Carolynn Reid-Wallace, a member of the recent Boyer Commission on undergraduate learning, writes that "the sort of defeatism that makes some people reluctant to enforce high academic standards is premised on a false dichotomy between access and excellence. Specifically, many assume that achieving excellence requires limiting access for low-income and minority children, and that providing access requires compromising excellence. These people are wrong. Access and excellence are in no way antithetical--they represent two noble goals that are both worthy of our best efforts."¹ Reid-Wallace's analysis emerged in a consideration of the latest of a series of educational reform movements that have consistently punctuated American life. Of this last reform movement, though, she speculated that enthusiasm for reform was flagging.

Perhaps it is true that the spirit of reform has flagged, but there has certainly been no remission in the appearance of works urging continued reflection. Most notably, those works have addressed some form of the question of "liberal education," the "core curriculum," or "general education." While it is true that education for a "global economy" receives its due share of ink or binary code, it remains the case that most informed commentary focuses on questions of general education. The reason for this is not hard to discern--education that is worth its name lasts for a lifetime.

Even a cursory review of recent titles reveals that the regularly recurring "crisis" of higher education marks our era no less than previous ones. Since the publication of The Closing of the American Mind, however, the conversation has bogged down over collateral issues perhaps best summed up in the expression, "culture wars." It is useful to reflect, therefore, that there are educational questions inherent in the debate that transcend the question of whose political ox is being gored. Among those questions none demands closer attention than the question of the adequacy of undergraduate learning. It would be foolish to haggle over "scientific" demonstration of the proposition when something so nearly like a consensus exists that we have experienced a decline in acceptable levels of accomplishment across broad subject areas. The more serious discussion of the current "crisis," therefore, ought to reconsider the demands we make upon our students--our expectations.

This does not mean simply making subjects like foreign languages, science, mathematics, or English more rigorous. It also means expanding what is taught in these subjects. It is not enough to learn the grammar and syntax of a foreign language; one must learn to speak the language fluently, and one must read great literature written in that language. Moreover, it is not enough for American students to explore the history and culture of foreign nations without a solid grounding in the history and culture of western civilization.²

In the broad discussion of general education--a discussion that the Council of Higher Education for Virginia has taken up with great seriousness--it appears ambiguous whether folks mean a full-fledged liberal education or only some condensed version of what students would have received if they had pursued a full-fledged liberal education. This perhaps explains the standoff between advocates of "multiculturalism" and advocates of "western civilization." There may be fewer questions of intellectual merit at stake (though there are surely some such questions) and more questions of depth and adequacy of coverage. Advocates of western civilization certainly cannot say that they oppose "multiculturalism" inasmuch as so-called "western civilization" is the true and original model of all multi-culturalism. It would be very difficult indeed to conceive of an argument for the study of western civilization that did not engage western civilization's very pronounced and consistent exploration of world cultures. In fact, I can think of no model of multiculturalism at all that does not originate in fundamental premises, principles, or practices of western civilization.

This example should illustrate the nature of the question of education reform in our time. Insofar as we have been hesitant to embrace any full-throated articulation of educational goals because of anxieties regarding their collateral implications, then we have denied ourselves the opportunity to go as far as we might go toward assuring excellence. That is the reason I have deliberately used in the title of this essay the expression "final step." That word, "final," is a red flag, designed to challenge people who defend themselves against all possible infection from supposed "absolutes" to rethink what is their best defense. Human ambition, at its best, aims for the most complete accomplishment, even while recognizing human fallibility. A premature decision to ignore any expression of complete ambition is tantamount to lowering levels and standards of exertion. It is far better to hear the word "truth" and retain one's ability to think than to shield one's ears from the word and lose the ability to think.

So, too, in education it is better to contemplate "perfections" and learn to recognize "failures" than to fail without acknowledgment because we refuse to entertain perfection. The practical implication of this apothegm is that higher education needs to delve more deeply into the discussion of undergraduate learning. Among the things to be noted, most certainly, is that this will remain the core of higher education. It does not diminish the significance of the research university to observe that its foundation is still the undergraduate program. Further, we must admit that our goal to make access virtually universal has challenged us to seek new ways to assure that standards of accomplishment can and will be met despite the variable preparations of students. Nor can we permit ourselves to imagine that a swiftly changing technological and work environment has rewritten the terms of general competence and information. People who will increasingly find themselves surfing the crests of job skills with shorter and shorter half-lives must still rely more on sound fundamentals as the heart of their education. Otherwise they will be buried by waves of change.

We must seek new ways to assure standards of accomplishment not only for our students but also for our colleges and universities. Perhaps as a consequence of the rapid expansion of higher education in the decades following World War II, growth itself has come to be seen as the standard of success. Throughout much of these United States, open-ended, infinitely expanding enrollment has become the very soul of the large research university and particularly the public university. There, productivity is far more routinely measured by growth in numbers--matriculants and dollars--than by any other factor. This inertial growth and the desire for it impose on the large university the logic of segmentation--some would say fragmentation. Within it the most specialized and the most growth-oriented units are the most successful. Thus, a college of social science prospers within a research university by the very logic of its mission and structure--to produce as large a number of graduates (plus credit hours) in as large a number of sub-specialties as possible.

As comprehensive universities emulate research universities, many have also come to value growth--in enrollment, faculty, programs, and facilities--as the benchmark of success. External factors, particularly the recent increase in the number of high school graduates, feed the appetite for growth and, in fact, demand that institutions of higher education grow in some fashion to fulfill our commitment to access. While many colleges and universities in Virginia have intentionally limited their enrollment expansion (embracing their missions and their belief in the worth of smaller institutions), this widespread esteem for growth influences other measures of institutional accomplishment.

But growth alone is an inadequate yardstick and even poses an obstacle to success in other important areas. A superior measure of success is an institution's capacity for change--the constant refinement of procedures, resources, and facilities that is the only true path to excellence. Quality of academic life, rather than quantity of academic life, ought to be our paramount concern.

In declaring quality the basis for assessing institutional accomplishments, we confront the inherent difficulty of measuring it. Indeed, some of the indicators of quality are counterintuitive. Lower GPAs, not higher, indicate better teaching. More integrated learning? Abler students. Readier attainment of life-long learning as a reflex and not just as a slogan? Cultural richness. And most ineffably of all: superior understanding. Yet these are the virtues of education for which we strive. And these are also the very virtues sacrificed to the logic of inertial growth.

The broad, administrative challenge we must ponder, then, is how to privilege dynamic approaches to learning over inertial approaches. If we do this we can spawn a renaissance of liberal education, even within public universities.

In Virginia these principles mean that an educational system of public and private institutions that has functioned at the forefront of contemporary higher education must push itself still further. As Dr. Timothy J. Sullivan, chair of the Council of Presidents and president of William and Mary College, has observed, these best of times will lead into the worst of times if we do not chart paths of correction into the future. One of the most recent works on liberal education, Alan Ryan's Liberal Education and Liberal Anxieties, suggests that the time may have arrived when we can coolly take this final step into the future--beginning a new cycle. The Council of Higher Education believes that this step will be taken best when we challenge our institutions to articulate their aims, not as idiosyncratic, coded messages but as intersubjectively transmissible (that is, objective) principles that may be judged by independent observers. That is the test of education.

Consider but one item from the council's in-progress survey of general education in Virginia colleges and universities:

How do you know whether students have attained the expected content and/or skill development as a result of completing your institution's general-education program?

Institutions completing the survey may imagine that this item designs to yield a numerical representation of average practices. In fact, however, it intends to surface programmatic analyses of what we actually aim for in general education. Coupled with the statement of the goals of general education, this should enable us to derive an argument for general education. Once derived, such an argument should lead us unfailingly to the kind of dialogic exchange that can clarify for all of us what is reasonable and what is not in general education. The awareness of what is reasonable and what is not, moreover, is the final step preceding choices. I believe that we will always choose excellence in the manner that we understand it. Therefore, raising academic standards begins with raising our own understanding of what those standards should be.

NOTES

1 Carolynn Reid-Wallace, "The Promise of American Education," in The New Promise of American Life, ed. by Lamar Alexander and Chester E. Finn, Jr. (Indianapolis: Hudson Institute, 1995), pp. 292.

2 Ibid.

William B. Allen is director of the Council of Higher Education for Virginia. He has been dean of the James Madison College at Michigan State University and a professor of political philosophy and of government. He has also chaired the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the American Academy of Liberal Education Accreditation Team, served as a Kellogg National Fellow and a Fulbright Advanced Teaching Fellow, been on the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John's College, and served as a trustee of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.