Purpose

Universities are communities of special moral significance, scaling from the sectarian and regional to the secular and international. Some exist to transmit the particular ideals of a founder or community; others pride themselves on credentialing a class of international elites – originally for the church and state – nowadays for corporate multinationals and the academy itself. But what ought to be the purpose of higher education? To cultivate students’ intellects? To create engaged citizens? To improve society through research? To prepare the workforce?

The History & Philosophy of Higher Education
The primary purpose(s) of an institution of higher education.

  • The roots of higher education in the west date to the fourth century B.C. when, most notably, Isocrates established his school of rhetoric and, shortly thereafter, Plato founded the Academy. Bruce Kimball’s The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Documentary History collects primary sources ranging from the contested purpose of higher education in antiquity to debates about the liberal arts at the turn of the twenty-first century.
  • James Axtell’s Wisdom’s Workshop describes the history of America’s universities (and the influence of their continental predecessors).
  • John Henry Newman’s Idea of the University remains an important reference on the purpose of higher education. Newman weighed in on debates about the university that have proven to be perennial such as whether universities should focus on liberal education or preparation for profession, and whether universities should focus on undergraduate education or research. (Jaroslav Pelikan, in The Idea of the University: A Reexamination assessed the late twentieth century university in light of Newman’s work.)
  • Robert Paul Wolff’s provocative and radical The Ideal of the University remains of interest for his engaging conceptualization of four purposes of the university, even if his proposals (abolishing Ph.D programs and putting governance in the hands of faculty and students) might attract even less sympathy now than when the book was written.
  • Jonathan Cole’s The Great American University: Its rise to preeminence, its indispensable national role, why it must be protected and Toward a More Perfect University offer lucid and compelling discussions of America’s universities. No one argues more pointedly that research—the distinctive discoveries and innovations that drive our economic and social well-being—is central to the purpose of the university.
  • Michael Crow and William Dabars’s The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of Higher Education analyzes both the past and future of America’s colleges and universities. They argue that many large research universities ought to pivot away from abstract research to focus, instead, on responding to society’s needs. Part of doing so involves radically reimagining admissions standards to ensure far greater access to education.

Curriculum
The primary means by which an institution of higher education effects its purpose.

  • Andrew Delbanco’s College: What it Was, Is, and Should be and Martha Nussbaum’s Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities are noteworthy among the dozens of books advocating for the centrality of the liberal arts to higher education. In Let’s be Reasonable: A Conservative Case for Liberal Education, Jonathan Marks has added a nuanced and sensible conservative argument to the literature.
  • Derek Bok’s Higher Expectations: Can Colleges Teach Students What They Need to Know in the 21st Century? explores a range of aims that universities could pursue, such as cultivating good citizens, global citizens, resilience, creativity, leadership, or teamwork skills (and the list goes on). Bok believes that most of the aims he explores are attainable. A critic might object that colleges are not even successful transmitting knowledge central to students’ majors, let alone a long list of other skills. Bok acknowledges the objection, and he finds some of the aims he explores more promising than others. But Bok remains optimistic that colleges could embrace them, though with qualification: most of these potential aims could only be achieved with faculty buy-in and dedicated resources. Assuming that the latter two could be secured in today’s institutions of higher education might cast Bok as a greater Pollyanna than his list of aims would suggest. (Harry Lewis reviewed Bok’s book here.)

Community
The primary ends of an institution of higher learning, not merely defined by colocation or an age cohort, but extended in time and accountable to past and future generations.

  • As the population of students attending America’s colleges and universities has increased and diversified, and as students’ experiences at colleges and universities differs radically among institutions and within each institution, it is challenging to speak generally about campus life. Nevertheless, for those looking for a historical introduction to the topic, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz’s Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present remains a good place start, though it was published almost four decades ago. Horowitz distinguished “college men” who were interested in the social experience, studious “outsiders” who took their education seriously, and “rebels” who bridled at the conformity required for by those pursuing shared social or academic goals. As she wrote the book, Horowitz saw a new kind of student on campus, one who was obsessed with getting good grades rather than enjoying a rich social life or the joys of learning; the students who William Deresiewicz would call “excellent sheep.”
  • Two recent books explore the student experience at college. In The Real World of College: What It Is and What it Can Be, Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner argue – based on over two thousand interviews with students, faculty and others – that today’s students are, perhaps unsurprisingly, focused on grades and future careers. They are also, however, searching for connections and belonging in their college communities. Richard J. Light and Allison Jegla, in Becoming Great Universities: Small Steps for Sustained Excellence, discuss how universities can help students make the most of their extracurriculars.

University Governance Structures, a library of references focusing on the history and traditions of higher education, is the companion site of Paideia Times, an online news digest of higher education.

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