Liberal Arts for All, Not Just the Rich

The following "Point of View" appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education issue of October 19, 2001.

William Durden
President, Dickinson College

For years, many of our country's most wealthy and privileged families have ignored shifting educational fashions and continued to send their children to high-quality residential colleges and universities for a liberal-arts education. They are well aware of the many lifelong benefits of such an education. For example, an estimated 40 percent of the Fortune 500 chief executive officers in 2000 graduated from a liberal-arts college or received a degree with a liberal-arts major.

Yet every time poor, minority, immigrant, first-generation, or otherwise disadvantaged college students in the United States stand to benefit from a liberal-arts education, the rules of the game change. Education is suddenly redefined. The liberal arts are devalued, and "modern" educational theories—usually anti-intellectual, practical, student-centered, and vocational—are trumpeted.

The outcome has been clear. The rich have remained rich and powerful. And the poor have remained poor and disenfranchised because they have been diverted, yet again, from obtaining the type of education that has served as one of the primary avenues to leadership and power for generations.

The latest educational fad is distance learning, arriving just as the proportion of black and Hispanic college-aged youths in the general population is predicted to rise substantially, yet their share of the college population will be much less. If we are not careful, many disadvantaged students will, once more, lose access to substantive leadership opportunities.

Why does a traditional liberal education foster leadership? People are "affinity beings" who possess an innate desire to learn among other people in the most comprehensive sense: to see them, hear them, exchange ideas, share food and drink, even to have sufficient stimuli to fantasize about them. The "24/7" nature of a residential liberal-arts institution forces the inevitability of learning through social interaction. Students are addressed by their names and recognized and differentiated by their appearance, distinctive pattern of speech, gestures, or written words. They see their thoughts and ideas received and discussed by others, providing external recognition that those thoughts and ideas have value.

At the same time, one can't just strike the "Delete" key or turn off the machine in a residential environment when confronted with a difficult human interaction or an intellectual disagreement. Affinity with others is a "built-in" program, not an option. Through a liberal education, students engage in the study of a wide range of subjects in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences, directed by an instructor in ways that ensure that students move beyond what they already know. Such an education aims to free students from preconceptions and encourages them to consider many different, often conflicting, opinions. In an environment that encourages experimentation, students can reconcile their perspectives with the prevailing values of current authorities—represented by instructors and the individuals whom instructors recommend—as well as other students.

Having worked both in a distance-learning company and a residential liberal-arts college, I know firsthand that no existing form of distance learning can similarly affirm students as individuals and also force them to acknowledge the ideas of others. Liberal education is not defined by practicality or the immediacy of occupational goals—which would do little to challenge prejudice, bias, or authority. But a liberal education is ultimately useful; it give students the strong sense of self and habits of mind and action to become leaders. And, unfortunately, it is precisely the poor, minority, first-generation, immigrant, or otherwise disenfranchised students who most desperately need an educational environment that builds identity and gives them the confidence even to attempt leadership.

The historical pattern of denying disenfranchised youth a liberal education is well documented. In her book Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (Simon and Schuster, 2000), Diane Ravitch described how early-20th-century educational reformers created a new curriculum for poor, foreign-born, and nonwhite students that excluded them from gaining access to power through a liberal education. "Because the children were 'different,' because many did not come from English-speaking homes, it was argued that they needed a curriculum different from the one available to the children of affluent, native-born families," she noted. "Not for them the 'old limited book-subject curriculum'; the experts in the new schools of pedagogy said these children needed industrial education, vocational education, nature study, sewing, cooking, and manual training." Joining the reform movement, colleges built new programs in technical, vocational, and professional fields at the expense of liberal education—which was portrayed as irrelevant, inefficient, and outmoded.

Ravitch also identified the condescension in the rhetoric on behalf of the poor, detailing how reformers believed that schools and colleges should offer differentiated programs. Providing a similar academic curriculum to all students was "antidemocratic" and "aristocratic." Observed Ravitch, "'Equality of opportunity' was redefined to mean that only a minority should continue to get an academic education, while the great majority—the children of the masses—would get vocational or industrial training."

Such focused educational marketing did not convince all representatives of the non-elite. As early as the 1890s, W.E.B. Du Bois questioned whether industrial training would best serve African-American students—recognizing that the path to success and power in America traditionally went through a liberal education. He called for the selection of a "talented tenth" of African-American youth, who would receive a college education in the liberal arts in order to prepare for leadership roles.

But, unfortunately, despite the pleas of Du Bois and others, a succession of populist and progressive reforms held sway and were introduced into schools and colleges by faculty members and administrators who embraced such beliefs. Those reforms diverted poor, minority, and immigrant students toward industrial, vocational, and technical studies, as well as student-centered learning—and away from access to a substantive education in the liberal arts.

Today, to encourage disadvantaged students to choose distance-learning offerings over a liberal-arts education, people use arguments strikingly similar to those used decades ago to embrace populist reforms. For example, in testimony before Congress's Web-Based Education Commission, Andrew M. Rosenfield, the head of UNext.com, which sells online courses, enthusiastically predicted, "Internet learning has the power fundamentally to transform educational opportunity and democratize access to education"—especially, Rosenfield noted, for "those who because of the happenstance of financial and geographical circumstance never could hope to attend a physical college or university."

Yet, of course, the only area of distance instruction that appears pedagogically effective for great numbers of learners—and adult learners specifically—is vocational knowledge, where a body of technical information is transferred in specific fields like business and information technology. Therefore, the only education that can effectively be delivered en masse to young people is, by necessity, vocational and practical—precisely the type of education advanced in the early 20th century by progressive educators for immigrants, minority groups, and the poor.

While most online-education organizations are not yet offering full undergraduate degree programs for college-aged students, the momentum is growing. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's decision to place undergraduate-course materials online, with basically zero feedback to viewers from professors, is one highly publicized case in point. And in an article in the Bloomberg News Service (February 28, 2000), Christopher Byron, an Internet commentator, urged parents not to send their children to a residential college. He directed them instead to Virtual U., which he equates with the University of Phoenix Online. Why? Simply because it is cheaper. And what type of colleges does the author generally reject? Liberal-arts colleges, of course. According to this perspective, there is little use for an education in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences.

What's more, announcements of the triumphant rise of distance learning are linked to predictions of the demise of the physical context for liberal learning: the campus. Several years ago, in an article in Forbes magazine on technology and higher education, Peter Drucker pronounced: "Already we are beginning to deliver more lectures and classes off-campus via satellite or two-way video at a fraction of the cost. The colleges won't survive as a residential institution."

Few observers doubt that distance learning will be an important platform for the delivery and sharing of information and practical knowledge in the coming decades. It is already effective at delivering workplace training and adult continuing education. Growing evidence also suggests that it may be a useful supplement to liberal education—providing discrete knowledge or even coursework not readily available in a particular residential setting.

But to predict the death of liberal education and to offer distance education as a viable alternative for college-aged youth is irresponsible. Where's the research that proves the effectiveness of virtual learning for that purpose? The claim is also unfortunate because it comes precisely when more and more disadvantaged youth are ready for college, and when liberal-arts colleges are poised to make it possible for them to attend in unprecedented numbers through financial aid and heightened recruitment efforts.

Disenfranchised students, as much as their affluent and advantaged peers, deserve a chance at a residential, liberal education—not an unproven alternative. Those students deserve the opportunity to break the destructive cycle, finally, and receive, not just placebos, but the education that they need. They deserve a chance to obtain the type of education that will substantially increase their access to power and success.

It is time to let the secret out beyond the privileged: A liberal-arts education equals leadership.

William Durden is president of Dickinson College and a former vice president for academic affairs of the Caliber Learning Network, a distance-learning venture. He was also a first-generation college student.