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The liberal arts have been in crisis in American colleges and universities in one way or another throughout my academic life. Whether challenged by Sputnik, assaulted by the rise of vocationally oriented education, or rejected by the fine arts as irrelevant to performance, we in the liberal arts have found ourselves playing defense for a long time. We watched as many of our traditional liberal arts courses declined in enrollment, we saw our graduate student populations decline, and we witnessed the rise of an instrumental argument for the liberal arts (it turns out liberal arts are practical).

The commitment from our institutions, enshrined in the core, distribution, or general education requirements, became a curricular battlefield over the ability of the academy to absorb the dramatic social, political, and cultural transformations of the late 20th century. We fretted as the nation turned towards a crusade to enhance the STEM disciplines which divided the liberal arts and sciences into two camps: the nationally significant mathematically based disciplines and the perhaps useful and charming but less important social, behavioral, and humanistic studies.

We learned that college was critical to the nation’s future and that everyone should have an opportunity to attend, but we also learned that we should add programs and activities to support those students arriving from high school with one or many academic deficiencies. We found ourselves asked to support economic development in our communities and state, we responded to calls for community involvement and service learning, we engaged in outreach to many off-campus constituencies, and we pursued various forms of distance learning. All this effort produced dramatically increased enrollments in higher education but also constant discontent from one or another of our many constituencies. Ideologues of all persuasions found our values suspect, employers found our graduates not as well prepared as expected, governments complained that students graduated with different levels of skill and performance and that some did not graduate at all, testing concerns lobbied for regulated uniformity through standardized outcome measurements, and our national associations and other interested groups issued call after call for dramatic reform, rededication, reconfiguration, and renewal.

One elegant and comprehensive call to arms for the liberal arts comes from the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) perhaps the most focused on liberal arts of the lobbying organizations in Washington DC. Their campaign carries the inspiring title Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) and their challenge appears in the publication, College Learning for the New Global Century (2007) available online. This report is wonderful in its rhetoric, purposes, and recognition of the many remarkable things being done for liberal education across the nation. It outlines The Essential Learning Outcomes, seven Principles of Excellence, and fifteen Recommendations to implement these principles. The AACU LEAP leadership council includes representatives of colleges and universities of varying types and sizes. All in all, it is a fine report. One of its great strengths is that it makes a strong case for flexible, effective, and specific outcomes measurement tailored to the particular academic objectives of the widely varying institutions in the country and makes an effective critique of the simple, one test serves all, methodology proposed by many accountability advocates.

Still, as I read through this report, cheering on my colleagues whose broad definition of the liberal arts seems to encompass everything a modern college or university does, some nagging doubt restrained my enthusiasm. Although presented as a remarkably new proposal, much of the rationale and content have been part of our liberal arts rhetoric and agenda for at least a generation or two, and most of the principles, perhaps ineffectively implemented, have provided the justification for every college and university’s general education or core requirements. The described innovations, admirable in every way, actually exist in most colleges and universities in some form or another, providing undergraduates with real world experience, taking multidisciplinary courses, working on team projects, and otherwise broadening and deepening their engagement with multiple facets of the curriculum. That these admirable accomplishments should get more attention and visibility is surely a good thing, and that our colleagues have been enhancing curriculum and the opportunities for students to meet the goals echoed by this report is reason to rejoice.

The great challenge for the achievement of all these fine principles and recommendations comes from more practical considerations. Almost everyone would agree with these broad recommendations and principles, for they have been the stuff of our discussions on these topics for years, but not everyone will see a clear method for implementation. While the LEAP document asks us to put our experiments into a complete reform of the undergraduate process, this is not as easy as it might appear. Most colleges and universities have 120 hours, more or less, to provide all the things everyone wants from their undergraduate experience. Most of the recommendations in the report speak of adding onto the current curriculum, by enhancing the core and extending the principles of liberal learning into the structure of majors. Indeed, LEAP reinforces the importance of the strong in-depth major. The challenge may be worth accepting, but it is not trivial, and especially for large complex universities, the integrative approach presented here may prove somewhat more difficult to achieve. Most colleges and universities are doing some of the things recommended in this report, but not many are implementing them all in a systematic fashion.

This is not for lack of leadership, imagination, or good will, but instead, it reflects the real practical and economic challenges of implementing comprehensive, sweeping reforms. All of us appreciate the call to arms of the AACU, we who are of the traditional liberal arts cannot help but resonate to the rhetoric, but we look forward with anticipation to the development of a strategy that will help us find the money and the space within our highly regulated environments to engage the fundamental reforms outlined here.

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Friday, May 11, 2007

ACE, the American Council on Education, is a remarkable organization. Their mission, to speak for and about the entire range of higher education institutions, is admirable for its impossibility. Even so, ACE is almost always there when we need someone saying the right things about significant national issues related to higher education. Indeed, David Ward’s reign, which is sadly nearing its end, has been a model of effective representation, and we are sorry to lose his charm, insight, and forthright courage in speaking on our behalf.

ACE does lots of things for different constituencies, but it always pays special attention to institutional presidents/chancellors because these people are the primary constituents of the organization. Presidents have many interests and concerns, but they are always interested in themselves. ACE responds in a variety of ways as it reflects the presidents’ personal perspectives. A list of the titles for sale from ACE’s publications on leadership and institutional effectiveness provides a sample: the flagship magazine, The Presidency; On Assuming a College or University Presidency: Lessons and Advice from the Field; and especially, The American College President.

This last item (most recently published in 2007 and on sale through ACE) appeared on my desk, and in looking through it, I marveled at our fascination with conversations about ourselves. Since 1986, ACE and its collaborators have been asking college presidents what they think about their jobs, seeking a profile of the work and performance, challenges and opportunities, as seen by the occupants of these high visibility positions. Much of the information is very interesting, especially related to the changes in presidential characteristics by race and gender, age, previous experience, and other descriptive characteristics of this carefully selected population.

In other sections of the report, the presidents portray themselves as hard working, over-stressed individuals, denied much privacy, and consumed by the struggle to make their institutions successful. However, there is also a sense in the commentary that accompanies these responses that perhaps something is wrong with a system of higher education that requires its presidents to seek money and deal with demanding external constituencies, cope with accountability and the changing requirements of the marketplace, and grapple with the difficulties of governance. As the report says “The mystery is why any individuals would subject themselves to such sacrifices and, because they obviously do, how they survive.”

This is not something we should worry about. It is rare that an individual who becomes a college president imagines that the job is about pure thought, charming conversations with colleagues, and thoughtful discussions of the curriculum. Everybody, in or out of a presidency, knows that the success of colleges and universities depends on the acquisition of adequate funding. Everybody is clear that a president who avoids donors, does not like to speak with legislators, is uninterested in working with parents, and ignores corporations should probably not be president. The data in the ACE report highlight this consensus about the job of president, although the commentary appears to question the fairness of the requirements.

College presidents are actually not worth their price unless they are willing to deal with all those issues, as well as everything else that comes with the territory: faculty, unions, students, athletics, and communities, each with a long and impossible to resolve, conflict-related agenda. The list of presidential aggravations may be long in our own minds, but that is the job. It is the point of the exercise, to manage these complex interactions with the assistance of very smart people who will make the college or university more successful in competing for students, faculty, and staff, who will then deliver the performance that defines quality.

When the lure of academic life in its purer forms becomes great, presidents fade into the faculty or some other more graceful place, but while they are presidents, we should expect them to engage the battle and enjoy the fight. As one respondent to the survey accurately commented, “You do it because you love it.”

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Although much that comes across the academic administrative desk shines with the bright light of pride and promotion — expensively produced with high quality paper and commercial production values, creative layout and design, and magnetically attractive photography — a few items arrive with impressive calm, quietly. In this case, it’s a small book that looks like a scholarly journal in an obscure area of the humanities. The paper is soft, the cover appears faded; there are no pictures, no dramatic announcements, no claims of cosmic significance. Instead the Reports of the President and Treasurer of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2005) arrives in the mail with the unassuming confidence of a longstanding enterprise of uncontested substance.

Just under 200 pages, printed in a small scholarly typeface, the book consists primarily of the names and mini-biographies of the individuals awarded Guggenheim fellowships. The preliminary material speaks gracefully of the Guggenheim’s mission, thanks in a quiet way those who have helped, and provides a short financial report. Then the main content follows: page after page of information about the fellows, distinguished and interesting people from their bios, but impressive for the Guggenheim’s practice of telling us almost nothing about the projects for which they have received these prestigious awards. Sometimes we can guess from the title, “Appointed for a study of the global depletion of nonrenewable energy resources,” although this surely is but a hint of the actual project. Others are even less helpful as “Appointed for music composition.” Is this for a song, an opera, a string quartet, a jazz concerto? We do not need to know, for the value celebrated here is the individual, not the work.

In our competitive academic meritocracy, where specific differentiation of intellectual activity often defines career success, this sparse report offers a different perspective. The Guggenheim, as the foundation explains in its introduction, is about supporting people whose past performance and future promise predict good work. It is about having faith that these people will do very good things on their own, driven by their personal commitment to their academic, intellectual, and artistic convictions. The Guggenheim report tells us that the foundation believes in these people by funding their personal effort. The Foundation does not ask for a specific product or a particular return on its investment, but instead simply selects individuals and asks them to be as productive and creative as they choose to be. Such open ended faith, in our endlessly regulated world, is a joy to behold. Such a commitment to the process of academic, intellectual, and artistic creativity. Such an old-school sense of confidence in the judgment of their reviewers and the quality of their Fellows.

Much in the way a quiet walk in a graceful garden or time spent in an elegant museum provides peace and inspiration, a moment perusing the Guggenheim report (delivered without any sense of urgency in 2007, compiled in 2006, and reflecting the activities of 2005) reminds us of the timeless primacy of the personal creativity of our colleagues.

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Everyone who lives the life of academic administration receives a steady flow of publications in their mail and email streams each day. Some of these items delight, some bore, and some outrage, but all prompt amazement and awe at the energy and literary achievement they represent. We receive magazines, journals, and endless reports from various alphabet agencies. Some we deserve because we pay their sponsor agencies a membership fee and some come in unsolicited. My wiser colleagues, better managers of their time, don’t read these things and instead have their staff pass them on to colleagues on the assumption that what the chancellor finds irrelevant and unworthy of review is of vital importance to a provost, a dean, or a department chair. My upbringing, however, does not permit such efficiency, and the voice of my father reaches out from beyond and reminds me that we never know when the irrelevant information we read will become useful. So I read most of the stuff. While my father was surely right about this, he didn’t consider the problem of signal to noise ratio. Some of these items contain real informational gems, insights and data of great value to understanding the nature of the colleges and universities we inhabit. Much of the rest of it, is primarily noise, and the level of noise can, from time to time, rise to an eye-straining level of literary cacophony.

Reality Check: The Blog shares some of these items, without the irritating referral to my colleagues, by putting a note into the public blogsphere where anyone can ignore anything with enthusiasm, pleasure, and impunity. The items that attract attention here will fall into a number of categories; some I can predict now and some may emerge as time goes on.

One group of items include the endless self-promotional reports from our own institution and others that explain to a perhaps unaware public that our universities’ teaching and research programs are not only terrific, constantly improving, but also unique in every respect (and thereby much better than anyone else’s). Most of these do not merit much attention as institutional self-promotion is now a common occurrence, driven by the need to motivate alumni, recruit students, and impress colleagues at other institutions to perhaps influence reputation-based rankings. Some people read these publications with enthusiasm, others don’t read them, don’t receive them in the mail, or when they do, discard them immediately. A special place within this group belongs to the presidential/chancellor self-promotional pieces. Presented as institutional information or celebration, they characteristically feature a large and careful posed picture of the campus or system CEO on the cover, smiling with relentless enthusiasm about whatever it is the photographer mentioned at the time of the picture. These publications are great fun to do and for one’s family to receive. A minor variation are the newsy updates from the university that also include, prominently in case we’d forgotten, other fine pictures of the institutional leader.

Another set of items captures the flow of reports, manifestos, and other publications from the associations to which we all belong. There are quite a few of these, almost all known by their initials, frequently starting with an A (ACE, AASCU, AACJC, AAU, ARL, AAUP). We can learn from the trustee group at the AGB or read about international affairs from NAFSA, which used to be the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors but now, in a more correct vein, is called the Association of International Educators but retains its NAFSA brand. In any case, all of these associations provide information about issues and activities relevant for those individuals whose institutions pay the membership fees. The associations serve in almost all cases as lobbying agents for the interests of the educators involved. Their executive directors usually work in Washington, DC, and have nice offices. The most prestigious associations have former university presidents as their directors and a few provide them fine homes in Georgetown.

Then there are the crisis reports. With considerable frequency, think-tanks, associations, government agencies, special blue ribbon committees, and other groups (ad hoc or semi-official in some respect) issue stirring calls to arms about this or that crisis affecting some aspect or even the whole of American higher education. Old warriors recognize these for the recurring phenomena that they are, but the best are filled with stirring rhetoric and alarming critique, and on occasion they serve as career builders for those engaged in their crusades. Sometimes the crisis reports provide accurate data, careful analysis, and useful recommendation. Often they also include pictures of the distinguished academic leaders whose names grace the commission, committee, or advisory board list. If they contain examples of best practices, which they often do, these exemplars correlate highly with the institutions whose names appear under the pictures.

We also receive articles, monographs, book length studies of various topics of interest to academic organization and management. As we troll through J-STOR, we come upon many interesting and substantial journal articles about critical university issues related to teaching or research or to the money and management of these marvelous places. A number of government agencies and university research centers also publish useful data and analyses that inspire admiration. These too fall within the purview of the Reality Check Blog.

As these items flow across my desk, this blog will share a perspective on their contents, quality, and utility. The Reality Check blog may inspire you to request a copy or immediately download the items mentioned, or, perhaps, to use them in a class on the literary theory of academic culture.

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