Is the central use of a university to produce young people
trained in a specific area and ready to become professionals in
that field?
Or, more generally, is it to provide students with a variety of
challenges that will later equip them to become informed
citizens?
Or, why not both?
Harold T. Shapiro, the former president of Princeton University
and the University of Michigan, spoke at UCLA Wednesday, saying the
aims of a liberal education and a professional education are closer
than many perceive. Universities, he said, should work to break
down “bureaucratic barriers” separating the two types
of education.
“We need a more integrated view of liberal education and
professional education,” he said.
Shapiro said it was not until about 100 years ago that
professional schools ““ law schools, medical schools, and
divinity schools, for example ““ were not the center of the
university. Nowadays, universities direct more resources toward
students pursuing a liberal education, or “academic”
areas of study.
Chancellor Albert Carnesale pointed out after Shapiro’s
lecture, that universities may be the only places where students
who do theoretical mathematics seem to perform a more central duty
when compared to those in professional schools who “make
devices that actually help people.” As a result of such
organization at universities, students and professors in
professional schools often feel they are pursuing goals not central
to the university’s purpose, Shapiro said.
But they shouldn’t, he added.
“The aims of a professional education are startlingly
similar to the aims of a liberal education,” he said.
In essence, education serves to create well-informed members of
society ““ whether by preparing them for the work force or by
turning them into informed citizens, Shapiro said. Whether studying
law or the humanities, students encounter the same challenges.
Because Shapiro sees an over-exaggerated difference between the
missions of liberal and professional educations, he said
universities should work to break down barriers between the
two.
When an audience member pointed out that one difference between
the two forms of university education is professional schools are
largely closed to undergraduates, Shapiro said this could
change.
“I see no reason why undergraduates shouldn’t be
taking courses in the law school, or the medical school”
provided they have taken necessary preparation courses, Shapiro
said.
He went on to say there is also no reason someone studying in a
professional school shouldn’t take classes in the arts and
sciences.
Shapiro’s presentation was part of the University of
California’s Clark Kerr lecture series, which explores the
role of higher education in society. Clark Kerr was the UC
president in the 1960s and has written and lectured extensively on
the role of universities.
Carnesale said Kerr’s book, “The Uses of the
University” is “as close as we can get to the Bible (in
the field of higher education).”
The book was based on a series of lectures Kerr gave, and was
first published in 1963. In it, Kerr introduces the idea of a
“multiversity” ““Â a university with many
uses.
“The university started as a single community
““Â a community of masters and students. It may even be
said to have had a soul in the sense of a central animating
principle. Today the large American university is, rather, a whole
series of communities and activities held together by a common
name, a common governing board, and related purposes,” Kerr
wrote.
Another audience member suggested to Shapiro that his lecture,
which was titled “Liberal Education, Professional Education,
and the Soul of the University,” should perhaps have used the
word “souls” in the title, given Kerr’s idea of a
multiversity.
Though the thrust of Shapiro’s argument was that the aims
of two seemingly distant types of education are really quite
similar, he seemed to agree that “souls” might be
appropriate.
“I wouldn’t be offended by that,” Shapiro
said.