The Liberal Arts Spirit at Haverford and Wesleyan

[asteriskea]

<p>Inside Higher Ed piece by Wick Sloane “Nominated for President, Haverford and Wesleyan” gives his take on “small, liberal arts colleges with superb faculties, overflowing libraries and no serious roof leaks”.</p>

<p>

Let’s start by blowing the whistle on the tired formula for elite higher education — accept only the perfect; incarcerate and coddle for four years; pass on to the dreariest jobs. No clothes on this emperor.</p>

<p>When will elites concede that students who began competitive sports, classical music, and SAT prep in utero have finished traditional college long before freshman year begins? Students said so in the buried New York Times article “The Incredibles.” The reaction of mighty Stanford to students arriving with a B.A. full of Advanced Placement credits: Simple — ignore AP exams, for credit or placement. Among my crazy ideas is that education is a process for everyone — students and faculty — to learn and to stumble and to grow…</p>

<p>My common platform:</p>

<pre><code> I will eliminate half the curriculum.I don’t mind which half. (Note: Not half, or any, of the faculty.) All students, faculty and staff will take the Myers Briggs personality type assessments and get to work on people skills. Listening, communicating and collaborating — how to operate in a world that doesn’t care about your SAT scores. To foster these skills, for all courses the entire class will receive the lowest grade achieved by any student in the course…
</code></pre>

<p>No more buildings. Cede the build-and-gild race to colleges without imagination. A challenging education, not real estate, must attract top students. Students with 1600 SATs who think luxury living is a factor? No one I’d waste a Haverford or a Wesleyan education on. Trustees need a refresher walk down the Stoa in Athens.</p>

<p>Besides, my daughter has found that the fancier the science labs, the duller the teaching. Both campuses have too many buildings. As president, I’ll convert a building to supportive housing for homeless families. The college, to ensure a grounded education, will commit to putting these families out into the world again. I will join the Middletown (Wesleyan’s hometown) leaders and their plan to eliminate homelessness…</p>

<p>How about a class project for senior-year course requirements? Four more years of independent assignments, tests and papers is redundant. Higher education, especially at the elite liberal arts colleges, must align with the cross-disciplinary problems of the world. Higher education must be a laboratory where students can learn to structure unstructured problems.

</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/02/05/sloane[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/02/05/sloane&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[bethievt]

<p>This sounds to me like an Antioch College education.</p>

[Hanna]

<p>“Students with 1600 SATs who think luxury living is a factor? No one I’d waste a Haverford or a Wesleyan education on.”</p>

<p>Well, I guess education was wasted on me, then. I don’t see any virtue in living in a cinderblock cell with two strangers instead of a bright new dorm. You shouldn’t have to live on bread and water in an ashram to prove that you’re worthy of an education. On the contrary, I’d argue that a huge drop-off in your quality of life when you leave home and move to school makes it substantially harder to focus on your work.</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>We were just having this conversation in the “3rd best lac” thread. It seems to me that a college can either spend all of its time essentially rebuilding the same dorms every twenty years or spending it on something more important, like shoring up financial aid for middle-class families. But, I understand that times have changed. I actually read a post on the Wesleyan alumni board just the other day, asking why, if Wes was having trouble trimming its deficit, didn’t it just “get rid of need-blind admissions.” She was a '06 graduate.</p>

[mini]

<p>Because they don’t HAVE need-blind admissions, and are pretty desperate (as are most private colleges) for more qualified full-pay customers.</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>The process by which “qualified” has come to be associated with the ability to be a “full-pay customer” is one which the Wick article would like to attack or at least reverse, starting with the whole notion of “build and gild.”</p>