(Washington, DC) We have a pending proposal to create a system that will demonstrate whether students are appropriately prepared to conduct community service. Meanwhile, I am currently teaching a whole course that aims to prepare undergraduates for active citizenship. My class will help design an online module that other students will take before they may participate in civic work in the communities around Tufts University. Students who complete that module will have a kind of “badge” (not necessarily by that name) for community service.

This work is part of a general movement toward “badging” that recently attracted a good summary article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

If I had to summarize the debate with two stylized positions (recognizing, obviously, that many other positions are also possible), here they would be:

In favor: We must find alternatives to the standard model, which is selling students “seat time” and awarding diplomas to people who pass enough tests. That model is too expensive, it alienates too many students, it fails to recognize skills that some students do acquire, and it is poorly designed to teach many important skills. To be sure, students should read and discuss Plato and write analytical or scholarly papers, graded by professors. But most undergraduates do not experience that kind of education now. And in any case, we should also teach other things, such how to work in community organizations, and allow students to demonstrate competency in those areas. Further, we must recognize that schools and colleges are not the only educators. Instead of piling more responsibilities onto students and schools (and adding new ways for them to fail), we should create opportunities for a whole range of institutions to educate and to recognize individuals’ skills.

Against: Education is “holistic” in that it’s not just the aggregate of discrete courses or other educational experiences. An entire curriculum should have a shape, so that the whole is greater than its parts. Likewise, education should combine academic work with membership in a learning community; skills with knowledge and values; theory with application and critical reflection; individual work with collaboration. One of our problems is that we try to sell education in chunks, one credit at a time, to a public that mistakes it for a divisible good. A four-year degree earned at a single residential college is the ideal, because it is coherent. Badging just contributes to the false idea that education is modular, skill-oriented, and portable.

I see both sides, but I believe we have a desperate need to experiment with alternatives, even if they present dangers, because we are very far from being able to offer a satisfactory education for most American students.

(Washington, DC) I am at a conference at which most of the participants–who represent a few dozen diverse colleges and universities–believe that faculty should take more responsibility for the overall welfare and development of their students. Professors should worry about problems (such as depression and interpersonal conflict) that interfere with learning, and they should treat students’ non-academic experiences as assets for learning.

I agree that many students, including those enrolled at expensive, private colleges, face significant challenges outside of the classroom that should be addressed. I also agree that the best education always draws on the “whole person.” But whether faculty should pay attention to these issues is a more complicated question. Consider professors in the following imaginary cases:

1. A poorly funded metropolitan public university whose student body (of more than 50,000) is mostly composed of part-time commuters older than 25. The issues that arise in their personal lives clearly interfere with their learning. If daycare falls through, they will fail a course. At the same time, their experiences from family, work, and community are educational assets. But each professor teaches hundreds of such students every semester. Their personal challenges seem overwhelming. The faculty have their own problems balancing work and life on inadequate salaries–many are adjuncts. They are likely to agree that students need help with psychosocial problems, but they may not feel that the responsibility can justly be assigned to them. Professors may also resist being paternalistic toward adult students.
2. An expensive, private, selective college. It may employ more professionals in student affairs than faculty. For a sticker price of $50,000 or more, it provides 24/7 services for its undergraduates, including counseling, extracurricular activities, and well-appointed facilities. The students may, on average, have higher family incomes and social status than the faculty. Professors should recognize that these students still have psychosocial problems, including depression, which are relevant to their learning. (And to teach them is the faculty’s job.) Yet professors can reasonably conclude that students’ problems are mainly someone else’s business.
3. A large, research-oriented university with impressive graduate programs, labs, and libraries. Its students probably face personal and psychosocial problems at rates approaching those at the metropolitan public university, and the institution’s support per/student is probably scanty. But faculty have legitimate reasons not to make addressing their students’ needs a high priority. Professors don’t conduct research and train PhD students just for the prestige and grant money or for self-indulgent reasons. They are trying to cure HIV/AIDS, save migratory birds, preserve the heritage of the Renaissance, or understand the relationship between freedom and prosperity (to name just a few examples). These are idealistic goals, requiring a degree of commitment and even self-sacrifice. When faculty weigh an extra hour trying to cure cancer versus an hour caring about undergraduates’ depression, I think they have legitimate reasons to stay in the lab.
4. A teaching-oriented liberal arts college in a small town. In this case, the implicit agreement holds that the college will take care of the “whole student.” That is pretty obviously what all the faculty and staff are employed to do. Besides, the students may represent a substantial proportion of the town’s population, so they are neighbors and fellow citizens as well as “customers.” The college may not have highly impressive labs or libraries, and its students may be some of its most important assets. So this is a case where holistic concern for the student is obligatory.

Because students at all four kinds of institutions bring problems and assets from outside of academia, we should pay more attention to their whole lives. I think there are ways to integrate concern for the “whole student” into all kinds of courses and programs. But we shouldn’t pretend that this is easy or free of tradeoffs and legitimate concerns.

The American Commonwealth Partnership (ACP), to be launched in January, is an initiative of the White House Office of Public Engagement, the Association of American Colleges and Universities,  the Department of Education, and supportive partners such as the  American Democracy Project, The Democracy Commitment, NERCHE, the National Conference on Citizenship, Campus Compact, and the Anchor Institutions Task Force (see Tim Eatman’s summary).

Today, the ACP unveiled a website called DemocracyU that’s devoted to presenting students’ personal stories of civic activism, plus discussion and debate on the evolving role of university and college students in engaging in public work that benefits society. The website will be hosted on CIRCLE’s site, as our contribution to the effort. It links to a new blog on which some of my friends have already contributed.

Imagine a college with 1,000 undergraduate students. If they all take eight seminars a year, if every class enrolls 20 students, and if each professor has a very manageable teaching load of five courses per year, the 1,000 students need 80 faculty members. If those 80 professors are paid, on average, the national median for an associate professor in the social sciences ($60,064) plus benefits ($20,028), then the total faculty payroll will cost $6,407,360. That comes to $6,407.36 per student per year.

Private colleges and universities are now charging almost eight times as much for a year’s education. Why?

• Their usual bill includes room and board and various services, such as health plans and career counseling, as well as courses.
• Universities are buildings, labs, lawns, stadiums, and admissions offices as well as courses and teachers.
• Lots of people work at colleges beside professors. As I wrote here, “Harvard, for example, employs 5,102 “administrative and professional” staff (excluding clerical and technical workers and those in “service and trades”). Harvard has 112 full-time professional and administrative workers in its athletics department alone. This compares to 911 tenured faculty (or 2,163 total faculty).

When I suggested creating a  “no frills” college from scratch, various friends who work in student affairs, community engagement centers, and other parts of universities wrote privately to ask if I was disparaging their contributions. I would not want to do that. Many adults who work at colleges and universities educate as much and better than many faculty. The distinction isn’t even important to me. But if 80 professors could teach 1,000 students in small classes, then I think 100 educators (including some deans, coaches, counselors, co-curricular leaders, etc.) could serve a student body of 1,000. Even if those educators were paid $60,000 each plus benefits, the per-student cost would still be about $8,000.

I recognize that rent must be paid, lights lit, and diplomas printed. But would it not be possible to build a private, non-profit college whose base tuition was $10,000, whose curriculum was entirely devoted to seminars and labs, and which could employ students on financial aid to perform a substantial portion of its work?

Donald Harward, former president of Bates College and now director of Bringing Theory to Practice (BTtoP), has edited a newly released book about undergraduate education. The 41 authors tackle the interrelated problems that students often disengage from learning, professors are alienated from teaching, and students are disconnected from communities in ways that harm them psychologically.

University of Michigan Professor Barry Checkoway, Wagner College President Richard Guarasci, and I contribute a chapter on “Renewing the Civic Purposes of Liberal Education.”

In his introduction, Don Harward cites four major themes that run through the volume. In my paraphrase, these are:

1. Campus cultures can be changed.
2. Liberal education has epistemological, psychosocial, and civic aspects. The three must be considered together.
3. Certain troubling behaviors of students can be ameliorated by engaging them better academically.
4. We have a base of effective programs and centers, but we must move toward deeper and more systematic change.