Inaugural Ceremony Archive
Morton Schapiro
President, Williams College
It's a great pleasure to be part of this magnificent celebration. Presidential inaugurations are very strange events. They appear to honor individuals, but they really celebrate institutions. That, of course, is the way it should be. As you induct president number 10, it's appropriate, as we've heard over and over, to acknowledge that Vassar has had nine presidents already during its proud history, and that it will have many, many more in the future. Still, after reflecting a bit on the realities facing liberal arts colleges, I'll turn my attention to your wonderful new president, Cappy Hill. Six years and one week ago I had my own induction as the 16th president of Williams College. My kids kept referring to it as my coronation, which I kind of liked, while my wife pointed out that it was a bit like our wedding, but that this time we didn't get to keep the gifts. I remember well that I appreciated hearing not only the general reflections offered by several speakers, but some more personal ones as well.
Regarding the liberal arts college, folks have, alas, been sounding its death knell for more than one hundred years. Stanford's first president, David Starr Jordan, at the turn of the 20th century, famously predicted that the liberal arts college would become a relic of the past - with the best becoming full-blown research universities and the rest becoming little more than prep schools. I'm an economist, so I'm used to really lousy predictions, but even by my discipline's low standards of predictive accuracy, President Jordan was spectacularly wrong. Now, sure, the Stanfords of the world, which in 1900 looked much like Vassar and Williams look today, became large, complex universities, with substantial graduate and professional schools, large-scale government-funded research operations, hospitals, big-time sports, and the like. But the liberal arts college has endured, and indeed thrived. Back in 1999, a special edition of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, was published titled "Distinctively American: The Residential Liberal Arts Colleges." You should read it -- it did a wonderful job celebrating the uniqueness of our schools. In that volume, professors from the humanities and from the natural sciences wrote inspiring essays about the importance of our institutions to our nation and to the world. Alas, a cautionary note was sounded by two economists, myself and my long-time coauthor Mike McPherson. The working title of our essay was "Is There an Economic Future for the Liberal Arts College?" although the editors renamed it "The Future Economic Challenges for the Liberal Arts Colleges," presumably so as not to depress our fellow authors.
First, the good news. Many of us have been thinking and writing about how education can best prepare students for this rapidly evolving world. The bottom line is this - keeping pace in a world of rapid technological change and diminishing trade barriers puts a premium on learning how to learn, on becoming flexible. Even the very best training in today's technology will quickly become obsolete in the world into which we are moving. What's needed in fact is not training at all but education in its broadest sense. Education includes being prepared to respond to new situations and challenges. It means cultivating the ability for independent thought, for expanding the capacity to cope with new ideas and new outlooks. Perhaps as important as technological change to the future of the economy is the growing internationalization that we can see all around us. It's clear that the next generation will need to be much more comfortable with a broader range of languages and cultures than was previously the case. And there's every reason to expect that cross-national communication and interaction will extend well beyond narrow business purposes. Economic and social issues, from pollution to the spread of the latest pandemic, are inherently global and will increasingly require a search for common understanding and common values. The capacity to transcend one's own parochial point of view and join in a larger understanding is one of the fundamental aims of education, and that's what you do so well here at Vassar. I am convinced that, for many, an education at a liberal arts college is a student's best shot at learning to embrace and respect difference, at developing the key critical thinking skills that will keep him or her nimble and adaptable, and at honing writing and speaking skills. But, most importantly, I know that the Vassars of the world do a wonderful job instilling an eagerness to continue learning over a lifetime. As an economist, I am often asked how a person can protect himself or herself in a world of outsourcing. My answer is simple, and it seems to surprise people expecting to hear me drone on about differential investments in human capital. What I tell them is that reading great fiction, attending concerts, discussing politics, traveling the world will all help keep you employable in a rapidly changing labor market. And the great thing is that those activities aren't exactly torture. To the contrary, they are the pleasures that enrich our lives.
But if liberal arts colleges are so good at preparing students for today's challenges, why worry about their future? Let me go through some numbers. By the end of World War II, 20 percent of the two million students enrolled at America's colleges and universities were studying at liberal arts colleges. Today, that percentage has fallen to at most four percent, assuming an extremely generous definition of what counts as a liberal arts college. Without much fanfare, many colleges have transformed themselves into small universities with significant graduate programs or into professional schools, with shockingly few of their students majoring in English, physics, political science, and the other disciplines that define the liberal arts.
What many of us picture as the prototype for higher education - a selective, residential, undergraduate college with the majority of students majoring in the liberal arts - still exists, despite what David Starr Jordan predicted. But that's the experience of fewer than 100,000 out of 14 million undergraduates currently enrolled at our nation's colleges and universities - less than one percent. Little more than a rounding error. What's more, a smaller and smaller percentage of students at research universities have been majoring in the liberal arts. Only one in four undergraduates in this country majors in one of the traditional liberal arts disciplines, with the philosophy and history majors of previous generations being replaced by the business and engineering majors of today.
Should we care if our nation's students select a very different type of education? Yes we should. When educators and the general public imagine the ideal education, they imagine us: dedicated faculty teaching committed undergraduates, sitting around a seminar table, discussing literature. If liberal arts colleges become so marginal that America's most talented high school students don't even consider us among their potential college choices, how long will that gold standard of higher education quality survive? It's the responsibility of the faculty, staff, students, and alumni at our schools to grasp the mantle of leadership in undergraduate education. We have to get our message out - not because we need to expand our applicant pool - the top liberal arts colleges are more selective than ever - but because talented high school students should at least think about our model as well as that of the research university when planning their college careers. And if they do select a large research university, they should surely choose a university that at least tries to emulate us in taking undergraduate education seriously and, once there, they should certainly consider majoring in one of the liberal arts disciplines.
We know that immersion in these disciplines enriches every aspect of students' lives and we shouldn't be shy about saying it. But we also have an obligation to make sure that the education we provide is the best that is possible. We must do a better job enrolling a student body that better reflects the nation in which we live. It was none other than your new president, Cappy Hill, who coauthored a series of papers with our colleague Gordon Winston documenting the fact that the most heavily endowed, most selective colleges and universities have been doing a terrible job enrolling students from the lower range of the American income distribution. It was that work that helped open our eyes and led Harvard, Amherst, Williams and many others to rethink the foundations of our admissions policies.
There are other challenges as well: using new technologies to enhance the special relationship between faculty member and student; fostering cutting edge interdisciplinary teaching and research; linking more effectively the education that takes place within the classroom with the education that takes place in the dorm rooms and dining halls and on the playing fields; and embracing the challenge of learning assessment before outsiders force us to do it their way.
Economically, the odds are certainly against the liberal arts college. Our small size, which is essential to our purpose, works against us in terms of our budgets. If we tripled our enrollment, would we need to triple the number of books in the library, the number of departments, programs, and computers, the number of athletic teams? Of course not. But just because we are too small to exploit the efficiencies that accompany economies of scale doesn't mean we aren't worth the cost. We are.
A key to our survival is leadership. You have certainly had it here in Fran Fergusson, a model for all of us in higher education administration. And I know you have it again in Cappy Hill.
Now some say that the job of a college president is impossible. My favorite commentator on the subject is the legendary Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California. A brilliant leader and amazingly witty guy, upon being dismissed from his post by Governor Ronald Reagan over his handling of protests during the Vietnam War, he famously remarked that he was leaving his job the same way he entered it - fired with enthusiasm.
Kerr once wrote that a college president is expected to be a friend of the students, a colleague of the faculty, a good fellow with the alumni, a sound administrator with the trustees, a good speaker with the public, spokesman to the press, and a scholar in his or her own right. Cappy Hill loves student, is proud to be a member of this faculty, enjoys interacting with large and small groups, and is a compelling speaker, a brilliant manager, and an economist whose research is transforming higher education. So far, so good. Clark Kerr continued that a president should be a devotee of opera and football equally, a decent human being, a good parent and spouse, an active member of a church and, above all, should enjoy traveling in planes, eating meals in public, and attending public ceremonies. He concludes that no one can be all of these things, and that some succeed at none. Well, Cappy may want to brush up on Puccini, but she is one of the most decent, imaginative, supportive, classy people I have ever met. She is the product of a liberal arts college and knows as well as anyone how our vital institutions work. She is lucky to be at Vassar, and you are lucky to have her. Support her and encourage her through the inevitable hard times and join her in her efforts to make one of the true treasures of American education even better.
I miss one of my best friends every single day. But, I know she has found the right home. Vassar, the liberal arts, and American higher education all benefit as a result. Thank you.