We need a new model. The ills of public universities are many, and they are altogether lacking a civic mission.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, the main news source for higher ed., is continually publishing articles about these things—even if they are often not as frank as they should be. A recent one, “A ‘Stunning’ Level of Student Disconnection,” combines observations on the wreckage of the Covid pandemic with awareness of long-term systemic problems in higher ed. And, I quote:
“A former president of the Association of Chief Academic Officers, Niesen de Abruna, said the time had come to reinvent the academic experience. Can professors build more hands-on learning into their courses? Are their classes and course sequences designed to help students build careers or just turn out future Ph.D.s like themselves? ‘How can we change the model that we have in higher education,’ she said, ‘from coverage of disciplines to experiential learning, which is really connected to the careers that most of our students are going to have?’”
A new model? Experiential ed.? I know the answer.
The civic mission of higher education, meaning mainly public universities and two-year colleges, needs to coincide with our vision for the nation as a whole. Isn’t that the implication of what it means to be a “public” institution? And, since we have no shared vision for the nation as a whole, the mission of higher education must be to create one.
In other words, higher ed. needs to enable citizens to run their country and participate as fully as possible in democracy and meaningful civic engagement. This would be like combining two years of national service with two years of job training, custom-tailored, of course, for individual students’ needs and career choices. Going to college could become a far more meaningful experience as a service to one’s country, with the entire experience resembling an extended internship or even an actual job. A model like this would preserve what is best from the current liberal-arts-plus-job-training model, but it would rework both into a profoundly more powerful system for directing capitalism and government.
The Wisconsin Idea, created at the turn of the twentieth century, was an early example of a state university system with an ambitious civic mission. But, as my Easter diary from last weekend mentioned, while the University of Wisconsin still claims to be doing the Wisconsin Idea, it falls far short of what might be. If I had my way, I would remake U Wisconsin into the university of the future. Going to college could then become a truly life-changing experience.
On a related theme, it is commonplace today to observe that liberal democracy is in crisis. I would go further and argue that liberal democracy is inherently incomplete insofar as citizens cannot agree on what is the best way to run an economy. Once we know how we want to run our economy, the corresponding roles of government and public education would become much more obvious. So, what should be our priorities in running the economy? Again, this is obvious: national security; sustainability; and, high quality of life for the average person.
We know that economic growth is not as important as quality and breadth in an economy. Rather than focusing on GDP and stock performance, therefore, it would be better to base our idea of economic success on the average person’s quality of life. The question then is, how much might it be possible to “grow” the economy on sustainability work?
In other words, if we had an incredibly powerful educational system that enabled us to have a vastly superior democracy, how much could we use that democracy to pursue environmental sustainability and economic prosperity together?
If I get time, I’ll write more on these themes. Thanks for reading.