As first-year students arrived at Middlebury, a new president outlined the challenges ahead
By Ronald D. Liebowitz
Dear Readers: For my first column as president of the College, I thought it meaningful to share with you the message I conveyed to first-year students at Convocation on September 12. What follows is an excerpt of the address. I welcome your comments and, along with my wife, Jessica, look forward to seeing you when you visit campus or when we visit alumni chapters around the country.
Though many argue that liberal education is education in the purest form, separate and divorced from the influences of specialization, professionalism, and the pressures of the here and now, I believe this need not be the case, nor can we afford to let it be the case.
The specific subjects that make up what a liberally educated individual should study today may be a matter for interesting debates, but beyond that, for sure, a liberal arts education has a moral dimension to it. That dimension defines an obligation on the part of the individual to give to society, to share the fruits of what one has learned with society at large. Our society, in turn, needs what a successful liberal arts education provides its students, regardless of their major field of study. And those who benefit from such an education should feel compelled—an obligation—to understand how that education fits in with the greater good.
So it's the "how" of what you study, and not so much the "what," that I want to focus on. Education here is human intensive. Very intensive. Our relatively small scale of operations means that students interact quite regularly and intensively with an engaged and talented faculty, or at least they have the opportunity for such engagement and interaction.
This mode of education is the exception and not the norm; fewer than 2 percent of all undergraduates enroll at residential liberal arts colleges with this method of teaching and learning, largely because of the cost of such an education. The true cost of educating each student is around $60,000 per year. Our comprehensive fee, at just about $40,000 a year, means that every student, whether or not he or she receives grants and loans from the College, is given a subsidy or scholarship of at least $20,000. The $20,000 difference between the cost of attending Middlebury and the actual cost of providing the education is made up by annual gifts to the College from alumni and friends, plus the annual earnings on the College's endowment—its long-term insurance policy against potentially difficult financial times.
I mention the cost of this kind of education and the subsidy or scholarship that everyone receives for two reasons: First, a liberal arts education is not foremost about efficiency or cost containment—it is about providing the teaching and infrastructural resources necessary to ensure you can engage your complex world seriously and with great confidence when you graduate; and second, so you will be less likely to take for granted the incredible array of resources available to you here, to prepare yourself for consequential engagement in the world.
I should note that the essence of this issue is hardly original. Some institutions of higher education have come to the same conclusion in recent years: You might want to read Yale College's recent self-study on undergraduate education, or Harvard president Lawrence Summers's several speeches on undergraduate education, or a number of the elite state universities' rationale for the development of undergraduate-honors liberal arts colleges within their larger structures. In each case, these larger institutions of higher education have been forced to discover—or rediscover—the centrality to their mission of a liberal arts education, with the emphasis on intensive human exchanges.
The finest large universities, both private and public, have made a commitment to reestablish their focus on undergraduate education. Will they succeed? Only time will tell. Success at those institutions may well influence our own future path, but for now, the ethos of devoting remarkable time to each student is alive and well here, and we must be sure to do whatever we can to preserve that ethos and commitment.
What do I mean—in terms of the way we should educate and you should learn—when I say we need to ensure that all of you leave here ready for serious engagement with the greater world, confident in your skills to make a difference?
First: seek classes and professors that force you to write ... and write some more. Middlebury requires two "intensive" writing courses. In those courses you will write a lot. You should also rewrite a lot—multiple drafts of the same assignment. Never feel satisfied by doing the minimum when it comes to having the opportunity to have a faculty member read your writing. The final result will be that you become a better writer, a skilled writer, able to make an argument forcefully and with confidence. That confidence is crucial if you are going to be engaged in the world following Middlebury, and it requires the sustained and intense guidance we offer here.
Second: seek out courses and professors that require you to speak and present your views in class. The ability to speak clearly is another important part of developing the confidence you will need as you set forth from college. There are ample opportunities to take courses in which oral presentations are required. Don't sidestep these courses because you are shy, or you think others know more than you do. If you keep in mind the question, what is the goal of education? and ask yourself why you are here and how being liberally educated involves a moral obligation to give back, you will feel more comfortable in taking the initiative to get as much as you can out of what this human-intensive learning environment offers you.
Most faculty will cherish the opportunity to help you hone your oral skills in class. At the least, they have a vested interest in the quality of discussions in their course; for many, the opportunity to help you develop your oral skills is part of their role, as they view it, at a place like Middlebury.
And third: give great thought to scientific study—labs and all. In and of itself, the need for a more scientifically literate population is self-evident. The scientific dimension of so many of society's current issues—be it the environment, the ways in which human beings communicate with each other across the globe, genetic manipulation and cloning, alternative energy sources, food alteration, or new forms of warfare—is central to understanding the world around us and to our ability to participate and make a difference in it.
Middlebury offers students who pursue science a huge comparative advantage: the ability to work side by side with a faculty member, to do research, and to use state-of-the-art instrumentation that, one would think, is found more frequently and is made available more readily to undergraduates at larger research universities. In fact, at most larger universities, it is the graduate students who have access to the scientific equipment, not the undergraduates. There is a reason why a disproportionate percentage of Ph.D.'s in the sciences are earned by students who went to small liberal arts colleges and not to large research universities for their undergraduate studies. Even if you do not major in science, the pursuit of scientific education will expose you to the scientific method, to the importance of replicability, to the development of sound theories and new knowledge, and will instill a discipline that is likely to become part of how you think and address multifaceted issues well after you complete your studies here.
Now, I don't expect a significant change in the "drop-add" activities over the coming weeks as a result of these comments. I do, however, hope you will rethink what it means to attend a college whose mode of education—intense human interaction—and dedication to that mode of education offers you an opportunity to prepare yourself for a world far different from the one my faculty colleagues and I inherited when we completed our undergraduate studies.
In fact, I can't help but observe how yesterday's third anniversary of September 11 fits into all of this: If nothing else, September 11 should represent to each of you and your generation a clarion call for action—for serious engagement in the world and a commitment to prepare yourselves for that engagement as best you can. I can think of no better place for that preparation than here, or a better time in your lives to begin that preparation than now, just as you begin your studies at Middlebury. You have an important role to play in how the major issues across the globe that we are witnessing today play out in the future.
I encourage you, as strongly as I can, to take advantage of the resources you have before you to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to engage the world and those complex issues with confidence and conviction. We are here to help you; that is the nature of a Middlebury education. Please don't pass up the opportunity that is before you.