Reading essay collections is a shot in the dark. Some volumes are tightly edited and themed. Those are my favorite, for they offer multiple perspectives on an issue. They are easier to remember them and I feel as though I’ve learned something when I finish the volume. Other collections wander. And while it’s almost always interesting to see what the next essay has to say, I much prefer intentionality.
In April 2012 at Lafayette College, the Mellon Foundation sponsored a conference with an ambitious title: “The Future of the Liberal Arts College in America and Its Leadership Role in Education around the World.” The event drew hundreds of attendees – a surprise to the hosts – and all manner of folks from the higher education world were there, presidents and students, faculty and board members. Rebecca Chopp, chancellor at the University of Denver, Susan Frost, a seasoned consultant and researcher, and Daniel Weiss, president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and former president of Haverford College and Lafayette College, were key organizers. They decided to assemble essays and presentations from the conference and fashion an edited collection. The result of their work, Remaking College: Innovation and the Liberal Arts, is an informative volume containing seventeen short essays bound by common themes and issues. The authors, mostly college presidents, are academic leaders. Smart and accomplished, they write from an informed and privileged perspective. Giving the endeavor an unexpected twist, the breadth of the volume tells us quite a bit about the strengths of liberal arts college leadership and how they see the challenges ahead. It also informs the more careful reader about what liberal arts colleges and and cannot do. Spoiler alert: the future is good for the liberal colleges with money. However, the role of how liberal arts college might lead higher education? I think it is less secure. The volume may be something of a grab bag, but it delivers.
Liberal arts colleges face multiple challenges: a business model that demands large and growing endowments, enrollment competition from all sides, and increasing questions about relevance and value. Successful college leaders are not passive in the face of these problems. As the book demonstrates, liberal arts college leadership is comfortable pushing back and out – and has no doubts about the value and worth of what they and their colleges do.
Liberal arts colleges educate about 6% of all undergraduates in the United States. Their influence, though, is significantly greater. They are often the best alternative to the elite universities when it comes to speaking about and for the academy. The universities tend to emphasize research and impact; the liberal arts college stress community, teaching, scholarship and transformative learning.
Brian Rosenberg, president of Macalester College, argues that liberal arts colleges “should be the cutting-edge laboratories of US higher education.” He has a good point. Higher education across the board has learned a great deal from liberal arts colleges. It is a theme, too, throughout the essays.
The book is loosely organized into six sections: Reimagining the Liberal Arts College in America, An Opportunity to Lead, Knowledge, Learning, and New Technologies, Collaboration and Partnerships, Residential Communities and Social Purpose, and Future Prospects for the Liberal Arts College. None of the categories are mutually exclusive. The authors consistently highlight the challenges ahead while expressing optimism and confidence.
Almost all of the essays reference the same assertions. The authors are believers in the mission, value and strengths of liberal arts colleges. They see liberal arts colleges as adaptable survivors, well-suited to further flexibility as the landscape of higher education changes. They affirm the great value of a liberal arts education (as delivered in a liberal arts college setting) and its ability to prepare students for personal, professional and community successes. The book, to be honest, is not really about “remaking” college. Instead, it is about how a certain kind of college can adapt and remain excellent.
I do not believe that there is any substantive debate that a wealthy small residential liberal arts college with highly motivated, well-compensated and talented faculty, working alongside a robust support staff, cannot provide an outstanding education to young people who are able to dedicated years of study to their education. What is not to admire? It is a superb way to learn. It builds lifelong connections and identity. For those who work at a successful liberal arts college, there is also much to celebrate. It offers multiple forms of community, a shared sense of mission, and an environment chock full of smart and motivated people. It’s catnip for many academics. And if the college is clever and thoughtful in how it pursues its mission, its impact can extend well beyond its alumni.
While readily acknowledging all of the above, let us be careful not confuse a liberal arts college with a liberal arts education or the outcomes of a liberal art education. In the latter, students explore the arts and sciences, learn about disciplines and disciplinarity, benefit from small classes with high-quality teaching, and can make lifelong connections – and it can happen in other academic settings. Highly motivated faculty who are excellent teachers work at many different kind of higher education institutions, as do skilled and dedicated support staff. Transformative learning can and does happen in many places in higher education. That story is not part of Remaking College.
I think that academia “gets” liberal arts college values and care of the student as learner. Many of the faculty, staff and administration within higher education studied at liberal arts colleges as undergraduates. And whether or not these colleges were part of our education, we recognize the impact of good education. Larger institutions often organize undergraduate education into smaller colleges, enabling greater personalization of the academic experience. We’ve seen a proliferation of honors colleges and specialized programs in recent years. Almost all institutions in higher education have shifted in one way or another to being more attentive to the student experience.
In fact, there is widespread evidence higher education has been giving ever greater consideration to what works and what does not when it comes to teaching and learning. We have progressed a long way from the “sage on the stage” model of pedagogy, regardless of the size and wealth of an institution. Some of the best college teaching I have ever witnessed has been at community colleges. Small class sizes and attention to student learning are central to the way that community colleges function. Student learning outcomes for community college students who plan to transfer are very much in alignment with traditional liberal arts college outcomes. In other words, we do not always need a liberal arts college to achieve a liberal arts education or learning outcomes.
Most everyone in higher education thinks highly of liberal arts colleges. We appreciate what they are able to do and we learn from their innovation, expertise and talent. We are aware, though, that many of the dominant questions facing American higher education – access, affordability, programmatic relevance to the economy (jobs), and student completions – are not going to be solved by liberal arts colleges. Today’s challenges are different. The value question facing colleges and their students – Is it worth the tuition, fees, and opportunity costs? – is very much shaped by how much students and their families have to spend.
I do not think that we can overstate this: the critical challenge facing liberal arts colleges is one of cost. It’s a very expensive model. A few of the essays in Remaking College address the business issues, but it is not the focus of the book. Easy answers are difficult to imagine. Instead, the aim of liberal arts colleges is in many ways best understood as reinforcing the value of the brand.
If we were to think of a college education like an automobile, liberal arts colleges are like a high-quality niche company like Mercedes. Mercedes makes excellent technologically advanced vehicles. Mercedes has about three percent of the overall market share in automobiles. Why? Their cars are expensive and not many Americans can afford a Benz. Mercedes knows that their model depends upon them continuing to stand for high-quality. Their brand has to maintain an elite status.
Liberal arts colleges, similarly, have to position themselves in the education market as distinct from the more accessible public institutions. It is not a model, especially on the business end, suited to mass education. When we buy a new Mercedes, attached to it are high expectations. For more affordable vehicles, the value proposition is framed differently. Reading Remaking College while thinking about the needs of community college students, who make up more than two-fifths of all students in college, highlights the disconnect. The academic advances that liberal arts colleges have spurred may have less traction today.
When we think about higher education for many, issues of scale and cost of an undergraduate education have to be examined through a lens of financial and political sustainability. In that sense, even with all the good that they do and will continue to do, liberal arts colleges’s strengths and concerns are becoming less central to our thinking about the future of higher education.
David Potash