To seek a newer world: revitalizing liberal education for the 21st century. (Perspectives).

THERE IS A LOT OF TALK THESE DAYS about what it will take to live, work, and prosper in the twenty-first century. Many institutions, including my own, claim as part of our mission the preparation of leaders in this new century. But, how do we go about achieving that mission in a world characterized by explosive technological change and unprecedented interconnectedness and interdependence? How do we go about achieving that mission in an era where "our national interest has become little more than making it easier for people to pursue their material dreams" (Gabler 2001)?

Competition, consumerism and the academy

The sheltered status of institutions of higher education is changing. New types of for-profit and non-profit organizations are beginning to provide competition in targeted segments of higher education. ...Intense competition as it is known in the broader economic sense is coming to higher education.

ARMSTRONG 2001

As the business of higher education becomes more competitive, liberal education faces two distinct but related threats. The first is the challenge of relevance: Is liberal education useful in the world today? The second challenge is economic: Can liberal education survive the impending changes in higher education? In this increasingly competitive environment, it is tempting to simply serve the customer. After all, isn't that what competition is all about? In most cases, what the customer wants is very specific--the most direct possible route to gainful employment or to graduate studies in a professional area. Succumbing to this temptation is rationalized as either a naive belief in the power of the invisible hand or a willingness to simply abandon the larger social aims of education in favor of the limited private goals of individual students. In either case, it expands a growing vacuum of purpose, purpose that is at the very core of liberal education.

The challenge of relevance is neither trivial nor limited to liberal arts colleges. Indeed, this is a challenge that must be faced by all institutions that offer liberal education. Public and private institutional responses to the challenge will vary. Likewise, research universities and liberal arts colleges have different degrees of freedom in how they answer the relevance question. But answer we must, because the competitive landscape will demand it.

As Armstrong (2001) notes, many new players are offering students an entirely new set of benefits: convenience, flexibility, a curriculum keenly focused on job-related skills, and a substantially lower cost structure. We will not attract students to liberal education the way parents coerce children to eat their spinach. In the absence of tangible value, most students will not pursue any particular curriculum because "It's good for you."

Another popular response to the challenge of relevance focuses on the quality of the education. But quality, like beauty, is subjective.

Consequently, institutions are likely to rely on quality surrogates such as the quality of their faculty, institutional reputation, and the breadth of offerings. This type of response is indirect at best, and in too many cases it is unsupportable. Commenting on undergraduate education at research universities, the Boyer Commission (1997) noted:

Many students graduate having accumulated whatever number of courses is required, but still lacking a coherent body of knowledge or any inkling as to how one sort of information might relate to others. And all too often they graduate without knowing how to think logically, write clearly, or speak coherently. The university has given them too little that will be of real value beyond a credential that will help them get their first jobs. This observation underscores the extent to which curricula are dominated by discipline-specific specialties in all forms of undergraduate education. Liberal arts colleges and research universities alike look to a sampling of humanities and sciences to provide students with breadth, and they look to discipline-specific majors to provide depth of understanding in a particular area. But to what end? Serving the customer is a useful economic imperative but not a moral imperative. In the absence of a moral foundation to guide the purpose of undergraduate education, we leave ourselve s--and our students--to the mercy of the market, with nothing to guide us, and with no unique societal contribution to make.

The second type of threat comes in the form of market or economic challenge. As undergraduate curricula have become more specialized and as non-traditional competitors enter all aspects of the higher education market, liberal arts colleges in particular are likely to face intense market pressure. These institutions occupy a specialized niche, serving less than 5 percent of the college-going public. Taken as a group, they are not particularly well capitalized and their fixed costs are high. Unlike research universities or institutions with substantial continuing education enterprises, they have no alternative revenue-producing activities to offset a loss of income from teaching.

Although less esoteric, the market challenges are inseparable from the challenge of purpose. To put it in the unvarnished language of business, traditional competitors have three choices when the market recognizes a better mousetrap has come to town--hold, fold, or adapt. Much energy is spent these days contesting the notion that non-traditional competitors and Internet-mediated learning strategies represent an improvement on traditional higher education. The issue is only marginally relevant, because, like it or not, the market of higher education is changing.

The prospects for consolidation are not unlike those faced by financial services in the 1980s and healthcare in the 1990s. Like the financial-services industry and the healthcare industry, higher education is a large and highly fragmented business. And like financial services and healthcare, higher education now faces the intrusion of non-traditional competitors, the deployment of disruptive technologies, and specialized product offerings. For-profit competitors and Internet-mediated learning strategies are nipping at the margins of traditional educational markets. Although the impacts are not yet clear, it is apparent that the functions of educational institutions are being unbundled by new market players. As more of the teaching components of higher education are stripped away from colleges and universities, market threats will intensify.

The alternatives for traditional competitors in higher education can be differentiated by type of institution. There are some specific alternatives for liberal education whether offered at a private research university or a traditional liberal arts college. On a continuum, the alternatives are marked at one extreme by abandoning the aims and purposes of liberal education altogether, and on the other extreme by simply ignoring the market indicators. The "hold" option may work for a small number of highly ranked, well-capitalized liberal arts colleges (whether independent or within research universities). Liberal arts colleges in the last quartile in terms of ranking and/or endowment are the most vulnerable to "fold." Colleges with either high rankings or large endowments may have a variety of choices. Remaining the same, however, will not be one of them.

This is not meant to suggest that some consolidation in higher education would be a bad thing. The elimination of low-quality institutions, reduction of public expenditure on redundant programs, and better alignment of educational programs with individual and social needs are all possible good outcomes. But consolidation is likely to be market driven rather than mission driven. The market has no mechanism for evaluating social goods or long-term needs, and only the simplest ability to assess quality. Nevertheless, it is likely that (among other institutions) many liberal arts colleges will not survive a significant consolidation. Perhaps the greatest hazard is that the market's judgment about economic viability may be mistaken for a "value-neutral" assessment of the efficacy of liberal education.

Reclaiming the moral imperative of liberal education

The history of higher education teaches us that liberal education is inextricably intertwined with normative goals. In order to truly understand how to fashion undergraduate education in the twenty-first century, our aims and strategies must be grounded in a purpose that transcends the notion of serving the customer or preparing students simply to pursue their own individual ends. There are some obvious hazards inherent in such an endeavor, and these hazards will surely create resistance. The fear of replacing an old elitism with a new elitism and the slippery slope of indoctrination are but two. While these are not trivial concerns, we should view them as cautions rather than insurmountable obstacles.

In the simplest terms, the "old elitism" (which still taints the very notion of liberal education) was peopled by that rarified group of educated, property-owning, white men who were motivated by a combination of individual interests and noblesse-oblige regarding the common good. They were the Jeffersons and the Adamses, and later the Carnegies and the Rockefellers. Many of those generations accomplished great things for the nation, while they also pursued their own ends. But they were members of an exclusive club, and such exclusivity in today's world is intolerable.

The tendency toward indoctrination lies in the temptation to tell students what values and ideals make for good citizens, rather than preparing them to exercise their own moral agency to its full potential. The notion of a common moral code has met with increasing challenge since the mid-nineteenth century. As the world becomes more tightly connected, pluralist challenges will only increase. It seems obvious, therefore, that we would not serve our students well by trying to indoctrinate them into a particular set of values or a particular way of seeing the world--assuming that we could.

How do we avoid these and other pitfalls while revitalizing liberal education? If we are to revitalize liberal education, it will happen on individual campuses, one school at a time. This task cannot be legislated at the national or at the state level, nor be accomplished with rhetoric. Revitalizing liberal education requires a strong commitment from individual institutions, their boards, presidents, and faculty. It calls for open and authentic dialogue regarding the purposes of liberal education and some agreement as to the qualities possessed by liberally educated people. Finally, it will require the development of curricula that give students every opportunity to acquire the skills and attributes of productive citizens as well as successful individuals. It is likely that reasonable people of goodwill will differ on how this is to be done. However, it is also likely that we can find many areas of agreement. In the final analysis, it is a matter of institutional will.

William Cronon (1998) has suggested ten qualities by which we might recognize a liberally educated person:

1. They listen and they hear.

2. They read and they understand.

3. They can talk with anyone.

4. They can write clearly and persuasively and movingly.

5. They can solve a wide variety of puzzles and problems.

6. They respect rigor not so much for its own sake but as a way of seeking truth.

7. They practice humility, tolerance, and self-criticism.

8. They understand how to get things done in the world.

9. They nurture and empower the people around them.

10. They follow E.M. Forster's epigraph to Howard's End: "Only connect

More than anything else, being an educated person means being able to see connections that allow one to make sense of the world and act within it in creative ways.

While we may not agree entirely with Cronon's list, it is one possible starting point. What is most provocative about these qualities is the combination of many of the intellectual abilities (listening, reading, etc.) long associated with liberal education, with normative qualities (hearing, understanding, and persuading), and some very practical skills (knowing how to get things done in the world). And in the final analysis, Cronon asserts that all of these qualities have a moral purpose-to prepare people to "make sense of the world and act within it in creative ways.

Another starting point is persuasively outlined in the Greater Expectations National Panel Report (AAC&U 2002). The report calls for liberal education in the twenty-first century to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to thrive in a complex world and notes our students must become empowered, informed, and responsible. The report suggests that liberally educated people become empowered as they master intellectual and practical skills, informed by knowledge and how to acquire knowledge, and responsible for their own actions and for their contribution to civic life. This new paradigm offers great promise for the goals and purposes of liberal education in the twenty-first century.

The road ahead


Come,
My friends,
tis not too late to seek a newer world...
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are-
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
--TENNYSON, "Ulysses"

If we are to be successful in revitalizing liberal education, I suggest that we begin by asking two questions: In what kind of world will our students live? And, what kind of education will best equip them to lead productive lives? Given the advances in medicine, it is likely that they will live and work longer than any generation before them. The complexity and interdependence of the world will only increase. It will not be unusual for a person to have four or five different careers. Students today will come of age in a world where technical ability outstrips human understanding of how that technology ought to be used. Indeed, that world is already here.

Yet for all of our technical and technological capabilities the world remains a place of radical differences-in wealth distribution, access to resources, in tolerance. The question that remains unanswered is, given all that we can do, how are we to know what it is we ought to do?

The debate about what type of education will best prepare students for this new century pits liberal education against professional education; breadth against specialization. It is a false choice. Even in the short span of four years, breadth and depth are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, they can be extraordinarily complementary if neither is relied on as an end, but rather a means. Breadth is necessary to the development of transferable skills--reading and understanding, listening and hearing, communicating and persuading. Likewise breadth provides a context for understanding a rapidly changing world.

At the undergraduate level, depth of knowledge in a particular area is simply a place to start--whether that start provides basic preparation for a professional career or for further study at the graduate level. Thus to the extent that we allow students to focus exclusively on depth, we prepare them for a short-range destination at the expense of their long-term journeys. We prepare them to pursue their own immediate interests. But we do so without preparing them to understand or appreciate the extent to which their future is connected to other persons and to social, political, economic, and technical environments that, like their own interests, are constantly changing.

It is time to reclaim the moral imperative of liberal education. To this end, we must revitalize liberal education for the twenty-first century by grounding it in a clear purpose: to prepare productive citizen-leaders. We must do so for two reasons. First, it is liberal education that provides students with fundamental knowledge and skills--critical thinking, communication skills, etc.--that are neither job nor place-in-time specific. They are skills that will not become obsolete. Second, it is our greatest hope for a good society. Liberal education provides us with the tools to value, to seek, and to discern those connections of which Cronon speaks. It is in these connections that we find our common good. It is in these connections that we are able to understand not just what we can do, but what we ought to do.

The incentives are equally plain. If we fail, the impending consolidation of higher education may all but extinguish liberal education. And, we will have left our students and our children to make their way in a world that Gabler (2001) describes as one in which there are "not citizens, only consumers." Better, I think, to seek a newer world.

To respond to this article, e-mail: [e-mail], with author's name on the subject line.

WORKS CITED

Armstrong, Lloyd A, Jr. 2001. A new game in town: Competitive higher education. Unpublished manuscript.

Association of American Colleges and Universities. 2002. Greater expectations; A new vision for learning as a nation goes to college. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Bok, Derek. 1982. Beyond die ivory tower. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates. 1997. Reinventing undergraduate education: A blueprint for America's research universities. Menlo Park, CA: The Carnegie Foundation.

Brubacher, John Seiler. 1997. Higher education in transition. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Cronon, William. 1998. Only connect: The goals of a liberal education. The American Scholar. Volume 67, Number 4.

Edgerton, Russell. 2000. Education white paper. Philadelphia, PA: Pew Trusts.

Gabler, Neal. 2001. A nation longing for a higher cause. Los Angeles Times, June 24, Ml, 6.

Kerr, Clark. 1991. The great transformation in higher education. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Lucas, Christopher J. 1996. Crisis in the academy. New York: St Martin's Press.

Schneider, Carol Geaty and Robert Shoenberg. 1998. Contemporary understandings of liberal education. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Weber, Max. 1958. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York: Charles Scribners Sons.

Westmeyer, Paul. 1997. An analytical history of American higher education. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas Publisher.

L. KATHARINE HARRINOTON is associate vice provost at the University of Southern California