University Business - May 2010 - (Page 22)

viewpoint the liberal arts education is pursued, and are there students and families who find that setting worth the monetary sacrifice? How much training, support, social opportunity, and community experience do we think it appropriate to provide those who will be leading our society in the future? Now, these are good questions. When we talk to an insurance agent about life insurance, we don’t discuss the value of our life. No insurance agent will ask, “What is your life worth?” Instead, the agent assesses the value of your life’s material setting: your house, your assets, and the wealth you are likely to generate from the point of life insurance purchase until the day that the actuary has postdated your return. A liberal arts education can cost almost nothing. One can go to the website of any liberal arts college or university, drill down to its academic departments, find the courses, find the syllabi (there are thousands posted on faculty websites), then go to the library and start reading. The sciences may pose a problem, but, with increasing frequency, there are virtual lab simulations accessible online. Decide you need the classroom? The least expensive route is to enroll in a community college or state university, many of which are superb. Find them too crowded? Want to pursue an education with a cohort of fellow learners? Want to play a competitive sport, or play in the orchestra? Took a class with a smaller enrollment and found that more conducive to learning? It’ll cost you more, but there are a range of small liberal arts colleges that provide a more intimate learning experience. You say you tried one but were put off by the absence of academic support services and wanted even more access to your professors? The most expensive colleges have all these things in the setting of the education, and there are enough of these colleges, geared to various levels of academic preparation and ability, that anyone can find one suited to their desires. But the value of the setting will mean students 22 | May 2010 will pay more for it than at most other educational outlets. The STudenT’S experience How much you’ll pay for that experience is another matter, separate from its value. At the most expensive liberal arts colleges—those that make the news for their high tuition and fees—the setting is challenging but nurturing, protected from external distractions, and artificially constructed to assure a wide range of intellectual and athletic stimulation. Many provide one professor for every eight or 10 students, and nearly every professor has a PhD or terminal degree in his field, and is actively engaged in research or a creative There are no back rows in small classrooms, and it’s inconceivable to attend class unprepared. endeavor, defining the classroom by current knowledge and experience. Science facilities are state-of-the-art, classrooms are fully equipped with technology, academic support centers are devoted to specific skills like writing and quantitative reasoning, professionals are available to assist nonnative speakers with English, and specialists are waiting to help accommodate learning disabilities. Often, science professors are assisted by lab technicians to free their time for students, and summer fellowships allow students to pursue research with faculty members. The setting is not for everyone. A traditional American work ethic dominates the student culture. It’s socially suspect to skip class or seek shortcuts. There are no back rows in small classrooms, and it’s inconceivable, short of something going terribly wrong, to attend class unprepared. Do students complain? Yes, when the class isn’t sufficiently challenging, when they’re not asked to read or do enough, or when they feel the professor isn’t giving them all she’s got in terms of preparation, or investment in their education. For every student who attends our finest residential liberal arts colleges, five or 10 have been turned away. Many students receive financial aid. The most resourceful liberal arts colleges are need blind, admitting those considered the most talented among their applicants, creating as diverse and intellectually stimulating a student body as possible, and making it financially possible for all who accept admission to attend. Financial aid is structured to attract the best, brightest minds and educate them at an affordable cost. Our liberal arts colleges’ social mission demands an elaborate, expensive infrastructure for the select portion of college age students who respond to the distinctive programmatic rigor that these colleges provide. Beyond GraduaTion day When students are about to graduate, I make it a habit to ask them what they plan to read in the months ahead. Invariably, I am answered with a list of titles, areas in which the graduate feels deficient, subjects he did not quite get to as a student. In this era when those with less interest in the life of mind are asking for threeyear degrees, students at residential liberal arts colleges are finding four years, out of a life-span of 80, a preciously short period of time to devote to intensive, sustained, uninterrupted intellectual endeavors. My students continue to write to me years after graduation, reporting on their reading and continued education, and recalling defining moments in and out of the classroom. A liberal arts education never ends with Commencement. Instead, it commences a life of self-education and refinement, rooted in the memory of four years of intense intellectual journey, often in a pastoral setting, safely bubbled away from the world of commerce, where the student acquired the capacity to fulfill a lifelong journey of the mind. On it goes, long after the tuition is paid: value accrues in one’s sense of a life worth living, wholly apart from the exchange of money. universitybusiness.com http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - May 2010

University Business - May 2010
Contents
Editor’s Note
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Human Resources
Money Matters
Models of Efficiency
Fast, Friendly Fix-its
Go With the Flow: Campus Traffic and Parking Solutions
What’s New
Community Colleges
End Note

University Business - May 2010