Wabash College - Wabash Yearbook (Crawfordsville, IN)

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CONTENTS Administration and Staff The Year

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28 Pee Te Tt peheneuaien

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An interview with Thaddeus Seymour President, Wabash College In an unrehearsed interview with the editorial staff of WABASH ‘72, Dr. Seymour expressed his thoughts on the stability of Wabash College, both academically and financially, and on the Wabash Man of the 70’s and the challenges he will face upon leaving Wabash. WABASH 72: Do you think the number of Wabash grads going to graduate school is decreasing? DR. SEYMOUR: | haven’t seen the recent figures, but | think it is quite clear that the number going to graduate school from all undergraduate colleges is going down. There are a number of very real and ob- vious factors — not the least of which is that the scholarship money that was available for grants and fellowships has been vastly reduced while the cost of graduate education continues to rise. Additionally, in the arts and sciences at least, there’s not much merit in getting a PhD if you can’t get a job thereafter. | think it’s pretty clear that the numbers are down. How far down, | don’t know. WABASH ’72: Do you think graduate school will be harder to get into? DR. SEYMOUR: Law school yes, The pool -of applica- tions for law school has multiplied seven-fold in the last three years. Medical schools, | think, are about as competitive as they have always been. But if you want to get a PhD in English, you can get admitted to a program pretty easily. Business schools are hurt- ing for applicants. I’m sure that the law school situa- tion gives the impression of much more competition for graduate school, but if you take graduate enroll- ent across the board, | think you’re find it to be own. WABASH ’72: Do you think that with everything becom- ing more specialized that liberal arts college will find itself becoming smaller and smaller? You can’t specia- lize in an undergraduate school, and the question is “If | come to Wabash and get a B-average here, can | get into any graduate school | want to?” DR. SEYMOUR: I’m sure that these shifts — whatever they are — are going to impose on us some very healthy rethinking of our own institutional and educational goals. | don’t think they are shifts from something so much as they are shifts back to something. This whole gra- duate school phenomenon is a relatively recent thing. The liberal arts used to be the foundation which pre- pared you to go out and be an effective citizen in society. In recent years we said more and more that the liberal arts prepare you for law school, or business school, or me icigechoun or graduate work in phy- sics. There was very little emphasis put on preparing a graduate to be a business executive, or a Congres- sional aide, or a town manager — that sort of thing. The real test of the liberal arts — or what have said they are — may be whether they prepare a student 30 BH TT CURL RAL Re reer eet ano Ye 8 Sra een to assume leadership in his chosen career, whatever it may be. Whether they make a student a whole and free person who is better able to serve society. WABASH ’72: Do you think the standards of Wabash College in general are declining? DR. SEYMOUR: There is no doubt that the SAT scores have gone down in the last decade. How to interpret that, | don’t know. We have done quite a bit of analy- sis, and we find it doesn’t take many people with some unusually high scores to throw the average off. There’s the story about the 6-foot man who drowned when trying to get across a river that had an average depth of 5-feet. Our studies seem to indicate that when we stopped Honors Scholarships some years ago, we reduced the number of pacesetters in the College — the ones with the very strong College Board scores who set the tempo for the rest of the campus. My guess is that we will begin to see this one turn. On the other hand, there is increasingly some skepticism about College Board scores have gone down, the class rank has gone up. This is documented over the years. We don’t know what to make of it. The number of students who continue to transfer from Wabash because the work is too hard is what makes me understand that we are probably still playing in the same ballpark we always have. WABASH ’72: | seem to recall reading somewhere in a college guidebook, that Wabash attracts good solid, students — not excellent students — but good students. With the challenge of the curriculum at Wabash, the close relationships of faculty and students, and with the tempo at Wabash, they tend to become excellent student. Do you agree? DR. SEYMOUR: | think if there has been any charac- teristic of Wabash at its best, it is that it attracts well- motivated, but in the main not distinguished, scholars. In a setting which | consider an ideal environment for learning — small college, close relationships with fine faculty — the students come out the other end reflecting the good education which they receive. Years ago — almost a decade — there was a study that placed us seventh in the nation in the number of post- graduate fellowships won by our graduates. But the schools that were in the list — both ahead and behind us — were all these highly selective schools, like Cal Tach, and Reed. We came out ahead of Harvard. A study today would show that our record is still strong in this regard, which speaks well for the quality of education that goes on here.