Liberal Education and America’s Promise
Excellence
for Everyone as a Nation Goes to College
By Daniel F. Sullivan
Recently, Ann and I viewed an hour-long PBS program on dyslexia, and one
of the points that was made has a clear parallel in liberal education. Bruce
Jenner, Olympic decathlon gold medalist and a dyslexic, narrated the program
and at one point said something like “Until universal literacy became
a requirement for even minimal participation in American society, dyslexia—a
learning disability of neurological origin which causes difficulty with
reading and writing—remained undiscovered.” When it became
critical for everyone to be able to read, the incentive grew to understand
why a substantial group—some say as many as 10% of the population—of
otherwise intelligent persons had enormous difficulties in learning to
read.
In many respects an analogous situation applies to our need for liberal
education in the world of today. Industrial societies need vast
numbers of factory workers to do routine, repetitive tasks that do not
involve such things as analysis, synthesis, teamwork and problem-solving,
high-level written and communication skills, critical and creative thinking,
intercultural knowledge and competence, quantitative literacy and information
literacy. Managers, leaders and professionals need such skills in
industrial society, but they are a relatively small fraction of the workforce. As
manufacturing in a society like ours more frequently involves “continuous
process” technology, where labor costs are a smaller fraction of
overall production costs, and less frequently involves “mass production” technology,
factory workers also increasingly need the advanced skills I note above
while manufacturing that is still best done in a “mass production” way
moves to less developed societies. In manufacturing involving continuous
process technology, the fraction of employment that is managerial and technical
grows while the fraction devoted directly to production declines.
As the manufacturing sector of an advanced economy becomes smaller in
terms of numbers of workers employed and the services sector grows, those
high-level skills are in even higher demand. This is so even in traditional
blue-collar service jobs; the complexity of today’s plumbing and
electrical systems requires plumbers and electricians who can analyze,
synthesize, problem-solve and communicate, among other skills.
In short, just as dyslexia was discovered when universal literacy became
a basic societal necessity, liberal education is being “discovered” in
new ways as the skills, habits of mind and personal attributes we associate
with a liberally educated person become more and more necessary for almost
any kind of work and life in a modern society like ours—indeed, an
almost universal necessity.
The Universal Necessity of Liberal Education
That is the basic premise of “Liberal Education and America’s
Promise (LEAP),” an exciting decade-long initiative of the Association
of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) begun in 2005, its 90th
anniversary year. For several years I have been on the board of AAC&U,
and this year I am chair-elect (to become chair in January 2008). AAC&U,
with over 1,100 colleges and universities of every type and size in its
membership, is “the only major higher education association whose
sole focus is the quality of student learning in the college years,”1
and the only association devoted to fostering liberal education. LEAP’s
core principle is that not only should liberal education be the central
focus of post-secondary education of all types, but that it should also
be the primary focus of K-12 education—our “education for all”—as
well. Indeed, today’s “vocational” education must
also be liberal education, for success in what we have historically called “blue-collar
work” is also dependent on acquiring the skills, habits of mind and
forms of personal commitment of the liberally educated person.
I believe we have evidence that the American public increasingly gets
this. At our January AAC&U meeting we released the results of
a major survey of American business leaders—mostly chief executive
officers of companies of a variety of sizes—and recent college graduates.2 Let
me quote from the report to summarize the findings:
“Employers and recent college graduates reject a higher education
approach that focuses narrowly on providing knowledge and skills in a specific
field; majorities instead believe that an undergraduate college education
should provide a balance of a well-rounded education and knowledge and
skills in a specific field.”3
“They particularly emphasize the importance of providing students
with . . . . experience putting [their] knowledge and skills to practical
use in ‘real-world’ settings.”4
“Majorities of employers think that
colleges and universities should place more emphasis on:5
u Integrative learning: the ability to apply knowledge and skills
to real-world settings through internships or other hands-on experiences. (73%)
u Knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world:
concepts and new developments in science and technology (82%); global issues
and developments and their implications for the future (72%); the role
of the United States in the world (60%); cultural values and traditions
in America and other countries (53%)
u Intellectual and practical skills: teamwork skills and the ability
to collaborate with others in diverse group settings (76%); the ability
to communicate effectively orally and in writing (73%); critical thinking
and analytical reasoning skills (73%); the ability to locate, organize
and evaluate information from multiple sources (70%); the ability to be
innovative and think creatively (70%); the ability to solve complex problems
(64%); quantitative reasoning (60%)
u Personal and social responsibility: global issues and developments
and their implications for the future (72%); a sense of integrity and ethics
(56%)”
The survey also indicates that there is a growing national recognition
of the importance of science and mathematics education, both as a key element
of liberal education and because of the critical and growing contribution
science and mathematics education plays and will play in making possible
the technological and other innovations necessary to produce a growing
world economy that is environmentally sustainable. Of course, St. Lawrence
and the rest of the nation’s selective liberal arts colleges got
this long ago. Selective liberal arts colleges, for over a half-century,
have produced 2.5 to three times as many baccalaureate degrees in science
and mathematics as research universities and other kinds of undergraduate
institutions on a proportional basis: typically from 25%
to 40% of their graduates. The only problem is that the total enrollments
of the top 60 American liberal arts colleges can fit comfortably in the
University of Michigan’s football stadium! We are way out ahead,
we are too few to change the big picture by ourselves, and we have to help
the rest of the nation catch up
St. Lawrence: Exemplar of Best Practices
St. Lawrence faculty and University leaders have been deeply involved
in AAC&U for at least two decades, and more than any other institution
I know St. Lawrence exemplifies the best practices that lead most directly
to critical liberal education outcomes in students and a culture of innovation
and constant self-improvement.
We begin at St. Lawrence with inspiring aspirations for the liberal education
of our students. This is some of what we say in our Statement of
Aims and Objectives:
A liberal education requires breadth, depth and integration in learning.
It also requires the cultivation of those habits of intellectual and moral
self-discipline that distinguish a mature individual. To these ends,
St. Lawrence seeks to provide an education that fosters in students an
open, inquiring and disciplined mind, well informed through broad exposure
to basic areas of knowledge; an enthusiasm for life-long learning; self-confidence
and self-knowledge; a respect for differing opinions and for free discussion
of those opinions; and an ability to use information logically and to evaluate
alternative points of view.
A liberal education frees students from the confines of limited personal
experiences and limited knowledge of the physical, historical, social and
cultural world. In return, this liberation gives an enlightened understanding
of that which is singular, immediate and limited. Thus, a liberal education
is always relevant to the world in which students must live at the same
time that it attempts to maintain a certain detachment from that world.6
Faculty at St. Lawrence pursue those aims and objectives within a culture
of innovation and self-improvement. The First-Year Program (FYP)
is, according to the University Catalog, “a combined academic and
residential program that emphasizes critical thinking and active student
participation in both the classroom and the residence,” now celebrating
its 20th year—a remarkable innovation, then and now. The FYP
is interdisciplinary and team-taught, and each FYP college’s academic
focus is an enduring theme of the human experience; there is a strong “emphasis
on communication skills, in particular, writing, speaking and research”;
and the FYP encourages “student participation, collaborative intellectual
experiences, self-expression and critical thinking.” All of
these goals are central to almost any definition of liberal education.
The Winter magazine gave several other examples of St. Lawrence “carrying
academic innovation to new heights” in its review of a series of
academic strategic planning papers, or “white papers,” that
describe innovations under consideration and in some cases beginning implementation,
from “Cultivating Intentionality in Academic Planning,” to “New
Literacies for the Twenty-First Century,” to “Understanding
the Global in Global Study,” to “The Intersection of Serving
and Learning: Civic Engagement and the Liberal Arts.”
Let me repeat my response to this quote from the federal Commission on
the Future of Higher Education—the so-called Spellings Commission: “American
higher education has become what, in the business world, would be called
a mature enterprise: increasingly risk-averse, at times self-satisfied,
and unduly expensive. . . . We recommend that America's colleges
and universities embrace a culture of continuous innovation and quality
improvement by developing new pedagogies, curricula, and technologies to
improve learning, particularly in the area of science and mathematical
literacy.”7 My response was: “They sure haven’t
visited St. Lawrence!”
Not too many years ago some commentators on higher education suggested
that perhaps the nation’s selective liberal arts colleges were dinosaurs
heading toward extinction. That is certainly not evident in the
steady and in some years dramatic increase in application demand at American
liberal arts colleges. And it is certainly not evident if one takes
to heart the observations and analyses presented here. Liberal education
is the education Americans need for the 21st century. It is not just
relevant; it is the core, the centerpiece of what is needed. We at
St. Lawrence feel our responsibility in this regard acutely.
1AAC&U, “College Learning for the New Global Century,” Foreword,
2007.
2 Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc., “How Should Colleges Prepare
Students to Succeed in Today’s Global Economy?” Conducted
on behalf of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, December
28, 2006.
3Ibid, 3.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 St. Lawrence University Catalog, 2006-07, 5.
7 U. S. Department
of Education, A Test of Leadership: Charting the
Future of U. S. Higher Education, Washington, D.C., 2006, ix.
