THE UNIVERSITY OFCHICAGO 9 RECOUPJanuary 15, 1973 An Official Publication Volume VII, Number 1CONTENTS1 REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE PROBLEMS AND SCOPEOF GRADUATE WORK2 REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON TEACHINGTHE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGOFOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER© 1973 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO RECORDREPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE PROBLEMSAND SCOPE OF GRADUATE WORKTo: Edward H. LeviNovember 30, 1972I am herewith forwarding to you the Report ofthe Committee on the Problems and Scope ofGraduate Work. After this draft has appeared inthe Record, and after comments on it have beenreceived from readers, the Committee intends toreconvene at least once to see whether furtherdrafting or editing is necessary.I believe that all Committee members foundthis to be a productive assignment and profitedfrom our discussions; now it is our hope that thelarger community can make its contribution toreflection on this subject.Martin Ev Marty (Committee Chairman)Professor and Associate Dean of the DivinitySchoolToday, graduate universities are endangered bysuggestions that such schools are too expensive,irrelevant, and lacking in immediate practical effect. These serious criticisms have weakened thefinancial underpinning of the University. Decreased governmental and private funding, accompanied by rising costs, have created a perturbation on this campus. The criticisms havecontributed to a loss of a sense of purposeful-ness among some faculty and students. It seemswise at this time, therefore, to undertake a reassessment of the University's purposes, and to seeif present or planned directions are compatiblewith them.President Levi has asked this Committee to"explore the main concepts and state the goals"of graduate education here today, and to "discern whether there are underlying ideas, basictheories, and guiding principles" in it.Fundamental to this report is our belief in theimportance of new knowledge to civilization and our conviction that the well-educated creativescholar contributes to the quality of life. We believe that The University of Chicago can have itsbest effect by being faithful to its distinctive features as a medium-sized graduate research University having a small undergraduate college.In approaching our task we asked questionsconcerning the organization of knowledge inlight of the genius of the University as a graduateinstitution. Part I addresses those issues. Part IIconcerns itself with the central problem of thepolity of graduate education here, given theassets and liabilities of departmental structures.Part III is a detailed comment on what we cameto call the "clientele" problems, and includessuggestions for changing the scope of graduateeducation at Chicago. An appendix, finally, illustrates the variety of approaches in several de-apartments.1Because several different kinds of expertise were demanded for these various parts, it was impossible for asingle committee member to draft them all. Efforts toproduce a committee-drafted document proved frustrating. So we conceived the idea of commissioning variousmembers to concentrate on drafting individual portions.Richard McKeon and Jacob Getzels are responsible forthe form Part I takes; Part II is based upon a reportpresented by Howard Aronson and J.A.B. van Buitenen;Henri Theil wrote Part III; Hewson Swift, Eric Hamp,and Irving Kaplansky interviewed department heads andprepared the Appendix; Dr. Alvin Tarlov and committee chairman Martin E. Marty introduced, coordinated,and edited the essay.While this division of labor might at first give theimpression that the various elements of the report aresimply a forwarding of the ideas of one or two peopleto the University community -we encouraged personalstyles of expression and discouraged bland ''committee-style" prose-it should be stressed that the whole committee met regularly to isolate, diagnose, and appraisethe problems and make suggestions about the scope ofgraduate work. While no effort was made at reachingfull consensus on every point, the report as it appearsdoes represent wide areas of agreement and, in everycase, is the result of the common efforts and contributions of all committee members.1Part I. The Genius of The University of Chicago:Issues in Graduate Education and ResearchThe problems of understanding, reinforcing, oraltering the genius of The University of Chicagoare distinct from the problems of creating, using,or selling an image of the University in order tosecure greater material support or larger studentenrollment for the University. A true universitydoes not always, or indeed usually, conform tothe popular view of what a university is or shouldbe. Nor is a university that contributes most effectively to the creation, communication, andconservation of knowledge— which is after all itsmain work— necessarily the most opulently financed or most universally-approved university.A statement of the genius of The University ofChicago is of course itself a presentation of animage, but it is an image manifested in the workof the scholars, scientists, students, and instructors who come to it for learning, teaching, and-research, and who are not easily enticed awayfrom it. Its genius does not depend on adherenceto a common ideology, although its name maycommonly be associated with the formulationand development of a particular philosophy, aform of literary criticism, a school of economics,a social discipline, a scientific or pedagogicalmethod, and a particular use and application ofknowledge for human welfare. It does not subscribe to a canon of prescribed principles or advertise a set of foreclosed ends and objectives.But neither is it chaotic or anarchic. It has anorientation which, though not controlled, is disciplined; it has a character that is identifiablyits own.The great accomplishment of The Universityof Chicago, at its foundation, did* not consist somuch in solving problems in education and research or in establishing mechanisms and institutions for their ultimate resolution. It consistedrather more in the perception and formulationof problems which had not been recognized before, and in the willingness to follow with persistent, informed curiosity where its inquiriesled— even if only to other problems. Innovativeproblem-finding precedes and prepares for creative problem-solving; indeed, the formulation ofthe problem often determines the nature of thesolution.The statement of "persistent" or "present"problems— problems urged upon the Universityfor work rather than problems emerging fromthe work of the University— is usually the prefacenot to an inquiry for solving problems or verifying solutions but to a campaign for securing acceptance of problems already formulated orfor enforcing solutions already known and advocated by a protagonist. The singular genius ofthe University resides in its insistence on findingand formulating its own problems for researchand instruction. This character of the Universityhas a significance which extends beyond the apparently limited questions of graduate educationand research, even though the problems of theUniversity appear only as such, because the perception and resolution of the most significant issues of our time depend, in large degree, on theformulation of fresh questions, the acquisitionof new knowledge, and the advancement of self-directed education.Among the problems of graduate educationand research the following have a prominentplace today.1. Basic and Applied Research: The dilemma ofbasic and applied research is a genuine and pervasive problem. It cannot be brushed aside bypointing out (truly) that the classes "basic" and"applied" overlap, and assuming that the issuehas been disposed of. There is a fundamentaldifference between knowledge and the use ofknowledge, and a consequent difference betweeninquiry directed to the advancement of knowledge and inquiry directed to the application ofknowledge. It is a distinction between two artsvf inquiry and between their respective products.There is a parallel difference between appliedart (handicraft or commercial art) and basic art(fine art), a difference of orientation or purpose,and this difference is not annulled by pointingout (truly) that some artifacts are oriented bothto commercial ends and to purely artistic ones.The art of inquiry is practice-oriented whenit is employed on a problem of action and construction, even one which depends on the use ofdata and materials made available by knowledge,such as the construction of a curriculum for aparticular school. The art of inquiry is theory-oriented when it is employed on a problem ofknowledge and structure, even one which depends on the use of data and information concerning practice, such as the structure of theAmerican secondary school curriculum. The applied investigator, like the commercial artist, directs his technical skill to the solution of a practical problem. It is relevant to ask regarding hissolution, what is it good for?, and cost-benefitcriteria may be used to measure the success andpracticality of the inquiry. The basic scientist,like the fine artist, also directs his disciplined2skill to the solution of a problem, but the onlyquestion relevant to his solution is one of fruit-fulness in the case of basic inquiry, beauty in thecase of fine art, with or without the explicitaddendum, for what?, and cost -benefit criteriaprovide no relevant measurements. The difference between applied inquiry and basic inquiryis the difference between detection and science,to follow the comparison by Einstein and Infeld:"For the detective the c'rime is given, the problem formulated: Who killed Cock Robin? Thescientist must, at least in part, commit his owncrime as well as carry out the investigation."The function of a university in graduate education is to produce "artists," not "illustrators"or "vendors"— "scientists," not "detectives" or"mechanics." It can exercise this function bypersistently undertaking to find its own problemsfor inquiry, and by refusing no less persistentlyto contract to do jobs which distract it from theproblem-finding and problem-solving which havedefined the character of this University. TheUniversity 'is a living organism. It will encounterand must resolve problems arising from circumstances, difficulties, and obstructions as well asproblems arising from the needs for medical,legal, educational, and social assistance in thecommunity of which it is a part. But its fullestand most significant contribution to human welfare will result from the work it undertakes byrecognizing and following its unique functionand genius.2. Significant and Insignificant Teaching andResearch: When one reviews the memories ofone's own education and formation, one encounters a persistent paradox, that what was undertaken as unquestionably significant has oftenlost its significance, and what was undertaken asinescapable drudgery has sometimes blossomedinto unsuspected significance. Significance is acombination of meaning and relevance. We areconscious today— or we listen reluctantly and impatiently to allegations— that much of what wedo in education and research in the Universityis irrelevant. The charge of irrelevance is oftensupported by reference to facts, information, orconcerns that are not explicitly addressed to thesolution of a practical problem in technology orsociety. So to set the matter of relevance in controversial opposition to the matter of meaning isto present a clash between innovation and unquestioned tradition, and to impede the detection of whatever may be wrong in what we doand the discovery of what may be done to cor rect it. Knowledge and education, to be significant, must bear both meaning and relevance tolife and inquiry, but meaning and relevance arenot forever fixed and determined by what hasbeen or by what someone thinks might or shouldbe. Meaning and relevance in education and research emerge with the cultivation of informedimagination and curiosity. The function of theUniversity and its graduate education is to preserve freedom for imagination and curiosity in acontext of meanings and relevance and to discourage random whim, arbitrary preference, andimpermeable attachment to dogmatic meaningsand insular relevances.3. Reduction and Increase of Time for Education: In many enterprises— in building structures,or surveying fields, or assembling resources— it isoften useful to follow without deviation sequences of steps and schedules of time. Education at all levels depends on programs with sequences and schedules, but, like all other scheduled activities, the programs in education frequently swell and become clogged with continued prerequisites and preparations which impedeimagination and curiosity in the perception ofproblems and the pursuit of meaning and relevance. The shortening of programs of education is in the interest of prolonging educationthroughout life. The Greek word schole meant"leisure" and hence came to mean "school" inwhich leisure was employed in self-developmentand inquiry. Graduate education may be shortened by reducing the fixities of scholastic requirements and substituting for the mechanicallinks in "formal education" the growing connections to an "educational leisure" which can becontinued throughout life.4. Combined Undergraduate and Graduate Degrees: Graduate education and research dependon disciplined competence. Work in a particularfield of inquiry requires competence in the concepts and techniques proper to that field, in thefields adjacent to it, and in the disciplines ofgeneral education which carry across fields. Thepreparation of a student for such education andresearch should, on the one hand, begin as earlyas possible and, on the other hand, not be narrowed prematurely to exclude the capabilitieswhich round out specialized competences andfrequently transform them in creative directions.This combination of general education in the artsand sciences coupled with specialized educationin a department, interdepartmental field, or pro-3fession may be carried out more effectively andin a shorter time by incorporating the requirements for the A.B. with those for the M.A. in aDivision or with those for a professional degreein one of the Schools. On the one hand, inquiryand integration of knowledge may be increasedin the general courses and specialized work in theCollege, and on the other hand, research andtraining in the Division or Professional Schoolmay be directed to more flexible and universalformulations of problems than those possible inthe terms given by the specific discipline or profession itself. The function of the university andits graduate education is to preserve withoutdiminution or adulteration full and precise competence in a discipline or profession within a context which profits from an awareness of changing knowledge in other fields with consequentopportunity for the development of higher-orderconcepts and techniques deriving from newknowledge.5. Departmental and Interdisciplinary Teachingand Research: Since the Renaissance, the historyof graduate research and teaching has been adouble story of rivalry and of fragmentation ofsubject matters. From the seventeenth to thenineteenth centuries, rivalry between new disciplines and sciences and those already established arose out of the intrusion of the naturalsciences into the dominant and expanding humanistic erudition and teaching; and since thenineteenth century, the rivalry has arisen fromthe intrusion of the social sciences into the precarious synthesis of the natural sciences and thehumanities. Fragmentation has occurred fromthe beginning as each of the three expandingfields broke into endless subdivisions and specializations. In the process, subdivisions havebeen combined into hyphenated fields whichbecame additional subdivisions, and fears havebeen expressed about a rivalry between two cultures, humanistic and scientific. When the relation is seen as one of disciplines rather than oneof fields, the possibility of interdisciplinary research and teaching presents new problems suggestive of fruitful possibilities of resolution, forthey are problems, not of juxtaposing two fieldsin which related problems are examined in different technical languages, but of devising anddeveloping a common discipline to connect andtransform existing disciplines. The University ofChicago has made early and long use of interdisciplinary committees and institutes for research and teaching. They have originated new disciplines, found new uses for existing knowledge, and organized new fields of research andstudy; they have also been the victims of fragmentation and multiplication. The function of auniversity and its graduate education is to maintain on a high level and to advance work in thevarious branches of knowledge, and to guardagainst weakness and degeneration by rootingout the insignificant and superfluous and building connections to form new disciplines and todevelop new applications of knowledge.6. Knowledge as Acquaintance with What Is Already Known and as Inquiry into What Is NotYet Known: The books and reports in the librarycontain statements of what is known and of whatcan be studied in the arts and sciences. Education must begin with that information and withacquaintance with the methods which were usedby the discoverers and creators of that knowledgeand of the problems they solved. But educationdoes not consist merely in mastering and repeating what they said and did, even if theiraccomplishments are recognized as problem-solving, for problems can be solved only after theyhave been found. The importance of the problem-finding stage in education and its relevanceto research is seen in the gross statistics of thesuccesses and failures of students engaged ingraduate studies in some departments at The University of Chicago. After admission to graduatework, very few students fail in their courses;very few fail in their preliminary examinations oreven in their comprehensive examinations. Whenthey are admitted into candidacy, however, andwhen they must "find a problem" for research,an extraordinarily large proportion of them areeliminated— they do not fail a set examination,but they withdraw, let time pass, and eventuallybecome drop-outs because, despite their formalpreparation in their fields of specialization, theycannot find a problem whose solution would bea contribution to knowledge. The function of auniversity and its graduate education is not onlyto bring students to a mastery of available information in a field or to a mastery of the techniques that have been used in solving problems;the function is to join information, method, andattitude together in the recognition that problems do not present themselves ready-made andthat inquiry and research depend on findingthem and analyzing them into appropriate concepts and procedures which open the way to newdiscoveries.These are some of the problems of graduate4education and research which the Universityfaces. They differ only in circumstances and details from the problems which it has faced sinceits foundation and in the solution of which it hasformed its particular genius. Continued operationin accordance with that genius does not dependon consensus concerning such an enumeration ofproblems or concerning a program of operationwith respect to those problems or to an amendedlist of problems. The statement of the genius ofthe University, like the statement of the problems which were used to expound that genius, isreflexive: if the formulation of what the University is and has been and what problems it facesand has faced leads to discussion, and in thecourse of discussion to finding other problems,the consideration of the genius of the Universityhas served its proper function in reinforcing anoperative genius which is pluralistic and innovative, but critical and informed.Every effort to reform and improve graduateeducation is eventually channelled through theUniversity's departments or their analogues. It istherefore necessary to include discussion of polity among the problems of graduate work. Onemember of the Committee posed the issue well:"Does the department polity admit grave abuses,which are hard to remedy? Is there any plausiblealternative to the departmental polity?" Theclear and agreed answer to the first question was"yes" and to the second was "no." "The properstress of this section, then, should be to repeatthe standard argument for a departmental polity(it is necessary to academic autonomy), acknowledge the grave abuses to which it gives rise, andendorse such remedies for these abuses as seemto us good." The following section faces theseissues.Part II. PolityDepartmental polity has developed in graduateuniversities as a means of assuring that thosemost responsible for teaching and research in adiscipline also may play a major part in determining policies which affect that discipline. Thispolity also has prevented universities from beingtoo easily or too suddenly reshaped to suit thestyle or philosophy of a particularly forceful divisional or university -wide administration. At TheUniversity of Chicago, for all the frustrations towhich it gives rise, the departmental polity hasbeen reasonably effective and there have been few calls for its elimination. That being the case,it is important that the abuses to which it givesrise or to which it can give rise be regularly isolated and faced.1 . A potential weakness of the large amount ofdepartmental autonomy at The University ofChicago is the fact that it can become difficultto improve a department which has lost its senseof direction and intellectual excitement or hasceased to attract outstanding students and faculty. Such a department may tend particularly toperpetuate its weaknesses through weak appointments. It has often been observed that strong departments have to make especially strong cases tojustify new appointments, renewals, or promotions of faculty because there is a greater expectation of excellence. Thus the gap grows betweena university's strong and weak programs.Deans and higher administrative leaders, sincethey often have basically negative or at leastlimited powers, find it difficult to remedy thissituation. They can refuse to approve weak appointments or renewals but they can do little toinitiate strong ones. This is the case not only because of the tradition of departmental autonomybut also because it is difficult for one not in aparticular field to assess a given candidate oreven to evaluate the needs of a given departmentor to prescribe its future directions.Where there is a question about the representative character of evaluations of potential newfaculty or of existing faculty facing the questionsof renewal or promotion, it may be wise to makeit possible for requests for these evaluations toissue not only from the departments, but also independently from the Dean's office. This wouldalso diminish the possibility that an outside eval-uator may write an unwarranted favorable reportto a department where the possibility exists thatthis evaluator might some day be appraised bysomeone in the department.2. A second enduring problem with the traditional departmental polity has to do with the encouragement it can give to the tendency for agroup of tenured faculty to perpetuate its ownpriorities. The case can be made, of course, forthe fact that such a group may well balance theforces which are too enthralled by their ownspirit of innovation and promise of achievement.But the departmental style organizes power insuch a way that the burden usually falls on theinnovators, particularly if these are non-tenured.Ideological disputes of this sort cannot ordinarilybe resolved by simple administrative changes,but steps can be taken for staging the kind of de-5bates or soliciting the kind of help from outsidea department so that the issues can at least beraised apart from simple concentration on personalities or power relations.3. It has long been recognized that anotherliability to balance the assets of departmental organization is the tendency of departments to pursue their interests independently of the concernsof other departments. As a result conflicts candevelop when jurisdictional lines are seen to betransgressed, while, on the other hand, certainthings do not get done at all. We might distinguish two separate cases here. In the first, theremay be a conflict within the department betweenwhat it views as its major program and its servicefunction. By service function we refer to what itdoes for other parts of the university or for thecommunity, as in the case of literature departments which serve the university by offering language courses or the medical school which is atthe disposal of the community through its emergency room services. Will the University giveproper attention to the service functions and regard as seriously those faculty members who perform them as it does those who concentrate onwhat most regard as a department's "major program?"In the second kind of inter-departmental conflict, a department may not choose to developareas within its scope or competence, even ifthese areas are regarded by others in the University as necessary for their programs or for thelife of a full and balanced University. The trans-departmental committees (Social Thought, Ideasand Methods, History of Culture, Human Development, and the like) have served as a check insuch instances, and their purposes should constantly be reappraised in the light of changingneeds at the University.Correlated with the above is the difficulty atour University of establishing divisional (or professional school-wide) priorities— not to speak ofpriorities on even higher or more broadly-basedlevels. Some divisions tend to be rather atomisticcollections of departments, each with its ownneeds and priorities. In exceptional cases an interdepartmental committee can help formulatenew priorities, encourage new services by one department for another, and influence the makingof new appointments other than the departmentmight have made had it been left to its owndevices. It is fair to say that such a committee iseffective to the extent that it has resources of itsown. In certain instances such interdivisionalcommittees have helped make possible appoint ments in many parts of the University.Since we are unable to come up with a satisfying alternative to departmental polity, itseemed valid to address the main areas of weakness in such a style of organization; we wouldrecommend the following policies as measurestoward ongoing reform:a. There should be greater standardization ofthe procedures for recommending appointments,renewals, and promotions. This would implyprovision for developing procedures whereby student evaluations of teaching and evaluation ofscholarly contributions from both outside and inside the University would be included.b. Where there is a possibility that controversywill develop over departmentally-initiated requests for evaluation of new or existing personnel, provision should be made for some requeststo be initiated directly from the Dean's office.c. Each department should submit to the deana detailed statement of the department's expectations concerning one who is to be promoted totenure or to the rank of full professor. Recommendations for renewal, promotion, or non-renewal and non-promotion, could then be measured against the departmental expectations.d. Where this is not regularly or officially done—and we applaud the seriousness with which theProvost's office has taken the question of annualevaluations of faculty— each department shouldbe asked to send a detailed annual report to thedean outlining strengths, weaknesses, plans forfurther development, and the like.e. The University should make greater use ofoutside evaluations of its departments.f. Where such evaluations are not regularlyconsidered, at least once a year there should bea meeting of departmental chairmen within thedivision to discuss any problems of conflicts ofinterests between departments, as well as explorations of areas of inquiry which may presentlyfall between departments and thus be overlookedby the University.The Committee adopted the premise that maintenance and enrichment of the intellectual quality of the faculty and students must always remain a first and inviolable priority. For example,the highest standards in teaching and researchmust be reached for even at the expense of decreasing the size of the faculty or discontinuingsome programs. Likewise, for students no compromise of admission standards or standards ofacademic performance can be tolerated. Students6must be selected on the basis of intellectual capability and energy, and because they are attractedto the premium on inquiry characteristic of TheUniversity of Chicago. We believe the Universitycan attract 8,000 excellent students per year provided we allow reasonable flexibility in curriculum content and goal, and provided we developa reasonable mechanism for the students tofinance their education.Nevertheless, discussions of graduate education have an unreal character unless they come toterms with the preoccupying problems resultingfrom changes in demographic patterns, forms offinancial support, and relations to "clienteles"-by which is meant the pools from which prospective students might be drawn and the spheresin which they could pursue vocations after graduate work. While in the first two components ofthis report there was concentration on the localsituation, Part HI enlarges the scope and reportson national trends. It may be that Chicago is exempt from some of the national problems, justas it may have to face others with special intensity. The Committee felt, however, that this lessprovincial section could provide a framework forlocal adaptation, and there are several specificsuggestions as to what Chicago might do to facecurrent crises having to do with clienteles and the"market. "Part III. Graduate Enrollments in the 1970s and1980sThe Demographic Base: Higher education in theUnited States, although still growing, will sooncease to be a growth industry. Every meaningfulprediction runs the risk of being in error, but thisparticular one has a solid base. For a long periodahead, the future customers of our industry havealready been born. The second column of TableI shows the number of children born in eachacademic year since World War II.2 This numberincreased almost uninterruptedly until 1956-57.It then remained approximately constant at aplateau of about 4.3 million during a five-yearperiod, after which it declined substantially.By shifting the time scale by 18 years, as isdone in the third column of the table, we obtainthe number of 18-year olds in each academicApproximated as two-year moving averages of birthfigures for calendar years. These figures are taken fromvarious issues of Statistical Abstract of the UnitedStates. The data for 1969 and 1970 will probably be revised, but not by much. TABLE 1: ZERO-YEAR OLDS, 18-YEAR OLDS,AND 22-YEAR OLDS (in thousands)Zero-Year 1,000s 18-YEAR 22-YEAROlds Olds Olds1945-46 3,150 1963-64 1967-681946-47 3,630 1964-65 1968-691947-48 3,744 1965-66 1969-701948-49 3,661 1966-67 1970-711949-50 3,656 1967-68 1971-721950-51 3,745 1968-69 (B) 1972-731951-52 3,889 1969-70 1973-741952-53 3,961 1970-71 1974-751953-54 4,046 1971-72 1975-761954-55 4,115 (A) 1972-73 1976-771955-561956-57 4,186 1973-741974-75 1977-781978-794,2881957-58 4,306 1975-76 1979-801958-59 4,296 1976-77 1980-811959-60 4,310 1977-78 1981-821960-611961-62 4,312 1978-791979-80 1982-831983-844,2651962-63 4,178 1980-81 1984-851963-64 4,106 1981-82 1985-861964-65 3,936 1982-83 1986-871965-66 3,722 1983-84 1987-881966-67 3,598 1984-85 1988-891967-68 3,545 1985-86 1989-901968-69 3,570 1986-87 1990-911969-70 3,678 1987-88 1991-92year listed in that column.3 This is the cohortwhich supplies the college-entering class. For thepresent academic year (marked A in the table)the cohort is just over 4.1 million. This indicatesthat we can expect some increase in the size ofthe cohort, but not much and only in the verynear future.The outlook for the entering graduate class isdifferent. To see this we shift the time scale byfour more years, as is done in the fourth columnof the table. The size of the cohort of 22-yearolds in the present academic year (marked B) isThis procedure is not fully correct, because it assumesthat everyone survives until his 18th birthday and itdoes not consider migration to and from the UnitedStates. However, this objection is not of great numericalimportance, because migration does not amount tomuch and death rates below the age of 1 8 are low. Ifwe assume that age-specific death rates are constant andneglect migration, the number of 18-year olds shownin Table I exceeds the correct number by a constant(and small) proportion; the picture of the ups anddowns of 18-year olds is then not distorted. The sameapplies to the 22-year olds shown in the fourth columnof Table I:7about 3.75 million. These cohorts will increasein size by about 1 5 percent in the next six years,and they will not become smaller until 10 yearsfrom now.Nationwide Undergraduate and Graduate Enrollments: The percentage of 18-year olds who go tocollege is presently about 50. If this percentagedoes not change (more about this below), thetotal first-year college population will soon ceaseto grow and it will start to decline by the end ofthis decade, with obvious consequences for thedemand for new college teachers. The supply ofthese teachers in the years ahead has a great dealto do with the development of the number of22-year olds. The reduced demand for teacherswill probably have a negative effect on the proportion of B.A.s and B.S.s at the age of 22 whodecide to do graduate work, but the increase inthe total number of 22-year olds in the next sixyears may compensate for this, partly or wholly,to the extent that the size of the entering classmay not decline very much, or not at all. Sincethe number of 22-year olds will continue to growuntil late in this decade, it is likely that the number of graduate degrees conferred will not declinesubstantially until the mid-1980s; there may infact be no decline at all. Of course, there may besubstantial shifts in the composition of the graduate student body toward disciplines which provide employment opportunities other than teaching; more will be said about this later.The fraction of 18 -year olds going to collegehas been increasing steadily over the years, and itis quite possible that this college participationrate will increase beyond the present 50 percent.However, the saturation level is probably well below 100 percent, because there will always besome high school dropouts and some who prefera different type of postsecondary education orno postsecondary education at all. Also, it seemsplausible that the financial constraints of the stateuniversities will induce their administrators toraise tuition fees. This would have an upwardeffect on the enrollment in junior colleges, whichare much less expensive for students becausethey can live at home. Therefore, we should notat all be surprised if the future would show thatthe effect of an increasing college participationrate is largely confined to a growing studentbody in junior colleges. But this growth, too,would gradually disappear as the saturation rateis approached. There will be a decline in thenumber of 18-year olds from 1979 onward, andthere are predictions, such as those made by Cartter,4 which imply an absolute decrease oftotal first-year college enrollment starting in1983, in spite of an assumed gradual increase inthe college participation rate.5The Future Employment of Ph.D.s: There can beno doubt that, in the next 15 years, the proportion of new Ph.D.s employed as college teacherswill be far below the level that was considerednormal until recently. Of course, there will bedifferences, depending on the field and also onthe. institution where the degree is obtained. Itdoes not seem unreasonable to expect that theproportion of new Chicago Ph.D.s employed inteaching will exceed those of most other institutions, but it would be unwise to count on thepossibility that Chicago's proportion will not decline. Our students may be better on the averageand our faculty may succeed, by working hardon them, to obtain a larger "value added," whichleads to better statistics for the proportion of ourstudents who perform outstandingly in their professional careers. However, such statistics measure only a tail of the distribution. The predictability of an individual's scholastic or scientificmerits at the age of 22 is very limited; we shoulddo as well as we can when deciding on the admission of graduate students, because this raisesthe average quality of those who are admitted,but at the same time we should have no illusionsabout the dispersion around this average.A decline in the proportion of Ph.D.s employed in teaching will have several consequences. The obvious one is that Ph.D.s will beemployed in occupations where we do not nowfind them. This is h? line with similar developments in the past, mechanics now having two-year college degrees and secretaries having B.A.swhich they did not have 25 years ago. In muchthe same way, we shall meet civil servants with aPh.D. rather than an M.A. in economics, andpublishers with a Ph.D. in classical languages or4 Allan M. Cartter, "Scientific Manpower for 1970-1985," Science, Vol. 72, (April 9, 1971) pp. 132-140.5 There are other studies extending the predictions tothe 1990s and suggesting that this last decade of thecentury looks brighter from the viewpoint of the college industry. This is an exercise in futility. For onething, predicting the number of 18-year olds in the1990s requires a prediction of the future developmentof the birth rate, which is a notoriously difficult variableto predict. For another, it is hard to see what kind ofdevelopments in the 1990s would require decisions now,in the 1970s, that could not equally well be made in the1980s when we know the number of 18-year olds in the1990s.8political science. This will imply disappointmentsin a number of cases in which the person involved would have preferred a teaching position.The experience of a sufficient number of suchdisappointments will lead, as a second consequence, to a shift in the composition of the nation's graduate students in the direction of disciplines that are less oriented to teaching positions,particularly some of the professional schools.If this happens on a sufficiently large scale, itmay lead to a decline in research output resulting from Ph.D. dissertations. This is a prospectfeared by many. However, it seems reasonable toexpect at least a partial compensation, for thefollowing reason. With the flood of Ph.D. students in the 1960s there was a tendency to relaxthesis requirements; in some departments thePh.D. thesis is now supposed to be about equivalent to one publishable article of medium size. Ina tighter market, with more demanding prospective employers, the Ph.D. thesis will require amore substantial effort, which will provide acompensation in terms of the total Ph.D. research output.Nevertheless, it would be wrong to think thatthe future is bright. Many universities face financial difficulties in spite of the fact that the number of 18-year olds is presently still growing.That will not last very long, and we should usethis short period to take appropriate actions.What follows are some specific suggestions.Extensions of the Master's Programs: Some ofthe M.A. and M.S. degrees have become consolation prizes for those who did not succeed in getting the Ph.D. We should create a new image forthe master's degree, viz., more than a bachelor'sdegree rather than less than a doctoral degree. If60 percent of the high school graduates entercollege, it must be possible to attract a largepercentage of the college graduates for a one- ortwo-year master's program.Another possibility of extension is providedby the fact that there are many students whowish to be professionally competent without aspiring to be creative (as a Ph.D. is supposed tobe). Our University has a lot to offer to such students because of its large number of specializedcourses. Many of these courses have a very smallattendance; the incremental cost of twice the attendance is typically small. By passing a sufficient number of courses with a sufficient gradeaverage the student could be awarded a specialdegree, which might be tentatively named-forlack of a better alternative— a grand master's de gree. Such a program could be established inmany (though probably not all) departments andschools at relatively little cost.The grand master's program amounts to a continuation of the ordinary master's program to theextent that it provides more advanced trainingin a particular discipline. We should also considerwhat could be called— again, for lack of a bettername— a free master's program, which may bedescribed as follows.When a 22-year old obtains his B.A. or B.S.,it is no longer appropriate to be paternalisticabout which courses he should or should nottake. Of course, his freedom has to be limitedwhen he wants a master's degree in a specificfield, because he must demonstrate competencein his field to earn the degree. But why not permit him to obtain a free master's degree by taking a sufficient number of graduate courses of hisown choosing and making a sufficient gradeaverage? What is wrong with obtaining a general,non-specialized, graduate education? Such a program could be viewed as an extension of theDivisional Master's Program that now exists inthe Division of Social Sciences. It would extendthis Program to all graduate units of the University.Comments on the Proposed Extensions: Theabove suggestions have considerable educationalmerits, but they are also motivated by a desire tobroaden the University's support base. In theyears ahead, when cohorts will no longer growand then decline, we do need a wider base. Ourlocation in a large metropolitan area providesample opportunities. There must be hundreds ofthousands of persons with a B.A. or B.S. degreein or around Chicago. It seems reasonable to expect that several thousands would be interestedin getting a master's degree if they could selecttheir own courses and proceed at a pace theydeem desirable. The free master's program wouldnot be confined to 22-year olds; it would attractpeople of any age, thus contributing to the goalof life-long learning.The free master's program will contribute littleto the University's image of a research-orientedinstitution. In this respect, more optimism is justified for the grand master's program. Althoughits participants may not desire to do creativework themselves, their participation in discussions will stimulate their colleagues in the Ph.D.programs and their faculty members. Nevertheless, to further the interests of the University asa research institution we have to consider steps9which will compensate for the likely decline ofthe Ph.D. proportion of this country's graduatestudent body.Foreign Students: There are many foreign countries, particularly in the Western world, where themajor current problem in higher education is theenormous increase in the number of students.Most of these countries can look forward to sizable annual increases for a long time to come before they even approach the present Americanacademic participation rates. An additional complication for many of these countries is that theadministrative mechanism of their universitieshas been upset and in some instances even dissolved in the last three years. This is a result ofrecent campus unrest, which has had a muchmore lasting impact in several countries abroadthan it has here. Another consequence of the unrest has been that research output in many disciplines is presently far below the level of fiveyears ago.The two main academic problems for thesecountries are (1) how to insure that a rapidly increasing student body will receive an educationof acceptable quality and (2) how to achieveacademic excellence in a limited number of institutions, not only for excellence per se but alsoto supply the teachers needed for the increasingnumber of students. This second problem shouldbe contrasted with our prospect of decliningPh.D. programs. I think that we should be ableto participate in the high-quality instruction offoreign citizens while serving our own needs. Butit should be trade, not aid; the other Westerncountries have become sufficiently affluent tobear the financial burden of the graduate training of their own citizens. In more specific terms,there could be a consortium of a small number oftop-rated American universities, including Chicago, which can negotiate with Ministers of Education abroad. Representatives of the consortiumshould be able to convince these Ministers that itis worthwhile to discuss their needs for academicmanpower in relation to educational opportunities in the United States. The foreign Ministriescould name students, and pay the full cost if thestudent is accepted. The U.S. universities couldreciprocate by sending progress reports on theforeign students to their home Ministries. Ofcourse, the individual participating universitiesshould decide on whether prospective studentsare acceptable.This project requires a careful approach. Therewill probably be uneasiness on both sides. The other nations might fear that their studentswould stay in the United States although thechange in our labor market should be discouraging in this respect. Patriotic pride might be affected. However, things are changing, and time ison our side. Many Europeans now recognize thatthe American pattern, with a small number offirst-rate institutions plus many others which arenot first-rate, is the only real solution to theiracademic problems.Such a program could raise our campus population by several hundreds, possibly more, in the1970s and early 1980s. It is plausible that therewill also be interest abroad in the grand master'sdegree, which could be included in the foreignprogram. This program would not last forever; itis designed to be terminated by its own success.I would hope that in the decade of the 1980s, weand the Europeans, Israelis, Japanese, Australians, and others, as equal partners, could discussthe problems of educating the rest of the world.This prospect of equality in a not-too-distant future should be regarded as an important argument in convincing foreign Ministers to join theprogram.The Committee met for at least twelve plenarysessions; in addition, there were numerous interviews and communications by the chairman, subcommittee meetings, drafting sessions, and reports on research and reading by various members. Since the members came from many different parts of the University, there were representations of problems and possibilities growingout of the experience of these parts. Our Report,then, derives from a mixture of personal experiences, impressions, and observations, as well asfrom empirical data gained largely informally. Nomember of the Committee necessarily agreesfully with each part of this Report, nor doeseach member feel obligated to defend the Report in its entirety. We fully expect, furthermore,that none of the observations or ideas herein expressed are applicable to all components of theUniversity. We hope, nevertheless, that the Report will provide a basis of University-wide discussion.Martin E. Marty(Chairman) Richard P. McKeonHoward Aronson Norman H. NachtriebAlan Donagan Hewson H. SwiftJacob W. Getzels Dr. Alvin R. TarlovEric P. Hamp Henri TheilIrving Kaplansky J. A. B. van Buitenen10REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON TEACHINGTo: Edward H. LeviOctober 31, 1972The Committee on Teaching hereby submits itsessay-report. We do not know how useful othersmay find it, but we think the members of theCommittee have had some educational effect onone another.Stuart M. Tave (Committee Chairman)William Rainey Harper Professor in the Collegeand Professor and Chairman of the Departmentof English.Why We TeachWe speak here not of teaching and not of teaching at a University but of teaching at a Universityof a certain sort. We do not say that it is whatall universities should be, and would insist ratherthat there should be varied institutions seekingexcellence in varied ends, but we do say it is important that there should be some of this sort.It is a University that conceives highly of itselfand with these pretensions it must be judgedseverely, for if it is not what it claims to be thenit has no valid claim; it becomes not merely goodin another kind but an inferior version of a thingthat has value only when it is superior. In anystatement we make, therefore, we risk writingour own satire.The University as Teacher: The distinguishingmark of this University is that it devotes most ofits powers to the advancement of research andscholarship and to the education of students whowill be able adventurers in the discovery of newforms of knowledge. It was founded as a "university." Its graduate divisions and professionalschools are its largest part; most of the facultyof its College are appointed both to the Collegeand to the graduate or professional faculties. Itis, among major universities, small and deliberately so, to make its resources adequate to its intentions of excellence. It does not have a number ofthe degree programs, departments and schools ofother universities, partly no doubt for historical or accidental reasons, but chiefly because it hasno willingness to do what it cannot do best in itsown kind. Its kind is intellectual.It is exposed therefore to charges of narrowness and, since choices are also exclusions, thecharges are not always foolish and the choicesmust always be open to reconsideration. Butwhat it must be prepared to resist is any attackupon the devotion to research as an unfitting orunserviceable choice for a university; nor can itgrant that a devotion to research becomes exclusive of a devotion to teaching.Those charges are themselves narrow and simple when they see research and teaching as antagonist forces and they misconceive the natureof both. There are indeed problems in the relations of teaching and research, and the University must always be setting itself against pressuresboth external and internal that divide the two; itmust because its peculiar strength will always lieat that point where they meet and where theymeet not in compromise but in reinforcement.The reality of that strength is in the history of aUniversity which has been notable as an effectiveteaching institution: not because the teaching isan additional or separate achievement, or secondary, or a by-product, but because the same investigative minds found their natural and necessary activity in all forms of learning. Historicallythis has been a University whose graduates havebeen moved, in an extraordinarily high proportion, to become teachers themselves. It has beenone of a few universities which have been genuinely innovative in curricular development, atall levels, from its own elementary school to itsmost advanced degree courses and programs. Ithas been able to do that work because it has hada faculty who are innovators in their desired anddaily work, immediately concerned with the bestthought that their disciplines are capable of, concerned with all problems of organizing and learning presented by those disciplines. What it hasdone in curricular development and in teachingmethods has then become influential elsewhere,so that it has been, at its best, a teacher of institutions.The distantly extended effectiveness of theUniversity as teacher presents it with a problem11in making its work understandable. Where effectsare remote from causes and not readily visiblethere will be rightly a skepticism to claims ofconsequence. These doubts impose on the University the additional educational task of continually explaining itself to others and to itself.As the distinction between privately and publiclyfinanced universities becomes less obvious whenboth are dependent on governmental support,the University must become a teacher of the public and its representatives whose support it needs;the country cannot afford many universities ofthis kind and it has a right to ask why it shouldbe willing to take the burden. Students musthave closest to them the immediate concerns oftheir own learning, of the teaching they receive;when the University is doing many things otherthan teaching them, and of no obvious directvalue to them, they should be asking questionsabout what it is they gain by being students here.To try to answer such questions must be part ofthe teaching function of the University, endlessly, in every form of explicit statement and dailypractice. It must always be examining itself.It is important to insist upon the varied kindsof teaching that are carried out by the Universitybecause both faculty and students tend to assume that the kind of teaching with which theyare familiar in their own work must be the norm,for better or worse, and that all teaching is to bejudged by that one norm. A good part of theteaching function of a university like this is directed outward, the work of the faculty oftenbeing addressed not primarily to a local audiencebut to a national and international audience, defined narrowly or broadly by the immediatenature of the work. The University Press is, inthis sense, one of its important teaching agencies;it is proper that this University has created astrong Press, distinguished in its book list, unmatched in its range and quality of journals. ThatPress becomes, of course, not the publisher tothe faculty only but the channel by which scholars everywhere speak to their audiences. It is aninstance, at one extreme, of how a university ofthis sort becomes widely diffusive in its teachingeffect. At another extreme, because it is a University heavily engaged in research, a large partof its teaching is necessarily in the proportion ofone teacher working with one student. Much ofthe very important teaching therefore does notappear in the list of courses and much facultyteaching is not done in the classroom; there are,certainly, faculty who are far more effective inone-to-one teaching than they are in the class room. There is much important teaching of thosewho are not students at all, in the usual sense,but who are here for postdoctoral work. Nordoes all teaching in fact move in the directionfrom faculty to students. Faculty can spend agood deal of time teaching other faculty. Becauseof the quality of students, because of the relatively small numbers of students and the largenumber of seminar-type classes, students becomeeffective teachers of students, in and out of class.The Professor as Teacher: The question cannotrest there because in the daily experience of mostfaculty and most students the central figure ofthe teacher remains the teacher in the classroom.But if he is there effectively it is because he is afigure who moves to and from that classroomand makes it part of a larger landscape. It is fairto ask why he is there at all. We are a faculty engaged in the pursuit of new knowledge. Why,then, do we teach? Why should a scholar or scientist, if he really is doing serious work, be distracted from that work to teach a class? The firstanswer one must give is that he should not be. Ifhis teaching is a wasting of his time and a dissipation of his energies he ought not be doing twothings badly rather than one thing well. Histeaching should be as intellectually important tohim, as difficult, as interesting, as satisfying, asanything he does. If it is not, something has gonewrong with himself, or what he is teaching, or hisstudents.Why do we teach? One way of answering is tosay, quite simply, we teach to listen to the soundof our own voices. It is necessary. We teach, aswe publish, to know what it is we are saying. Itis a necessity of thought. We teach to listen tothe sound of our own voices not to hear an echobut an answer. That is one reason why, as we liketo think that the excellence of the faculty is essential to the students, the excellence of the students at this University is essential to the faculty.They must be the most difficult respondents,bringing always the questions and the answersthat press most. The faculty must be worthy ofthem, not out of a sense of obligatory service,certainly not with the comforting self-approvalof conferring a favor, but because only the verybest effort of mind will be adequate to the highrequirements of those students. Teaching is not,cannot be, a transmission of idea from one mindto another as one might deliver a package fromone place to another; the idea changes as it moves.To teach something to somebody changes thething. At the very least the teacher is forced to12think out anew what it is that he is teaching, andto whom, and for what end and, therefore, inwhat way. He must understand again what it isthat he thinks he knows. It is for that reason thatteaching at a freshman-level is not for the seriousscholar a distraction from serious work but a partof the fundamental thinking he would not otherwise be brought to do. If teaching is, as it mustbe at times, an interruption of a line of thoughtbeing pursued with single mind, that may well beone of its primary values. It changes the teacher.There is an excellence of teaching that comesonly from those who do not only teach, butwhose teaching is continually informed by, transformed, disturbed by, their own unresting attempts to push the limits of what is known. Whatthey teach is not a subject matter shaped byothers and consigned to them as teachers. Theyare themselves the makers and shapers in theprocess by which their subject is always in motion. What they teach is, if not immediately oftheir own making, because it cannot be simplythat, yet theirs as they are doers in the samekind. But it is also true that there is an excellencein scholarly research that comes only from thosewho teach. A faculty member doing importantresearch, we have said, should not interrupt hiswork in order to teach; his teaching should be insome important way related to his research, improving both. But that does not mean that thetwo are simple extensions or continuities of oneanother, or that the same subject matter or problem is translated from laboratory or library toclassroom and back again. We have said also thatthere is an important way in which teaching isand should be a disturbance. If there is a leisureand freedom necessary to research, there is alsoa need for a force that continually stirs thatpeace and moves it; moves it from easy paths ofself-containment, from the limits of only thoseproblems set by oneself, however difficult, fromonly self-questioning, however vigorous. It isgood for a man who is interested in opening newpaths to be moved from his track. The difficultcourse of the University is to find for its facultymember that valuable balance between the freedom to go his own way and the need to go withanother. It is the course of special value for bothits faculty and its students.Problems and RewardsThe point of balance, to be sure, will vary fromone part of the University to another, from onetime to another, from one faculty member toanother. That is easy enough to see and to say. But if there is no obvious formula and if theremust always be exceptions to the combined roleof scholar-teacher, there is also a temptation forparts of the University to slide into the comfortof what seems to be flexibility and is often reallya yielding to circumstance. The problem is thencompounded because the exceptions tend not tobe symmetrical. To make a favorable case for thefaculty member whose exceptional virtue is inhis teaching is more difficult, because it is muchharder to bring satisfactory evidence on his behalf. To make the case for the man whose claimis in his research there are plain proofs to offer;there is also a national visibility so that impartialwitnesses can be cited; there is the further temptation of money.The faculty member may be collecting outsidesources of support for his research and have thatcash value to the University; if that is not, in anyone instance, an irresistible fascination to a university of integrity, it is yet an understandableattraction to be able to underwrite large piecesof a salary budget with a subsidy. But whenfunds which help determine the size of a faculty,the possibilities of tenure in an area, or the levelof salary, are dependent on external agencies,they are not equally available to all parts of theuniversity. They are not given to all academicareas and they are not given to all functions ofthe university. In the balance of disciplines andthe relations of teaching and research they pushthe university toward a shape it does not fullychoose for itself. The lure of his sources of support may take the faculty member in a directionhe would not choose for himself, so that even research is dulled. And he is offered, further, theincentive of a career in drawing upon distanttreasuries so that he has no need for the rewardsof teaching. He learns young to be the juniorentrepreneur. If he is successful he does well onhis own, the particular university where he sojourns is not essential to his ends, and indeed itis not clear why he need be at a university. Buthis success, or even his prospective success, makeshim a desirable object, coveted, competed for,and his presence is purchased at a cost to fullteaching effectiveness. It is not a price the University should be willing to pay.The faculty member to whom teaching is abarrier which his superiority enables him tojump, who thinks that his research will suffer ifhe must teach, is not the researcher for this University. As we seek the teacher who needs his research to be the teacher he wants to be, we seekthe researcher who needs his teaching. Perhaps13there should be no appointment in which the appointed person is expected to spend most of histime on research.The heavy burden on the University here isthat the academic market does not offer equal returns for equally important work, and its wedgesdrive apart what should be the unity we seek. TheUniversity cannot live outside that market; but itsintegrity must be tested by its ability to resistwhat distorts its ends, by how well it practices toclose the gap between its intention and its reality: most concretely by the equity of its teachingloads and by how well its appointments, promotions, and its distribution of cash and other rewards do in fact recognize the unity it professes.There are, certainly, in different parts of theUniversity great differences in student-facultyratios and in time given to teaching. No doubtthere should be because there are different functions, but it would be interesting to see a detailedstudy of what these figures are. No doubt thereare real problems in defining teaching loads because, as we have already insisted, there are somany kinds of teaching, but it would be valuableto see each part of the University engage in thissort of self-examination. The results should bemade visible by public report and subjected tocomparisons. Then there would be an opportunity to see if the differences are indeed justifiedby differences of function, or if there are identifiable inequalities that are injustices. This examination would have to be, therefore, not simplya study of figures but rather a systematic evaluation of what it is each part thinks it is doingwhen it teaches; what ends it hopes to achieve;what kinds and methods of teaching it employsto those ends; and what reasons it has to believethat it is attaining its ends. How well does it bringits resources into teaching? And next, how doesit encourage and reward teaching?Rewards specifically designed to celebrateteaching are excellent things. The QuantrellAwards for undergraduate teaching, establishedhere before such prizes became widely fashionable, are substantial both as dollars and as important yearly ceremonial recognitions. Theyshould be imitated by other parts of our ownUniversity. Other means to the encouragement ofteaching can be devised which will be less extraordinary in their nature and a more direct partof the normal recognition accorded by the University. For example, there ought to be a systemof sabbaticals or leave-taking granted to youngerfaculty members who have been heavily engagedin teaching: it would make clear that the double demand upon their effort is serious, that theymust give themselves without reservation to theirresearch and to their teaching, that time for bothis provided and that both will be judged. But nodevice can be so effective as the simple proof ofdaily observation that the way of the teachingscholar is the path of advancement. The continuing example of the senior man sets the pattern—and it had better be good.The pattern of expectation about the importance of teaching in its immediate relation to theactivity of the research scholar should be established early and continued late. It should be apart of the program in which graduate studentsare educated that they are trained and practicedin the teaching of their subject. That trainingshould be a direct responsibility of the departmental faculty members who are charged withthe education of their students. Those facultywho have research assistants ought to engagethem in the teaching of the courses given by thefaculty, to engage them thereby in the total activity of the scholar and teacher. The value here isthat the education is effective on the facultymember too, who is forced to think again of hisown role as teacher. It should be a regular part ofthe life of the faculty member that he must bethinking of the problems and rewards of teachingand every stimulus to that end is desirable.Teachers young and old need to be continuallytaught. There are both uncertainties and certainties of mind, there are questions both of methodand of matter, always in need of exploration. Totake a simple instance, it is well that at this University mechanical teaching devices as substitutesfor thought are ignored with contempt; but itdoes not follow with the same certainty thattechnical aids and equipment could not be ofvalue if faculty understood better the possibilities, as they might if there were a competent person always available to tell them what is at theirdisposal and to make them aware of new developments. To take a less simple instance, it iswell that when a young faculty member arrives itis assumed that he knows his subject and canteach it, or will soon learn to do so, and that heought not be pursued by officious overseers; butit does not follow that he has no serious uncertainties and would not be helped by instruction,by staff and interstaff meetings in which hecould be taught as he shared experience withother junior faculty and with older faculty. Atanother level, there would be useful profits in aregular series of substantive seminars in whichfaculty teach faculty, on the principle that one14form of teaching leads to another. These sessionswould be most effective where they were cross-divisional; a concentration upon a question ofcommon interest with an audience formidablyintelligent and formidably ignorant is an idealteaching situation: it sets all the problems andopportunities of mutual education. There areother forms of combined teaching, which aremore expensive, but offer more directly largeeducational returns, in which two faculty members teach the same class. The potential actionin this compounding comes not when the hoursare divided and each teacher takes his own segment of a course but when both teachers arethere with the class and all are acting on oneanother. To put two teachers together in oneclassroom is not simply to double the educational possibilities but to multiply them by an unknown larger factor. If one of the teachers is ajunior faculty member and the other is senior,then there is one more complicating element thatgives the teaching enterprise its raised value.In these ways it is its teaching practice thattests the unity of the University. There is a special sense in which its teaching practice createsthe unity.The Teacher and the Unity of the UniversityThe work of the scholar is, more often than not,a necessarily lonely work: he faces his problem,lives with it, perhaps for years, in an intimateprivacy of suffering and success. That is one ofthe strengths and values of him and his work.The potential weakness is in an isolation that canleave him, and others like him, next door to oneanother, each leading a separate existence, eachseparately significant, but not giving or receivingwhat a university can offer. That tendency is accelerated as the need for special competencegrows and members of the same department findit increasingly difficult to follow one anotherwith interest and understanding. It is not a difficulty to be deplored with general pieties, becauseone does not produce general competence byspecific incapacity; and while welcoming theoften bright ends of speciality it is not sensibleto deny the means. Besides, in usual fact simplythe presence of impressive colleagues, their mereexample, more directly their questions, theirdoubts, their encouragement, at times their immediate participation or collaboration, generateand feed unities of keen life. It is further truethat simply the continuing presence in the sameplace at the same time of varied disciplines,which in aggregate contain most of man's major intellectual possibilities, makes for a unity. Thecollection operates, part with part, at manylevels, individual and divisional, modifying, presenting opportunities often unforeseen, forcingquestions. But in this way problems of the collectivity, problems of relationship and of wholeness, come into view only by chance or by irregular crossings and arousals of interest. It is inteaching, most directly, and by daily necessity,that the oneness of the University is made, or,where it fails, that its failures are most publiclyevident.It is when he teaches that the faculty membermust find a commonality of scholarly endeavorwith his students. What he knows, what he thinkshe knows, what he wants to know and how hewill go about finding it, have meaning then onlyas they are shaped by the needs of his students;where the process works he works a change inthem, and they in him. It is in teaching that thefaculty member must, if the job is being donerightly, work with other faculty. He must facewith them and with the students they teach incommon the questions of the ends of the discipline they practice and of the means of educating to those ends. There may be variant possibilities of ends and means, and one of the valuesof the need to turn together toward these questions is a mutual education in the possibilitiesthat are undiscerned by the individual. But thenthe diversity will be the product of an understanding of a centrality of concern and will be anaccess of strength rather than an accumulationof random purposes. The value of this unifyingneed imposed by teaching becomes all the greaterand all the more difficult of attainment as onemoves from particular disciplines to relationsamong disciplines. Then the quest for discoveryof a commonality and of a common language canbecome a profoundly moving pressure upon thebest qualified man in any discipline. The divisional structure of the graduate schools at this University, for example, offers opportunities forteaching which, when taken, have produced notable results, and which have not been seizedfully.It is by its unique teaching function that theCollege should be the center and the chief unifying force of the University. This is not becausethe College is that part of the University whichtakes teaching, or takes liberal education, as itsspecial duty, while the other parts are engaged inother and more advanced activities. That falselyconceived division of labor is what we havedenied; all parts of the University are teaching15agencies and in all parts the teachers are engagedin the pursuit of new knowledge. But it is in theCollege as nowhere else that the parts must converge and try to understand what they are doingas parts of a whole. It is in the College that theself-examining questions must be faced not as anoptional interest in an abstract possibility but asimmediate necessity, as theory-in-practice. It is inthe College that the questions are extraordinarilydifficult, because as each part is in continual motion a satisfactory resolution of forces is neverpossible and the College is in endless restless turmoil. The least intelligent and least satisfactoryreaction of the other parts of the University is tolook away from this disturbance with the comforting, and sometimes contemptuous, feelingthat happily the problem is not theirs to understand or to solve. It is their problem, too, createdby them in action or default of action. More importantly, it is their opportunity; that disturbance, if they can hear, speaks to them as theirown, should stir them to a better sensitivity thana pulling away in protective self-sufficiency. Inthe College the faculty of other parts of the University can speak and be spoken to on a uniquestage, a focal point of so many varied modes ofhuman understanding. In the College they canteach and be taught by those colleagues and students who are insistent in demanding most fromand conceding least to the claims of professionalcertainty. They can bring to question the mosttightly hugged certainties of some of those students and colleagues. There are in the Collegethose who deny a necessary place, in the education of all men and women, to whatever form ofknowledge happens most to offend their ignorance; and there are those who are assured thatthe shape of knowledge and the articulation ofits parts have been discovered and set and waitonly to be transmitted annually. A college leftto itself can become liable to those extremes. Itis in the College that there are most opportunities for faculty to teach by twos, and by threes,and by staffs. The abuse of the staff system isits slow hardening into an agency of indoctrination; but its virtue in its proper form is that itreaches across individual limits and disciplinarylimits to become a powerful agency of self-education for a teaching faculty.The College has, therefore, as a focal point, adistinctive teaching function as a part of the University; but as it is not distinct because it ischarged to teach, neither is it that part of theUniversity which is distinctly charged to offer aliberal education. All parts of the University that are teaching as they should be are engaged inliberal education. Those who are professionallyconfident that they are doing no such thing haveno great cause for self-approval. Where the education of graduate or professional students providesinformation and know-how— is a training in theuses of techniques or research or practice— however well the education does that job, if it doesno more then it has not the ends which thisUniversity sets for itself. A graduate student, forexample, who gains his doctorate as a subordinate participant in a group research project, inwhich he has been given an assignment and hasdone it well, has not been well educated. He hasnot discovered his own problem, charted his ownmeans and pushed to his own limits. The resultof a student's research must be important, not amere exercise, because otherwise it has no meaning to him or to anyone; but the test of the education is not the result of research only but whatmanner of man it is who has attained it. He mustbe anabled to find always new results because heis aware of what principles control his work, andbecause he is capable of critical examination ofhis discipline and capable of self-criticism. Theends of graduate study are equally frustratedwhen the student has been undertaught or over-taught. It has failed when he has drifted to hisdegree, stumbled alone into and out of a dissertation subject, having never learned to find andto form. It has failed when he has cast himself inthe mold of another man, taken fatally the impress of a dominant teacher and is no longer hisown man.The Teacher and the StudentThe last difficult test of the unity of the University is in that sensitive balance of the relation ofteacher and student.What that relation can be will be determinedby what is conceived to be the purpose of theteaching. The purpose of our teaching is intellectual. It is the point from which we started and towhich we return. It is a purpose that needs mostassertion when it is most denied as inadequate orirrelevant or self-serving. What we try to do certainly will not meet all purposes of the individualor the society; that is true and that is the point.What a University of this sort tries to do in education is greatly important, is what no othersocial institution can do so well, and is something for which there is no substitute. Nor is theUniversity fitted to do other tasks, fulfill otherends, and it mistakes its own ability when it attempts them.16The University teacher's relation to his students is intellectual and he cannot remove himself from that responsibility either by neglect, ordeliberate abdication, or by making his presenceoppressively close and overwhelming. He is not,for example, a parent and it is no longer fashionable to expect him to play the part; if he tries ithe may be resented. Sometimes he finds it forcedon him and then he must respond with suchgrace as he is capable of, but he is not suited toit. It is more current to expect him to be afriend, and that is a part there is often moreeagerness to try; it is more difficult to resist, because to do so is to seem foolishly defensive andfearful, when to respond is to be more warmlyopen and fully human. In one further development in this line, it is said that the right relationof teacher and student is that they must meet asequals; to deny that, with modesty, may be anembarrassing gesture. All these relations can beattractive possibilities and they are not false, orrather they are neither true nor false except asthey originate and develop. Sometimes that relationship, parental or friendly or equal, may become enormously important in one life or another and more important than what is hereasserted to be the distinctive relationship ofteacher and student; but that is an accident forwhich the University is not necessary and a university is a haphazard and wasteful form ofcreating the occasion.If the relationship of university teacher andstudent is intellectual, their lives touch at thatpoint where both are involved at the same moment in the same question of the mind. That canbe, and it ought to be if both are doing what isproper to them, a reaching involvement, thoroughly absorptive, totally demanding. It can bea moving moment, for what is distinctively in tellectual is not exclusively intellectual and by itspower it calls into activity many other parts ofthe man. The dedication to the pursuit of theidea brings its moral pressures to bear, will not besatisfied with less than the tenacity of a relentless commitment, is devastating in its refusal ofanything less than the most scrupulous honesty.These things stir the emotions. There are fierceexcitements in the process of coming to understand, of seeing for the first time, of making.There is, for teacher and student, a joy of creation. For that joy we teach. It is not common,and the everlasting temptation is to embrace thesimulacrum.It is in this process of understanding, when itis true, that the other relations of teacher andstudent, parental or friendly, perhaps lastinglypersonal, can come into being; and then, whenthey spring from and retain their root in that intellectual source, they need be neither sought norshunned. The question of the equality of teacherand student becomes no problem. If the studentis the equal, that will become apparent. If he isthe superior, that too will emerge. There are fewfaculty who can teach for long at a Universitylike this one without recognizing among theirstudents those who are brighter and better thanthemselves, students who become their teachers.That, too, is a joy of teaching and a test of theteacher.Stuart M. Tave (Chairman)Wayne C. BoothDr. Jarl E. DyrudDonald A. FischmanNeil HarrisEugene N. ParkerJoseph J. SchwabGeorge H. SorterJanice B. SpoffordTHE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO RECORDOFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRSRoom 200, Administration Building2 X Wm m $%om ft3** SPSS? e«§< f?l£«•h-.-'% '%Jt <&aO rs pi3^> Hirofm mHIo oEa0r2.ON^1fe*:o z"0 I 0m £ c 333 9 T>s >- Q ¦of" 3HOz l.O r-r- >s 00 <Q0)3SS z n'T1 O m *¦••¦*¦ r- Ow 3