A recent Chronicle of Higher Education opinion piece echoes President William G. Durden '71's longstanding concerns about how the growth of online learning might negatively impact disadvantaged and middle-class families. In "How the Embrace of MOOCs Could Hurt Middle America," University of Central Arkansas Instructor of Writing Greg Graham argues that the growing popularity of massive open online courses (MOOCs) could force everyone but the very rich out of traditional classrooms.
"[I]t is not hard to imagine a day when a face-to-face education could be a privilege of the elite," Graham writes. "The great masses would be educated online ... This could happen because the move toward online education is driven by a holy trinity of interests: state and local governments that want to reduce education expenditures, school administrators forced to cut budgets, and technology companies looking to expand their markets."
Because online learners miss out on the "immediacy" and personalized instruction afforded in the physical classroom, Graham fears that non-elites will be cut off from a full educational experience. In his 2001 op-ed, "Liberal Arts for All, Not Just the Rich," Durden takes Graham's argument one step further, asserting that being cut off from this kind of education will rob economically disadvantaged students of leadership skills they need even more than the elite.
"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," says Durden. "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 gives 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."
President Durden's full 2001 op-ed is reprinted below:
Liberal Arts for All, Not
Just the Rich
By WILLIAM DURDEN
(originally published in The
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 19, 2001)
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 gives 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.