Aug 24, 2024
This is the last in my series on higher education, which I’ll also summarize in a newsletter. If you’re interested:
Part 1 on formation. Part 2 on readiness. Part 3 on prescriptive disciplines. Part 4 on spaces for learning.
Buried in a footnote in Lewis Hyde’s classic study on gift economies is a stirring question that sums up the adventure I hope holds my two college-bound children — at least some of the time — in their years at university. Earlier in the book, Hyde names the gift economy as operating on eros in its classical sense, a form of unfettered attachment, a “shaping into one.” And then, later on:
In the modern world the rights that adults have in their children…normally pass slowly from parent to child during adolescence and become fully vested in the child when he or she is ready to leave home.
If our lives are gifts to begin with, however, in some sense they are not “ours” even when we become adults. Or perhaps they are, but only until such time as we find a way to bestow them. The belief that life is a gift carries with it the corollary feeling that the gift should not be hoarded. As we mature, and particularly as we come into the isolation of being “on our own,” we begin to feel the desire to give ourselves away — in love, in marriage, to our work, to the gods, to politics, to our children. And adolescence is marked by that restless, erotic, disturbing inquisition: Is this person, this nation, this work, worthy of the life I have to give?
The best heuristics I can generate for thinking through college operate with this gift disposition as their engine. I think young people need 1) formation (a good number of experiences they don’t self-select), 2) readiness (rehearsal experiences for civic mindedness, not just the professions), and 3) the prescriptive domains of philosophy and theology (getting beyond everyday issues to the big enduring questions) — all to help young people encounter this life-as-gift invitation. And it’s clear to me now that we don’t have to look for a one-size-fits-all university structure to see these elements at work. The spaces for learning (that’s #4) might be arranged in a few different ways that together provide the first three.
[Here’s the to-be-sure part of this post] Reader: I have been parenting for 18 years, so I’m fully aware that you don’t assemble and serve an experience to your children with the expectation that your good intentions will automatically take root in their minds and souls. Trust me. But I do think the question of whether and what kind of college is worth paying for is an important one, given the various muddled mission statements and practices of the contemporary university. I’m doing the best I can — and in the spirit of formation, the best I can requires more than just facilitating my kids’ shopping for their choices. The below is a list of schools and programs that is in no way comprehensive — just things that have caught my eye, with offerings that would be formative for my kids who go to big Title I public K-12 schools in an east coast city.
First model: A strong required core curriculum
The big questions and enduring ideas that make up the “great books” style of college go a long way toward formation and readiness, ideally with the prescriptive domains taught with enough primary sources and critical assent.
One of my godsons is starting his sophomore year at St John’s College in Santa Fe, and this is probably the most formative core curriculum on offer in the US: sequential, nearly lockstep all the way through. Everyone takes singing class in the first year! Glorious. We’ll be visiting him sometime this year, though I sort of doubt it’s the thing for my two.
I’m also a fan of the traditional Jesuit core, since it often includes good sophisticated philosophy and theology. It seems like a number of the Jesuit universities are trending like the rest of higher ed, with more choices for meeting broad categorical requirements than prescribed topics, but Georgetown’s core looks pretty great, as does Boston College’s.
Other programs of note: William and Mary has a sequential-ish core that spans all four years, and Furman’s innovative Cultural Life program has students attend lectures, concerts, exhibitions, and other humanistic programs in a required set of hours over four years.
Second model: Opt-in core curriculum in smaller programs
If you’re tempted to stop reading because you think great books is an elitist enterprise, I invite you to go right now and read Ted Hadzi-Antich’s beautiful report on how these courses are thriving at places like Austin Community College. And I am very excited by some of the great books-style plans within larger universities:
Notre Dame’s Program of Liberal Studies
The Honors College at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus
Marquette’s sequential Honors Core program
There are also first-year programs that offer foundations, like Yale’s Directed Studies program.
Third model: Formative early classes with available follow-on resources
There are really interesting single classes that go a long way to foreground prescriptive disciplines: Georgetown has its required course called “The Problem of God” — a beautiful framing that helps students of all backgrounds encounter one of the most important human questions. And Notre Dame has its optional (but very popular) “God and the Good Life.” Both of these are historically religious institutions, so they have additional required core classes, plenty of ongoing resources in the prescriptive domains, campus ministry, and exposure to wisdom traditions of all kinds. But one could imagine this model working at lots of places — a small intervention in the form of a Great Questions class for all students, even without a further required core.
Update: my friend Ben Lipscomb directs the Honors London semester program for first-year students at Houghton University. He sent me the syllabus, and it looks fantastic.
Fourth model: Spaces outside the classroom
If we think creatively about spaces for learning outside the classroom, we might pay attention to a couple of recent developments.
First is the creation of parallel centers for civic education, most of which have some humanistic and readiness framing, like SCETL at the University of Arizona. It joins others in its ilk, like UT Austin’s School of Civic Leadership or the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida. There’s bound to be talk that these are right-reactionary centers meant to reverse the perceived excesses in left-coded application statements and viewpoint homogeneity, but as this piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed makes clear, it’s just too soon to tell.
And then there are changes to campus religious ministry structures that would house some of the prescriptive domains of theology in places where it’s absent in the curriculum. Note Chapel Hill’s robust offerings of non-credit seminars for students — a very different model than the peer-led casual gatherings of past campus ministry. At Chapel Hill, the Christian Study Center staff are employed by the university, not competitors for classrooms, which also feels important. And the University of Florida has its CSC led by the wonderful Michael Sacasas. Perhaps these structures are a corollary to the Hillel tradition for Jewish students on many campuses? I welcome it all.
Finally, an addendum: In 2023, I mused about some plausible ways you could remake an engineering school to give a STEM education real humanistic gravitas. I’m fascinated by the similar spirit that’s powering the brand new Catholic Tech (in Italy!!), where all students get engineering plus philosophy and theology, and The College of St Joseph the Worker, where training in the technical trades comes with the same.
Will any of these places draw my kids and also be affordable for their parents? We’ll see.