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The Collegiate Way

H. M

. Evans and T. P. Burt (Eds.)

Spine10.363 mm

The Collegiate WayUniversity Education in a Collegiate Context

H. M. Evans and T. P. Burt (Eds.)

S e n s e P u b l i s h e r s

The Collegiate WayUniversity Education in a Collegiate ContextH. M. EvansDurham University, UK

and

T. P. Burt (Eds.)Durham University, UK

A college is, at its heart, an association or community of people having a common purpose: in the University context this common purpose is the pursuit of scholarship, at the core of the richest possible development of the whole person.

The point of this book is to share experiences of college life, to identify and spread good practice, to bring together in conversation representatives from the widest possible range of colleges worldwide. Like the ground-breaking conference that preceded it, this book – the first of its kind – aims to promulgate the collegiate way of organising a university, to celebrate our colleges, however different they may be, and to learn from one another. It seeks to continue the conversations and to articulate the benefits of a collegiate way of organising a university.

Establishing and maintaining colleges needs no justification to those who have experience of them – but all who work within collegiate systems are familiar with the need to be able to articulate their benefits to those outside, and to show how such benefits justify the additional cost-base of the collegiate experience. How is this best achieved?

Colleges come in different forms and according to different models, be they constituent parts of a larger university or free-standing institutions. But whatever their constitution, colleges are first and foremost scholarly communities: special and distinct places where people come together as scholars within the setting of a shared community life.

Cover photograph: Durham University. Used with permission.

ISBN 978-94-6300-679-8

CONT 6

C O N T E X T S O F E D U C A T I O NC O N T E X T S O F E D U C A T I O N

The Collegiate Way

CONTEXTS OF EDUCATIONVolume 6

Series Editor:

Michael A. Peters, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USAProfessor, Policy, Cultural & Social Studies in Education, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Scope:Contexts of Education is a new series of handbooks that embraces both a creative approach to educational issues focused on context and a new publishing credo.

All educational concepts and issues have a home and belong to a context. This is the starting premise for this new series. One of the big intellectual breakthroughs of post-war science and philosophy was to emphasise the theory-ladenness of observations and facts—facts and observations cannot be established independent of a theoretical context. In other words, facts and observations are radically context-dependent. We cannot just see what we like or choose to see. In the same way, scholars are argue that concepts and constructs also are relative to a context, whether this be a theory, schema, framework, perspective or network of beliefs. Background knowledge always intrudes; it is there, difficult to articulate, tacit and operates to shape and help form our perceptions. This is the central driving insight of a generation of thinkers from Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper to Thomas Kuhn and Jürgen Habermas. Increasingly, in social philosophy, hermeneutics, and literary criticism textualism has given way to contextualism, paving the way for the introduction of the notions of ‘frameworks’, ‘paradigms’ and ‘networks’—concepts that emphasize a new ecology of thought.

This new series is predicated upon this insight and movement. It emphasises the importance of context in the establishment of educational facts and observations and the framing of educational hypotheses and theories. It also emphasises the relation between text and context, the discursive and the institution, the local and the global. Accordingly, it emphasizes the significance of contexts at all levels of inquiry: scientific contexts; theoretical contexts; political, social and economic contexts; local and global contexts; contexts for learning and teaching; and, cultural and interdisciplinary contexts.

Contexts of Education, as handbooks, are conceived as reference texts that also can serve as texts.

The Collegiate WayUniversity Education in a Collegiate Context

Edited by

H. M. Evans and T. P. BurtDurham University, UK

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6300-679-8 (paperback)ISBN: 978-94-6300-680-4 (hardback)ISBN: 978-94-6300-681-1 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858,3001 AW Rotterdam,The Netherlandshttps://www.sensepublishers.com/

All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2016 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue viiKit Thompson

Introduction xiH. M. Evans and T. P. Burt

Part I: Collegiate Vision and the Challenges of Establishing Colleges

1. On the Future of the Collegiate Way 3Mark B. Ryan

2. Singapore’s Collegiate Model: Combining Teaching, Research and Residency 17Gregory K. Clancey

3. Establishing Residential Colleges at the University of the Free State: Nourishing Student Development in an African Context 33W. P. Wahl

4. Establishing Residential Colleges in Diverse Cultures 45Kyle Farley, Kenneth Grcich and Mark B. Ryan

5. Disruptive Innovators? Colleges on the Cusp of the World’s Largest Metropolitan Area 57Kit Thompson

6. Constructing a Collegiate Compass: Navigating Change in the Culturally-Constructed Collegiate University 61Michael Eamon

7. Building Characters, Sharpening Minds: The Values and Virtues of the Collegiate Way 75T. P. Burt and H. M. Evans

Part II: The Support of Learning and the Student Experience

8. The Varied and Vital Roles of Faculty in Residential College Life 95John Hutchinson

9. The College System as a Culture of Care 109Paula K. Hutchinson

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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10. Dropping to the Universals 115Philip L. Dutton

11. Elevating the Student Experience: The Importance of College Architecture 123Amy Aponte and Gay Perez

12. When Does Help Hinder? The Benefits and Risks of Collegiate Support 137Terri Apter

13. Colleges and the Development of Personal Epistemologies 151Adrian Simpson

Epilogue 161T. P. Burt and H. M. Evans

List of Contributors 167

Index 171

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KIT THOMPSON

PROLOGUE

This Prologue is based upon the text of a contribution to the Collegiate Way Blog that was part of the preparation for the inaugural Collegiate Way Conference in Durham 2014 – Editors.

Penned from London after rewarding, if agglomerative, whistle-stop visits to Durham, Oxford and Cambridge colleges, and now nestling back en route to Macau…

Redolent images: rich, heavy night scents of Cambridge’s ambrosial limes; the skyline of Durham’s monumental Cathedral lit by late evening sun; frenzied hordes of summer-closeted and newly-released high-schoolers stretching from the Cherwell and Magdalen Bridge the length and breadth of Oxford High. Far from the Madding Crowd, Oxford really does have a tavern named after Gray’s Elegy and Hardy’s novel;1 nonetheless the trip was far from a Cook’s tour, or a travel diary in which to record adventures.

Together with University of Macau colleagues, I shall be speaking at Collegiate Way 2014 on the aspiration of the University of Macau to create, purportedly, the largest collegiate system in Asia, on an island campus leased from China under jurisdiction of European, Portuguese law. But for the moment, here is something of a brief reflection on recent visits to US and British colleges and, moreover, on the initial year of operation spent on UM’s new Hengqin campus.

First, I would wish to extend a special note of gratitude to the College Masters I was fortunate to encounter. In sharing their experience and practice, Masters’ generosity was unrestrained. Each in different ways was, it seemed, searching for pragmatic ways of realising the extraordinary fertile environment and experiential riches contained within their colleges to inspire students and enhance their lives. Their experience, narratives and counter-narratives will be left behind for the next generation of Masters. It has been a fascinating and insightful trip that reinforced the potential of a council of Masters and Principals engaged within the Collegiate Way, a regular international forum of peers where commonalities and diversity can be seen, nuanced or revealed in bold relief, and where best practice can be shared. It also seems to prompt what might be termed emeritus Masterships, to keep the experience accessible once serving Masters have relinquished the mantel.

From start-up on a new campus some eleven months ago, we at University of Macau have moved through two successful semesters, each with seminal and defining moments. We have, it seems, begun to define a prototype of a residential college, serving both an academic community of practitioner-teacher-scholars, and

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a communitarian model serving a larger, broader local community of Macau, the greater Pearl River Delta, and all its stakeholders, alumni, business and employees, arts organisations, consular corps, and strategic partners – Mainland and international.

There are key strategic alliances underway with leading international universities, organisations, and individuals, together with more local connections and considerable interplay of locally-represented international associations. Inevitably, operationally, there will also be constant challenges in terms of buildings, their upkeep and adaptability.

Undoubtedly, the planning process and transition from what was essentially a faculty-based structure to a collegiate residential system represents a sizeable strategic shift. The resulting human, spatial and physical (building) implications required to effect that change alone, notwithstanding the co-curricular imperatives, crystallise a near sea change in the signal character of University of Macau’s undergraduate provision.

The locus of collegiate activities themselves within the totality of the student learning environment, and the quality of intellectual depth and weight of co-curricular activities, will be decisive in building credibility and respect for residential colleges (RCs) across faculties, within the University itself, and beyond to the external and international world at large.

For the future there is much to be done from embedding the UM collegiate structure, phasing co-curricular activities appropriately, to seeing through the RC concept from aspiration to reality, if we are to underpin the development of a truly RC system, rather than simply represent a federation of constituent colleges.

Collegiate universities in which students share similar academic, social or cultural interests differ extensively in type, shape and complexion. Within these are first-year ‘commons communities’ for freshmen (similar to those found in Harvard Yard and UM’s pilot Freshmen Colleges), designed to help incoming students embark upon their journey through university with greater surety of step. The benefits of participating in the first-year commons programme are legion. Students at once have access to integrated support systems, a network of professional staff and to experienced, more senior, peers. These serve as role models for their residents and they focus programme topics pertaining to common first-year experiences. Representative programmes may include time management, note-taking, study and communication skills.

Given differences in size, structure and traditions, contrasting for instance those where tutorials and teaching take place within the colleges with those, as in the case of the ‘Durham difference,’ where predominantly teaching takes place in faculties rather than constituent colleges, the degree of disparity in complexion and intention is particularly extensive. Some are all-graduate colleges, others entirely given over to freshmen. Still others are premised on outdoor and environmental pursuits, public outreach, the services and community engagement, or on religious or cultural dimensions. Others have become known through their alumni to excel

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in fields of cultural diplomacy, politics and debate. Some, through the creativity of their graduates and faculty, are especially strong in the arts and expressive fields. There are also, even within the same university, differing degrees of devolvement and gradations of subsidiarity, in some cases diverse levels of what might be termed ‘devolved autonomy’ from central university administration. Decentralisation is more pertinent, it seems, than command-and-control in a flat world.

Masters represent a particular kind of hyphenated academic, albeit with their own professional identities and wider cultural interests. They inhabit intellectual and College leadership roles. They intersect their institutions with specific credentials and experience. Clearly apparent was how soon new Masters and students, early adapters and early adopters, celebrated and took pride in their college’s distinctive cultures, traditions and narratives, retellings stretching centuries – narratives in which narratives, like Russian dolls, reside within narratives. Inside one is another. And yet how quickly new Masters open up new ways of seeing, how quickly their interests and enthusiasms became acculturated into the character of the College. Acculturation works both ways, it seems. Seen through the lens of time, these first perceived liminal figures leave indelible marks on a College’s much-storied history.

At risk of sliding into anecdote, in one instance reciprocity was most apparent with the appointment of a new Master whereby his young family had been enthusiastically embraced by, it seems, the whole of the collegiate community and received into its activities. Students, in turn, seem to feel part of the College Master’s (albeit extended) familial circle and were openly appreciative of developing and sharing their collegiate experience along with his young children.

Similarly, there was noticeable reciprocity in terms of some of the fabric of the Colleges, the surroundings and built environment, venerable ancient and modern, each born out of time. A building may be conceived and designed by architects, yet soon after the building is in use, it seems, people begin to take on something of the quality of the buildings in which they reside. One hears it in the voices, in the acoustics, naturally, in the invention of ideas, but also sees it in terms of the spaces – enclosed or open – in the quality of natural light or of sun exposure, in the ambience of filtered light, in landscaping surrounding the Colleges, in the artwork created and displayed. Artworks by John Piper are visible within the footprint, stained-glass windows and on the walls of Robinson College Cambridge. There are potters’ wheels in Yale College, and designs were found in Worcester College Oxford, of Shakespeare’s indoor Jacobean Southbank theatre. ‘We shape our buildings’, Churchill said, ‘and afterwards, our buildings shape us.’

Knowledge has to be acquired first-hand. The writer learns, for example, that a few simple, classic lines and lean precepts inform the sketchbooks and design principles of so many successful colleges – a primacy of enlightenment over conservatism. With all colleges, the approach to residential communities is predicated on the assumption that students engaged in living and learning communities are more likely to succeed, receive higher marks and graduate. In short, the assertion held is that, whether on

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campus or, after first-year commons, within the community at large, having made a personal, experiential investment in residential communities facilitates student success and makes for a rich and rewarding time at university.

Based on a US model, (Adam Peck, Stephen F. Austin State University Texas), Moon Chun Memorial College surveyed freshmen at the end of their initial year, and replicated similar results to those at SFA. In brief, more students found that they learnt verbal communication, teamwork, decision-making and problem solving skills, planning and organising, use of computer software and persuasion when taking part in extra-curricular activities.

As University of Macau Masters, we have been considering the wider issues and challenges faced by UM and Macau’s educational, cultural, environmental, and rapid economic development. If the residential college’s mission – in the broadest sense – is worth doing, it is worth doing in its entirety. Residential colleges enable something of the complexity of academic study, academic time and academic practice to be seen in the round. What qualifies, if not always quantifies, as academic study manifests itself across a wide range of life skills, life styles, cultural values and knowledge work, each interpenetrating others. For faculty, engagement with residential colleges, and the collaborative relationships therein, can crosscut disciplinary boundaries and enrich the intellectual context of their work. For students, the opportunity to integrate their work as collaborators with faculty in an informal and relaxed setting of a residential college, gives them as learners unparalleled contact. It allows a more fully-realised sense of the intellectual climate and academic ecology across the university, and of the landscape of scholarship. In short it offers education on a personal scale.

As their conceptual shape begins to take tangible form, I have every confidence in the potential of residential colleges within University of Macau. There is, of course, much to learn from the peer masters and heads of colleges, wherever they are found. There is much to do to prefigure future collegiate development in terms of residential colleges as part of the fundamental and integral structure of University of Macau, international in ambition and, over time, reckoned with the best of the best, be they within the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge, in Durham, or in those in United States and other parts of the world. Happily, many of which will be represented at Collegiate Way 2014.

NOTE

1 Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife…’ is a line from Thomas Gray’s Elegy written in a Country Churchyard (1751) that later supplied the title of Thomas Hardy’s fourth novel, Far From the Madding Crowd (1874).

Kit ThompsonMoon Chun Memorial CollegeUniversity of Macau

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INTRODUCTION

We are such stuff as dreams are made on. William Shakespeare, The Tempest

There is an argument that the popularity of Shakespeare around the world indicates the triumph of western civilisation and culture. The counter-claim is that Shakespeare transcends culture and the subject matter has universal appeal. The same might be said for collegiate universities: whilst the well-known ones seem to be limited to the Anglo-American world, recent initiatives show that the collegiate model – the collegiate way – has application from Macau to Mexico.

A college is, at its heart, an association or community of people having a distinctive sense of common purpose: in the university context this common purpose is the pursuit of scholarship and understanding through education and research. A college is typically small enough to enable its members to experience university life on a smaller and more human scale – a scale that is both manageable and intimate.

College communities are safe, supportive and inclusive – a diverse membership leads inevitable to a sense of respect for others, a precondition of flourishing together. Members of a college enjoy a sense of belonging and they readily build lifelong affinities and loyalties as well as friendships. A college community offers greatly increased opportunities for its members compared to a non-collegiate situation and they carry the skills and virtues involved with them into employment and into life more generally. Colleges encourage new experiences and new understandings: they are places to discover new interests, to live adventurously and, indeed, to dream.

When we launched the Collegiate Way website to announce the conference from which this book emerged, we included the following statement:

Establishing and maintaining colleges needs no justification to those who have experience of them – but all who work within collegiate systems are familiar with the need to be able to articulate their benefits, and to show how those justify the additional cost-base of the collegiate experience. How is this best achieved?

The point of the conference and thus of this book was to share experiences of college life, to identify and spread good practice, to bring together in conversation representatives from the widest possible range of colleges worldwide. Like the conference, this book aims to promulgate the collegiate way of organising a university, to celebrate our colleges however different they may be, and to learn from

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one another. As Cardinal Newman would have said: we are sure to learn from one another, to gain new ideas and views, and fresh matter of thought.

Kit Thompson’s Prologue to this Volume, ‘Setting out along the collegiate way,’ formed part of the series of Blog posts leading up to the conference; written – appropriately enough – while travelling, it both summarises and exemplifies the process of bringing the experiences of established colleges to an altogether new collegiate setting, in which Kit is one of a band of pioneering travellers. Later in the Volume (Chapter 5) he describes in substance the early steps on this road taken by the University of Macau.

Figure 1. The first Collegiate Way conference, Durham, 2014

The book is divided into two parts; the first summons the overall vision and ideals of collegiate life and learning, illustrated by experiences both of leading long-extant colleges and of building and nurturing newly-established colleges, while the second focuses down upon colleges’ ‘core business’ of supporting students in learning, and in broadening and enriching their experience.

Part One begins with Mark Ryan’s opening chapter reproducing, more or less as delivered, his magisterial lecture that opened the 2014 conference itself. Drawing on long experience leading Jonathan Edwards College at Yale, his is an inspiring collegial ‘call to arms,’ from which both the conference and the rest of this Volume naturally follow. The Editors’ own contribution (Chapter 7, closing Part One) is based on our joint lecture that was the conference’s concluding act, takes up Ryan’s challenges, and – in part – renews our own collegiate vows in the context of our two Durham colleges, Hatfield (Burt) and Trevelyan (Evans).

Of the five intervening chapters, the first four are devoted to exhibitions of new collegiate practice in contexts formerly unused to them. Greg Clancey (Chapter 2)

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and Kit Thompson (Chapter 5) describe their experiences as the founding Masters of brand-new colleges in Tembusu College, Singapore and Moon Chun Memorial College, Macau respectively. In some respects these experiences are fascinatingly different – the evolutionary experiment at Singapore’s U-Town campus runs in parallel to conventional student life and learning elsewhere in the same university, whereas Macau has effectively re-incarnated itself wholesale, and at a single stroke, as a collegiate university – but both contexts share a conspicuous innovation, in identifying a portion of the students’ actual degree studies as being constituted by their engagement in collegiate life. This is an experiment that will be closely watched and, no doubt, envied elsewhere. William Wahl tells a dramatic story (Chapter 3) of the inception of colleges as the response to challenges having both an educational and a politico-cultural dimension: residential college life has been instituted in the University of the Free State as, in part, a means to confronting the racism that still to some extent persists in South Africa. Chapter 4 reprises the memorable symposium presented at the 2014 conference by Kyle Farley, Kenneth Grcich and Mark Ryan, all of them practitioners in existing collegiate institutions who were given the task of ‘exporting’ the collegiate way. Farley and Grcich describe institutional partnership arrangements between American universities and international partners (Yale/Singapore, and New York/Abu Dhabi respectively), while Ryan recounts the rather daunting prospect of being recruited as an individual ambassador for the collegiate way in building a new collegiate system in the Universidad de las Américas, Mexico.

These chapters all recount the emergence of colleges in previously non-collegiate contexts. Nothing can be taken for granted, however, and Michael Eamon considers the contrasting fortune of a university founded as collegiate from the outset, but forced by external pressures to reconsider its collegiate commitment. If this commitment is to be reaffirmed, it requires that the influence of external culture – important, after all, to all of the foregoing tales of flourishing – be matched on occasion by the cultural force of collegiate tradition. In Chapter 6 he discusses the response of Lady Eaton College, Trent University, to the need to evolve, bringing traditions and core values to bear upon the changing environment in such a way as to preserve the collegiate ethos even in challenging and rapidly-changing circumstances.

Part Two is devoted to the business of collegiate life, particularly in terms of the experience of students living and learning together. Husband-and-wife teams are widely to be found in residential colleges; but it is unusual that such relationships be formalised into the leadership structures of colleges, as is the case at Rice University, Texas. Chapters by John and Paula Hutchinson open Part Two. John Hutchinson (Chapter 8) argues strongly that students’ experience is substantially enhanced, in terms of both learning and living, by having resident academic faculty within the college. Such important benefits are not easily come by, and John describes the challenges of recruiting and retaining talented and committed academics within residential college life. Paula Hutchinson considers the complementary importance of peer-support by students for students in Chapter 9. She describes how professional student support at Rice University is disseminated through a highly-developed

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structure of student volunteers in a variety of important and responsible roles – a system that benefits the volunteers themselves, their peers whom they support, and the building of community in the Rice Colleges. In Chapter 10 the theme of peer-support is taken up by Philip Dutton, lately of Burgmann College, Australian National University, in the context of exploring the history and practice of one of the defining characteristics of collegiate life, the role of mentor. Citing research conducted in both American and Australian residential colleges, he notes that over a range of issues – including academic questions – students reported seeking support and guidance from their peers significantly more often than from professionals; Dutton concludes that mentoring relationships between students deserve recognition and reward in college life.

Figure 2. A collegial conference coffee break enjoyed by, from left, speakers Mark Ryan, John Hutchinson and Paula Hutchinson

In organising the 2014 conference, we conjectured that there might be discussion and perhaps examples of the notion of a virtual college, a college without walls, and wholly non-residential. In the event no examples were forthcoming, and all the colleges represented at the conference inhabited their own loci and their own characteristic physical structures. A sense of place is, we suspect, intimately bound to the sense of affinity and identity that typifies college membership. Having reviewed some of the personal dimensions of collegiate life and support, Part Two


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continues with a discussion of how architecture shapes the student experience, by two colleagues who have collaborated on building collegiate residences, a practising architect and a Director of Housing and Residence Life. In Chapter 11, Amy Aponte (Balfour Beatty) and Gay Perez (University of Virginia) review the impact of the built environment upon students both in historical or heritage colleges and in new buildings responding to the ‘societal dynamics’ of contemporary learning patterns and information technology. Living and learning are equally-important objectives in college life; thus while where adjacencies, the deliberate intersection of routes, and designs that encourage intimacy are tried-and-tested architectural stratagems for encouraging community, Aponte and Perez argue that today we need also to attend to how spaces moderate the influence of technology upon how students think.

It would be possible in a volume such as this to fall into the trap of assuming that all collegiate undertakings are self-evidently virtuous, and that our chief editorial aim should be to list as many as possible, displaying them rather than criticising them. But Socrates warned that the unexamined life is not worthy of us, and this is doubtless as true of the collegiate life as of any other kind. Psychologist Terri Apter (Newnham College, Cambridge) brings to her role of Senior Tutor long experience of researching the challenges of young people’s transition to adulthood, and long observation of its changing social context. As a result she has come to challenge the view that this transition was ideally accomplished through prolonging it within a residential collegiate model of support. In Chapter 12, Apter asks, in effect, whether we risk overdoing things – and concludes that in some cases, what we do in the name of student support can exacerbate the problems of dependency, and can impede a student’s progress to maturity. This can be compounded when college measures are interacted by concurrent parental interventions. Apter concludes that while for the most part collegiate support does facilitate education development, we must be attentive to ensure that we encourage agency and responsibility in our students.

Finally, Adrian Simpson of Josephine Butler College, Durham, considers one of the ‘end results’ of colleges, that is, the making of graduates. He notes in Chapter 13 that the nature of learning, and the richness of understanding, are the subject of much debate in academic pedagogy; theories of learning draw on theories of knowledge – epistemology – and students need themselves to understand the nature of knowledge. Simpson argues that the residential college context significantly facilitates the most ambitious form of such understanding, one that enables complex thought and understanding beyond one’s discipline. Indeed, the very notion of ‘graduateness’ – which transcends disciplines – ought to be grounded on precisely that conception of knowledge that collegiate life best facilitates. However, as he observes in closing, this position requires articulation and defence, and cannot be taken for granted.

***

In saying this, Simpson is in effect expressing in one particular dimension the more general impulse that led us to convene the Collegiate Way 2014 conference and

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to produce this book. The academic, cultural, ethical and personal virtues of the collegiate way are abundantly plain to us – but not always plain to the world outside, and indeed not always to all our university colleagues. As Heads of Colleges we often remind one another that the price of colleges is eternal vigilance; but strong, confident and persuasive advocacy would be better by far. It is to the task of such advocacy that this volume is committed and dedicated.

H. M. EvansTrevelyan CollegeDurham University, UK

T. P. BurtHatfield CollegeDurham University, UK


PART I

COLLEGIATE VISION AND THE CHALLENGES OF ESTABLISHING COLLEGES

H. M. Evans & T. P. Burt (Eds.), The Collegiate Way, 3–16. © 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

MARK B. RYAN

1. ON THE FUTURE OF THE COLLEGIATE WAY

We gather for this First International Conference on ‘the Collegiate Way’ in the embrace of a venerable ideal. The phrase, as we know it, derives from Cotton Mather, the Puritan divine of colonial Massachusetts, who reported that the founders of Harvard College rejected the notion that students should fend for themselves in the iniquitous city. They opted instead for what he called ‘a Collegiate Way of Living’ (Morison, 1935, pp. 251–252) and so built their little seat of learning as a residential college, on the model of Emmanuel and other colleges of Cambridge, housing together the students and at least some of their teachers.

CONTINUITY OF THE IDEAL

The ideal of pursuing higher learning in residential communities is of course far older than the Massachusetts Bay colony—and the very air here in Durham is charged with it. Durham, indeed, can be seen as a provenance of it—and therefore the fitting site for this conference. As we come together to examine the modern possibilities of that ideal, we stand, in a sense, in the legacy of the Cuthbert Community, nearby monastic precursor of the university tradition. More directly, we claim the lineage of William of Durham, founder of University College, Oxford, arguably the oldest of residential colleges; of Walter of Kirkham, Bishop of Durham, the instigator of Balliol College; and of Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham, founder of Durham College, now Trinity, built, also down by the Thames and the Cherwell, to house the scholars of Durham Priory. Those thirteenth century institutions are with us still, reminding us of the continuity of this vision through centuries; and the modern Durham University that has arisen here, defining itself as a ‘residential collegiate university,’ is redolent of the tenacity of that ideal, of its worth and its power.

By some measures, this seems an especially robust moment in the contemporary residential college movement—and in this conference itself we see the evidence in its full international glory. From here in the U.K., for example, we represent among us not only the thought and creativity evident all around us in Durham, but the mother colleges of Cambridge, and the current invigoration of the system at York. We come displaying the long reach of British collegiate traditions as they flower variously in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. From my home country, we represent the expanding systems at such exemplary seats of the ideal as Yale and

M. B. RYAN

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Rice, and the newer system at Virginia. We hail, too, from new collegiate enterprises in such far-flung places as Macau, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi. The vitality of these projects, their geographic extent, and the long history of this collegiate ideal, should inspire us with confidence in its resilience and its future.

But historical continuity may not be what most shapes our educational landscape today. The rhetoric now tossed about in popular parlance, to the contrary, often suggests the imminent breakdown of long-established educational practices and institutional structures. We hear of the ‘crisis’ in higher education, and of ‘disruption’ and ‘innovation’ and ‘transformative change.’ Traditional ‘brick and mortar’ residential universities are sometimes portrayed as outmoded businesses on the verge of collapse—like the pony express at the initiation of the telegraph, or the record business in the age of MP3s. ‘There is a tsunami coming,’ warned the president of Stanford in an oft-quoted remark (cited in Auletta, 2012), and the metaphor has permeated the media, along with phrases such as ‘seismic shift’ and ‘historic transformation’ (cited in Glassner & Schapiro, 2014).

My purpose in these brief remarks is to take a sober glance at a few of the forces and factors behind that feverish rhetoric, and to open a discussion—I can do no more—on how they might affect the collegiate way of living. In the process, I hope to suggest some objectives for us who labour in residential halls. If my perspective seems largely an American one, I ask your indulgence, but I trust that the currents operative in the States are not wholly irrelevant elsewhere in academia.

CHALLENGES TO RESIDENCE

Many of these assertions of crisis challenge the very notion of residence in higher education. They are fed, essentially, by two perceptions: first, of a relentless rise in the cost of traditional universities and second, of the boundless promise of new technologies. Together, those perceptions have kindled an unprecedented popular scrutiny of higher education—often focused on its ‘investment value’—along with breathless predictions of its radical restructuring.

‘Is college a lousy investment?’ asks Newsweek Magazine on its cover (2012), while Forbes, on its cover (2012), asserts that ‘no field operates more inefficiently than education’ (cited in Bowen & Lack, 2013, p. 10). Many journals and a widely circulated documentary film (Rossi, 2014) pick up the question of whether college is ‘worth the cost,’ while a plethora of books, articles, and blogs—some knowledgeable, some less so—assail the quality of the educational product. Widely reviewed accounts charge universities with being ‘academically adrift’—to use the title of one (Arum & Roska, 2011)—or with ‘the mis-education of the American elite’—to take the subtitle of another (Deresiewicz, 2014). They question whether true skills are really inculcated at all, or whether those that are, are suited to the marketplace or to the betterment of student souls. Others harp variously on a range of complaints: swollen university bureaucracies; a research-oriented faculty that purportedly cares little about teaching; increased reliance on part-time, adjunct

ON THE FUTURE OF THE COLLEGIATE WAY

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faculty; low graduation rates; a rising time-to-degree; inadequate advising; grade inflation; an anti-intellectual student culture, and so forth.

Fiscal Pressures

Quickening these critiques is a very real anxiety about the cost of higher education. Statistics, as always, are subject to multiple interpretations, but undeniably, the cost of tuition in the U.S. has been in a steep rise since the 1970s, and especially since the late 1990s (Best & Best, 2014). By one estimate, it has risen at three times the rate of inflation (ibid., p. 135). At the same time, family incomes have flattened, buffeted by the recent Great Recession and its aftermath. State support for public higher education has fallen, nationally in the U.S., according to one study, more than 25% per student between 1990 and 2010, shifting costs from taxpayers to tuition (ibid., pp. 81–82). To meet those costs, more and more students—now more than half of the total—have taken loans; student debt surpassed the trillion-dollar mark in 2012 (ibid., p. 106), and the average debt per borrower continues to climb, perhaps to about $28,000 now (Bidwell, 2014). Although college graduates do far better in the marketplace than those who do not have degrees (Glassner & Schapiro, 2014), the current job market seems less than promising to many recent graduates. Concerns about student debt, according to a recent Gallup-Purdue poll, have caused substantial numbers of graduates to postpone post-graduate education, marriage, purchasing a home or bearing children (Blumenstyk, 2015). The media, meanwhile, often focus on the extreme binds that have caught some in an irremediable cycle of debt, and the public at large has become highly price-sensitive.

Meanwhile, many universities face fiscal difficulty, with flat or declining net tuition—that is, cash remaining after distributing financial aid. Smaller, private, typically residential institutions face declining enrolments (Selingo, 2014a), and at least until the last year or so, more students have turned to non-residential alternatives: community colleges and the for-profit sector (Best & Best, 2014). With greater competition for enrolments, many universities have enhanced student amenities, including residences, but residence—what Rolling Stone magazine referred to as ‘hotel-like dormitories’ (cited in ibid., p. 143), suggesting luxury and extravagance—often is viewed as part of the problem, increasing pressure on tuition. Questions arise about the sustainability of the universities’ financial model—about whether they represent an enterprise ripe, as we say, for ‘disruption.’

Technology

And the disruptive force, of course, is the new technology. In 2011, Sebastian Thrun was astonished to find 160,000 acceptances of his Internet offer to open his course in artificial intelligence at Stanford. A subsequent wave of technological exuberance brought the acronym ‘MOOC’ (for Massive Open Online Course) into popular speech, and sparked rampant speculation about a radical transformation of higher

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education—with scenarios of on-site, in-person classes replaced, to one degree or another, by solo study in front of a computer. ‘Imagine,’ urges one writer, ‘colleges closing as students opt for free options; campuses laying off professors as more teaching is done via online tools; and institutions standardising their curricula to use materials created by star professors far away’ (Young, 2013, p. 36). We have heard predictions that twenty-five per cent of colleges will disappear or merge in the next ten to fifteen years (Christiansen & Horn, 2013), or that only 600 traditional colleges (of some 3500 or more in the U.S.) would survive the next few decades (cited in Selingo, 2013). Another writer, confidently heralding ‘the end of the university as we know it,’ expects surviving, name-brand universities to enrol ten million online students, and the residential college campus to become ‘largely obsolete’ (Harden, 2012).

EMERGING VISIONS

Indeed, residence figures little in these futuristic scenarios. The very point, in fact, is to eliminate the major costs, perhaps most especially of room and board. An emerging vision involves students taking classes that originate from numerous sources, each at his or her own pace, assembling a portfolio of particular educational badges and certificates in lieu of a more comprehensive degree. Says Andrew Rosen, CEO of online university Kaplan, ‘presence is not the essential piece’ (cited in Selingo, 2013).

Vast resources are aimed in the direction of such educational transformations, even if with no clear vision of a desired outcome. Prestigious universities have invested heavily in the creation of MOOCs, most notably through the consortium EdX; for-profit endeavours such as Coursera and Udacity have attracted millions in venture capital, and others are rapidly coming on the scene; and foundations such as Lumina, Kresge, and the virtually inexhaustible Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, together with corporate philanthropies, are pouring funds into exploring the educational possibilities of these technologies. The combined number of available MOOCs, according to a recent report, has climbed from 100 at the end of 2012 to nearly 4000 in 2015 (Wexler, 2015).

Meanwhile, the goal of simply graduating more students, more quickly, at lower cost, has gained political clout. Western Governors University, begun by a consortium of state governors, with no physical campus, has created a radical educational model involving online instruction from multiple third-party sources, together with competency-based learning assessment for certification. Some established public universities have begun to experiment with on-line, non-residential freshman years, offered at minimal cost, while Southern New Hampshire University, with support from U.S. Dept. of Education, calls students to work through extension centres, online learning channels, and low-residency programs. Education-technology start-ups are now a billion-dollar industry (New, 2014). These enterprises, and many others now joining the parade, are developing more promising technical approaches


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and platforms, and cheaper technology. They are experimenting with new forms of interactivity in electronic forums, collaborative learning techniques, adaptive learning programmes that respond to needs of individual students, new forms of assessment, on-line mentoring, professional course designers, and the like.

True, some of the exuberance for the more inflated visions has been tempered more recently, as experience with MOOCs has brought to the fore knotty questions about their practicality and performance. Those questions have to do with how they can be made financially sustainable; with their very low completion rates; and with the fact that the vast majority of those who do complete them already have higher degrees. A prominent experiment produced very poor learning results among traditional college-age students (Selingo, 2014a), and doubts remain about the efficacy of MOOCs in teaching more discursive fields in the humanities, where conversation is at the heart of the enterprise. There are operational questions as well: about of the validity of exams, the potential for plagiarism and cheating, the difficulties of grading and credentialing, and so forth. And faculty fear that the state might impose MOOCs as a way to cut costs—and, with that, inevitably, faculty—as the quality of student education suffers. At the same time, some high-flying for-profit, largely on-line enterprises have faltered, as federal regulators respond to dubious loan practices and job-placement claims (see, for example, Surowiecki, 2015).

The discussion has doubtless only begun, but we hear more these days about an evolution rather than a revolution in education (Selingo, 2014b), about the newer technologies being additive rather than disruptive to the existing system, about MOOCs as supplementing rather than replacing traditional courses (Selingo, 2014c). The undeniable reach and convenience of MOOCs and other forms of online learning might make them most suited as professional development and continuing-education tools for those who already hold degrees, while the traditional college-age population—those who can afford it, or who merit it through scholarships and aid—keeps the brick-and-mortar university intact. The demand to enter selective colleges, private and public, continues to grow, but there are those who fear the emergence of a multi-tiered system, in which advantaged students attend high-quality, brick and mortar schools, and less advantaged ones attend less effective, largely online institutions.

THE IMPACT ON RESIDENCE

In any case, even without a radical disruption, the effects of these changes on the collegiate way of living are by no means clear. Many innovations under discussion pose no apparent threat to it: the flipped classroom, adaptive learning systems, instant feedback to instructors of learning data, if they improve education, might well improve residential life as well. But other possibilities could well undermine the relative stability of residential communities on campus. We have suggestions that online classes could replace introductory and remedial courses, and perhaps even the entire first year; that they make possible variable starting dates and scheduling of

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courses, especially when combined with assessment based on competencies rather than class time, which suggests more rapid turnover in residences; and that they can be blended with in-person classes in ways that require students to spend less time per week, and less of the school year, on campus. Another trend, promoted by Coursera and Udacity, is to offer ‘micro’ or ‘nano’ degrees—in effect, certificates—in lieu of full degrees. While these moves are largely directed at students already launched on their careers, they might eventually have an impact on undergraduate programmes—pointing towards a general ‘unbundling’ of college degrees into more isolated components of courses and services (Craig, 2015). Such a vision threatens to fragment if not dissolve established patterns of campus living.

RAISING OUR VOICES

So the ancient collegiate way is entering on uncertain times, and that brings us, I would say, to issues at the heart of this conference. A potential virtue of the debate is that it can delve into fundamental purposes and processes of higher education, focusing attention on questions long since unexamined or taken for granted. And it is vital that we, who have the most intimate sense of the value of smaller residential communities in a university setting, bring our voices to the table.

Our first task, it seems to me, is to push that conversation away from simple economic calculations, towards the broader purposes of undergraduate education. Implicit in so much of the current popular discussion is the assumption that the measure of the worth of college is its ‘investment value’—whether it increases an individual’s monetary earnings over a lifetime. A related focus is on the immediate marketability of the degree, whether it provides training demanded by the economy of the moment. Higher learning, in short, is seen merely as job training. Those are matters not to be ignored, but surely the most basic axiom of a residential college is that a university education has much broader goals that are vital to society, and our first task, drawing on our long collegiate heritage, is to assert them.

There are many ways that such goals have been expressed in that lengthy history, but they turn, at the core, on some notion of the whole: the development of the whole person, the improvement of the whole student experience, the benefit of the whole society. They are about meaning and self-realisation, and about pursuing our highest potential in all aspects of our lives—professional, personal, social, moral, spiritual. They are about deepening our awareness and developing our character and unleashing our creativity, in ways expressive of our full humanity. They are about the creation not only of a churning economy but of a rich interior life and an engaged and enlightened citizenry, capable not only of charging the economic engines of society but of comprehending and criticising its dynamics.

The first premise of a residential college is that those broad goals can be enhanced through community life, in flesh and blood. How is that so?

In the first place, we should point out that college communities address many of the concerns that critics, in their recent scrutiny of higher education, rightfully


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bring to the fore. If the faculty is sometimes disengaged from teaching and student life, if advising is often inadequate, if students are often indifferent toward their studies and retention lower than it should be, residential colleges, through enriching faculty-student contact and providing students with personal guidance and emotional support, can provide part of the solution.

PURPOSES OF RESIDENCE

Some years ago, drawing largely on the historical literature of American higher education, I made an attempt to define, more specifically, the general purposes of residential colleges, at least as seen by past participants (Ryan, 1995, 2001). By my count then, six stood out, which I called community, ethics, citizenship, instruction, co-curricular programming and peer learning. No doubt that list can be bettered, and reorganised, but to give our considerations a start, allow me to review a composite of the concerns that emerged with those labels. Together, I would argue, they make a strong case for the residential experience, especially—critically—in the stage of life of traditional university students.

Community

In that formative stage, the social bond among students—intensified by the proximity of residence, by identification with an ongoing community, and by the structures and rhythms of common life—provides crucial personal support. It aids in assimilation by providing an immediate circle of friends and a new sense of home, overcoming the anonymity that students often face as they transition into a new environment. Evidence of that is familiar to all of us involved in collegiate life, as we witness students immediately identifying with their collegiate institutions, sporting its symbols and espousing its traditions, however long-lived or makeshift those ‘traditions’ might be. As they absorb the collective ethos and join in the common goals of their peers, students are motivated to take up academic challenges and to fall in with the rhythms of the academic calendar—essential elements in student success.

The results are enhanced through general academic advising and personal counselling by authorities and peer counsellors whom, in the college’s social context, the students know personally and can access easily. Their familiarity and availability increases the likelihood that students will turn to those advisors to help sort through personal as well as academic questions and stresses. In the best of times, such counselling provides a means to navigate the university’s easily baffling array of resources. In the worst, it enables intervention that can sometimes save the day. In the tight social environment of the college, a seriously troubled student cannot easily pass notice; it is often college personnel who, as first responders, are best positioned to assure that a student receives needed attention. An adult presence in the community increases the students’ sense of trust in the institution’s support, and it can sometimes result in meaningful mentorship.

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Residential colleges can strengthen the ties not only among students, and between students and faculty, but among the faculty themselves. In the large and complex universities of today, meaningful social contact among faculty is too easily confined within schools and departments. But an active, multidisciplinary residential college fellowship, reinforced with regular social gatherings, builds ties across departmental boundaries; it promotes insight into the life and concerns of colleagues from across the campus, and often facilitates strong friendships that otherwise might never have flourished.

Ethics

A prime purpose of the Collegiate Way has always been the inculcation of moral values. In the long collegiate tradition, that intention, no doubt, has been implemented in ways that would seem impossibly heavy-handed in today’s world; few of our students would look kindly on the reinstitution of mandatory chapel or the behavioural requirements of, say, the ‘Rule of Merton,’ with its strict determination of daily schedules. Nevertheless, students’ need for ethical formation persists—indeed, it is a critical component of personal development in the college years. Inevitably, colleges persist in contributing to that formation, inculcating social and ethical values as they provide models for, and reinforce norms of, collective life.

Community life demands considerations of common weal: for their welfare and harmony, colleges require that students develop a respectful regard for one another, and for the community as a whole. Faculty and student leaders of the college are in a position to promote, explicitly, the virtues of successful community, such as mutual respect, tolerance, civility, compassion, a sense of justice and of the common good. In the interactions of everyday life, of course, those virtues are constantly put to the test; their effects, and the effects of violating them, are constantly in evidence. Rules and regulations might be far looser than they once were, but rules of some kind these communities must have, and their enforcement necessitates an appeal to, and thought about, basic human and social values. In a well-run college, the needs and even the conflicts and abrasions of community life become occasions for thought and discussion about the virtues of successful collective living, and about purpose and meaning. The life of the College, guided by college authorities, provides a model for how to approach relations with our fellow human beings.

Citizenship

As a goal, the formation of good citizens is a more recent rationale for college life than the inculcation of worthy morals, but it gained strength with a democratic polity. As an ideal, it passes the locus of authority from college officials to the students themselves, encouraging them to take on the mantel of self-governance. The notion is that students best learn to govern themselves, both individually and in community,


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by doing just that—through student councils, societies, clubs and other forms of organised community life.

In the college context, students might assume a large measure of responsibility for the direction of the college itself. One model system, for example, describes its colleges as ‘a self-governing group of students’ who direct activities, appropriate funds, and maintain order—with the intention of fostering ‘a mature sense of honor, responsibility, and sound judgment’ (Rice University, 2015). Assuming authority over their common life, students learn skills of leadership and responsibilities of participation. In governments and other college organisations, they assess needs, adjudicate differing perspectives, define goals, mobilise effort, implement programs. Universities, of course, offer myriad of such opportunities outside of residential colleges, but by dividing large undergraduate populations into smaller, highly articulated communities, residential colleges provide many more students with the opportunity to participate in such organisations in a meaningful way. During my deanship at Yale, for example, my own college boasted not only a student government, but a drama group, a literary magazine, 27 intramural sports teams, and committees overseeing curricular programmes, housing allocation, and social life. The microcosm of college life becomes training for participation in the social world.

Instruction

In their initial European forms, residential colleges were agents of instruction, with college-appointed faculty, sometimes granting degrees. As colleges were re-created in the United States in the earlier 20th century, however, they were incorporated into existing universities, which were organised by academic departments. These newer colleges were a hybrid of the older European model and an American dormitory; in the main, although they might have associated fellows from the university professoriate, they seldom had teaching faculty of their own. As colleges have expanded worldwide, most follow this hybrid model, as student living centres within departmentalised universities. Nevertheless, many have explored the advantages of teaching credit-bearing courses in the community setting of the college, offering, for example, seminars for first- or second-year students, section meetings of large introductory courses, or special seminars on subjects not included in the regular curriculum.

It can be in the residential setting where ideas absorbed in the classroom are, so to speak, put to the test—where they are truly absorbed into a student’s intellectual life. In informal conversations, they are examined and explored, and their implications imagined against the background of the student’s own personal experience, and that of his or her peers. In the process, students can see more fully how specific ideas resonate with their own deeper proclivities and sensibilities, their ultimate sense of reality. The formation of intellectual communities where ideas may resonate and be evaluated is an essential element of university life; and residential colleges, with their intimate networks of relationships, offer fertile settings for the process.

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In turn, the offering of courses within the college setting, predominantly to the college’s students, gives promise of enhancing the intellectual life of the residential community, by intentionally increasing the flow of ideas from the classroom to the dining hall, providing more common food for thought. Classes in the colleges offer mutual advantages both to instruction and community life.

Co-Curricular Programming

There are, as well, many other ways in which colleges work to create intellectual community, through co-curricular programming, increasing the opportunity for students to engage in common cultural or intellectual experiences, which then reverberate in social interactions. The long-lived Oxbridge tradition of master’s teas and their equivalents, inviting prominent visitors into the college for conversation, remains a pre-eminent element in the intellectual life of colleges throughout the world. The arena of co-curricular programming offers unending opportunities for creativity and imagination, depending on the interests and talents of the college community, fellows as well as students. A survey of activities in any sampling of colleges is likely to turn up visiting speakers, theatrical and musical performances, student literary magazines, art shows, foreign language tables, film series, research presentations by fellows and students, group excursions to cultural events—the possibilities are limitless. Through such means, the intellectual curiosity at the heart of liberal education can become more of a personal virtue, shared and reinforced in the life of the community.

The college setting also provides rich opportunity for effective academic support services, beginning with the counsel provided by college-based advisors, and extending through, say, tutorials in writing and other academic skills, technical computer support, or critiques by peers or fellows of research and projects.

Peer Learning

Finally, perhaps most importantly, there is peer learning—what students in close personal contact, over time, learn from one another, about their varying backgrounds and perspectives, about their interests, experiences, insights and enthusiasms. John Henry Newman’s eloquent, 19th-century statement of the principle, drawing on his own collegiate experience at Oxford, endures:

When a multitude of young men, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic, and observant, as young men are, come together and freely mix with each other, they are sure to learn one from another, even if there be no one to teach them; the conversation of all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh matters of thought, and distinct principles for judging and acting, day by day.


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With their differing talents and sensibilities, students play a critical role for one another in stretching perceptions and revealing new horizons, often awakening new intellectual and academic interests—and surely bridging cultural divides.

For years now, the educational establishment has been committed to the notion that cultural diversity, in itself, has vital educational value. But that value is best realised not only when students of diverse backgrounds assemble in a classroom, and perhaps display and discuss their differences, but more, when their contact has personal depth, when they reach levels not only of understanding but of empathy. In the college community, where students meet day by day, they are likely to form bonds of friendship across cultural divides, and to identify with the common human traits they find reflected in their comrades. Encountering one another’s vulnerabilities and cares and sources of strength, they might be better able to empathise with the way others confront their own measures of fear and sorrow, trauma and joy, aspiration and hope. The process can be rough, and sometimes fraught, but the rewards immeasurable.

REALISING THE IDEAL

In this brief composite, I present, of course, an ideal, but all elements of this ideal are within the reach of residential college communities, and solid research, before and since the formulation of my list, supports them as strategies for student success, academic and personal, immediate and long-term. When our sense of education is broadened beyond questions of narrow economic payoff, we come to understand that well-organised social life—intensified, where possible, by residence—is not simply an amenity but a critical component in fully realising the true value of higher education, to the individual student, and to the larger society. It is our responsibility to bring that perspective into the public discussion, and to manifest its potential in our own collegiate enterprises.

Here at this conference, we shall explore how best to realise these and other elements of our venerable ideal. Those elements can help to make college, yes, well worth the investment, for families and for society, even if it requires some measure of debt. But as we explore the further possibilities of our practices, even as student loan systems may be further regulated and overhauled, it is incumbent upon us to be sensitive to expense. The educational goals to which we aspire need not be so costly; while architectural considerations can promote them, they can be carried forward as well in modest accommodations as in sybaritic ones. Our essential message to the public, and even, sometimes, to our own administrations, is that residential colleges are primarily about the quality of education, about the educational value of community life, and about the nourishing of student personal and intellectual development; they are only secondarily about the comforts of housing. We hark back, I like to think, to the Aristotelian distinction between ‘mere life’ and ‘the good life’: the first has to do with sustenance, the second with individual growth and

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fulfilment in community. A dormitory is organised for mere life, a college for the good life.

For all those reasons, the residential college is not, I believe, soon to become ‘largely obsolete,’ particularly as a way to educate the traditional college student. But it may take its place in a multi-tiered system that involves an increasing array of low-residency and non-residential options, especially for non-traditional students. The educational goals to which we aspire may be most effectively gained through residence, but they are not utterly dependent on it. We are likely to discover more ways in which they can be promoted, to one degree or another, by electronic interactions. For that reason, too, it is vital that we clarify those goals, understand them more fully, promote them more vigorously, so that to some degree, they may be integrated into low- or even non-residential forms of education, so that those who opt take such routes, whether by preference or necessity, reap a measure of their benefits. World-wide, a greater and greater number of students will be crying for higher education, under myriad structures and in myriad ways, and we do a service to future generations by promoting the educational values we represent, by asserting them to the public, by perfecting our own collegiate institutions, by promoting residential colleges elsewhere in the world, and also by distilling and clarifying those values and encouraging their assimilation into different and emerging forms of teaching and learning.

A FINAL WORD

Allow me to close with a personal story that illustrates the enduring character of those values. Only a few weeks ago, my friend and successor Kyle Farley and I attended the first all-class reunion of the college at Yale of which we were dean. I had been in that post for over twenty years, between 1976 and 1997, and at this reunion, found some four hundred alumni back in New Haven for the event, the bulk of them, perhaps, from the years of my deanship. Now, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five years after their college days, they were in the full flower of their lives and careers, many with extraordinary accomplishments to their credit, in government, private enterprise, medicine, education, and the arts—all still feeling the bond with one another forged by their experience in the college. It made, in truth, for one of the most gratifying days of my life, as these beautiful and gifted souls, with all their contributions to the world, recalled the vulnerabilities and struggles as well as the joys of their student days, and as they acknowledged—indeed, insisted—with a clarity born of retrospect, how the community life that they had there, and the support and mentorship that they received in the college, guided them through those years and made a significant and in some cases critical difference in the unfolding of their ultimately very productive lives.

We were privileged to feel their long-lingering gratitude as we heard recollections of personal crises and our interventions, of academic faltering and our aid in recovery


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from it, of our support in the making of crucial decisions, of the lasting impact of conversations from long ago, of the enduring influence of instances of mentoring. The emblematic comment of one alumna echoes in my mind: ‘You bet on me,’ she said, ‘and it worked out.’ I left that gathering in New Haven feeling more confirmed than ever in the choice of my own life path—and most of all, in the worth and the future of our venerable ideal of the Collegiate Way.

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Auletta, K. (2012, April 30). Get Rich U. The New Yorker, 30, 38–47.Best, J., & Best, E. (2014). The student loan mess: How good intentions created a trillion-dollar problem.

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Bidwell, A. (2014, November 13). Average student loan debt approaches $30,000. U.S. News & World

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Blumenstyk, G. (2015, October 9). Just half of graduates strongly agree that college is worth the cost. Chronicle of Higher Education, A7.

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Craig, R. (2015). College disrupted: The great unbundling of higher education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Deresiewicz, W. (2014). Excellent sheep: The mis-education of the American elite. New York, NY: Free Press.

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Review, B4.Harden, N. (2012). The end of the university as we know it. The American Interest, 8(3), 54–62.Morison, S. E. (1935). The founding of Harvard College. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.New, J. (2014, October 4). Education-technology start-ups are booming. Chronicle of Higher

Education, B26.Newman, J. (1873). The idea of a university defined and illustrated, I. London: Basil Montgu Pickering.Newsweek. (2012, September 11). Cover.Rice University. (2015). General announcements, 2015–2016. Retrieved December 9, 2015, from

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Education, A72.Selingo, J. (Ed.). (2014a). The innovative university: What college presidents think about change in

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Surowiecki, J. (2015, November 2). The rise and fall of for-profit schools. The New Yorker, 34.Wexler, E. (2015, October 30). MOOCs are still on the rise, at least in numbers. Chronicle of Higher

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Mark B. RyanYale University

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