THE LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE
Is It "Sunset or Sunrise" for the Independent College?
FIVE YEARS AGO the unusually well-informed president p of an outstanding New England college made this pointed statement in print: "We are today witnessing the'twilight' of the four year liberal-arts program." His article, entitled "Is the Liberal-Arts College Doomed?" appeared in one Of the leading educational journals,1 and he followed his just-quoted assertion by observing that "statistically and in the expressed opinions of educators" four-year liberalarts colleges—such as his own institution and Dartmouth and Hamilton—will have a tremendously difficult, time resisting the pressures which are pushing toward a complete reorganization of American higher education.
Dozens of similarly pessimistic articles have been appearing in the educational press for many years now. And they cannot be laughed off. Beneath their smoke is a huge fire, and everyone devoted to the four-year liberal college had better get ready to become a fire-fighter. The war has heaped large quantities of new fuel upon the conflagration, and it is certain that what has seemed to most people to be a mere smolder will soon burst forth into raging flame.
Indeed, blazes have already appeared, and even though they have largely escaped the attention of the general and the alumni public, they are intensely hot. I cite but three of at least a dozen places where they have broken out:
1. The Problem of the Bachelor's Degree: For almost a century successions of Germanophile American educators have worked energetically and incessantly to reorganize American higher education after the pattern of the German university. Their major point of attack has been the bachelor's degree since it is the symbol of the four-year liberal college, an educational institution which has no counterpart in Germany. These educators have continuously asserted that the four-year college has no place in a sound educational system, and they have shrewdly reasoned that to grant the bachelor's degree two years earlier would soon lead to the killing off of the traditional American college.
In my article in The Atlantic Monthly of last June, entitled "The War on the College," and in a longer article in an educational journal,2 I have described the eleven attempts that have been made since 1852 to reduce the college to either a three- or a two-year institution. These eleven attempts were soundly scotched, but the twelfth is still with us under the sponsorship of President Hutchins and the University of Chicago. As yet no other university in the country has followed the example of Chicago, but the battle is far from over. Mr. Hutchins asserted last spring that he expects to win the campaign because the war is playing into his hands. When peace comes he confidently believes that dozens of universities will follow his leadership.
I wish it were possible to write off Mr. Hutchins' statement as mere boasting, but the fact is that the presidents of three of the great universities of the country have told me within recent months that they agree with Mr. Hutchins' thesis.3 They may not be able to persuade their trustees and their faculties that they should follow the Chicago example, but beyond question they intend to move in that direction.
2. The Universities Belittle Liberal Arts Colleges: For a long time it has been the practice of not a few university presidents and faculty members to belittle independent liberal arts colleges, that is to say, colleges which are not associated with universities: Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Hamilton, Lafayette, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, Williams, etc. Consider, for example, the article a few years ago written by a well-known Princeton professor which appeared in The American Scholar4 under the title "Our Intellectual Graveyards." By "intellectual graveyards" he meant independent colleges. He stated and defended the
thesis that colleges not associated with universities are inferior institutions because, he asserted, their faculty members are merely the cast-offs of the universities—men not good enough for university appointments. Taking research productivity as his measuring stick, and ignoring the teaching functions of higher education, he soberly and candidly suggested that independent liberal arts colleges should close their doors and give way to the university-controlled liberal arts college.
It has been suggested that Professor Wertenbaker's ideas are but his own and not widely held. The fact seems to be, however, that they are widely held not only by other university professors but also by many if not most university presidents. Significant is the fact that not a single university professor or president criticized Mr. Wertenbaker for his article—at least not in print—and many another published article and address leaves little doubt in which direction the larger and more potent winds of university opinion blow.
Up until two decades ago many leading university presidents frequently raised their voices and wrote vigorously in support of the independent college, but if they speak and write to encourage them today, I've missed both their speeches and their published articles. Meanwhile I've heard and read much in the Wertenbaker vein.
3. The Military Judgment Upon Liberal Education: When we went to war sixteen months ago, liberal education found itself on the spot. Educators soon discovered that the military authorities in Washington put a low valuation upon the product of liberal arts colleges—whether of the university or the independent college variety. Members of the General Staff of the Army made it clear that they saw no wartime importance in liberal education, and some of them went so far as to assort that, in their judgment, liberal arts colleges had no peacetime value either. Finding strong support among some of the members of Mr. Stimson's secretariat, they proceeded to develop plans which made it necessary for college administrators to make a desperate choice: on the one hand they could accept technical training programs for the duration of the war or they could close up for want of students.
This is not the place to review the debate that went on between educators and the Military all during 1942 or to discuss why the Navy has a more liberal wartime program than the Army. Two other issues are more pertinent to the present discussion: first, the failure of the proponents of liberal education to attract public support, and second, the probable serious plight of independent colleges after the war in comparison with the universities.
Concerning the first of these issues one must candidly ask why it is that liberal education failed to win public support in its day of trial. A complete answer to the question would bring to light many factors, but in my judgment the most important of all is the fact that by and large the American people have little interest in liberal education. I make this as a bald statement, and for want of space offer but one piece of evidence in its support: the educators who conducted the negotiations with the military authorities were honestly afraid to go to the American people to petition their support for liberal education. Why? They were convinced that the public would not back them.
From the beginning of the discussions it was obvious that the military men who participated had innocently or intentionally fallen into the either-or fallacy. They asserted that the issue was this: either save liberal education and lose the war or win the war and let liberal education pull through as best it could. A broad and wise view of the situation would have made it clear that a plan should and could be developed which would do both. Even among some of the educators, however, that view did not prevail. The result was that a successful plea to the public in behalf of liberal education could not be made.
As a distinct enterprise broad education, therefore, has been ruled out for the duration. This is not likely to affect the universities seriously, but it may prove damaging to independent colleges.
The universities—even Harvard and Yale—give the major portion of their energies to specialized education rather than to liberal education. Since specialized instruction will always be in demand, and will probably increase after the war, the universities will have little difficulty in reestablishing their programs. But the independent colleges may find the going very hard indeed. In the first place, a relatively small percentage of the men who have left college for military service before graduation will return to continue their liberal education. They will be older and will want to settle down into a job and family life as rapidly as possible. In the second place, the tremendous ballyhoo that the war has given to technical training will drain off large numbers of students from liberal education into specialized training. In the third place, the economic situation will probably be such that a smaller number of families will be able to finance liberal education for their sons and daughters. Thus after the war independent liberal arts colleges will continue to face heavy sledding.
These three trends in American higher education seem clearly to support the judgment that "we are today witnessing sing the 'twilight' of the four year liberal-arts program." A dozen other trends might easily be added which would constitute a staggering brief against independent colleges. I for one, however, am miles and miles from being convinced that we are in the "twilight" that precedes nightfall. Instead, I believe to the depths of me that the war has created for the supporters of independent colleges the greatest opportunity in our national history for the reorganization and rejuvenation of both liberal education and the independent college. If we fail to reach out and embrace the opportunity, then with a certainty night will come not only for higher education but for American society as well.
Such a reaching out requires, first of all, a clarification of the objectives and a reappraisal of the methods of liberal education. We need to ask and to find answers for such questions as these: 1. Exactly what do we mean by liberal education?
2. Is it really important, and if so why?
3. What is "culture" and how important is it in the life of the nation and of individual citizens?
4. What should be the relationship of liberal education to specialized education?
5. Are there any minimal essentials that are so important that they must be included in the course of study of every liberal arts student?
6. Is education solely an intellectual undertaking or must social, physical, and moral education be equally stressed in liberal colleges?
7. Can these extra-intellectual objectives be achieved in non-residential colleges?
8. Are such objectives being achieved in residential colleges to the degree that they should be? If not, why not?
9. What place should discipline have in education? And what kind of discipline?
10. Should faculty members be promoted in rank and salary chiefly because of their ability as teachers or their ability as research men?
11. What methods should be used to determine the teaching effectiveness of faculty members?
12. Has a professor any responsibility for the out-of-class education of his students?
13. Should men who plan to teach be given special training for teaching or should they be trained only in their subjects and in research methodology?
14. Is the so-called credit system of measuring student achievement valid or should it be abandoned? What should replace it?
15. How can students be motivated to become liberally educated men—and to begin while still in college
The tragic fact about liberal education is that the answers to these and similar questions have not been commonly agreed upon for about a century. Ask any such question of two or more faculty members in a committee meeting or even at a party, and the fur flies. Men in the same instructional department don't even agree. The result is educational chaos. No wonder the Army and the public aren't sold on liberal education! The educators aren't even sold themselves. They can't agree upon what it is.
The situation is so bad that a growing number of administrators and professors are becoming alarmed about it, and they are starting to work to face the problem forthrightly and realistically. lam convinced that the high-lighting of the inadequacies of higher education brought on by the war has been a veritable gift from heaven and that energies have been stirred which will bring the redefinitions that we have needed for decades.
I am convinced, too, that some of the studies that are being initiated will demonstrate beyond quibble the significant if not the pivotal place of the independent college. I hope it will not be necessary for such colleges to protect themselves from the traditional criticisms of the universities by parading university weaknesses and shortcomings, but if that is necessary the ammunition is abundant and the targets plentiful. Much wiser and infinitely more desirable would be an immediate rapprochement between the universities and the colleges in a common study of liberal education.
If such a rapprochement could be achieved and if incisive studies of higher education could be promptly initiated, we could still talk about the "twilight" of the independent college; but it would not be the twilight before darkness but rather the twilight before the sunrise of a new and greater day.
1. The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. IX, February, 1938 pp. 59-67.
2. "A Ninety-Year-Old Conflict Erupts Again." The Educational Record. Vol. XXIII, April, 1942. pp. 192-218.
3. I wish I could name and quote these men, but since they may deny their statements to me, I must unfortunately wait until they declare themselves publicly.
4. Wertenbaker, Thomas J. "Our Intellectual Graveyards" TheAmerican Scholar, Vol. III, No. 2. (Spring 1934-) pp. 171-179.
LT. GEORGE L. SCOTT '25 USAAC, LEFT, AND LT. ALBERT L. DEMAREE USNR. BOTH MEMBERS OF DARTMOUTH FACULTY ARE ON LEAVE OF ABSENCE
HAMILTON'S PRESIDENT COWLEY, DARTMOUTH CLASS OF 1924
President of Hamilton College
