How About a School That Teaches Rather than Caters to Students?

Universities and colleges in America these days are a giant mess. Potential students have become “customers,” shopping for the “right” school, scoffing at the often outrageous and ruinous costs, and treating an education like a product for purchase. They oddly see acceptance to some so-called prestigious place as a ticket to fame and fortune, as if they didn’t have to attend for four years and pass exams along the way. Some of their parents also think a university education is simply a matter of buying one, presumably because they have no idea what an education is. The schools are also treating education like a branded product up for sale, obsequiously kissing up to possible rich donors and giving a pass to legacies because they want all that family money to keep pouring in. Campuses bookstores are also filled with a plethora of items sporting the university logo in an attempt to imprint a sense of identity on students and their families; these schools are touting a “brand” on every surface, including the students’ backs. The purpose here is to set in motion a loyalty that translates into money down the road from dedicated alums.

In general, administrations seem to be reinventing higher education as some kind of big corporate business, blithely unaware that a business model is inappropriate here. What exactly, are they manufacturing and selling? How would you measure profit or loss on whatever that is? And who are the shareholders who benefit? With an eye solely on the almighty dollar, these institutions have jettisoned their primary goal and their job—to produce educated citizens.

It’s all so disgusting, and discouraging. As a university professor (and an Ivy League one at that) who believes, and knows for a fact, that a decent education changes lives for the good and improves society along the way, I have watched in horror as campuses across the country slide into educational crassness. At this point, I’ve decided that the only thing I can responsibly do is to take the bull by the horns and open my own university.

This is my plan: First of all, we accept applications only from those who do not use the Common App and can prove they have only applied to five or fewer places. There will be no mountain of applications overwhelming my admissions staff—oh, no. As a result, we will read every single application and evaluate these kids as if they were real people with real minds, not ambitious robots. Our policy is also to eschew the SAT, the ACT, and any other test because these instruments only cause stress for young people and such multiple-choice nightmares are meaningless in predicting what kind of person is ripe for education. Sure, we’ll look at your grades from High School, but we want a good statement about why you want to attend our university and what you want out of it. And if you mention making lots of money as your goal in life, you will be rejected automatically. Oh, we also want a graded essay from High School to make sure your parents didn’t hire someone to re-write your statement into some sort of perfection that you don’t possess.

The number of applications might be low anyway because there will be no university spa, no boutique food stalls in the cafeteria serving crepes and cappuccinos, no climbing wall, no frat houses, and nothing for sale in the bookstore but books. But the big draw is that each dorm building will have common spaces for studying and chatting, even a T.V., and each floor comes equipped with a common kitchen—learn to go to the grocery store and feed yourselves, kids. Also, ordering in will not be allowed (too much leftover rubbish). Dorms have washing machines and dryers but no maids (oh, yes, some universities these days provide maids to clean dorm rooms and bathrooms weekly, and oh how I wish I had that at home). Students will quickly learn to clean up after themselves before the other students throw them out of the window.

Here’s how the semester will go: You sign up for classes and then you go to them. You do the assigned reading. You engage in discussions when they occur. You study or go to the library when not in class. You take exams. We tolerate no complaints about the workload because that workload is now your life (and an amazing one if you think about it—the freedom to do nothing but read and study and believe me, you’ll never have a life like this again). For those students who have never been exposed to the difference between right and wrong, you’ll surely get a good dose of that. Be ready to hear the word “no” from your professors who do not consider you special or the center of the universe. By the way, cheating on an exam will get you killed.

We have a very good library at my university (because we put our money into that rather than alumni cocktail parties, constructing fancy buildings that can’t be sustained, or paying our administrators like C.E.O.s), but that library is offline. This means you have to go to the library, in person, and walk among the stacks to find references for some paper that is due. Who knows, you might grab other books, even open them, just because they are there. Part of your education is learning from books and watching them slowly decay in the library. The silence really is golden.

We’ll have a few administrators to take care of the paperwork, but the majority of work on campus will be done by—wait for it—the professors who teach you. There will be no star professors unless they like to teach big Freshman classes. They, like all teachers, will be required to adhere religiously to their office hours and talk to their students one-on-one. These so-called stars will be paid at the same level as everyone else.

And when a student of ours graduates he, she, or they will be able to say, in all honesty, “I am an educated person, a different person intellectually than when I started here, and I think I can understand, analyze, and cope with the rest of life.” With our diploma also comes a lifetime guarantee of continued curiosity about the world, the ability to ponder human differences and commonalities, an understanding of how history, culture, science, literature, and the arts have shaped our past and present, and a deeply embedded love of learning.

It will be worth it for the little bit of money we’ll be asking for tuition. We don’t need much because we haven’t squandered our budget on all those frills that make for a college “experience” rather than an education.

Also published on Medium https://ms32-23594.medium.com/welcome-to-my-university-1253c1301274