Ernest L. Boyer

The late Ernest Boyer was a hugely influential voice in higher education policy during the latter part of the 20th century. He was the chancellor of the giant State University of New York (SUNY) system, before becoming the U.S. commissioner of education (a position that later was changed to “secretary”); he ended his career as the president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Boyer was very comfortable taking on the higher education establishment and calling out its weaknesses as he perceived them. For example, he believed that American higher education began to lose its way after WW-II, when the National Science Foundation was established (1950) and the National Institutes of Health were greatly expanded, making federal research dollars available, in increasingly larger amounts, to campus-based researchers. Boyer was visibly concerned that the growing emphasis on university-based research was coming at the expense of the historic emphasis on high-quality undergraduate education.

In 1994, Boyer published an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “Creating the New American College.” He opened the article with these words:

“How can American higher education successfully contribute to national renewal? Is it possible for the work of the academy to relate more effectively to our most pressing social, economic, and civic problems?”

Later in his article Boyer said the following:

“I’m concerned that in recent years, higher education’s historic commitment to service seems to have diminished. I’m troubled that many now view the campus as a place where professors get tenured and students get credentialed… And what I find most disturbing is the growing feeling in this country that higher education is a private benefit, not a public good” [emphasis in the original].

Boyer makes it abundantly clear that the designation of research (“publish or perish”) as the primary mission of today’s universities is very much a modern phenomenon, and one that takes the American university far away from its origins. He points out that, while in the colonial era the first colleges were founded by various religious denominations for the purpose of training clergymen and educating pious gentlemen (there were no women’s colleges at that time), purely secular institutions became the norm after Benjamin Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania in 1740 – and their purpose was broader and more inclusive than the mission of the original church-related colleges.

Franklin stated the purpose (or mission) of the University of Pennsylvania “as consisting in an Inclination join’d with an Ability to serve Mankind, one’s Country, Friends, and Family” [spelling, capitalization and italics in the original].

“Service to society” as a mission was embraced by the public universities as they were established in the closing years of the 18th century and in the first few decades of the 19th century – and service was also very clearly the purpose behind the founding of the land-grant universities (beginning in 1862, following passage of the Morrill Act).

Even when graduate education and research began at major universities in the latter part of the 19th century, service to society remained their primary mission. Daniel Coit Gilman, the founding president of The Johns Hopkins University (1876), the first university in America to be established using the German research university model, had this to say in his inaugural address:

“[Universities should] make for less misery among the poor, less ignorance in the schools, less bigotry in the temple, less suffering in the hospitals, less fraud in business, less folly in politics.”

The presidents of Harvard, Princeton and Stanford offered similar comments at various times over the following three decades. My point is: Service to society was the stated purpose of even the most prestigious American universities well into the 20th century – and in his paper, Boyer points out that this theme of service was, in large part, the basis for the G.I. Bill and the Peace Corps, mid-20th century initiatives.

Boyer challenged the higher education community to restore service to society as its primary value, when he said:

“Violence, unemployment, poverty, poor housing, and pollution often occur at the very doorsteps of some of our most distinguished colleges and universities. How can the nation’s campuses stay disengaged?”

He called on the faculty:

To “apply knowledge to real-life problems [and] use that experience to revise their theories.”

He said:

That “institutions must become less imitative and more creative.”

He suggested:

That “the goal of such colleges would be to bring knowledge into intimate relationships with the small, daily problems of real people and real neighborhoods.”

Boyer’s paper, coming as it did from one of the great leaders in higher education, was widely praised and celebrated – but it was ultimately all but ignored. Sadly, very little has changed in higher education in the 21 years since the paper’s publication. And the irony is that Boyer’s call for action, for the reinstitution of service to society as the primary mission of higher education institutions, is at least as relevant today as it was in Boyer’s day.

Roger Williams University responded to Boyer’s call by engaging in a campus-wide, yearlong review of its core values, core purpose and overarching university goal. Our new core purpose, or mission, is just eight words long: To strengthen society through engaged teaching and learning. Coincidentally, our new overarching university goal is also just eight words: To build the university the world needs now.

Taken together, it is our stated purpose to give each one of our students the opportunity for at least one meaningful experiential education project – often a semester-long project-based learning experience. This approach will ensure that students learn how to apply theoretical knowledge learned in the classroom to practical, community-based (and community-identified) problems.

Project-based learning will ensure that, in addition to acquiring experience in their discipline, students will obtain experience in working with students from different disciplines; in perfecting their negotiation and collaboration skills; in working with clients; in meeting deadlines; in oral and written communication; in analysis and synthesis – the very skills that employers say are too often missing in today’s college graduates.

But the value of this approach is not limited to the student. The organization that identified the project on which the students are working also benefits, by receiving the value that a team of intelligent, eager and competent students (under the guidance of one or more professors) brings to the problem at hand. In one Roger Williams University project, now completed, the work of the student team allowed the community to receive a federal grant of more than $800,000, and made the students’ plan a reality.

Students on these projects are clearly moved and motivated by the gratitude they receive from the organizations with which they work – and many of our students commit to doing more community-based work once they graduate. To the extent they do, they will continue to strengthen society throughout their lives.

Roger Williams University thinks of itself as epitomizing The New American College. We hope that Ernie Boyer would have approved.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to pick up a newspaper, open a magazine, or walk into a bookstore without being confronted with yet another screed about the problems of higher education in America, each one seemingly more shrill than the last. With book titles such as Academically Adrift, or American Higher Education in Crisis?, or Why Does College Cost So Much?, it is no wonder that the parents of a prospective college student are confused and frustrated as they enter the season of campus visitations.

By way of welcoming the start of college this fall, The New York Times recently devoted its entire Sunday magazine (Sept. 13) to a series of articles collectively entitled Collegeland. If anyone thought it was safe to go back into the academic waters, these articles will frighten them back to the beach before they get their ankles wet.

There is no question that problems abound in the world of American higher education; they are serious, and they need to be addressed. But the good news is that genuine efforts are under way at many colleges and universities to implement solutions to these problems. Not every college is deaf to the voices of criticism. Consider three of the most vexing concerns:

1. College Costs Too Much: For the past 30 years, the sticker price of virtually all American colleges and universities has risen far more rapidly than has the Consumer Price Index, or any commodity in that index. But the rate of increase of the net price – the money actually paid by students and their families – has been much less. For example, the wealthiest private colleges and universities cover the full costs of students whose family incomes are lower than a set amount ($90,000 is a typical figure). Even among private colleges of modest wealth, the average net price today, adjusted for inflation, is actually less than it was 10 years ago. Pell Grants from the federal government, because they have increased in number and in value in recent years, now generally cover the full cost of community colleges for millions of low-income students.A college education is still an expensive investment, in both time and money, but the situation is improving, not getting worse. However, colleges contribute to the confusion by continuing to raise their sticker prices even as they discount those prices more than ever, in order to create larger pools of financial aid dollars. It’s no wonder parents are confused about college costs.

2. College is Too Risky; Graduation Rates Are Too Low: Low graduation rates are indeed a serious problem, but this is not a new problem. Unlike most other countries, America does not force its young people into particular tracks based on their relative success on qualifying examinations. Countries that limit access to college or university to the highest achievers on entrance examinations have very high graduation rates – but only for a relatively small percentage of the college-age population. America believes in second chances, in “late bloomers,” in doorways of opportunity that stay open far longer than in most other countries. Unfortunately, the price of broader access is a higher rate of failure.But what’s different today is that the consequence of failing to complete college is far greater than it was 40 years ago, when college dropouts could still get well-paying jobs. And that places a burden on today’s colleges to do all they can to help students succeed – but without lowering academic standards.Here, too, we see wonderful examples of colleges that have accepted this challenge. To give just one example, the Accelerated Study in Associated Programs (ASAP) at community colleges in the City University of New York (CUNY) system have been credited with doubling the colleges’ traditionally low graduation rates – and many colleges and universities across the nation are implementing a broad range of strategies to increase student retention and graduation rates. These programs come at a cost, and therefore can conflict with efforts being made to reduce the price of higher education, but they are still cost-effective because the total cost per graduate is falling significantly.

3. Colleges Don’t Prepare Students for the Marketplace: Surveys of business leaders by the American Association of Colleges and Universities show that while employers are generally satisfied with the skills of graduates in their particular disciplines – that is, engineers and accountants know their stuff – they are far less satisfied with general skills, such as communication, collaboration, dealing with people from different backgrounds, and the graduates’ general knowledge of the culture of business. Regrettably, this particular “skills gap” has resulted in a rising rate of job termination among college-educated Millennials. Moreover, as a consequence their dissatisfaction with the quality of recent hires, employers now often limit their search to employees with actual experience, a quandary for newly minted college graduates seeking their first job.The question of who prepares college students for employment has resulted in no end of finger pointing. Colleges note that, historically, they provided their graduates with general skills, and the employers trained them for the specific work they needed done. Employers say that whatever was historically true, they no longer are willing to invest in the costs of a lengthy period of training, but instead are looking for new employees to arrive already trained. The college graduates who are unable to secure a position that requires college-level skills are the victims of the standoff between colleges and employers.The solution is at hand, but colleges and universities have been slow to embrace it, because they will have to change some of their traditional ways of educating their students. Project-based learning, wherein groups of students, often from several disciplines, working with one or more faculty members on a real project that comes from nonprofits or for-profits in the external community, is a way for colleges to give the students valuable working experience before they graduate, even as they continue to earn academic credit. Colleges that have adopted this approach are finding their graduates to be considerably more marketable, and that result, in turn, attracts more entering students who (along with their families) want a good return on their educational investment – meaning a satisfying job that pays well.

Colleges and universities that actively and openly address the problems and concerns the broader society has with higher education in general can change the tone of the conversation from criticism (sometimes, actual hostility) to a point where higher education institutions and the broader society see each other as partners in preparing young people not just for employment but also to serve as leaders and change agents in an economy that continues to evolve at a rapid rate.

Roger Williams University, where I work, has taken these problems (and solutions) to heart. We have not raised the price of tuition since 2012 – and each entering class is guaranteed that its tuition will not increase during its four undergraduate years, thereby giving parents and students predictability and certainty regarding the cost of a college degree. We now guarantee that every student will have the opportunity for at least one experiential education project – often a semester-long project-based learning experience, where the student can apply classroom theory to practice in the external community – as part of their course of study, thereby ensuring that graduates have the proven skills employers want.

We don’t pretend that we have all the answers. But we do take pride in our efforts to give students what they want, and (even more important) what they need, at an affordable price. Our new overarching goal says it all: To build the university the world needs now.