Colleges should teach service
Learning institutions should focus on what makes humans human - the liberal arts.
By Silvio Laccetti
America's four-year college and university programs must lead the way as we enter an age of globalism. To do so, they must return to their historic mission, rooted in liberal-arts education.
Their present mission, bluntly stated, is to prepare students for the workforce - to get a job, have a career. But more than 40 percent of undergraduates don't obtain their degrees, even after six years of "study." Clearly, our four-year-college system is not an efficient means of educating the workforce, nor should it be.
People don't need a full college education for good jobs, and many jobs don't require a bachelor's degree. Too many students are on an expensive merry-go-round, chasing phantoms.
Twenty years ago, when my nephew graduated from the University of Rhode Island, his fellow grads were gladly accepting jobs selling stationery. I had a job like that after my freshman year, when I was already overeducated for it (and was asked to stay on full-time!).
Our modern higher-education system suffers from clogged arteries. But we have been constructing bypasses.
Community colleges now provide terrific job and career training. The DeVry University model is another workable bypass, offering degrees in a streamlined, appealing, and inexpensive fashion. The "e-university," offering online certificates and degrees, also has risen to prominence.
Students of such institutions gain the ability to visualize and actualize career paths. What is missing is any focused exposure to the liberal arts and their benefits.
We seem to have forgotten the principle that humanistic education can provide a foundation and compass as life unfolds and people encounter crises. It is essential in the preparation of leaders.
Fortunately, developments in the broader society make times propitious for reshaping our colleges. Greed-centric capitalism has produced general revulsion. And there is a growing hunger - especially among adolescents - for renewal of our humanity.
So I propose the creation of "Pinnacle Colleges" to meet the need for social, cultural, and individual development. The Pinnacle Colleges would be transformational institutions, much like the original, medieval universities, with a mission of illuminating a darkening world.
The colleges' work would unfold over decades, even centuries. Their aim would be to promote social conscience and community.
Who should attend? Pinnacle Colleges would seek the best, brightest, and most altruistic (to use a savaged concept). Their students would have a deep love of learning and a strong desire to develop themselves to serve and lead. In the long run, they would form the community of national and global teachers and leaders.
Leadership in the global age will eventually be based on a service model, stressing nurturing and mentoring. Entrepreneurship and technological skills would serve as a platform for creating a better world. Ambition, self-aggrandizement, and acquisitiveness would have no place in this model.
What would the curriculum be? It would be rooted in the historical liberal arts of the Western world, but this alone is no longer sufficient.
A second major component must be study of global cultures, politics, and philosophies. Students would be required to take a semester in a developing country.
A constant thread in the program would be the transformational power of the human mind. As a student of mine has lamented, that subject is hardly approached in high school and college.
Where would the Pinnacle Colleges be established? For now, they can be major components of the outstanding liberal-arts colleges that abound in our country.
Pennsylvania is particularly blessed with many of these. Seven are in U.S. News and World Report's top 50 higher-education institutions, seven more are in its top 25 baccalaureate colleges in the North, and five are among its top master's universities in the North.
Pinnacle Colleges could also be established at major research universities, but they would have standalone classes, curriculums, and dorms, as befits a true college. Eventually, they would have their own campuses.
Developing such an institution is necessary for America, the world, and humanity. As was once said of the university, it would be "the school of the modern spirit."