The Character Model for the American University (Part I)
The collapse of confidence in American higher education highlights two public concerns about its value: the cost no longer outweighs its economic benefits and colleges and universities have become havens for liberal ideologues whose values are at odds with most Americans. According to a 2011 PEW Research Center Report, a majority of Americans (57%) say that higher education fails to provide students good value for the money they and their families spend and even a larger majority (75%) say college is too expensive.[i] Although 86% of college graduates say that college has been a good investment for them personally and on average earn $20,000 more than those who did not graduate from a four-year college, they are burden with student debt.[ii] Nearly half of college graduates (49%) say that paying off debt makes it harder to pay for other bills and a quarter say it has had an impact on their career choice.[iii] For adults age 18-34 who are not in school and do not have a bachelor degree, two-thirds say a major reason for not continuing their education is the need to support their family and nearly half (48%) say they cannot afford college.[iv] This should come to no surprise as college and university tuition and fees have tripled since 1980-81, even after accounting for inflation.[v]
Republicans have grown increasingly negative about the impact of colleges and universities on the U.S.[vi] 58% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say that higher education have a negative effect on the way things are going in the country, while just 36% says the effect is positive. By contrast, 72% of Democrats see colleges and universities having a positive impact on the country. This partisan gap can partially be explained by how the two parties see the purpose of college: to teach specific skills and knowledge for the workforce (58% Republicans compared to 43% Democrats) or an opportunity for personal growth (28% Republicans compared to 43% Democrats). Other recent events–such as the controversy over free speech and race on college campuses–have given the impression that American colleges and universities are bastion of liberal ideologies, values contrary to Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.[vii]
In spite of Republicans’ skepticism about the political, social, and cultural value of American higher education, a majority of them (62% compared to 73% Democrats) say higher education does a good job preparing students for the workforce.[viii] This emphasis on preparing students for the workforce is shared by the American public as the primary mission of higher education: 47% say that colleges should teach workforce skills and knowledge and only 39% say that college is to help students grow socially and intellectually.[ix] College and university presidents likewise agree that making students productive members of the workforce is the most important societal role for higher education (74%).[x] Interestingly citizenship (73%) and access to higher education (72%) were a close second and third objectives for presidents, priorities not considered by either political parties or the American public.[xi] The consideration of liberal education is not explicitly considered by any of the surveyed groups, although there may be an association between liberal education and the objectives of personal and intellectual growth, which was lowly valued (28% Republicans; 43% Democrats; and 39% American public).[xii]
Although college and university presidents see citizenship and access to education as societal priorities for higher education, the public instead sees higher education as essentially a business that is more concerned about its own well-being than educating students or serving communities.[xiii] In response to Rawlings’ editorial, “College is Not a Commodity. Stop Treating It Like One,” Selingo criticizes higher education for promoting the economic benefits of a college degree, the mismatch between curriculum and student success, and the growth of administrative staff at the expense of faculty to make the four-year degree into an “assembly line” experience for students.[xiv] For Selingo, American higher education is primarily responsible for the public seeing colleges and universities as a business that only looks out for their own interests: students are customers, faculty are employees, and alumni are financial donors.
For faculty, they now exist in an era of technological change, globalization, and deteriorating work conditions: a decrease in financial resources and employment opportunities and an increase of being subject to a variety of accountability and assessment metrics.[xv] “Core” faculty–those who are employed as tenured or tenure-track–continue to diminish as “independent contractors” (e.g., adjuncts, post-doctoral fellows) increase, thereby diminishing the faculty’s role in university governance.[xvi] Faculty currently spent more time on learning new technology, committee work and meetings, and preparing for teaching while simultaneously face a falling off in funded research.[xvii] Faculty also have noticed a decline in autonomy, with tenure being a particularly contentious issue with respect to accountability, evaluation, and post-tenure review.[xviii] Finally, the trend of specialization in both content and role among faculty has only accelerated in the past decade, making the university more fragmented in governance, curriculum, and scholarship.[xix] The result is a professoriate that is increasingly treated as an employee rather than a colleague in university life.
American higher education consequently needs to adapt and adjust to the new circumstances that it currently confronts if it wants to preserve its value as a public good that is neither Republican nor Democratic in character. College and university presidents must demonstrate to the public that the values like citizenship and access are equally important to workforce preparedness. Colleges and universities must devise strategies to show that the higher education is not a business that operates only out of its self-interest but as a public good where students are treated as learners, faculty as colleagues, and alumni as part of a community that transcends economic considerations. If American higher education wants to be and be perceived as a public value, it must discover new and creative ways to reinvent itself in today’s neoliberal, globalized era.[xx]
I suggest a possible model–the character model–for public colleges and universities to consider in this new age of American higher education.[xxi] This model is based on the Aristotelian understanding of phronesis (prudence) which combines both theoretical and practical reason in the development of character.[xxii] In this article I will explain how phronesis can be at the core of a college’s or university’s mission and then show how the general education curriculum could be adjusted to match this new model, for a revision of the general education curriculum is vital not only for student success but also for the mission and purpose of the college and university. I conclude the article with some thoughts about how faculty and administrators can better align their roles with the character model.
I recognize that this proposal is an ideal type and may not work or even be feasible if implemented. But even if it were not to succeed, I hope that it will at least move the conversation of higher education to a rethinking about what constitutes its core and mission as a public value. The public value of American higher education, particularly its public institutions, has reached a tipping point. It is incumbent upon those who work and believe in the public value of higher education to make a new and different case for it. Failure to do so merely continues the gradual deterioration of one the great public institutions this country has created.[xxiii]
[i] PEW 2011, 5-6, 9; also see Riley 2011; Newfield 2016b; Clynes 2017; Caplan 2018.
[ii] Ibid., 6-10, 36-37, 45. Americas owe approximately $1.3 trillion in student debt in 2017, more than two and a half times more than a decade earlier. PEW 2017a; also see PEW 2014.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid., 28-29, 39-40.
[v] Ibid, 26-27, 32.
[vi] PEW 2017b; also see Newfield 2016a.
[vii] A fifth of American college undergraduates say it is acceptable to use physical force to silence a speaker who makes “offensive and hurtful statements.” Villasenor 2017. Also see Slater 2016; Ben-Porath 2017; Chemerinsky and Gillman 2017. Scruton 2017. For the most recent race controversy on college campuses, see Quintana 2017; also see Bryd 2017; Ross 2017. Although the actual impact that faculty have on students’ ideologies is minimal, the public perception is otherwise. Gross and Simmons 2014.
[viii] PEW 2017b.
[ix] The remaining 14% believe both missions are equally important. PEW 2011, 48-49.
[x] PEW 2011, 61-63.
[xi] The other objectives are conducting research to solve national problems (54%), contributing to regional economic development (52%) providing continual education to adults of all ages (37%), and providing cultural enrichment to the local community (17%). Ibid. For more about access to higher education, see Hacker and Dreifu 2010.
[xii] The literature about the challenges confronting liberal education, particularly the humanities, and possible remedies is enormous. For a summary, see Trepanier 2017a, ix-xvi.
[xiii] For more about how the neoliberal university perceives itself no longer as a public good, see Apple 2001; Giroux 2001 and 2002; Gould 2003; Powers 2003; Bok 2004; Washburn 2005; Hill and Kumar 2009; Tuchman 2011; Canaan and Shumar 2015; Kaufman-Osborn 2017; King-White 2018.
[xiv] Rawlings 2015; Selingo 2015.
[xv] Warner 2014; Srigley 2015; Finkelstein et al. 20216, 7, 12-18, 245.
[xvi] Ibid., 96; also see Ginsberg 2011.
[xvii] Ibid., 241-65; also see Flaherty 2014.
[xviii] Ibid., 298-307; also see Kaufman-Osborn 2017; Srigley 2018.
[xix] Ibid., 450-67.
[xx] For more about American higher education existing in an era of globalization, see Ibid., 378-482 and Mittleman 2017.
[xxi] The exclusion of private colleges and universities is that their missions and strategies do not necessarily have to take the public into account, whereas public institutions by their very nature do. The rise of for-profit colleges and universities are another challenge which public institutions have to address and have failed to do so far. Hentschke and Lechuga 2012; Angulo 2016; Cottom 2017.
[xxii] Trepanier 2013.
[xxiii] Nearly 4 out of 10 college and university presidents say that higher education is moving in the wrong direction (38%) and only 1 out of 5 presidents say the U.S. system of higher education is the best in the world. PEW 2011, 57-58.
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