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LIBERAL LEARNING IN AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION
Abstract
This study explores the often conflicting assumptions that the public and practitioners make about American higher education. In particular, it proposes that we have allowed much of these assumptions to assume the status of myth. The consequence is an imprecision in higher education: it is seen as both training for jobs and at the same time providing us with a heightened aesthetic and moral sense. This is rarely true. The review of the literature of the history of higher education reinforces this confusion. Curricular shifts are recorded with very little examination of the consequences they may have on the institution, itself; new missions, goals, and purposes are added with little concern for the overall effect this process of accretion may have. In the last 100 years, discipline, majors, and other academic responses have occurred to meet the training needs of industry; the atmosphere and goals of the arts, literature, and science are highly professional, as well. The consequences for higher education include trivialization of courses and majors, isolation of units within the universities, learning that exists only in-order-to acquire narrow skills or credentials, and a continuing rationalization of the connection with the marketplace. There is a lack of critical self-analysis by the institutions. Proposals for reform have, on occasion, been advanced in recognition of this proliferation of purpose. However, the trend in American higher education seems to be moving ever closer to vocationalism, in spite of proposed reforms. This movement is being effected at the expense of general or liberal education. The consequences of this trend do not seem to be a major concern in most educational circles, or to be fully understood. The study concludes that an important, even vital part of higher education is being sacrificed to the utilitarian ideal. This reality may force a rethinking of our myth; perhaps, even a reform of our educational ideal.
Subject Area
Higher education
Recommended Citation
GRENNAN, KEVIN FRANCIS, "LIBERAL LEARNING IN AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION" (1981). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8118001.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8118001