Comments on: It’s Not the Size, It’s What You Do With It

By: Ouija Boards

Ouija Boards — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:46:18 +0000

Sorry i forgot to mention that this is a well written article that will surely be noted. Thanks

By: Ouija Boards

Ouija Boards — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:43:25 +0000

I agree with Timothy. I just wish they would do something to the South Africans this side and improve on higher education. I dont know how many of you are aware of the South African models, but i sure wish i understood that. Thanks

By: withywindle

withywindle — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 05:57:30 +0000

Jadagul: vaguely aware of the Claremonts–I’m a Northeastern boy–thank you for reminding me of them as a good model.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 11:40:41 +0000

I also like the idea of big endowments helping to build small ones. I’ve counseled some of my friends teaching in public African universities to look into building institute or departmental-level endowments, if they can be protected legally from misuse (one way to do that might be to have a board in charge of endowment management that was partially composed of First World scholars, as a firebreak against misuse). Even a teeny-tiny proportion of a very large endowment could basically make an institute-level endowment in an African university allow for that institute to have self-sustaining independence.

By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 09:59:02 +0000

“Fervency” turns up in my dictionaries, but you’re right WW, fervor is better.

By: jadagul

jadagul — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 03:36:17 +0000

Withywindle: with regard to your ‘lots of small colleges’ idea, are you familiar with the Claremont schools? They may or may not be along the lines of what you’re lookng for, but you might want to check them out if you don’t know them already. Basically, it’s a group of five (totally administratively separate) colleges that share a campus and allow their students to take classes with each other. So we have five small liberal arts collges, with the small class sizes and such that that implies, but resources more in line with a somewhat bigger institution because the colleges can pool their classes.

By: The Constructivist

The Constructivist — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 02:18:05 +0000

I’d encourage the well-endowed to donate to the endowments of the less well-endowed. A drop in the bucket for, say, Columbia, would triple my institution’s endowment. In another post, you mentioned non-profits that don’t live up to their missions; no matter how much financial aid they offer, the most endowed won’t ever provide opportunity for more than a select few. They could have a much bigger impact by helping public universities in their states that are doing good things do better things. That way the public universities wouldn’t have to rely on tuition and taxes for 99% of their costs….

By: withywindle

withywindle — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:46:11 +0000

Madison on my ouija board … Grasshopper, you must set up a system that aligns the interests of professors with their fervor. (Did I just coin fervency, or is it actually a word?) But having made the “anything goes so long as you’re committed” critique, I want to backtrack enough to say that the theory does require actual commitment to a particular system, and an actual belief that’s it’s better. So I don’t want you to give up your commitment to the mechanics of the rough sketch of academia you just outlined. Please be undetached and unironic about its merits! Anyway, it certainly seemed like a good first draft. I very much like the Car course, combining car-repair and car-reading.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:52:59 +0000

I agree with your dad, actually. I raise that somewhere in the design document, that in the end I don’t think it’s a very good plan in that it would require everyone working at the college to firmly believe in the basic precepts of the design, and I don’t know that you can achieve that.

So then the real question is, how to nurture fervency. Because I think most teachers can achieve it, if they’re in an environment that cherishes and rewards it.

By: withywindle

withywindle — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:56:30 +0000

I may try to write something longer in response to this at my co-blog. Some initial responses to this, and to your design for a new curriculum. 1) My druthers are simply to have lots of small colleges with lots of small classes; which, aside from the self-interested consequence of increasing professorial employment, I think would be good for students under almost any curricular framework. 2) If I could shanghai universities with large endowments into my pet scheme, I would have them set up franchises–spin off $1 billion of Harvard’s endowment to start up Harvard West, another $1 billion for Harvard Japan, etc. 3) I do like the idea of many different dedicated funds–increasing the multiplicity of tradition. And I don’t necessarily trust college administrators to have a better idea of how to spend money than the donors. 4) I doubtless have a somewhat different Dream College from yours, but such a critique isn’t at issue; it’s an interestining vision, and would be worth exploring. (Actually, it’s not that far off in some particulars from what places like Sarah Lawrence started out as in the 1930s.) I’ll mention by-the-by that my dad went through very different educational programs at Amherst and Columbia, and concluded that was it was the dedication of the professors and administrators to an educational ideal, rather than the content of the curriculum itself, that made the difference; fervency educates. If I had one overall critique of your program, it would be that it requires fervency–the dedication of the committed–for it to work, and I suspect therefore that it would not last for long. An advantage of the current set-up, despite it’s grave flaws, is that it functions without fervor. I suppose I would say that whatever revolutionary colleges we set up, they all should benefit from some Madisonian thoughts–how to make them survive when run by ordinary men rather than true believers. 5) R. A. Lafferty, “Primary Education of the Camiroi,” is relevant to all discussions of ideal education.