Habits of Mind

Fostering Access and Excellence in Higher Education

William Allen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138510500
• eBook ISBN: 9781351516488
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Habits of Mind maintains that the fact that almost everyone now goes to college need not be seen as an obstacle to excellence in education. Some critics have insisted that college is not for everyone, but William B. Allen and Carol Allen assert that the college diploma has rightly become as much the norm in this century as the high school diploma was during the twentieth century. Accordingly, it is essential that higher education remains true to its deepest purpose: the cultivation of proficient humanity. The authors see the key to this goal as the development of judgment, or "habits of mind." Habits of mind are far and away the most influential determinants of human conduct, and nowhere are they more profoundly shaped than in institutions of higher education. Furthermore, liberal education has proven most effective in this undertaking.The authors elaborate on the purpose of higher education and identify the chief obstacles to achieving its aim. They demonstrate the critical role of academic leaders in achieving the aim of higher education and posit that excellence in judgment is the primary characteristic of the academic leaders who fulfill this role. They examine three aspects of access to higher education: academic readiness, the cost and funding of higher education, and the capacity of the physical plant. Finally, they use policies developed in Virginia to demonstrate realistic approaches to achieving the aims of access and quality discussed throughout the book.The authors draw on their years of experience as practitioners in both private and public institutions, liberal arts colleges, and research universities to develop their material. This volume will be of interest to faculty and students in higher education programs, nation and state public policymakers, legislative and academic leaders, and a general public concerned about the cost and value of a college education.

1
An Idea of the University

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
che la diritta via era smarrita.
In the middle of the journey of our life I found
myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.
—Dante, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri

A growing number of friends and critics of higher education, within and outside the academy, have lately concluded that the colleges and universities in this country have lost their way. Too many campuses wander about in a dark wood—mistaking workforce preparation as their chief goal, seizing technology as their primary strategy for successful competition, lowering academic standards in a misguided belief that access and excellence are incompatible goals, and pandering to those who would teach prejudice under the guise of multiculturalism. Surely such institutions are in need of a compass—one might even say a moral compass—if they are to find their way back to the light, back to the original destination.¹

But what is the destination? Do we, either as a society or as a profession, have a common understanding of the aims of higher education? Many would answer, “No,” as does Christopher Lucas: “…if there is a true crisis in American higher education today, it is chiefly a crisis of purpose.”² We must start the work of rebuilding our moral compass, which is to say the work of fusing what appear to be opposite poles into a single axis around which educational thinking can revolve, by laying “bare the questions hidden by the answers.”³

We might most fruitfully begin by asking why we care about education in the first place.

What is the Value of Liberal Education?

We care about education on account of the young. Although we accustom ourselves to speaking of the contribution education makes to our lives, our economy, and our civic practices, we actually mean to avow an unconditional commitment to posterity—to lives, economies, and civic practices that we adults will know only indirectly at best. It is worthwhile to ponder why one generation forms this bond with succeeding generations.

The most prominent version of the commitment to posterity has been conveyed in the Preamble to the United States Constitution, in which “we the people” pray for the “Blessings of Liberty” not only for “ourselves” but also for “our posterity.” Unborn successors always formed part of that larger conception, society, in the minds of the architects of American nationhood.

Our posterity takes place first as our young, our offspring, and in a moral community all the young are our offspring. When we pray for their future accomplishments we pray not to prescribe them but to ready the young to accomplish them as their own work. That is the reason our prayers take the form of provision for their education. We see in the education of the young the only gift we have that properly expresses our unconditional love. We know that before they can enjoy the “Blessings of Liberty” they must first enjoy liberty. Nor can they enjoy or benefit from liberty unless their souls first grow into able agents. They must grow to govern themselves, to attain such moral command of themselves as to be at liberty to structure their lives in accord with the “Blessings of Liberty.”

If we, the present generation, perform our work well, our posterity will perpetuate the way of life we know not because they will have inherited it from us but because they will see and embrace its virtue. Accordingly, this very abstract account of the reason we care about education is, in fact, the most concrete way we have to remind ourselves of what we seek in building schools, faculties, education partners, and communities in which the young see themselves as both cared for and directed.

Try to imagine writing a letter to a young friend or relative, providing guidance for his future educational choices. Then, the particular things you might say to him will manifest the general principles we have developed here. For example, you might say to a youth that education would provide valued skills, extensive knowledge, and enduring discipline to serve throughout life. However, it is still more likely that you would discuss the acquisition of character and judgment that would strengthen the youth’s confidence in his own decisions. The cultivation of good habits of decision on sound moral and religious grounds is the single most important gift that education conveys. Insofar as we are able to offer such a gift, we have a moral duty to do so. The best schools, the best education, provide exactly such a gift.

Chapter 2, “Excellence in Judgment,” stresses that the chief productive goal, or outcome of education is proficient humanity, which is characterized by excellence in judgment. The work of developing excellent judgment is fundamentally the work of replacing prejudice and accepted notions of the world and oneself with the capacity to see beyond the ground on which one stands, and even to comprehend within one’s vision one’s own ground, one’s own prejudices, one’s own point of view. In fact, you might go so far as to say that your education doesn’t amount to a hill of beans unless it gives you the power to look at yourself with a penetrating, critical eye, to understand why you stand where you stand and why you do what you do. James Baldwin describes the centrality of judgment to the work of higher education with these words:

The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white. To ask questions of the universe, and then to learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.⁴

Our aim is not just to inform students, but also to help form them. We have no trouble recognizing that young children are not fully developed. We readily accept that a major function of elementary and secondary education is to contribute to the overall growth and maturation of these students. We sometimes overlook, however, that the 18-to-24-year-old youths, who still constitute the majority of undergraduate enrollment at four-year colleges, are yet in their formative years.

The challenge of undergraduate education is to stimulate our students’ growth in both intellect and character. It is not enough to fill their heads with knowledge and skills. By the time they graduate, our students should feel that their education has challenged every segment of their being. And, the best way we know to offer students this challenge is through a robust, liberal education—one that exposes students, with appropriate depth, to a general education in literatures, mathematics, history, science, philosophy, and the arts.

A growing number of colleges and universities across the nation have recently re-embraced the notion that one of the fundamental purposes of education, including higher education, is to create the informed citizenry that is the bedrock of our democracy. Often this notion is taken up under the rubric of “service learning,” although it takes other forms as well. Yet at many, and perhaps most, institutions, this vital connection between education and democracy is overlooked in practice, however much it may be touted in college catalogs and mission statements, which still speak of “preparing students for responsible citizenship” and “developing future leaders.” It was surprising to encounter this phenomenon even in Virginia, where statesmen such as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison articulated the connection between education and democracy from the very founding of this nation.

Our public discourse about higher education too seldom touches on this connection. And, as we describe more fully in chapter 2, an earlier age than ours expected that the work of making youth ready to participate in our deliberative democracy would be substantially completed by the end of their secondary education. Yet just as the colleges and universities of this age have had to shoulder remedial education in such basics as composition and mathematics, there seems to be a need for them to provide remedial civic education as well.

As Jeffrey Wallin, president of the American Academy for Liberal Education, writes, the purpose of liberal education with regard to civic education is “neither to venerate nor to subvert, but rather to inquire about the most important matters, regardless of where answers to them may lead.”⁵ Our aim must be to help students grow in intellect and character so that they are “well able to engage in the most serious issues we face as men and women and as citizens: What is the best way of life? What is the best regime?” Surely the rising generation will face unforeseen challenges and opportunities as they fashion their own answers to these vital questions. And they may surprise us by answering these questions in unexpected ways.

If they are fortunate, our students will also encounter the unexpected in the evolution of their own interior lives. We aim, through a liberal education, to convey to students that an “examined life” is the only sort worth living. We point them toward the philosophic, literary, artistic, scientific, religious, and political avenues they might travel to grow in understanding of themselves and the world around them. In this journey toward understanding, the most important of our lifelong learning pursuits, we learn not by treading the safe waters of the known but by venturing into the unknown, perhaps even by seeking the unknowable. The best gift we can offer our students is to start them on this odyssey. We may hope, in return, to hear from our students an appreciation like that Susan Saltrick expressed in a talk she gave to a regional technology, teaching, and learning roundtable in November 1997. “My teachers gave me the world; and they honed my faculties to appreciate it, and in doing so, they gave me myself.”⁶ But whether or not we hear such appreciation from our students—or from others—we can take satisfaction in knowing ourselves the enduring value of our work and in seeing its cumulative expression in the lives of successive generations.

The value of liberal learning not only endures but increases throughout our lives. James O. Freedman, former president of Dartmouth University, conveyed something of the value of a liberal education when he wrote:

A liberal education acquaints students with the cultural achievements of the past and prepares them for the exigencies of an unforeseeable future…

[A] liberal education conveys to students a sense of joy in learning—joy in participating in the life of the mind; joy in achieving competence and mastery; joy in entering the adult world of obligations, intimacies and relationships; joy in engaging in the converse among our several generations.⁷

Why Have We Not Realized the Value of Liberal Education?

Put most simply, we fail today to realize the value of liberal education because we have lost sight of the idea of the university. The staggering growth of American colleges and universities through processes of accretion and differentiation during the past century brought with it so many new markets and missions that our universities have, by and large, forgotten their true purpose—their original destination. It is outside the scope of this book to analyze every development that has led to this consequence; however, six trends stand out:

1. The notion that the primary purpose of a college education is to prepare students for careers.⁸
2. Over-reliance on technology as the main tool for improving student learning and for enhancing the competitiveness of the institution.
3. A lowering of academic standards, mistakenly adopted as the means for expanding access to college.
4. A preference for measuring quality based on inertial growth rather than dynamic growth.
5. An incoherent curriculum, particularly within the general education program.
6. A perverse emphasis on multiculturalism and diversity in all aspects of the college experience.

Each of these trends has damaged the core of the university. Some analysis of their impact must precede our discussion of how to restore an idea of the university.

Work to Live, or Live to Work?

John Kenneth Galbraith had it right when he predicted that, at the end of the twentieth century, universities would become what banks were at its beginning—the major suppliers of the nation’s most needed source of capital.⁹ Throughout the nation, colleges and universities compete to generate that capital, and to capture increased revenue in the process. Even before Gary Becker first identified the economic return (in the form of higher wages) on the student’s investment in a college education, the academy had begun an inexorable expansion of its role in preparing young men and women for careers. As community colleges became major providers of postsecondary education and as the Perkins Act and successive United States legislation provided funds earmarked for vocational education, colleges and universities significantly ramped up the work force preparation aspect of their work. During the past decade, the clamor from business and industry for employees with computer expertise and other technological skills spurred the academy into new and ever closer alignment with employers, and still greater emphasis on the vocational aspects of collegiate study.

While it may be true that what is good for General Motors is good for a country, it does not necessarily follow that what is good for training automobile mechanics to work on today’s computerized vehicles is good for the college curriculum. W. E. B. DuBois cautioned educators about this underlying tension between vocational education and liberal education early in the century when he urged college faculty to impress upon their students the truth that:

…life is more than living—that, necessary as it is to earn a living, it is more necessary and important to earn a life; that is to do for the world—its thought, its aspiration, its human value—so much that the world will not always continue to ask if life is worth living.¹⁰

The first-time students entering college this fall will have careers that extend well into the fourth decade of the twenty-first century. They are likely to lead active, productive lives well beyond the year 2050. These young women and men not only will constitute the work force, they will be the political and religious leaders, artists and scholars, citizens, and parents whose thoughts and actions will shape this century. Their college education must do more than simply equip them with a set of vocational skills whose half-lives may be shorter than the duration of a politician’s latest promises.

Those who would mold the college curriculum to fit current, pressing needs for specific technological skills would do well to remember how quickly these specific needs can change. Consider for example, these two predictions, which were not nearly so accurate as that of Galbraith’s. In 1943, Thomas Watson foresaw a world market that would need no more than five computers. Forty years later, Bill Gates stated confidently that “640 K ought to be enough for anyone.” Hutchins limned the inherent limits of providing job training under the guise of a college education:

My contention is that the tricks of the trade cannot be learned in a university, and that if they can be they should not be. They cannot be learned in a university because they get out of date and new tricks take their place, because the teachers get out of date and cannot keep up with current tricks, and because tricks can be learned only in the actual situation in which they can be employed.¹¹

Education—as opposed to job training—shoul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction: The Multiversity at a Millennial Crossroads
• 1. An Idea of the University
• 2. Excellence in Judgment
• 3. Access to Higher Education
• 4. Evaluating Higher Education: Waiting for Change
• 5. Managing Higher Education: Lessons from Virginia
• 6. Epilogue: The Rhetoric of Higher Education
• Bibliography
• Index