What college administrators and faculty can learn from one philosophy department's story

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece this morning about how the Villanova University Philosophy Department has enhanced its relevance to the institution's students.  Courses such as "The Good Doctor" and "The Philosophy of Exchange" resonate with pre-med and business students.  Meanwhile, the chair and faculty have liaised with the admissions folks and others to communicate what sorts of careers the department's graduates have gone on to pursue.  The department also holds events to engage its majors and help them succeed academically.

This story is a microcosm of how endangered four-year institutions must ride the Fifth Wave of American higher education.  What many today are calling "The Value Proposition" is a combination of attributes which will entice students and parents to become our "customers."

First and foremost, they must see a worthwhile career at the end of the line.  Absent that pay-off, few will be willing to pay up.  A good place to start in making this case is with the basic or core skill sets that most employers say they want.  These include:

• Communication
• Adaptability
• Teamwork
• Goal orientation
• Positive attitude

All of these can come from four years of Philosophy, says one web site.

This same site says that the knowledge of logic and ethics that derive from the Philosophy major transfer into many roles in law, medicine, government, business and IT.

Second, we have to provide an experience that a pure on-line degree or even a community college can't.  For me, back in my day, this experience was provided by my fraternity (see yesterday's post).  Better ways of providing such an experience fall under the rubric of "engaged learning."  Some examples are:

• Student leadership roles
• Lab and other research experiences with faculty
• Community service
• Study abroad and short-term, faculty led study experiences
• Internships and co-ops

If the four-year institutions that form the core of American higher education are to ride out the Fifth Wave, we need to draw the larger lesson from the Villanova Philosophy Department story and apply it across our campuses.

Greek life poses a perennial dilemma for college administrators

Close on the heels of the former PSU President's conviction for child endangerment, Penn State's VP for Student Affairs, announced the closing of one fraternity, where a student fell down the stairs and died, and curtailment of alcohol use at all the others.

I'm not questioning the appropriateness of PSU's actions.  But I am wondering out loud if they would have been taken in the absence of the Spanier trial and its outcome.

What to do about those naughty Greeks has been a dilemma at least since I was in college some 50 years ago.

At my alma mater --- an all-male institution until 1969 --- with a student body of 1200,  supported nearly a dozen fraternities.  All but one were located off campus, a few of them quite distant from the college.  Consequently, oversight was virtually non-existent.

My fraternity was the college's animal house.  At one point, prior to my arrival at college, the frat enjoyed the triple crown: academic probation, disciplinary probation, and national-chapter probation.  To get out from under this functional equivalent of "double secret probation," we agreed to have a housemother.  We had a bedroom and bathroom built for her on the first floor.  And that's where she stayed with the door locked and the TV turned up high, when we had our weekend-long parties.

The only time in my four years at the college when I can recall the dean of students entering our house was the day after we conducted a pitched battle with "the cable guys."

The city was having a cable TV system strung throughout the city.  Burly workers came to town to do the job.  On a balmy April or early May afternoon, two of the older brothers were sitting on the front porch, imbibing (appropriately enough) May wine.  When a truck load of these cable workers rolled by, one of these brothers shouted out, "Alabama a**holes."  The truck came to an abrupt halt and the brewsers stormed the frat house.  They were met by a hail of empty bottles, as the two brothers beat their retreat indoors.

Heading home from class, and witnessing this phase of the melee, I slipped around back.  Everyone in the house at the time headed up to the flat roof, three stories above the street.  A popular sunbathing site, the roof was cluttered with cases of empty Coke and beer bottles, which we rained down on the cable crew.  They retreated to their truck and took off.

That night, our house became an armed fortress, while the cable guys called periodically with threats of returning after their shift ended the following day.  Naturally, word leaked out and on the next afternoon, several hundred students massed outside our frat house, along with the police, the local TV station and, yes, the dean of students.  Of course, the cable guys never showed up.

Their employer received fair warning from the city that they had better never show.  The cable project ended shortly after that, as did the semester, and the incident passed into the mists of legend.

Such was fraternity life in a time of harsh pledging practices --- I suffered a broken nose, a fellow pledge two broken arms from the rough housing.  The soda machine was stocked with beer at 25 cents a bottle.  The party started on Friday afternoon and ended Sunday night each weekend.  And, remarkably, nobody died.

Some years after I graduated, and women were admitted, the college rescinded recognition of the fraternities.  The result was they went underground.  What little control had existed became essentially no control.  A lot of alumni were angered by the move, while the attempted eradication of Greek life was an abysmal failure.  Recognition was eventually restored, and my old frat house --- which had been converted to the college art house --- was restored to its historic purpose.

My personal reminiscence represents the story of Greek life in microcosm.  It is a sort of damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don't dilemma.  It will be interesting to follow the Penn State initiative to see how it plays out.

The printed word remains important in this new millennium... at least so far

As a writer, I have found the first quarter of 2017 very gratifying.  The three books that have produced royalties for me for nigh on 30 years continue to do well.  These are:

1.  The Employment Law Answer Book (Wolters Kluwer 9th edition)

2.  Employment and Labor Law (Cengage 9th edition)

3.  Termination of Employment (Thomson Reuters)

Equalling gratifying is news today from Inside Higher Ed that the University of Arizona, riding the fifth wave with it aggressive online programming, is investing $100 million in its --- are you ready? --- libraries!

According to the story, "The university later this year plans to close the Hayden Library on its Tempe campus for a two-year renovation.  At the same time, the university will continue to work on expanding the library resources and services available to its 26,000 degree-seeking online students and the hundreds of thousands more taking at least one course online from the university."

The story adds, "Many other universities are reorganizing their libraries as they see an increase in the use of electronic resources and demand for cafes, multimedia classrooms, maker spaces, writing centers and other spaces for teaching, learning and research."

But, wait, you say.  Doesn't this sound like fewer books, not more?  The Moore's Law of new media says that new media ofttimes spawn greater use of old media.  Sadly that doesn't seem to be true for daily newspapers, which have generally been unsuccessfull in adapting their product to the Internet.

Or isn't it?  The New York Times now Tweets its headlines to 9.5 million followers.  And dailies, across the totality of all their platforms, now have more readers than ever.  Small local weeklies also enjoy prosperity today.  For example, The New of Delaware County, my weekly paper, is the only outlet from which I can learn what's happening with my school district, my police department, my town council.

As for the book, it too is riding the fifth wave successfully.  In addition to hard and soft cover editions, there are electronic versions that can be downloaded and audio versions on CD and the Internet.  Self publishing is coming into its own as well.

My book #2, above, is a textbook.  I thought sales would decline, even evaporate, in the new century.  But my royalties are better than ever.

Here's one avid reader's answer to the question, "why do books still exist?"  I'll let her speak for herself.

Free speech and academic freedom: the same or different?

The Chronicle of Higher Education is running a very interesting article this morning, concerning free speech on the college campus.  The author, Stanley Fish, argues that the mission of the university is not to permit unfettered discourse.  That, he contends, is the role of the soap box in Hyde Park.  Rather, its mission is unfettered inquiry.  What gets disseminated, as journal articles, books, lectures, etc. is subject to many and often rigorous filters and gate keepers.  He makes a good point.

Academic freedom is indeed different from free speech.  Under the famous AAUP statement, academic freedom involves the right to present ones views in the classroom, provided they are relevant to the course being taught.  Many faculty in my experience wrongly believe that it gives them the right to bring the soapbox into the classroom.

Fish also talks about the major Supreme Court decisions on free speech.  In case he isn't crystal clear, note that the First and 14th Amendments --- the Constitutional fountains of free speech --- apply only to public universities.  They do not reach through the gates of non-profit or for-profit private colleges.

Recent SCOTUS opinions have delineated, as Fish explains, a distinction between public employees speaking in their capacities as citizens and speaking in their capacities as state workers.  In the leading case, a prosecutor was fired after he criticized his office's decision not to pursue a case.  The former public employee challenged his discharge under the US Constitution.  The Court sanctioned his firing on the ground that he was speaking in his capacity as a public employee who owed a duty of loyalty to his boss and the office.

Whether professors at public universities enjoy a broader range of discretion than the plaintiff in that case remains somewhat unsettled.

And what of guest speakers on our campuses?  An incident at Middlebury College, which has been prominent (at least in higher ed news sources), has put this question into the spotlight.  Charles Murray, author of THE BELL CURVE, was prevented from speaking by a group of vociferous protesters.

Fish's answer to what happened at Middlebury: "My advice to administrators: stop thinking of yourselves as in-house philosophers or free-speech champions or dispensers of moral wisdom, and accept your responsibility as managers of crowd control, an art with its own history and analytical tools, and one that you had better learn and learn quickly."

Go to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and you find a different perspective.  This organization, which has been getting its own fair share of press coverage lately, argues, "Freedom of speech is a fundamental American freedom and a human right, and there's no place that this right should be more valued and protected than America's colleges and universities."

Like so much of what we higher ed administrators are asked to do, this issue requires us to walk a tight rope.  Constitutional law itself is a high-wire act.  The SCOTUS and lower federal courts are constantly struggling to set the right balance between individual rights under the Constitution and the rights and responsibilities of "state actors" on the other side of the line.  The current controversy over President Trump's executive order on foreign travel is a perfect case on point.  His administration contends that the government has a national-security obligation to keep Americans safe from terrorists.  It's hard to dispute that.  But on the other side of the debate, advocates for civil liberties contend that Uncle Sam is seeking to violate the First Amendment by establishing a religion and discriminating against another faith.

Stanley Fish, if I read him right, contends that our role is to manage the dissemination of speech on our campuses... deciding what speech is worthy of our support... and then ensuring that this speech is disseminated to its intended audience.  As I say, he makes a good point.

How to Be a Dictator, Part One: Create and maintain a sense of constant crisis

Your first executive order banning Muslims is blocked by the courts?

Then issue a second executive order?

It's blocked as unconstitutional?

Ban electronic devices from flights originating in those same countries.

This morning, the TODAY SHOW interviewed a so-called "security expert," who stated with absolute confidence that U.S. intelligence agencies must have "very precise information" ... which, of course, they can't share for national-security reasons.

Well, perhaps.  Or perhaps we are seeing a classic gambit to gain power by creating a crisis where none exists.

According to FORBES Magazine (yes, FORBES, not MOTHER JONES), "Dictatorships are often unexpected.  They have arisen among prosperous, educated and cultured people, who seemed safe from a dictatorship...."

This article goes on to say, "Hitler's main talent seemed to be as a speech maker, so he began giving speeches that appealed to Germans embittered and disillusioned...."  Anything about that sentence reverberate in the national scene today?

Another good article I've found this morning asserts, "Psychologists and sociologists who study terrorism say dictators are able to spread fear among their people, and place themselves as their only salvation."

And then, of course, there is the dictator as magician.  Don't look at the hand that holds the red ball (Russiagate?).  Look over here at my other hand (exploding iPads and laptops?).  If "Obama tapped my phone" didn't get any traction, maybe this will.

And, if all else fails, create a constant state of war.

"Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell. The novel is set in Airstrip One(formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation."  

A glimpse into our future?

How the mighty have fallen... and who may take their place

Graham Spanier goes on trial today in my home state of Pennsylvania.  To coin a cliche, it seems like only yesterday that Spanier was a national leader in higher education.  Penn State wasn't just a football power boasting perhaps the most popular coach since Knute Rockne.  It was the 800-pound gorilla in the Keystone State's higher ed living room.  In a state with dozens of small liberal arts colleges and a 14-university state system, PSU seemed to be in everybody's face.  It's two-year feeder campuses were rapidly being converted into four-year competitors to nearly every other college and university, no matter in which out-of-the-way corner of the Commonwealth.  And an online presence sought to make the whole human population into potential customers.

But there has always been a little something of the de classe about PSU.  It's hard to put one's finger on it.  But let me try an anecdote.  About ten years ago, Notre Dame was hosting Penn State football.  I took my mother-in-law, a die-hard Notre Dame subway alumna, to South Bend for the game.  We started our Saturday morning on campus with mass in the  famed golden-domed chapel.  After mass, I bought her a green rosary.  Then, before going to our bus's tailgate gathering, we took a walking tour of the campus.  We ran into a lot of Penn State students in town for the gridiron contest.  One of them, already inebriated at noon, advised us, "You Notre Dame fans don't know how to throw a party."

Penn State's party came at a high price.  It killed Papa Joe Paterno in two quick stages: first his reputation and then his life.  And, whatever the trial's outcome, it ended Spanier's illustrious career.  Quite a few lesser lights of PSU also went down with the Sandusky ship.  A couple of them will be appearing as witnesses against Spanier.

Was a time when college presidents were spokesmen (well, yes, they were all men) for national values.  One---Woodrow Wilson of Princeton --- became the actual U.S. President.  Today, we witness a former president of a major university system in the dock.  What a reversal of fortune for higher education.

But perhaps the women in higher ed's highest office will redeem us.  The University of Pennsylvania, under the leadership of President Amy Gutmann, has declared itself a sanctuary campus.  If Dr. Gutmann finds herself in the dock one day, it will be for all the right reasons... not for the sake of a macho football program.

Penn's official statement is one that co-founder Benjamin Franklin would be proud of, I think.  And Dr. Gutmann is proving herself to be a real class act.

What universities can do in this age of unreason and untruths

If you haven't yet read "Promoting Knowledge in an Age of Unreason" by Dr. Todd Gitlin, please do it now.  I've mentioned this article before and am directing your attention to it again.  He hits a very important nail right on the head.

"Public reason has plunged into a state of emergency.... When reason itself is so besieged, the university cannot be content to marinate in defensiveness and self-pity.  It is in a fight for its life.  It needs a forward strategy."

What strategy does Dr. Gitlin recommend?

1.  Sponsor ambitious journalism

2.  Stand up for science

3.  Put up billboards

I'm especially attracted to the first recommendation.  As I --- and Bill Maher (see a recent post where I linked his rant) and many others --- have pointed out, the likes of Matt Lauer have sold their "journalist" credentials for the big bucks of Infotainment.  Even the great newspapers are struggling.  With few exceptions, the networks are no longer committed to genuine investigative reporting; they no longer see it as a public obligation.  But, as Gitlin points out, America's universities are well able to fill the gap.

As the title of this Blog reflects, American higher education is struggling to cope with Fifth Wave's disruption.  Many private non-profit schools are struggling with an existential crisis.  Many public institutions are little better off, once state supported and now little more than state located, as a public-sector acquaintance of mine once said to me.  This existential struggle can be darned distracting, as I know from personal experience.

But three important questions occur to me... all being relevant to this post:

1.  If a university is tax exempt and/or state affiliated, doesn't it have an obligation to the state and its citizens to champion the principles of truth, justice, civil rights and civil liberties?

2.  And if it is failing to champion those democratic values, does it deserve to survive?

The most interesting question that occurs to me this morning is:

3.  Can being a champion of these democratic principles actually help save the university?

In future Blog posts, I want to explore this question, because I think it's crucial to our survival strategy in riding the disruption of the Fifth Wave.