In the nineteenth century Charles Eliot, president of Harvard, said that the reason the university had so much knowledge is that freshmen bring so much more in and senior take so little out.
Today most students and SAT scores reflect a somewhat different reality in which freshmen know very little, yet think they know a lot, and seniors know a lot about very little, and don’t know whether to take it with them or discard it.
In an era of radical egalitarianism standards in the academy have been reduced to the lowest common denominator. There is now a college for everyone; indeed, even a course for everyone. However, the essential characteristics of a liberal education confidently defended by a faculty are to be found in the ashheap of the past.
The only pursuit guaranteed by universities at the moment is a political objective, a utopian effort to refashion the society through university reformism. University administrators engage in Byzantine contortions in an effort to address the representation of blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and other designated minorities on the faculty and in the student population.
Nowhere has this condition been more evident than with the accrediting bodies that review and assess university programs. Two colleges with a distinguished past, Baruch College and Reed College, almost lost accreditation in the last decade because the accrediting institutions — Middle States and Western — considered the racial composition of the faculty a more important criterion for assessment than the worthiness of academic offerings. Accreditation, it should be hastily noted, does not simply suggest a stamp of approval from a presumptively objective group of scholars; it is most significantly the guarantee that allows for the transfer of federal government student assistance and loans to colleges and universities.
Into this cauldron of ideological considerations has emerged a glimmer of hope. The application of the American Academy of Liberal Education (AALE) as a new accrediting body has been approved by the Secretary of Education. What this means is that the stranglehold of the regionally based accrediting organizations will be loosened. Moreover, instead of relying on arbitrary standards for assessment, AALE has vowed to restore traditional methods of evaluation including a review of curricular requirements and teaching approaches. AALE contends that it will certify only those liberal arts colleges and programs that adhere “to the Academy’s high standards of undergraduate teaching and learning.”
Led by Jacques Barzun (honorary chairman) formerly provost at Colombia University, and Jeffrey Wallin, president of AALE, a stellar cast of academic leaders has been assembled for the board of trustees and the council of scholars that will oversee evaluations. Into a metaphorical lion’s den have these scholars been thrust. For decades the accrediting agencies have shown little interest in the decline of liberal education, specifically the core curriculum or general education requirement that has been vitiated by a supermarket of course offerings. The concept of a well integrated core curriculum clearly articulated and defended by faculty members has all but passed from the academic scene.
AALE was created in 1992 to address this deficiency. In my judgment it will be the accrediting body concerned exclusively with upholding a standard of excellence in general education programs. As John Agresto, president of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, notes: “The time has come to reestablish the primacy of liberal arts education, reargue its importance and value, and refine its standards and methods of teaching.” That enormous challenge will be tackled by this new accrediting body.
The task is formidable. While the AALE board has admitted four institutions to candidacy status: St. Thomas Aquinas College in California, James Madison College at Michigan State University, the University of Dallas, and Rhodes College in Memphis, its ultimate success will depend on the general support it can generate in the academic community. In an environment that has seen the dilution of standards for decades, this won’t be easy. On the other hand, recent polling data attest to widespread dissatisfaction with higher education. The lament is that the product is marginal and the cost too high.
It may well be that AALE has an unanticipated ally in a public eager to see reforms which restore confidence in institutions of higher learning. Parents who place $25,000 a year on the barrelhead for the education of children who speak in a form of psycho-babble and cannot understand a newspaper editorial may well represent a lobbying force of enormous influence. Those parents will need professional guidance and AALE can provide it.
From my perspective the acceptance of AALE as an accrediting body marks the most significant development in higher education in years. Now the academy may finally turn from political requirements peripheral and sometimes antithetical to the mission of higher education, and concentrate on the goals which once made our colleges and universities the envy of the world.