Vanderbilt University - Commodore Yearbook (Nashville, TN)

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A frequently quoted statement on the purposes of a university is that it is an institution for the acquisition, transmission for disseminationj, preservation, and appli- cation of knowledge. That knowledge is the primary commodity with which universities are supposed to deal is undeniably true, but the statement, nevertheless, is deficient in a number of respects. In the first place, the statement fails completely to embrace the notion that universities exist to serve the ends of mankind. While knowledge pursued for its own sake has long provided a powerful impetus to learning, attempts to interpret the meaning of such a motivation do not have to probe very deeply before it is discovered that knowledge for its own sake really means knowl- edge for the sake of humanity. Obviously, the endless search to achieve a comprehension of the natural, social and human worlds refers to a desire to achieve human comprehension. This search for comprehension has es- tablished principles possessed of great power, simplicity and beauty, has expanded the consciousness of man, and has given new meaning to human existence. Surely, knowledge for its own sake means knowledge for pur- poses such as these. Moreover, an emphasis on knowledge as a product or commodity, without due attention to the processes Glen F. Clanton, Vice Chancellor for Academic Planning by which the stated activities of acquisition, transmis- sion, etc., occur, lends a certain sterility and aridity to university activities which are not on the mark. The spirit and zest of an active adventure are altogether missing. In addition, the focus on the product knowl- edge and the body of content, thereof, leads to many organizational and pedagogical problems related to the vast increase of this product, and the specialization, fragmentation and obsolescence flowing therefrom. 'The emphasis on product rather than process is also serious in the sense that the prime actor in the process, namely, the human intellect, is overlooked. Conse- quently, nothing is said about the development of those intellectual qualities which the act of knowing requires. Learning to analyze, to weigh and judge evidence, to suspend judgment, to doubt, to draw conclusions, and to think with clarity, precision, and independence, yet with an understanding of .the limitations, the value, and the consequences of what is known-the importance of all these attributes is missing in the phrases acquisi- tion and transmission of knowledge. The specific words themselves have some interesting connotations. For instance, the phrase transmission of knowledge, to describe the teaching-learning process places the learner in the role of a passive spectator, 'Tian-Q nb 10 I ACADEMIC PLANNING

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be intellectually free. It must encourage the distinction between ul- timate social values and short-range personal prejudices. It must be blind to differences in color and deeply knowledgeable of differences in culture. It must aid and inspire its students to develop skills, knowl- edge, understanding, toward the goal of full awareness of the ultimate realities of our world and of the lives we live. It must be supported morally and financially by the society it serves. Even under' favorable conditions, Vanderbilt will encounter critical issues in the years immediately ahead. These issues will challenge the validity of many conventional university assumptions. They will test our educational creativity and ingenuity. And they will require effective interpretation of university values to the wide range of public and private constituencies on whose understanding and convictions the life of all universities in the long run rests. I point to four issues of special importance to Vanderbilt's future. lk We in the universities have acclaimed the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, have held that discovery and new knowledge are their own sufiicient rewards. The premise has been that in the long run the results would be good. Without denying the deep philosophical roots from which con- cepts of intellectual freedom spring, in our culture and in our time the justification for freedoms of expression and for freedom to inves- tigate the unknown-and our rationale for public and private sup- port-has been the ultimate value to the society that has guaranteed, tolerated, and supported these freedoms. The celebrated, tangible result of these processes has been pm- gress, especially material progress, the undergirding postulate has been that progress would result and progress would be good. The current challenge comes from the apparent consequence of assuming the open-ended goodness of knowledge and its discovery. We face the startling apparition that our technology demands for energy may exceed within a short, predictable time the supplies of energy that can and will be made available. The proper response to this condition is not anti-intellectual despair, but rather to direct research and thought in purposeful ways to make man and his environment compatible with each other. A national effort is called for comparable to waging a total war, a war for survival with our planet at to live on. Institutions of higher education will make their contributions to this national effort. The task calls for a sustained attack on a national and world condition and will inescapably change the social, economic, and politi- cal environment in which Vanderbilt will live in the future. ll' Now, a second issue. The severe impact of knowledge-based tech- nology on the culture of societies and the psychology of individuals has been profound, and has been largely unanticipated in the range of its consequences. The elasticity of human capacities is being tested daily: ability to adjust to unfamiliar pressures, to operate effectively in unstructured and changing environments, to meet new expectations, to sustain unanticipated living experiences. Within a remarkably short time, traditional conditions of continuity and stability in societies, within which individuals have functioned in t.he past, have altered at their roots. The strain on individual personalities and social institutions is ex- traordinary. The challenge to education is to help individuals develop internal, stabilizing gyroscopes. In stable cultural settings where values are clear and consistent, rules of conduct known and continuing, changes in expectations and contexts moderate, an individual has guidance and support from his heritage and environment. Within the limits of his cultural setting, a person knows what is right and what is wrong He is not bound to the status quo, but he knows what the status quo is. A multitude of technological changes have fundamentally altered the conditions of human life, even in remote tribal societies. One consequence has been a decline in the traditional socializing and stabilizing influences of education-and also of religion, of the family, of the tales of elders, of national legends, of creeds and command- ments-as these influences have been diluted by the incessant bom- bardment of new ideas, new skepticism, newly generated appetities. The cumulative result is a severe test of the individual's psychological stamina and strength of personality, as can be read in many indicators of personal and societal maladjustment. if Those are two issues that bear on Vanderbilt's future. They lead to a third: the scope and purposes of a university education. Every influential exposure an individual experiences is part of the educating forces that shape him. At one time higher education affected a relatively small segment of the population and constituted a relatively isolable segment of a person's total educating experiences. Other institutions that contrib- uted to the total education of a person, e.g., the church, the family, community opinion, appear to have declined in setting standards of conduct, defining moral values, creating allegiances and goals, and otherwise guiding the lives of people. Colleges and universities have been drawn into the partial vacuum created, with mounting hope by some that the institution will accept responsibility for developing the whole person, and with resistance to that expectation by others. At Vanderbilt, I have said, our first concern is the human intellect, but our ultimate concern is the human being. Certainly its primary contact with students is an intellectual one, but in the long run Vanderbilt must be concerned with the total human being who emerges as an educated person. The concept is clearly ambitious, to some doubtless presumptuous, in any event more a definition of concern than a description of duties. It will not be possible, however, to avoid the issue. It is a more complex question than deciding what kinds of vocational, professional, or continuing instruction to offer what kinds of students-issues that are themselves demanding enough. The concern for personal develop- ment stems from the need to cope with those conditions of a tech- nological society that have led to the decline in the authority of other institutions. The institution that can help its student become a better integrated person, with a sense of command over his own destiny and a sense of how he fits into his complicated and mercurial social environ- ment, will have achieved the most demanding and significant educa- tional objective of our time. lk Finally, a fourth issue. the kind of independence and autonomy enjoyed by colleges and universities when Vanderbilt was founded is gone. There is now functional interconnectedness among all elements of higher education and between higher education and the rest of the society. The enormous volume of material resources, for one thing, now involved in higher education ensures that the rest of society will assert its stake in what we do. Beyond that, however, the inherent importance of all a true university does makes certain that the func- tions it undertakes will be scrutinized, evaluated, and supported or' not supported, by others. Vanderbilt is now more integrally a part of its larger communities than ever before. Participants in higher education will inevitably need to become more effective participants in the councils of society where public policy and public opinion are formed-if they wish to influence the policies and opinions that ultimately determine their welfare. There will be no proper alternative to taking as effective a part as posible in shaping the nation's strategies of higher education and its policies as they bear on Vanderbilt. To identify issues that must be met is not to predict the shape of the future. The form of what we do will change continuously, but our largest goal will always be to create and stimulate the kind of learning that breeds strength and honor and hope within a person, and that helps build a society outside him that stirs his pride and commands his affection. THE SECOND CENTURY I 9

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rather than an active participant, in the process. Yet it is known that learning is not a spectator sport, effec- tive learning takes place through diligent labors as a doer of the word, not a hearer only. Finally, the four nouns acquisition',, transmission , preservation and application of knowledge suggest four separate, unrelated, compartmentalized activitiesg namely, that faculty members through research acquire new knowledge, which is then transmitted to students, preserved in libraries, and perhaps applied to the solu- tion of problems in an entirely separate enterprise. While there is a certain element of truth in these claims, it is possible to question the validity of such compartmen- talization and to seek to establish a purpose more coher- ent and unitary in its conceptualization. To move toward remediation of these deficiencies, an alternative statement of purpose is proposed, namely, that universities exist to foster inquiry into the natural, social, and human orders of existence to help ensure and enhance the future of mankind. Here, the emphasis is on process, the process of inquiry. To foster this neces- sarily entails attention to those capacities of the human intellect needed for this activity. It means learning how to learn, and, once this is learned, a foundation for a life-time of learning exists. There is no implication of a dichotomy that faculty members acquire new knowledge through research and that students are the passive recipients of this body of truth, forever and irrevocably valid. Rather, all members of the university are participants in the activity. Profes- sors and students sometimes inquire together into issues of common concern, sometimes they inquire separately, but in any event they are all actors, though presumably with differing responsibilities in the enterprise. The in- quiry may be at the frontier of a field, or may be directed toward analysis of a body of knowledge in the light of new insights, or may seek to understand the application of a body of knowledge to a set of social, technical or human issues. The inquiry may take place in the library, the laboratory, the classroom, the dormitory lounge, a factory, a kibbutz, a prison, or foreign country. It is a dynamic enterprise, with as much satisfaction coming from the chase as from the capture. fkflfflf Yet, if one takes note of the fact of the rapid obsoles- cence of knowledge and of the tendency of society to require expertise and sophistication in areas that do not fit into the traditional disciplines, it is clear that an education based upon the assumptions of the advocates of the body of knowledge theory are not integrally re- lated to the demands placed upon individuals in the forty or fifty years of life following the conferral of the baccalaureate degree. While it is clearly essential that students receiving an education learn the principles of mathematics, understand the dynamics of physics and chemistry, and appreciate the aesthetic products of man's genius, it is at least as important that young people acquire the skills, the attitudes, the habits, the techniques, and the modes of behavior that will help them to continue to learn throughout life despite the absence of a formal setting. They must be equipped to inquire into new areas of knowledge and to adapt and grow even though the substantive knowledge they ac- quired as undergraduates may, by their own middle age, be largely obsolete. In sum, the undergraduate curriculum cannot provide a reservoir of information upon which the individual can draw for the rest of his life. It can be an initial reservoir to serve the more immediate needs of the indi- vidual, but independence of mind and spirit, curiosity and the drive to satisfy it, disciplined modes of thinking, a capacity to discriminate between the important and the unimportant, and the broad perspective derived from an understanding of basic principles, cannot be fueled solely from a mastery of subject matter. SHINE It is clear that a majority of our students, perhaps as many as three quarters, come to Vanderbilt with the rather explicit purpose of preparing themselves for some sort of post baccalaureate study. These students pursue their entire undergraduate program at Vanderbilt with their attention focussed on the way in which their un- dergraduate records are going to be reviewed by admis- sions committees in schools of medicine, law schools, graduate schools of business, and so on. These students as a consequence tend to be relatively unadventurous and to have an overriding concern with their grade point average. A minority of students, perhaps a quarter, on the other hand, see their undergraduate education as an experience in itself rather than as a means to prepare for further study. They expect their undergraduate studies simultaneously to provide personal fulfillment and sufficient knowledge and to prepare themselves for entry into a career. These students are far more heter- genous in their aspirations than the preprofessional students and consequently place many more demands on our curriculum, both in terms of subject matter and methods of instruction. 'From the Assumptions of the College ACADEMIC PLANNING I 11