than a big business; but I am unsure that I fully appreciate the point you are trying to make about a "culture of philanthropy for higher education." Certainly philanthropic donations constitute a significant portion of many schools' budgets; the problem is that those making the donations are not doing so wisely or with appropriate conditions. Again, though, I feel like I may be missing your deeper point here.

Finally, your speculation that certain university administrators might make a good addition to the lineup up future Summer Institutes is very interesting. At the very least, a lecture or round-table with some friendly administrators may provide participants with very useful information about various administrative contingencies that affect academic life, as well as ways for professors to work with administrators to navigate those contingencies in the pursuit of improved liberal education. Thank you for the suggestion.

I rather like the lines from MacIntyre in Susan's reply. And I think that MacIntyre is essentially right--that true education has a theistic underpinning. But even a university dedicated to a good mission and with the right students will fail unless there is active, substantive scholarship produced by those who share this sense of mission. Sloan is also right when he suggests that most faculty teaching at the places with the right sort of mission statement are too overburdened to produce the scholarship necessary to effecting the sort of change we speak. To put it another way, I mean to add a necessary condition to Susan's comment. Of course I can't take too much credit for the point. It's a point Philip Johnson has been trying to press home for some time, and one about which he's right.

I think Patrick’s post, as well as the comments, raises a series of interesting questions, of which I’ll address just a few for whatever they may be worth.

Even if you have administrators who may be receptive to liberal education, they still are evaluated according to budgetary metrics – usually FTEs. The better administrators try to match the financial interests of the university with the pedagogical interests of the students (and sometimes even with the faculty, if they can be distracted for a little bit from their research and instead focus on teaching); but, at the end of the day, they are compelled to operate within a business model paradigm.

As students are constrained by financial limitations, whether present or prospective, and as faculty are confined by prevalent ideology and numerical enrollment, so are administrators confined by economic concerns. This actually isn’t necessary negative, because it does keep the university rooted in a concrete social and economic reality – can you imagine some ideologue as dean or provost? Not being constrained, he would bankrupt the school and destroy the institution for his own ideological ends. Of course, I recognize a need to balance financial considerations with academic ones, but we should also recognize the potential positive role of that economic matters play in the university processes.

With respect to the Lehrman Institute, it may be helpful to have someone provide an overview of the entire university system. Students certainly have their viewpoints (as Patrick had accurately divided into slackers, pragmatists, and the liberally leaning); faculty have their own disciplinary and philosophical perspectives; and administrators have their objectives, whether career advancement, setting the conditions for genuine learning, or office empire-building. In my experience, once a faculty member knows how the entire system operates, from the board of trustee to the incoming freshman, he will better able to know how to create the conditions of liberal learning (unfortunately, I have some experience in this matter, having served on our faculty union and having participated in the faculty-administrators negotiations). As Anonymous remarked, a faculty member participating in the admission process is an excellent way to change, albeit slowly, the culture of your institution.

Two other quick matters about philanthropic donations and university size:

Generally speaking, universities are tuition-driven for their income. Philanthropic donations do play a role in the budgetary process, but they are often dedicated to certain accounts and are not included in the general budget, or only a certain percentage of the interest can be incorporated into the general budget. Creating havens in the university from philanthropic donations are somewhat successful, e.g., the Madison College at Michigan State University. The problems with these type of programs is they still have to interface with the university’s bureaucracy, whether it is financial aid or housing, and there is no guarantee they will remain true to their core mission over time (think of the Ford Foundation, a classic example) – not to mention that you tend to have the problem of revolving faculty in these types of niches because of different evaluation requirements, budgetary process, etc.

  For liberal education to exist, I do think size is really a crucial factor, especially in a regime like ours where we have a system of mass education. Certain institutions are more likely to have genuine learning to take place because students are able to get to know each other as well as the faculty intimately over a period of a few years. This is less likely to happen at a mid-range school like mine, and certainly unlikely to happen at an R1 institution. One of the key ingredients to a liberal education is the creation of a small community. From our own experiences at the Lehrman Institute, we know this to be true. Generally speaking which were the better discussions: in Q & A’s after the morning lecture with a group of 26 plus, in the break-out sessions with half that number, or even among a smaller group over dinner and drinks? Creating a small community does not automatically translate into genuine learning, but it does set the conditions for making it more likely.

In light of my comments above about some of the reform talk in conservative circles, Paul's comment about balancing scholarship and teaching is interesting. I often hear language that makes me think that the aforementioned folk do not appreciate that a balance of scholarship and teaching is necessary to help a professor foster an environment of liberal learning.

Lee's explanation of some the inner workings of the university is helpful, too. Talk about higher education often seems to me like talk about health care—everyone agrees that all is not well, and that some changes are in order, but only a tiny handful of individuals actually understand how the whole gargantuan mess really works. The result is either pure theory that sort of skips across the surface, or focus on one element (like the business side) to the detriment of other elements.

Lee suggests that schools must be run to some extent through business models, which seems undeniably true. He then says, "I recognize a need to balance financial considerations with academic ones." How to go about doing this and helping your institutions do it should be a core concern for Lehrman Institute folks, since striking the right balance is crucial to your lives as academics and teachers.

On that note, I am also in tune to Lee's suggestion that ISI might provide a sort of guide to the guts of the modern university. This is a topic that has come up at ISI recently; one possibility could be the publication of an edited volume of essays on the many facets of the university, how those facets interact, and avenues for improving schools' ability to realize their true mission (of course, disagreement about what constitutes the "true mission" is precisely the problem at many universities). I like the idea of favoring a "comprehensive look" angle over a "reform handbook" angle. Perhaps Lee, with his insider experience, could help us conceptualize such a project. Valuable, or no? Short of that, an organized series of posts on the blog on this subject could be helpful, too.

I second Lee's comments about communal scale and liberal learning.

Now, should I take this series of comments as a consensus that core curricula at larger, non–liberal arts schools—wherein the majority of students are business and communications and engineering and sports therapy majors—are doomed to failure? Or is the cursory exposure to the liberal arts better than nothing even at these institutions?

I have been pleased by the lively and thoughtful responses generated by my original posting on the liberal arts. I was particularly appreciative of Patrick Ford’s lengthy initial post on the topic, which nicely acknowledged the nature of our problem. Namely, most of us ISI-types are committed to liberal learning, yet we often find ourselves working in vast universities, with thousands of students there merely to obtain a credential (while waiting to reach an age of professional employability), and faculty primarily committed to their own research interests and careers. A key point from my first post was that even in institutions forthrightly designed to promote liberal learning (such as my own), the challenge is still enormous given the pragmatic orientation of most students and the various time pressures on faculty members.

In both Patrick’s original note and his response to Anonymous, he raises many of the questions that were lurking in the background of my “heresy” piece, and that were insufficiently articulated in our discussion of liberal learning early in the Summer Institute. I am very grateful to see someone involved in ISI’s university stewardship program asking these questions, and struggling to discern the types of follow-up activities that would be most useful to those of us out in the trenches.

Lee’s discussion of the business structure of higher education, and the need to put tuition-paying students into classrooms to support the college or university infrastructure, is indeed a critical part of the picture. However, I am still pondering the extent to which exploring this business structure of colleges and universities operates will necessarily help us understand how to promote liberal learning more effectively on our campuses. I would welcome additional thoughts on that from other interested bloggers among us.

For my part, I’d suggest the book project notion Patrick offered might serve several purposes. Rather than being devoted primarily to describing and discussing the economic and managerial aspects of higher education (i.e. “the whole gargantuan mess”), the first part of the volume could focus on the large-scale impediments to liberal learning in early 21st century America. One of these would presumably be postmodernism and the radical skepticism of the humanities and social sciences in academia. Another would involve the culture of students—the extreme pragmatists we’ve been discussing. (Maybe this would be an update of Allan Bloom’s marvelous description of his Cornell and Chicago undergrads in The Closing of the American Mind, and an extension of this analysis to college students from other social classes as well.) A third and very significant component would be the business practices of higher education. A fourth might be the incentive structures around faculty members, especially at research universities, which reward scholars for ever more specialized research and penalize them for attending to the classroom.

Then the second portion (one-half? two-thirds?) could feature some thoughtful suggestions about how to counteract these tendencies in the interest of promoting liberal learning. This section could explore those issues of environment, students, pedagogy, curricula, and so forth that are presumably important for a vital liberal education. It could also feature case studies of programs, departments, schools, or entire institutions that had successfully surmounted the challenges to provide excellent liberal learning opportunities for students.

I’d be particularly interested in places that sell the development of a philosophical habit of mind to students on the ground that such an intellectual and spiritual foundation will enable them to serve more effectively as professionals and business persons. In other words, given the pragmatism of our students and the need for our institutions to generate revenue (to pay our salaries and justify our existence), I’d like to hear strategies for attending to the “pragmatics” of a liberal education. It would be great to hear of places where faculty in philosophy, political theory, and literature actually work closely with faculty from business, engineering, nursing, and other professional fields to ensure that students have a solid base in both the liberal arts and their specialty—if indeed such places exist.

As a post-script, I can’t help but note the irony in Evan Bassler’s comments elsewhere about the liberal learning program he has taken part in at Baylor. The selection process here seems implicitly to acknowledge difficulties of interesting more than a modest number of students in serious reading of texts, the pursuit of Truth, the search for wisdom across the disciplines, and the cultivation of a philosophic habit of mind.

Thanks to Prof. Clements for his very constructive suggestions. I am confident there is room here for some kind of project exploring the themes we've been discussing that would expand our consideration of key questions beyond the Summer Institute, and a number of you have voiced a desire for something like this.

The ever practical Kelly Hanlon reminded me this morning in conversation that, as we think about projects like this, we must constantly ask ourselves to whom such a project would appeal and why. Is this primarily a guide for conscientious young faculty with limited experience of the nuts and bolts of university life? Could it have a broader appeal to other "stake-holders" in higher education, or would trying to extend the appeal make the project too diffuse and unwieldy? Do more experienced professors, deans, provosts, other administrators, or trustees have needs that could be met by such a project, or would they primarily serve as contributors and teachers rather than learners? Are there situations to be addressed that obtain at a majority of colleges and universities, or would the project have to address differences between types of institutions?

The idea of case studies is one that holds considerable appeal. In this regard, the project could help peel back the layers and reveal the conditiones sine quibus non for genuine liberal education in light of all the exigencies in modern institutions of higher learning.

Let's keep this conversation going. We are always open to suggestions for new ways of extending the benefits of the Summer Institute beyond the two weeks at Princeton. Hopefully the ways that this website contributes to that end are becoming clearer; but as indicated already, we need not be limited to its ethereal domain.

Please do use the blog to continue exploring ideas. However, if anyone has more concrete nuts-and-bolts ideas for a project, the "Conversations" feature of this website might be a more efficient way of voicing them to ISI staff and other specific faculty members; please also feel free to email or call David, Kelly and me (pford@isi.org).

In the end, "success" along these lines will not be the fruit of a massive reorganization of the university, but the persistent, small-scale efforts of individual professors and small, cohesive groups of faculty, students, and administrators. This can happen at a very small institution, but will probably be more fruitful at larger institutions in which small "creative minorities" coalesce around a common purpose.

The reason I say this is that I agree with Patrick's categorization of students, and with the relative proportions he implicitly assigns. Most men are made out of bronze, some of silver, and few of gold (that sounds too rigid - education perhaps is like alchemy, and can change one metal into another). Paradoxically, a large setting gives us a better chance at creating small creative minorities.

This is not giving up on the practical-minded students. They benefit from being in the company and conversation of other students who are more inclined to philosophizing. In some cases the goal might be to turn the business student into a philosophy major. More often, I think, the goal will be to spark a flame of curiosity in the business student, so that later one he will be hungry for that which he missed when he was too young to appreciate it. Or, even better, he will joyously engage in his trade and profession in a reflective, reasoned, examined way.

(As a non-philosophy major, I'd like to sound a warning note against the idea that our goal is to produce more graduates in the humanities. The goal is to encourage the philosophical habit of mind. An economist, a biologist, an engineer, and a nurse can have that habit of thought and reflection and that ability to see things as parts of a whole. It just takes more work.)

But this won't happen if we shut out the practical-minded from the university through the admissions process. The goal is not to create a homogenous studentry that is prefabricated to be afire for wisdom, but to warn the slothful, to give the young pragmatists a taste of what they are missing (and turn some of them around), and to slake the thirst of those with genuine intellectual curiosity.

Like Lee, I have been "blessed" with the experience of faculty-administration negotiations over compensation and security, participated in all sorts of accreditation and assessment efforts, and dabbled in the study of the finance of higher education. As an economist, I know there's no such thing as a free lunch. Then, who pays for all this?

Earlier in this post someone mentioned the importance of philantropy in supporting the liberal arts. The philantropist, probably, made his wealth in the trades and professions, and was brought to realize the value of the liberal arts, probably through the efforts of individuals working in small-scale settings.

A different, somewhat paradoxical form of philantropy is that of the cash-cow MBA program that supports a classical core curriculum. Someone in the university (board, founders, administration, stakeholders) has made the decision to fund thinking and reflexion with the fruits of hard work in the trade and the professions.

I would like to suggest that the ISI book project that Stephen suggests should not be the usual litany of lamentations against the poor state of current higher education. As Patrick said, Socrates had his sophists: we know well how Socrates tenure case went.

Instead, the ISI book project should focus on case studies of individuals and small groups of faculty across departments who came up with a fruitful idea for encouraging students and colleagues. It should focus on the incentive structures set up by deans and departments to encourage philosophizing by faculty and students (in ways that won't be damaging to their long-term livelihoods - not all of us have Socrates' detachment from family). It should focus on the ways that universities can create spaces beyond the logic of exchange and the logic of diktat.

An excellent place to start that project, as Patrick said, is this blog and the Summer Institutes.

(A post-script, responding to Patrick and Kelly's question: the project would appeal to all of the above. A How To manual for young and experienced faculty would also encourage administrators and donors to support such efforts in their own campuses.)

Thank you, Prof. Martinez, for you additional insights.

I agree that we do not need another book of conservative lamentations, though there is still plenty to lament.

Both Profs. Clements and Martinez indicate the need for an examination of how to harmonize the practical and humane disciplines and how to extend a philosophical habit of mind to those inside and outside the humanities. Prof. Martinez' observations about the often positive and necessary relationship of business and liberality are well taken, too.

There seems to be a developing consensus that something like a case study of successful liberal arts programs would be very helpful (as Prof. Clements originally suggested), and I agree with Prof. Martinez that such a study could appeal to anyone within the university who wants to promote a genuine liberal education. Let's keep talking.

It seems like we are discussing two different but related topics: 1) liberal education itself and 2) the implementation of liberal education in a variety of institutional settings that includes reaching outside the university to fund such projects. There are a number of books on the first topic but none of which I can think on the second. However, in order to write about the second topic, the contributors would have to agree on what constitutes a liberal education and why is it important to human flourishing, especially in a world where utilitarianism and pragmatism rule.