Something has changed on the campus of the American university. Students, particularly those of IGen (born after 1995), are more fragile (while safer Something has changed on the campus of the American university. Students, particularly those of IGen (born after 1995), are more fragile (while safer than ever before), less given to critical thinking (and more driven by emotions), and more entrenched in an “Us versus Them” mindset (We’re right. You’re wrong). This book addresses what happened and what we can do about it.
The book in a sentence (or two): “This is a book about wisdom and its opposite." So the authors begin and end The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation For Failure. Greg Lukianoff and Jon Haidt are going to take us on a deep dive that explores the changing landscape of America and the American University. "Labeling," the “call out” culture, “microaggressions,” the rising need for “safe space,” the loss of free speech, discomfort mislabeled as “trauma,” “social justice” misdirected toward equal outcomes rather than equality in distributed and procedural fairness, and “identity politics” that make for common enemies rather than true dialogue. Their goal? Wiser kids. Wiser universities. A wiser society.
About the authors: Greg Lukianoff (Stanford Law), is an expert on matters of free speech and First Amendment issues in higher education. He serves as the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Jonathan Haidt (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania) is the Thomas Cooley Professor Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Both are self-described liberals. They lean left. Neither has ever voted for a Republican for Congress or the presidency. Their worldview is evolutionary. And they bring –in my opinion– some necessary critique to good intentions run amok in American higher education.
My take on The Coddling of the American Mind: Lukianoff and Haidt published The Coddling of the American Mind in 2018. I think the need for it is greater than when they wrote it. Like former CNN anchor Van Jones (see video below), Lukianoff and Haidt refuse their liberal counterparts “a pass” when ideological issues violate free speech, when personal autonomy becomes the measure of “right and wrong,” and when group think replaces true dialogue. For the record, the authors pull no punches when it comes to the left and right.
Overview:
In Part I the book examines “three great untruths”: 1. The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker. 2. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings. 3. The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
The authors demonstrate how these “great untruths” contradict ancient wisdom (ideas found widely in the wisdom literature of many cultures), contradict modern psychological research on well-being, and harm the individuals and communities who embrace them (4).
If the authors have a bent, it is toward Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT encourages one to push back on cognitive distortions, e.g., catastrophizing– if I do this the world/my world will come to an end; mind reading– assuming one knows what the other is thinking; over generalizing– perceiving a global pattern on the basis of a single event; and negative filtering– prioritizing negative feedback. The authors note that Greg has suffered from bouts of depression throughout his life and has benefited greatly from CBT.
Part II explores multiple accounts of “bad ideas in action.” The authors survey the growing accounts of intimidation and violence and examine modern-day witch hunts on campuses across America. They also explore the “whys” behind this rising phenomenon.
Why are things changing so rapidly? The authors provide their thoughts in Part III: 1. Rising political polarization and cross-party animosity 2. Rising levels of teen anxiety and depression 3. Changes in parenting that exasperate fears 4. The loss of free play and unsupervised risk-taking 5. Growth of campus bureaucracy 6. Increasing passion for (social) justice and what that requires
In Part IV, Lukianoff and Haidt offer suggestions for improving child rearing, K-12 education, and the university. As with the rest of their book, the work is practical and thorough. You can see portions of this summary in My Takeaways below.
Two excerpts worth noting: The Coddling of the American Mind is so worth the effort. The day I started this book, my reading included Proverbs 23:12, “Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge.” Lukianoff and Haidt provide a generous helping of that.
From "The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning" Chapter 2, "The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning" connected with me, particularly as it related to microaggressions. I never heard this term in college but find it commonplace today. Citing Derald Wang Sue, microaggressions are "brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color" (40).
I appreciate the charity and clarity the authors brought to this subject. "Aggression is not unintentional or accidental" (40). Rather than assuming the worst, would we be better off, the authors ask, if a more charitable interpretation might be warranted by the facts?
The potential for offense taking is almost unlimited. How should you prepare the students to engage with one another in the most productive and beneficial way? Would you give them a day of microaggression training and encourage them to report micro aggressions whenever they see them? To go along with that training, would you set up a bias response team – a group of administrators charged with investigating reports of bias, including microaggressions? Or would you rather give all students advice on how to be polite and avoid giving accidental or thoughtless offense in a diverse community, along with a day of training in giving one another the benefit of the doubt and interpreting everyone's actions in ways that elicit the least amount of emotional reactivity?" (43).
From "The Untruth of Us Versus Them" As to the staggering growing chasm between right and left (see data on pages 128ff), Lukianoff and Haidt offer this summary: "Common-enemy identity politics, when combined with microaggression theory, produces a call-out culture in which almost anything one says or does could result in a public shaming. This can engender a sense of 'walking on eggshells,' and it teaches students habits of self-censorship. Call-out cultures are detrimental to students' education and bad for their mental health" (77). This focus was also helpful in their conclusion when the authors suggested differentiating between "common-humanity identity politics" and "common-enemy identity politics."
Amen to that!
My takeaways from their conclusions: Here are a few of their conclusions that resonate:
1. Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.
2. Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded.
3. The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being (See Jeremiah 17:9).
4. Discourage the use of the word "safe" or "safety" for anything other than physical safety.
5. Help students distinguish between a critique of ideas and a personal attack.
6. Minimize screen time for all, especially teens (average is 9 hours per day; 2 is better).
7. Including Viewpoint Diversity. This is really a safeguard to "political uniformity and [political] orthodoxy" (258).
8. Discourage the creep of the word "unsafe" to encompass "uncomfortable." Differentiate between physical safety and psychological safety. I encourage you to watch this video of former CNN Anchor Van Jones.
Explicitly reject the untruth of fragility: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker. A university devoted to the pursuit of truth must prepare its students for conflict, controversy, and argument. Many students will experience their most cherished beliefs being challenged, and they must learn that this is not harassment or personal attack; it is part of the process by which people do each other the favor of counteracting each other's confirmation bias. Students must also learn to make well-reasoned arguments while avoiding ad hominem arguments, which criticize people rather than ideas (258-9).
9. Teach productive disagreement (from Adam Grant, 240) * Frame it as a debate, rather than a conflict. * Argue as if you're right but listen as if you're wrong (and be willing to change your mind). * Make the most respectful interpretation of the other person's perspective. * Acknowledge where you agree with your critics and what you've learned from them.
10. "Concerted cultivation"- "This time-intensive, labor-intensive strategy involves overprotecting, overscheduling, and overparenting children in hopes of giving them an edge in a competitive society that has forgotten the importance of play and the value of unsupervised experience" (236).
Quotes worth quoting: 1. Education: "Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think." Hanna Holborn Gray, President of the University of Chicago, 1978-1993
2. Us Versus Them: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: "If only ['Us Versus Them'] were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being" (243).
3. Collision avoidance: One's voice grows stronger in encounters with opposing views... The collision of views and ideologies is in the DNA of the academic enterprise. We do not need any collision avoidance technology here." Ruth Simmons, former President of Brown University and the first black president of an Ivy League university.
4. Our best days are in the past: We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us, and with just as much apparent reason... On what principle is it that, where we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?" Thomas Babintong Macauly, British historian and member of Parliament in 1830.
5. Wisdom and virtue: Nothing is of more importance to the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are, in my opinion, the strength of a state: more so than riches or arms, which, under the management of Ignorance and Wickedness, often draw on destruction, instead of providing for the safety of a people." Benjamin Franklin to Samuel Johnson, 1750.
6. On raising children: Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. Folk Wisdom
The authors piqued my curiosity about this book: I had not read John Stuart Mill's, On Liberty. It's on order!
Conclusion: Thank you Lukianoff and Haidt! Your research is solid. You treated the “violations” of both the right and the left. You offered critique, rationale, and perhaps most importantly, suggestions for moving forward. Read the Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. If you are in higher ed, use it as a tool to initiate dialogue, the kind that moves us to help build wiser kids, universities, and societies....more
This is a book about the importance of renewal for both societies and individuals – and the interdependence between the two to accomplish it.
Tell me mThis is a book about the importance of renewal for both societies and individuals – and the interdependence between the two to accomplish it.
Tell me more . . . Societal renewal (think government, education, race relations, international affairs), hinges on a creative society, which itself hinges on the capability of individuals to move from apathy to self-renewal. What sounds simple is complicated by entropy, the slowing pace that invariably occurs in societies, organizations, and individuals as they age. Gardner writes, “[V]itality diminishes, flexibility gives way to rigidity, creativity fades and there is a loss of capacity to meet challenges from unexpected directions” (5). Shocks to the system (think wars, disasters, pandemics, loss of a job) often unlock “new resources of vitality.” How to continually initiate renewal apart from these external prompts is the secret and subject of this book.
About the authors: John W. Gardner (1912-2002) held many high-level leadership posts, including Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon B. Johnson. His book, On Leadership, is one of the finest I have ever read on that subject. Gardner was an academic, activist, WWII veteran, and an astute reflective practitioner.
My take on Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society Gardner is the master of reflective analysis. Self-Renewal is insightful, challenging, and so applicable to me, especially as it relates to academic leadership. While the book is fifty-years old, I think it is as fresh and applicable as the day he wrote it. I appreciate the way Gardner demonstrates the inter-relatedness of personal and societal renewal. In a day of the preoccupation with the self, Gardner point higher than just “self-leadership.” Pick it up. Take your time. Get ready to make a few notations . . . and probably some life adjustments.
My favorite quote: “The renewal of societies and organizations can go forward only if someone cares. Apathy and low motivations are the most widely noted characteristics of a downward path. Apathetic men accomplish nothing. Men who believe in nothing change nothing for the better. They renew nothing and heal no one, least of all themselves. Anyone who understands our situation at all knows that we are in little danger of failing though lack of material strength. If we falter, it will be a failure of heart and spirit.” xv
Overview:Self-Renewal Gardner divides his thoughts his thoughts into twelve brief chapters. He examines the cycle of “growth, decay and renewal” as well as the factors that contribute to or diminish from societal and personal renewal. Chapters include: “Innovation,” “Obstacles To Renewal,” “Tyranny Without A Tyrant,” “Individuality And Its Limits,” “Commitment And Meaning,” and “Moral Decay And Renewal.” My book is highlighted and underlined. I have notes for personal application scrawled throughout this work. I found his words about innovation and organizations especially helpful.
My takeaways from Self-Renewal:
1. Self-renewal hinges on continual self-assessment: “Exploration of the full range of his own potentialities is not something that the self-renewing man leaves to the chances of life. It is something he pursues systematically, or at least avidly, to the end of his days.” 11
2. Educators must develop life-long learners: The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else. . . . The world is an incomparable classroom, and life is a memorable teacher for those who aren’t afraid of her.” 12
3. Have the courage to fail: “We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. . . . There is no learning with some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure—all your life. It’s as simple as that. When Max Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize he said:
Looking back . . . over the long and labyrinthine path which finally led to the discover [of the quantum theory], I am vividly reminded of Goethe’s saying that men will always be making mistakes as long as they are striving after something. 15
4. Live in generalist/specialist tension: Societal growth necessitates specialists who help us achieve what we could not on our own (transportation, medicine, engineering, etc), which in turn fosters compartmentalism, which can diminish individual versatility. “Note, it is not a question of doing away with the specialist. It is a question of retaining some capacity to function as a generalist, and the capacity to shift to new specialties as circumstances require.” Individual versatility is a priceless asset in a world of change. 24-25
5. Cultivate fresh thinking: "We tend to think of innovators as those who contribute to a new way of doing things. But many far-reaching changes have been touched off by those who contributed to a new way of thinking about things." 30 I read this against the backdrop of an educational partnership that was on the verge of collapsing. Collaborative “fresh thinking” is part of what God used to re-build it. Today it is flourishing.
6. Creativity is a path to innovation. Recognize it. Foster it: Gardner highlights four “traits of creatives.” I list them here, with a few additional notes, but the pages (32-39) are a good read. Creatives exhibit: (1) Openness: A receptivity to current experiences; (2) Independence: Creatives are “independent but not adrift.” They see the gap between what is and what could be, which requires a certain level of detachment. While such independent detachment may garner criticism, the creative ignore that type of criticism; (3) Flexibility: Creatives with “play with an idea,” “try it on for size.” Related to flexibility, creatives have a tolerance for ambiguity. The creative “is not uncomfortable in the presence of unanswered questions or unresolved differences.” 38 (4) Capacity to Find Order in Experience: Creatives impose order on their experience. I found this sentence fascinating: “Every great creative performance since the initial one has been in some measure a bringing of order out of chaos.” (39). Zeal, hard work, and arduous application is what it takes and what creatives give.
7. Identify signs of self-interest that form an obstacle to renewal: “In colleges and universities many of the regulations regarding required courses which are defended on highly intellectual grounds are also powerfully buttressed by the career interests of the faculty members involved in those courses. Vested interests can lead to rigidity, rigidity to defensiveness, and defensiveness to resistance and diminished capacity for change. 52-53
8. The importance of fostering a free society: But it is by means of the free society that men keep themselves free. If men wish to remain free, they had better look to the health, the vigor, the viability of their free society—and to its capacity for renewal. 66
9. The necessity of order for freedom: These words stood in sharp contrast to vandalism, looting, and riots in protest to the killing of George Floyd: “[C]onceptions of freedom that are not linked to conceptions of order are extremely disintegrative of the social fabric. There can be order without freedom, but no freedom without some measure of order.” 70-71
10. Educational administrators must apply the same rules of innovation toward their own university structure that they guarantee their professors: “Much innovation goes on at any first-rate university—but it is almost never conscious innovation in the structure or practices of the university itself. University people love to innovate away from home.” 76
Conclusion:
As noted at the outset, I appreciate the insights of John Gardner. His observations are those of the informed reflective practitioner. Gardner recognizes the capacity (tendency?) of SELF-renewal to slide toward egocentricity. Even as he encourages the self-renewing man to do “something about which he cares deeply,” he recognizes such SELF-renewal can lead to self-centeredness.
He writes, “And if he is to escape the prison of the self, it must be something not essentially egocentric in nature.” 17 One must be intentional about this work of self-renewal: “Exploration of the full range of his own personalities is not something that the self-renewing man leaves to the chances of life. It is something he pursues systematically, or at least avidly, to the end of his days. 11 He continues that them in chapter 9, “Individuality and Its Limits.
We must combat those aspects of modern society that threaten the individual’s integrity as a free and moral responsible being. But at the same time we must help the individual to re-establish a meaningful relationship with a larger context of purposes.
In the process of growing up the young person frees himself from utter dependence on others. As the process of maturing continues he must also for him himself from prison of other self-preoccupation. To do so he need not surrender his individuality. But he must place it in the voluntary service objectives. If something prevents this outcome, then individual autonomy will soar into alienation or egocentrism.
Unfortunately, we have virtually no tradition of helping the individual achieve such commitment. We now have a fairly strong tradition of helping him detach himself from the embeddedness of childhood…. Just as we help him in this way to achieve independence, we must later help him to relate himself to his fellow man and to the best in his social, moral and intellectual tradition.
It is just this kind of level-headedness, the kind born of years and reflective experience, that makes Self-Renewal an important book for his generation and ours.
In his concluding chapter, Gardner urges his readers to charge students not to stand watch over ancient values, but to continuously re-create those values in their own day. 126 As with the rest of his work, he is urging conscientious action over inaction; advancement as the antidote to entropy.
Gardner is no Pollyanna, he advocates neither “uncritical optimism” (“The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in” A. E. Housman) or “corrosive melancholy.” But . . . a certain buoyancy is absolutely essential. 113 Why? Because society is not a wind-up machine sustained with a few twists, but one continuously re-created “for good or ill, by it’s members.” 127 Gardner wants us to lock arms with the cohort bent on continuous renewal.
Quotes worth examining:
1. On intractable people: The most stubborn protector of his own vested interest is the man who has lost the capacity for self-renewal. 10.
2. On educating for renewal: “All too often we are giving our young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. We are stuffing their heads with the products of earlier innovation rather than teaching them to innovate.” Are we approaching their minds as storehouses to fill or instruments to be used? 21-22
3. On change: So stubborn are the defenses of a mature society against change that shock treatment is often required to bring about renewal. . . . Someone has said that the last act of a dying organization is to get out a new and enlarged edition of the rule book. 44-45 The new thing will usually look barbarous compared to the old. 49
4. On creativity: "Creative minds are seldom tidy." 49
5. On tyranny and renewal: A state which dwarfs its men . . . will find that with small men no great thing can be accomplished. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty. Gardner adds: “We need only add that no new thing can be accomplished, no renewing thing, no revitalizing thing.” 54
6. On peer conformity: The Image Managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market. 58
7. On freedom and renewal: We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free. Cicero, The Speeches of Cicero, Men of intemperate minds cannot be free; their passions forge their fetters. Edmund Burke
8. On protecting dissenters as a condition of renewal: Emerson said of the scholar: “Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, through the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm that it be a crack of doom.” Ralph W. Emerson, "The American Scholar," An Oration Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, 1837 (page 74 in the book)
9. On individuality: “. . . if I were to desire an inscription for my tombstone, I should desire none other than “That individual.” S. Kierkegaard, “That Individual”: Two “Notes” Concerning My Work as an Author, 1859. (In Soren Kierkegaard, The Point of View, Walter Lowrie (trans) [Oxford University Press, 1939], p. 115.)
10. On happiness, virtue and hard work: The storybook conception tells of desires fulfilled; the truer version involves striving toward meaningful goals—goals that relate the individual to the larger context of purposes. Storybook happiness involves a bland idleness; the truer conception involves seeking and purposeful effort. About that effort he quotes Montaigne: “Virtue will have naught to do with ease. It seeks a rough and thorny path.”
11. On calling: Every calling is great when greatly pursued.” Oliver Wendell Holmes. About this Gardner writes, "One my not quite accept Holmes’ dictum – but the grain of truth is there." 104
The author piqued my curiosity about these books:
Escape from Freedom, by Erich Fromm. Fromm examined why Nazi and Fascist movements of the 1930’s found it so easy to win adherents. He noted that the person who submits willingly to an authoritarian regime relieves himself of the anxieties and responsibilities of individual autonomy. 91-92
True Believer, by Eric Hoffer explored the same thesis.
The American Scholar, by Ralph Waldo Emerson...more
Inequity and personal responsibility clash in Josh Mitchell's The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became A National Catastrophe.
Josh Mitchell, a reporteInequity and personal responsibility clash in Josh Mitchell's The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became A National Catastrophe.
Josh Mitchell, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, takes us on an important journey. Mitchell traces the history of student loans from visionaries Lyndon Johnson and Carl Elliott (1957 - 1969) through seven historical phases in order to understand the financial catastrophe cascading down to the present (2016-2018). Along the way we meet Sallie Mae, Al Lord and Ed Fox (the two biggest architects of the student loan industry), discover how Presidents, Democrat and Republican, fostered the debt crisis by enabling colleges to "raise their prices with abandon," and we hear the stories of those strangled by mounting student debt.
The Debt Trap is history, economics, higher education, racial and social inequities, and politics. What it is not is a treatise on personal responsibility. Despite beginning and ending on Lyndon Johnson's dual values of personal responsibility and education, I felt Mitchell mostly neglected the former, though his treatment of the latter was exceptional.
As a college President, education and student loans are the stuff of daily life. When Mitchell pegs the student loan system as a national catastrophe, he is not uttering hyperbole.
Today, 43 million people owe $1.6 trillion in student debt, an amount that has tripled since 2006. Americans owe more in student debt than they owe in credit card debt and car loans (3)
As a parent of six, however, all of whom attended college on their own dime -- and none of whom were straddled by debt -- I was disappointed that discussions of personal responsibility were mostly neglected. For example, in Chapter 8, "State U In" (a fascinating chapter!), Mitchell recounts the sad tale of Thomas. Thomas graduated from the University of Alabama with $153,000 of debt. Sadly, he was barred from walking in commencement due to an outstanding bill of $2,800, a travesty in an institution whose football coach enjoys the highest salary in the nation ($9.75 million per year) and whose average faculty pay of $152,000 a year makes it a darling of higher education. Thomas' story is a travesty. However . . .
Thomas had cheaper options than Alabama. He could have gone to a state school in Florida for a lot less [because he was a Florida resident]. But he was responding to incentives built into the student loan system--and so was Alabama (181).
Was Thomas a "victim of the system?" Yes, I think he was. Could the system have served him better? Absolutely, and it should have. Is Thomas off the hook? No. There were other options. He chose not to take them. That is on him.
Neither Thomas nor most borrowers are asking for a handout. They are, however, asking for help. And my personal diatribe aside, Josh Mitchell gives us six recommendations to provide such help:
1. Forgive interest on student loans. Attempting to scale the ever-growing mountain of debt, many borrowers see no hope of ever paying it off. They don't want them forgiven, but they do want a shot at paying them off. Forgiving interest would help.
2. Make four-year schools put up their own money. This was Lyndon Johnson's original vision. With financial skin in the game, institutions would be more careful, thinking twice before giving away cash willy-nilly.
3. Make community college truly free: Mitchell does not support four years of free college for political and practical reasons. He is, however, a proponent of making a year or two of community college free so students can test the educational waters.
4. Revise the idea of the American Dream to respect and reward alternatives to the four-year degree, particularly apprenticeships. The research is clear: "Apprenticeship programs are effective at getting students well-paid jobs" (218).
5. The government should stop subsidizing grad school. Mitchell explains a number of financial educational products, among them Grad Plus, which he charges with being the most dysfunctional. Eliminating it would drive down graduate education and cause students to think twice before tackling the master's degree.
6. States, cities, and communities should step up. Mitchell cites Kalamazoo, Michigan, where wealthy philanthropists invested in the education of their own citizens.
In the balance of this review, I'll share some of my highlights ("Amen to that!"), recount a few shocking details I picked up reading The Debt Trap, and end with three considerations for the institution I lead, Lancaster Bible College | Capital Seminary & Graduate School.
My recommendation: If you have been to college, work at a college, have a student who will one day go to college, are concerned about higher education in America or national economics, read this book. Josh Mitchell gives us a splendid history and analysis of student loan debt. But he doesn't stop there. He offers us alternatives to improve the financial system that makes higher education possible for millions. In doing so he moves us toward better education and personal responsibility for it.
Amen to that!
1. How institutions CAN help level the playing field: Don Lively opened Florida Coastal School of Law in 1996, in part, to serve Black and Hispanic students normally passed over by schools obsessed with moving up in national rankings:
Lively believed the practice deepened racial inequality. Those with the highest LSAT scores were predominantly white students who grew up in privilege. Law schools had "this perspective that certain people aren't cut out for this--they can't do it," Lively says. "They can do it if as an institution you're willing to make the commitment to enable them to catch up with those persons that have a more privileged heritage and background life experience" (150).
While I disagree with the "disadvantaged" premise which fails to account for personal responsibility, Lively makes a great point! By 2004, 80% of Florida Coastal graduates who sat for the state bar exam passed; the second highest success rate in Florida (154).
2. What online educators must do to help ensure student success: Reflecting on Florida Coastal's later failures, Lively notes: "It was the school's responsibility to provide help to those students--tutoring, mentoring, intensive one-on-one instruction--to ensure they succeeded.
"The whole system broke down," Lively says in retrospect. "We weren't ready to deliver on a scaled basis. To be successful at this level, you've got to have a really strong academic support program. And we haven't built up our academic support program to a level that would enable us to deliver those things that we were convinced we could deliver" (163).
3. Educational loans, a "moral hazard." "Studies show that the more an activity is insured, the more people take risks" (44). Lenders with a 100% federal guarantee to cover the debt will lend money more carelessly.
4. The shaky foundation of the twin pillars of the American Dream: Sallie Mae (student loans), as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (mortgage market) "infused banks with cheap money in the name of helping poor and middle class Americans build wealth." These twin pillars of the American Dream are inextricably linked to debt (93).
A few shocking details:
1. College loan defaults: By 2016, 3,000 people defaulted on a student loan every day (190). 2. Rise of student loan debt in America: Student loan debt nearly tripled from 2007, to $1.4 trillion (200). 3. Political pickles: Grad Plus (a debt multiplier) was born in the Bush 43 administration (177-18). The Obama administration leveraged student loan interest to help fund the Affordable Care Act (133). 4. Big BIG Debt! In 1990 (adjusting for inflation), only 2 percent of all borrowers had balances in excess of $50,000. In 2014 there were 5 million borrowers with student loan debt in excess of $50,000 (71% percent of all student loan borrowers) (192-93). 5. Student loan bankruptcy: It is near impossible to declare bankruptcy due to student loan debt. Authorities can call repeatedly, garnish wages, tax refunds, even Social Security checks (199). 6. Did you know? Prior to his rise to the presidency, Barack Obama was carrying student loan debt until a book deal "wiped his financial slate clean" (205). 7. Student loans and taxpayer liability: Private lenders lost about $535 billion in subprime mortgages when the housing market crashed. Taxpayers are on the hook for $500 billion in unpaid student loans (7, 208). 8. How bad is it? Between 1980 and 1990, all consumer prices rose 62%. Typical family earnings rose 68%. One Year at a private college rose 145%. Public college rose: 113% (76).
What can LBC do? 1. Perform a student debt analysis. What is our student default rate? Why? 2. Ensure the quality of our global education student success process by determining and consistently assessing system measures. 3. Study University of Alabama's model for recruiting students (c.f. p. 167). 5. Help student borrowers to assess their ability to repay student loan debt. 6. Ask the President's Cabinet to read The Debt Trap. Take a half-day to discuss implications. Make The Debt Trap required reading for financial aid, admissions, and student services....more
If I were to re-read two books whose pages captured my mind in 2021, The Year Of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis would be one ofIf I were to re-read two books whose pages captured my mind in 2021, The Year Of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis would be one of them.
Why?
This book stretched me. Published in 2018, The Year Of Our Lord 1943 introduced me to Christian intellectuals of the 20th century I did not know (Jacques Maritain, W.H. Auden, and Simone Weil) and helped me get better acquainted with others I did (T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis). I had to put my thinking hat on! The Year Of Our Lord 1943 was not a "quick write" for the author; it was not a "quick read" for me.
This book reiterated the importance of familiarity with the past to avoid the pitfalls of the present. Masterfully, as only a scholar can, Alan Jacobs demonstrates ties between what his "intellectual five" saw in the war-torn year of 1943, and the implications for post-war Western democracy. More importantly, Jacob clarifies the implications for us today: the implications for twenty-first century education, human rights, and the role Christians and Christianity can (should?) play in society.
There are 250 pages of references to writers, their times, their works, and why those works matter then and now. Drawing on one or two to demonstrate Jacobs's ability draw a line between past and present is challenging, but here goes. On January 15, 1943, W.H. Auden gave a lecture entitled, "Vocation and Society," in which he encouraged students to be wise, not just to become wise to graduate cum laude. Remember, the year is 1943 and Auden is setting the necessity of vocation against the impossibility of such in state-controlled fascism. Jacobs writes:
Auden's vision, then, is of a vocation-based education sustained by a democratic polity, and a democratic polity sustained by Christian faith. The vision stood (as did Maritain's in Education at the Crossroad, as did Lewis's in The Abolition of Man against the commanding power of the nation-state, against pragmatism, against modern technocratic canons of efficiency--against Weil's Social Beast (click here for more on Jacobs and Weil's Social Beast(148).
In chapter 6, Jacobs draws on Jacques Maritain, Lewis, and Weil encouraging educators to recognize that their warnings about "the cultural collapse of Europe" apply today, not for fear of repeating the same mistakes (Ecclesiastes 3:9 applies), "but because they may well commit others that arise from the very different but equally heedless momentum of their society" (129).
That is, what Americans need to learn from Europe’s catastrophe is the danger of failing to cultivate intellectual and spiritual aspirations beyond what one's every day culture encourages. In Europe, what had primarily impeded genuine education was a false and ultimately poisonous model of group identity -- as manifested, for instance, in the belief in an intrinsically “German physics“ that had led the Nazi regime to expel most of its Jewish scientists. In America, the chief impediment to genuine education was technocratic pragmatism. Both paths led, in their different ways, to the death of deep education and therefore, ultimately, to the death of genuine human culture (129).
This book helps quell the urge toward sweeping generalizations. Reading Jacobs is to be reminded that "it's a little more complicated than that." He examines the works of five thinkers in one year and from their disparate lives demonstrates the threads of unified thought and warning. Masterful!
Recommendation: Any temptation I have to give The Year Of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism In An Age Of Crisis less than five stars stems from my unwillingness to think deeply, process carefully, evaluate consistently, and apply fairly. As I have noted, this was a hard read, not because it was poorly written but because Jacobs took me places I have not been before to listen to thinkers I have not heard before and forced me to grapple with ideas I have not processed before. Now to figure out when I am going to once again crack open this book, take a deep breath, and dive in a second time!...more
There are some 3,400 colleges and universities in the United States. Leaders of these institutions are confronting the demographic cliff, "free tuitioThere are some 3,400 colleges and universities in the United States. Leaders of these institutions are confronting the demographic cliff, "free tuition," the student debt crisis, the impact of a global pandemic, and the move to online modalities. These delightfully challenging days are made even more formidable for smaller private independent colleges which are tuition-driven.
What is a leader to do? Jeffrey R. Docking, President of Adrian College, says "the biggest risk is to do nothing at all!" Colleges must grow their enrollment or face the likely slow slide of institutional death.
Docking took the helm of Adrian College in 2005 with a bold revenue-building model that ultimately saved their institution. Docking shares that model in Crisis in Higher Education: A Plan to Save Small Liberal Arts Colleges in America or else. I found this work logical and practical. The results Adrian has achieved speak for themselves: First, enrollment increases by the hundreds and, second, increased budget revenue by the millions.
I am a presidential newbie, assuming the leadership of Lancaster Bible College, in February 2020. Dr. Docking's work has helped me better understand the academic business model. How? By clarifying admissions strategies that do not work and by carefully explaining and illustrating his Admissions Growth model, a model that has proven incredibly effective for Adrian College.
Here are eight enrollment strategies that don't work according to Docking:
1. Rebranding: Students rarely pick a college based on its brand. 2. Adding Satellite Campuses: They cannot deliver the same experience as the mother ship. 3. Investment in Online Education: He calls online "disengaged education," but the trends and research are proving him wrong with respect to modality. And the online revenue model works. 4. Adding Professional Programs and "Trade School" Certification Programs: They are not bad, they are just not what prospective students are looking for in a college education. 5. Building New Academic Facilities: Seventeen year-olds do not choose where to spend their next four years based on academic buildings. 6. Increase library holdings: Prospective students hold the gateway to research in the palms of their hands. 7. Publicizing Faculty Research: Enrollment research identifies this as a very small contributing factor to enrollment. 8. Manufacturing Fun outside the Classroom: Fun off-campus experiences do not draw students.
And what does work? Creating an admissions growth strategy that prioritizes the following six steps:
1. Do your homework and set goals. This pertains to every facet of your institution. Where do we excel? What sports would our region support? What must we stop doing and why? 2. Build and upgrade required facilities. 3. Fund teams and activities fully and set recruiting goals. 4. Focus on return on investment by holding recruiters accountable. 5. Redirect new income to academic facilities and programs. 6. Continue to build and utilize momentum for further growth.
More than a whack on the side of the head . . . Crisis in Higher Education: A Plan to Save Small Liberal Arts Colleges in America was an education for this educator. Here are a few of my takeaways:
1. Accountability: "Each program must be led by someone who is accountable for recruitment and retention" (25). Institutions must stress accountability at the admissions recruitment level as well. When you don't have accountability you don't have responsibility, and when you don't have responsibility recruitment fails. "Accountability is what distinguishes the Admissions Growth plan from every other enrollment fix being bandied around in books and magazines and on websites addressing the current crisis in higher education" (51).
2. Transparency: Confront every brutal fact (budget, enrollment, trends, etc) and be as transparent as possible.
3. Budget Cuts: "You cannot cut your way to prosperity" (40).
4. Sports: Utilize sports as a key admission mechanism (with full-time coaches and high accountability to recruit or forfeit one's job). This is "the key to the Admissions Growth plan" (55). Tables 3 - 8 (57-63) are very helpful.
5. Facilities and Infrastructure: New buildings won't necessarily bring students, but decrepit ones will turn them off.
6. Focus: Keep your eye on faculty and education. Docking is quick to emphasize that facilities, infrastructure and sports feed admissions which feeds academics. Faculty will need to catch the vision and endure the start-up that leads to academic improvement and increase in remuneration. The Admissions Growth model is ultimately about a better education.
7. Communication: "American inventor Charles Kettering said: 'a problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.' The problem this book addresses is low enrollment. Tuition from enrollment accounts for 90% of most small institutional budgets. "So the formula is really very simple: If you need more money, then grow the largest part of your budget" (107). In our communication, stress the return on investment is improved education, increased faculty, better pay.
Summary and recommendation: The primary goal of the Admissions Growth model is "to leverage investments in facilities and programs to bring more students to your campus. Small private colleges can only run on tuition, and tuition comes from students, plain and simple" (79). But those students and facilities do more than "simply" increase tuition dollars. They lead to curb appeal, improved community relations, student retention, and engaged alumni.
Why would an educational leader not read Crisis in Higher Education: A Plan to Save Small Liberal Arts Colleges in America unless he or she is content to take that long slide toward institutional demise.
Kudos to Carman Curtan for her writing expertise. She worked with Dr. Docking to deliver this polished gem....more
This comprehensive handbook may be the best one-volume work of its kind I have read. While slightly dated in a few places, it is encyclopedic in scopeThis comprehensive handbook may be the best one-volume work of its kind I have read. While slightly dated in a few places, it is encyclopedic in scope, focused in purpose ("a leadership resource for leaders at various levels"), distinctly Christian in worldview, and practical without being scripted.
The authors, with a combined 350 years of Christian organizational leadership experience, are experts or qualified practitioners in their respective areas of focus. How much did this help me? There is hardly a page of my book that does not include an underline, highlight, margin summary, or notation for future reference.
Christian Leadership Essentials: A Handbook for Managing Christian Organizations addresses the following: A biblical model of leadership, Organizational identity, Vision and strategic planning, Governance and board relations, Organizational management, Finance and budgeting, Development, Campaigns and building projects, Foundation relations, External relations, Relating to a varied constituency, Teams, From peer to manager, Employee relations, Engaging the culture, Crisis management, Leader as mentor and pastor, Leadership for a global world, Transitions.
As with any text one can always ask for more. For my part, I think the work would be improved by adding segments on organizational communication and enhancing organizational culture, though chapter 13, "Employee Relations in a Grace-Filled Community" was outstanding. Otherwise, both items were touched in a few places, but additional treatment would help.
My takeaways were many. Here are five (not in order of priority):
1. Links to additional reading: I love to know what others are reading. Since each chapter is well referenced and some authors cite book favorites, my "To Read" list increased significantly. 2. Dependence focus: Leaders must seek a spiritual understanding, a revelation of the unique work that God calls them to that is more than just the appropriation of best practices of successful models of others.... page 41. Dependence married to resiliency! See chapter 12, "From Peer to Manager." 3. Leadership presence and pacing: "Who who is available all the time is not worth being available when he is available." D. Elton Trueblood H.A.L.T. (page 282) 4. The necessity of the Board: Select the best. Leverage their expertise. Determine appropriate President-Board relations, 3 hats. 5. Relationships: "There can be no leadership apart from relationships." Randall O'Brien; "Everyone has something to offer." Philip W. Eaton (page 238)...more
If you enjoy learning about leadership "in context," then Portraits In Leadership is a book for you. Dr. Art Padilla, long associated with the CollegeIf you enjoy learning about leadership "in context," then Portraits In Leadership is a book for you. Dr. Art Padilla, long associated with the College of Management, North Carolina State University, examines the lives of six "extraordinary university presidents," drawing leadership lessons from their lives and leadership.
Padilla writes, “The university is one of the more enduring and complex enterprises in the long history of human organizations; it thus provide a useful vehicle through which to study the phenomenon of leadership in all of its human expressions." 247 Indeed it is. Dr. Padilla highlights the complex nature of educational administration, multiple demands, and even diminished power power due to multiple constituents (trustees, faculty, donors), and the boundaries they create.
Padilla devotes chapters to the complexity of the university and the nature of leadership before diving into the case studies of Clark Kerr (University of California), William Friday (University of North Carolina), Father Theodore Hesburgh (Notre Dame), Hanna Gray (University of Chicago), John Slaughter (University of Maryland), William Bowen (Princeton). He concludes his work by summarizing his findings from their collective experience in the chapter he titles, "Lessons, Conclusions, and Implications."
This book was worth my investment of time!
So many takeaways. Here are five:
1. Leadership occurs at the intersection of personal history and organizational context. It is that intersection that reveals particular leadership styles. Given differing histories and organizational cultures, styles of leadership vary. There are, however, certain patterns that emerge. The author addresses these in the final chapter, "Lessons, Conclusions, and Implications."
2. While there are universal challenges (communication, vision, collaborative coalitions, fund raising), each university is unique as are the leadership strategies/models of their presidents.
3. Physical and psychological stamina is absolutely essential to institutional leadership. Of the six leaders he evaluated in this book only one showed no signs of the “predictable patterns of work and renewal" so essential to effectiveness. 216
4. Each leader showed an amazing capacity for work, resilience, interpersonal relationships, and an understanding of the institution and it’s context.
5. His breakdown of the five main parts of university structure: (1) governance and senior administration, (2) internal support operations, (3) external development, (4) student affairs, (5) academic functions of teaching and research.
Padilla makes the point that readers of leadership hear often: “A compelling finding from the case studies is that the 'made or born'“ schism is not particularly relevant. 258...more
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