Tendencies in Higher Education That Might Affect Classical Studies

Over the past year or so I think I have been able to spot a series of trends that are likely to affect higher education strongly in the next few years. I omit some obvious ones of continuing importance if they have already received a lot of discussion (vocationalism, demographic changes, emerging fields such as gender studies, Late Antiquity, etc. ). Most classicists will have their own perspective and their own lists, but here's mine:

A. Concern about student engagement in "academics" and how it can be enhanced. Levels of student engagement are increasingly being monitored through instruments such as the National Study of Student Engagement (NSSE) but the big question is how students can "catch fire."

B. The continued specialization of knowledge and the consequent proliferation of fields that demand to be represented in undergraduate education. Many institutions, especially the smaller ones, have trouble responding to this tendency.

C. The continuing movement toward active learning. It is no longer sufficient for undergraduate students to be "exposed" to a field; they need to be actively engaged in it, even in the first year or two of college. How to do this and how to afford to do it?

D. The movement toward systematic assessment, requiring clearly defined educational goals and metrics to determine if they are being met.

E. Declining cost and increasing applications of information technology.

F. Communities of Learning: We now know that most students learn better if they systematically interact with other students of similar interests.

G. Putting undergraduate teaching front and center. A lot of places say that's what they want to do. How?

H. All the above cost money, at a time when there is need to restrain the increase in college expenses, and provide significantly increased financial aid.

But the biggest development, I believe, is a new awareness of the importance (and vitality) of liberal education (not its decline and fall!). If that is right, the most urgent matter becomes what distinctive contribution can classics, alone or in collaboration with other disciplines, make to liberal education?

W. R. Connor

15th December 2004

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