There has never been a greater need for articulating the value
of higher education. It is not only the critics of higher education but
also core members of our communities who question both the utility of a college
education and the cost of obtaining that education. There are powerful answers
to these questions and those of us who have dedicated our lives to higher
education should provide those answers. I believe that the best answers will be
found in those schools devoted to a blend of liberal arts and skills-based
professionally related educations for their students.
The best schools today educate students not only to stimulate
productive lives, but also meaningful ones. These complementary goals are the
core advantage of a residential college, providing a context in which students
are transformed by their university experience. This unique American entity
launches students into the wide spectrum of trajectories they will pursue to
become full members of their communities and our society.
To some extent the issue of higher education's "value
proposition" is a bottom line question, so perhaps it is best to begin
with a bottom line answer. Studies have shown that college graduates will have
lifetime incomes approximately 70 to 80 percent greater than those of
professionals without college degrees. This differential will only increase
into the future and not surprisingly so as the economy of the future will
select for and reward intellectual agility and flexibility. A productive life
in an ever evolving world requires skills that will prepare a student not only
for a first job, but also a tenth job.
Skills for that first job must be of a practical and focused
nature that many small, stand-alone liberal arts schools are ill equipped to
provide. A university with opportunities to study business or the applied
sciences, for example, will be well equipped to do so.
Focused skills are critically important, but not sufficient. The
skills necessary for a hypothetical tenth job may be harder to define but, if
anything, more important. Those skills are trans-contextual, ones that we can
say with confidence will be needed even as the workplace changes dramatically
over the years ahead. While we may not be able fully to imagine this
transformed workplace of the mid-twenty-first century, we know our students
must be able to analyze carefully; to think creatively; to communicate clearly;
and, perhaps most of all, to turn quickly accruing information into knowledge.
These skills are the very essence of a strong liberal arts
education. Knowledge about arts, humanities, and social and natural sciences
sets up the meaningful life alongside the productive one. The deepest and most
lasting impact of a college education shapes more than a graduate's value in
the marketplace; it shapes his or her even greater value as a citizen. As
Columbia professor Andrew Delbanco said, "The university should be a place
for reflection for the young to explore areas of the human experience, to be
fully aware of history and the arts... We don't want to have a population that
has technical competence but is not able to think critically about the issues
that face us as a society."
This kind of critical thinking is essential to developing
leadership skills. Given the sheer velocity at which social and economic change
now takes place, leaders must be able to identify problems, think clearly about
the means to solve those problems, and inspire others to collaborate on
implementing those solutions.
Our value proposition also defends the residential college
setting. Although online teaching platforms such as Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs) have much to contribute and have profitably been expanded to achieve
efficiencies in providing courses to distant and often disadvantaged students,
they will not replace crucially important virtues of residential institutions.
The full experience at such a university goes beyond what takes place in classes,
to the laboratories and libraries, studios and stages, playing fields and
courts, dining halls and dormitories. This experience further includes the vast
array of social settings that a college or university provides, from one-on-one
conversations to a growing range of student organizations and extracurricular
opportunities.
The university must inculcate not only IQ but EQ, emotional
intelligence, as well. The willingness to engage in real relationships and
build real communities should in many ways be the hallmark of higher education,
fostering students' abilities to understand their own motivations as well as
those of others: This is the essence of emotional intelligence recognized by
psychologists today as most closely predictive of success in complex
organizations, be they private companies, government organizations, or entire
societies.
Clear articulation of this powerful model not only answers
critics of higher education. It creates pride in alumni and enhances their
connection with the institution. During my years as a University President,
when I have spoken around the country and indeed around the world and presented
this value statement, concluding with "we are in the business of changing
the arc of young people's lives," alumni have often said to me afterward,
"I was one of those whose life arc was changed by the university."
There can be no greater value of an education than that. For more information
at: Frederick M. Lawrence
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