Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 10, 1995 TAG: 9501120047
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT M. GILL, NICHOLAS J. PAPPAS AND CRAIG WAGGAMAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Virginia Secretary of Education Beverly Sgro was on target in criticizing the Global College's ``lack of rigorous academic focus,'' and in suggesting that good training in traditional disciplines, supplemented by classes that provide tools and background useful for operating within other cultures and in a global economy, forms a sounder and more efficient way of educating students for the next (or any other) century.
The New College was an expensive white elephant lumbering nowhere fast, with those in charge of it cheerfully oblivious to its obvious administrative and curricular shortcomings, blissfully optimistic about its dubious future, and stubbornly resistant to warnings from many Radford faculty that they didn't know what they were doing. The reasons why these warnings were so easily ignored are instructive.
The New College was an idea without substance put forward in a then-favorable political climate. It allowed the university to lay claim to significant new funding, to be perceived to be on the ``cutting edge'' of technological education (for example, to spend money on computers and satellite feeds instead of testy tenure-track faculty), and to grow gracefully beyond its proclaimed cap of 9,000 students.
Getting money from Richmond (Virginia taxpayers) is not a bad thing. Wasting money on a long-term project whose failure would hurt the university's academic reputation concerned many of us who think education is about more than numbers and funding. Because it was money that was primarily on the minds of those involved, the New College's major constituency was Richmond.
Developing a coherent curriculum was put off in favor of pleasing those who might give money to the college. Ironically, this strategy precluded major funding from private foundations that would weigh the worth of the program in terms of its curriculum. State officials were fed a thin diet of cliches and promises of innovation that masked the lack of progress (until very recently) in developing an academic program.
Those of us who dissented were considered, at best, ``behind the times'' and, at worst, disloyal to the institution. People who had spent their academic lives studying foreign cultures and other international topics were told that their courses might be considered for New College students if changes were made that brought them in line with the trendy pedagogy that was the New College's trademark. Is it any wonder that a large part of the university community became disillusioned with the New College?
Radford University spent several years talking about (but not yet quite designing) a program, planning, and hiring numerous administrators for what remained a nebulous, undisciplined course of study, in the apparent hope that educational jargon (``more distance learning,'' ``more outreach'') plus a dash of electronic wizardry would substitute for a genuine education.
A liberal education is an adventure in time and space. There a student will meet a lot of the men and women who asked the hard questions and sometimes came up with painful answers. What is justice? Why are we here? From where do the stirrings in my soul come?
Over the course of four undergraduate years, the student should begin the process of turning himself or herself toward the kind of life that continually re-asks these questions. That, by the way, is the best preparation for the ``pressure cooker'' of modern life.
The alternative is that poignant moment later in life when one mutes the cellular phone and logs off the World Wide Web after a busy day on the information superhighway of the global economy and finds in that silence merely the faint echo of an empty soul.
We hope that Secretary Sgro and the Allen administration, having recognized the shortcomings of the Global College, will now support the cause of a good, well-defined specialized technical and vocational training within the overall framework of a liberal education. All of Virginia's students deserve a shot at a quality undergraduate education.
We can be grateful to Secretary Sgro and Gov. Allen for announcing the dismantling of the New College of Global Studies, and we can be grateful to the Radford University Board of Visitors for choosing to fight for the existing university rather than a still-nonexistent college that has consistently, and sometimes proudly, separated itself from the university.
Maybe now we can get back to the serious labor of getting Virginia's college students started on life's real adventure. Maybe they'll actually learn to enjoy a good book or two in the moments of respite from the productive life for which we hope to prepare them.
Robert M. Gill, Nicholas J. Pappas and Craig Waggaman are professors who teach courses in international relations and comparative government in Radford University's Department of Political Science.
by CNB