(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.

My Tufts colleague Professor Miriam Nelson is a distinguished nutritionist, a scientist who has been leading federally funded research studies on food and exercise for almost 20 years. She has written many books and articles and serves on official expert bodies, such as the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee for the US Department of Agriculture.

Those are conventional measures of success and impact. But Mim Nelson knows that a whole range of factors beyond our individual choice affect our health: for instance, what food is available locally, whether the sidewalks are walkable, and how friendly local governments are to bicycles. These factors are tough to change, but people can address them collectively, and in doing so, they can gain friendships, skills, and confidence.

Instead of exhorting people to make better choices, Mim Nelson and colleagues are organizing communities for social change. We see that shift in some other fields as well–for example, the family therapy professor Bill Doherty has moved away from treating stress as a treatable personal problem; he now organizes suburban families to fight the causes of stress.

Mim has organized Change Clubs across America, mostly in rural communities and mostly composed of women. She and colleagues are now on a national tour called “StrongWomen Across America: Change Yourself, Change the World.” It is really an exercise in community-organizing, with a focus on nutrition and exercise and an emphasis on rural women. You can follow their progress through videos, photographs, and reflections on their tour blog page.