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Liberal arts colleges represent a tiny portion of the higher education market―no more than 2 percent of enrollees. Yet they produce a stunningly large percentage of America’s leaders in virtually every field of endeavor. The educational experience they offer―small classes led by professors devoted to teaching and mentoring, in a community dedicated to learning―has been a uniquely American higher education ideal.
Liberal Arts at the Brink is a wake-up call for everyone who values liberal arts education. A former college president trained in law and economics, Ferrall shows how a spiraling demand for career-related education has pressured liberal arts colleges to become vocational, distorting their mission and core values. The relentless competition among them to attract the “best” students has driven down tuition revenues while driving up operating expenses to levels the colleges cannot cover. The weakest are being forced to sell out to vocational for-profit universities or close their doors. The handful of wealthy elite colleges risk becoming mere dispensers of employment and professional school credentials. The rest face the prospect of moving away from liberal arts and toward vocational education in order to survive.
Writing in a personable, witty style, Ferrall tackles the host of threats and challenges liberal arts colleges now confront. Despite these daunting realities, he makes a spirited case for the unique benefits of the education they offer―to students and the nation. He urges liberal arts colleges to stop going it alone and instead band together to promote their mission and ensure their future.
- Sales Rank: #1182437 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Harvard University Press
- Published on: 2011-03-15
- Released on: 2011-02-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.55" h x 1.04" w x 5.83" l, 1.06 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
Well researched and well written, Victor Ferrall's warning of the demise of the liberal arts in American higher education should remind us of the difference between intellectually nurtured education for thinking, and occupational training. If we abandon the former for the latter, what happens to American intellectual leadership in an unpredictable future? (Donald M. Stewart, Former President & CEO Chicago Community Trust)
Victor E. Ferrall, Jr. has written a timely book with passion, details, and insights on the factors contributing to the decline in demand for liberal arts education, the crisis facing the liberal arts colleges, and the way forward for arresting the decline...This book is must reading for those who want to know about liberal arts education and care about the survival of liberal arts colleges in general and in America in particular. (Edward K. Y. Chen Hong Kong Economic Journal 2011-09-03)
About the Author
Victor E. Ferrall, Jr. is President Emeritus of Beloit College.
Most helpful customer reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Back from the brink
By Wanda B. Red
The author, Victor Ferrall, worked as a lawyer for 30 years before becoming the president of Beloit College (a venerable and highly respected Tier II liberal arts college in Wisconsin). His training and perspective position him well to bring a fresh eye to the economic challenges facing liberal arts colleges in the contemporary higher ed environment and to consider the long-term viability of the business model adopted individually and collectively by these schools.
As long as he sticks to this brief, his brisk and logical writing style is well suited to his topic, and he makes a vigorous and persuasive argument that the climate for the small liberal arts college today is poor and that the best hope for this tiny but precious sector of American higher education lies in consortial efforts by liberal arts colleges as a group to make common cause for the unique value of the individualized and non-vocational education they offer. A statistic that stands out for me: More students are currently enrolled in the for-profit University of Phoenix (384,900) than in all the 225 liberal arts colleges (as identified in US News and World Report) combined (349,000). As Ferrall demonstrates, even this small sector of liberal arts education is moreover increasingly pressed to offer a more and more vocational education. While the most highly ranked liberal arts colleges still hold out against vocational studies, those with smaller endowments who are having a more difficult time surviving are turning over in many cases more than half of their curriculum to vocational courses.
While not overstating his case, Ferrall asks why we should care? Liberal arts colleges, he notes astutely, have produced more than their fair share of leaders in field after field: 12 US Presidents, 6 Supreme Court justices, 14% of our current representatives in Congress, 9% of our current senators, 23% of the Nobel laureates over the past ten years, and the list goes on. Toward the end of the book, he makes the argument that liberal arts colleges should overcome their reluctance to toot their horns and get some of these graduates out there to make the case that individualized instruction in the classic liberal arts can be transformative to a person's life. This is a great plan; let's do it. His other ideas about economic collaboration also make a lot of sense. As he notes, liberal arts colleges might revisit the legal arguments against sharing financial aid information on the basis that the education market differs qualitatively from other markets and should not be subject to the same rules about price-fixing that doomed the "Overlap Group" under the Sherman Antitrust Act 20 years ago. Ferrall's legal knowledge and economic sense inform each step of this clear and persuasive argument.
He is somewhat less persuasive when commenting on other aspects of academic culture, though he shows an admirable humility and rare recognition of the complexity of the world he joined late in his career. The methods he suggests for insuring quality teaching, for example, barely scratch the surface of how to hire, encourage, and evaluate young teachers--and while paying lip service to the idea that student-faculty research can be an important undergraduate experience, he does not suggest how this can be accomplished if liberal arts faculty are not rewarded (as he suggests they should not be) for maintaining competitive research profiles. Likewise his suggestions for improving tenure evaluations boil down to two pages advocating for more regular reviews leading up to tenure; his understanding of the tenure process is much more developed than his proposals for improving it, suggesting perhaps that he should have either edited this section of the book or expanded it substantially.
Finally, the raw data in the appendices is absolutely fascinating, in comprehensive tables indicating the financial health of liberal arts colleges in each tier of this tiny educational sector and also showing the evolution of the curriculum toward more vocational courses. The inclusion of this data enables the reader to judge the strength of the case for herself; there is nothing tendentious or tangential here. The link between the warping of the liberal arts curriculum and the declining financial health of a significant slice of this group of schools is undeniable on the numbers. This book is a powerful call to arms for those who love the liberal arts and want to preserve their unique contribution to American higher learning.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent, readable summary of market situation facing liberal arts colleges
By Jon Caulkins
Well-written, clearly presented summary of the challenging market in which liberal arts colleges compete. Author is a former president of a liberal arts college, and clearly cares about the future of liberal arts. So this is written with the intention of helping liberal arts colleges, not attacking them.
Should be particularly valuable for people (faculty, trustees, etc.) who care about liberal arts colleges and are used to thinking about internal issues (how to make our school better) but would benefit from seeing the big picture of industry-wide trends.
Contains thoughtful analyses of tenure's pros and cons and how badly typical PhD training at a research university serves people who end up being faculty at liberal arts colleges.
15 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
asia without liberal arts: mental atrophy, boredom, and the death of culture
By len
The author is to be commended for his concern, but he fails to raise what for me are the real issues involved with a liberal arts education.
I have now lived in Korea for five years, teaching English in both a public school setting as well as in the "hogwons" or academies that are on every street and on every block--those ubiquitous private institutions that teach a variety of subjects, from English to TKD to art, math,science, music, inter alia. The amount of time and money invested in these hogwons would arouse stunned amazement, at best, in the US, and disbelief at worst.
Unlike the liberal arts focus which is geared towards understanding and ceativity, in Korea the sole purpose of education is to pass the several rungs of exams each student must take during his academic life--to move up the ladder by going to a better middle or high school, and then a top college, and all for the biggest and most important payoff: getting a high-paying job. The problem is, however, that as a result of this "Test-education", no one here thinks much, or deeply; and few read after college--and almost no one on his/her own learns a new subject just for the love of it. Whereas a liberal arts education trains the mind, sharpening it, honing it, deepening it, and broadening it,and sets it on a life-long path of enquiry and beauty and truth, this exam-oriented education is wholly and entirely concerned with passing the state tests to get into a top college. Inquiry, in other words, is shunted aside and all emphasis is on memorization and the skills needed in test-taking! As a result, there is no inquiry-driven interest in academic subjects, only a concern to master test-taking skills.
Liberal arts graduates, on the other hand, think, explore, question--not because it might get them a job but because they are moved (in animo) by wonder, truth, goodness, justice, love, and beauty. Such--let me emphasize--is completely absent in Korea (and elsewhere in Asia)--and entirely missing in Muslim states, where "education" simply consists of memorizing the Koran, or other holy books, but not thinking, reasoning, debating, or criticising, let alone being exposed to the works of other cultural or religious traditions.
The vital set of qualities bequeathed to liberal arts students through their diverse and challenging studies, especially those with a foundation in Greek and Latin, can then enable students to carry on the production of (real) Culture (as against "reality TV" and other mind-numbing shows), and so stand in direct line with other minds and souls in our culture's history.
But as anyone can see, our dearth of liberal arts students these last few decades has changed America palpably for the worse. Real Thinking is a function of hard work over many years. It doesn't blossom just because one takes any old (especially vocational) program. It is a precious and rare flower, Liberal Arts; it demands the greatest care and nurture, which no vocational program can give or, more to the point, would know how to give. The love of and search for Truth is the key to Life: not how to write a computer program , or what a marketing survey might present!
A Liberal Arts education, in short, is about becoming a more fully-developed human being, one who then can make his or her own little (or large) contribution to the making of a more humane culture which can lift all of us above our daily troubles, griefs, and pains, and provide us with soul-changing wisdom, joy, and creativity.
But as anyone can see should they come to Asia, the lack of a liberal arts program here means that everyone is wrapped up in consumerism, materialism, sensualism, technics, and narcissism. This we too have begun to evidence in our country--and for the same reasons that can be seen in Asia: the non-existence of the Liberal Arts, which eventually, and inexorably, leads to the death ofthe human Mind and Spirit. But, alas, few seem to care...
I have, since I wrote the above, been attending St John's College, "the great books school", and everything I wrote about a liberal arts education is absolutely true. At a school like St John's one is engaged with texts like nowhere else. One learns how to think. One begins a lifetime of reading, thinking, and writing about the most important things. Get a liberal arts education...and view the world differently--better, deeper, wiser.
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