What Universities Can Be

What Universities Can Be is the title of Robert Sternberg’s latest book. I’ve read a fair bit from Sternberg, both books and articles, since I’m interested in the role that creativity can play in education. One annoying thing I’ve started to find is that Sternberg tends to repeat himself verbatim (is it self-plagiarism?) and cites himself a lot (perhaps to avoid such a charge). This trend is particularly evident in his latest book. To be fair, in the preface, he states that he has been thinking about the content of this book for over 40 years, and the book builds on many articles “published over the years through various outlets”.

The key proposal of the book is the establishment of an ideal university characterized by the acronym ACCEL. This stands for Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership. In Sternberg’s words, “successful ACCEL university graduates succeed when they make the world a better place in which to live.” This goal is the first of several key characteristics of an ACCEL institution. The others are that its graduates will impress employers with their “initiative and hard work” and will “give back” to society, students would be admitted based on principles of access and potential broadly-measured (this is Sternberg’s specialty area), the students will develop said broad abilities based on Sternberg’s WICS principles, and finally scholarship is valued primarily by long term impact.

The strongest part of the book is Part II “Who Gets In and Who is Able to Go?” covering the admissions process, financial aid and college costs. Sternberg has thought very carefully about this issue, and done plenty of work in this area, both as a researcher and as a university administrator. The chapter on Admissions critically looks at each of the typical evaluation criteria, with particular detail into the uses and misuses of test scores. Since Sternberg has administrative experience, his chapter on College Costs thoughtfully considers both the factors that contribute to the rise in costs but also discusses different options to keep costs down, and why this is a very difficult and tangled problem.

On the other hand, I was less impressed with his more cursory analyses of faculty assessment, governance, and assessing student learning in later parts of the book. Perhaps I have not been an administrator long enough to appreciate his point of view, but some of the suggestions seemed simplistic. This is in contrast to his very detailed Part II described above. The chapter on Teaching and Learning had an interesting (although not completely novel) proposal of “Interdisciplinary Problem-Based Learning as an Alternative to Traditional Majors and Minors”. It’s an idea that is not easy to implement given the current structure of universities, but it is also unclear how to implement it well if you started a new ideal university. Quest University in Canada, is to some extent, built on this principle. The student’s capstone project is a Question. There are no majors or departments in the institution. There are some attractive aspects of this setup but also some significant challenges. (I’ve visited Quest and talked to faculty, students, staff and administrators so I have some idea of what goes on.)

What can universities be? Post-election here in the U.S., there have been a flurry of op-eds discussing whether universities are bastions of elitism, out-of-touch with many parts of the country. What is “higher” in higher education? Is it the key outcomes that Sternberg thinks would be acquired by a student having an ACCEL education? Is it primarily academic? Joanna Williams would argue that the many popular outcomes advertised by institutions of higher learning are a distraction from their key academic purpose. Her new book, Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity, argues that “academic freedom [is] increasingly criticized as an outdated and elitist concept… and called into question by a number of political and intellectual trends such as … [among other things] identity politics.” (I’ve read this book, but I think her previous book was stronger. She builds on her earlier work, but the newer book thankfully doesn’t smack of self-plagiarism.)

Is higher education something that everyone should experience? Unlike the U.S., access to tertiary education is much more limited in many countries around the world. Institutions with a liberal arts curriculum emphasize critical thinking, ethical judgment, adept adapting, and other “high”-sounding outcomes that prepare one to be the “ideal” citizen of the new democratic polis built on the foundation of Greek philosophical ideas and ideals. But shouldn’t these be for everyone? Or is it the “higher” part of education that we are maintaining, perhaps somewhat removed from the “trade” professions. In the early universities, the students had a “higher” calling indeed – a religious one. Perhaps the situation in the U.S. should not be surprising, the “higher” educated elites being one side of a polarized entity.

What should universities be? Touted as the ticket to moving up to a higher socio-economic class, it is perhaps good that universities and academics be pushed to consider what indeed is the value added of higher education. Sternberg’s focus on wisdom, creativity and ethical leadership seem like good things, although structuring them into the educational framework may prove challenging.