Editorials and Commentary:

• President Anderson Letter to Chronicle Editor
• Robert B. Reich: "How Selective Colleges Heighten Inequality"
• Keith Devlin: "Finding Your Inner Mathematician"

"ANAC member institutions pursue selectivity, but they also prize a diverse student body, often weighing measures of desire and potential in students with lower scores who may have attended weaker high schools or had a checkered prior academic career."

President Anderson Letter to Chronicle Editor


September 18, 2000
Editor
The Chronicle of Higher Education
1255 23rd Street, NW
Washington DC 20037

To the Editor:

Over nearly three decades, the Carnegie classification system and patterns of student enrollment have firmly established the reality of several institutional types of American colleges and universities. Consequently, it is dismaying that the recent Chronicle Almanac issue (September 1, 2000) suggests that only two institutional models, "Doctorate-Granting Institutions" and "Liberal-Arts Colleges" represent the pluralism of American higher education (p.51). Indeed, these two institutional types combined represent only 12.2% (474) of all Carnegie classified institutions, considerably fewer than the 16% (615) that are classified in the Master's I and II categories. The latter represent nearly one-half of the institutions not classified as two-year or specialized (such as separate campus seminaries and professional schools).

At a time when the American public and the American economy demand more from higher education, it seems shortsighted to suggest implicitly by omission that all of our educational eggs do or should reside in two baskets. Master's I and II colleges and universities offer liberal arts, professional, and graduate programs in a manageably-sized setting (typically 3,000-6,000 students) that combines many of the best qualities of liberal arts colleges (a highly personalized residential campus ethos featuring small classes offered by faculty whose first priority is teaching) and doctoral granting institutions (multiple missions, consequently a diversity of students, faculty, and programs). The Associated New American Colleges (ANAC), for example, has a national membership of twenty-one of these Master's institutions that collectively enroll 100,000 students.

Qualitatively, the omission is significant. These institutions often emphasize integrative approaches at a time when overspecialization is blamed for a range of ills. Many Master's institutions link liberal arts and professional studies, whether at the baccalaureate or master's level of their curricula, in order to improve student applied competence and capacities for reflection. Further, they seek to connect classroom, student life, and student work and service experiences in order that students might continuously enrich and test their theoretical knowledge. They are also attempting to develop a coherent faculty professional model by integrating teaching and research as complementary forms of scholarship, and to conceive of the region surrounding campus as an extended laboratory for faculty and student applied research, experiential learning, and community service.

In short, many Master's institutions are entering a new century determined to fulfill higher education's mission through a hybrid strategy that gains synergies through new combinations and a regional responsiveness that recalls the land grant university Extension Service tradition. These colleges and universities are worthy of acknowledgement in the institutional category groupings of the Chronicle Almanac.

Sincerely,

Loren J. Anderson, President
Pacific Lutheran University
Chair, ANAC Presidents Council

Robert B. Reich: "How Selective Colleges Heighten Inequality"


Former Clinton Administration Secretary of Labor and present professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University, Reich takes aim squarely at the prestige model of higher education which holds that reputation and fundraising success are synonymous with attracting an ever more selective student body. As Alexander Astin did several years ago, Reich questions the morality of such a prestige model of institutional excellence which diverts increasing financial aid resources from needy students at the very moment of widening income distribution in the larger society. He questions with Astin whether excellence has much to do with focusing heavily or exclusively on "highly qualified" students who will be successful in most cases with or without the financial or educational impact of the institution. Further, Reich questions over-reliance on ACT and SAT scores in determining student qualifications and argues not only that education is crucial to achieve a good living in the information age economy but that this economy requires that a very high percentage of the population to be well-educated in order for society to function well. Considering the latter, it may be in everyone's interest to assure that American higher education address the full range of student educational abilities and needs.

ANAC member institutions pursue selectivity, but they also prize a diverse student body, often weighing measures of desire and potential in students with lower scores who may have attended weaker high schools or had a checkered prior academic career. In a case such as this the admissions decision is often a judgment of the likelihood that the candidate will be academically successful. The presence of highly qualified students tends to raise the sights of all students, just as ethnic, economic, age, and geographic diversity add cultural and intellectual richness to educational experiences within the broad student body. The connection between student selectivity and credential prestige may be inescapable and unlikely to change, but should not diminish efforts to achieve balance with educational and social purposes and to persuade students and donors alike to support models of excellence that are outcomes driven and serve societal needs. This is a challenge not unlike that of New American colleges and universities seeking to articulate and demonstrate the markers of excellence of an institutional model that integrates many of the best features of liberal arts colleges and research universities.

Keith Devlin: Finding Your Inner Mathematician


Keith Devlin, Dean of Science at Saint Mary's College of California and the "math guy" on National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition," believes that everyone has the capacity to do mathematics. In the Observer column of the September 29 Chronicle of Higher Education Review section, Devlin identifies nine basic mental abilities that enable math to make sense, at least through high school algebra and geometry:

• Number Sense - ability to distinguish between a single and a collection of objects.
• Numerical Ability - ability to count and to understand numbers as abstract entities.
• Spatial-Reasoning Ability - ability to recognize shapes and to judge distances accurately.
• A Sense of Cause and Effect - "if this, then that" reasoning.
• Ability to Construct and Follow a Causal Chain of Facts or Events - a mathematical proof of a theorem is a highly abstract version of a causal chain of facts.
• Algorithmic Ability - ability to learn a step-by-step procedure for performing a particular mathematical task.
• Ability to Understand Abstraction - an age-old human ability paralleling the ability to acquire language.
• Logical-Reasoning Ability - similar to ability to construct a causal chain, the ability to construct and follow a step-by-step logical argument is fundamental to mathematics.
• Relational-Reasoning Ability - ability to recognize how things and people are related and to reason about such relationships parallel math's reasoning regarding relationships among abstract objects.

Devlin argues that the secret to mathematical reasoning is to make abstract objects seem like real objects with which we are already familiar. When the brain recognizes abstract objects as "real," reasoning enters a realm the brain finds natural and instinctive. He notes, "The real value of learning basic math skills today is not that you will need to use those skills per se; chances are you won't. Rather, the benefit is to make the abstract objects of mathematics so familiar—and seem so real—that you can reason about them using the same mental capacities that you use to reason about everyday things." The implications for mathematics teaching are to begin with what is familiar and concrete, moving gradually to the abstract, and realizing that the key challenge for the student is "to come to view the abstract objects of mathematics as real."