I am delighted to be here. I'm incredibly impressed with this commission, commend Governor on this initiative, and am so proud to be a part of Virginia higher education at this moment of our state's history.

We have been asked to be extremely brief (3-5 minutes). Perhaps I could tell you a little about the VAS.

VAS is working on various "quality" fronts. Let me name four, then talk a bit more extensively about the fourth, and invite you to initiate discussion of any of the four.

First, VAS is greatly preoccupied with phenomenon of grade inflation, which in our opinion is a warning sign for the advance of the cult of self-esteem, or mediocrity. The topic was discussed at our last annual meeting hled in Radford, at which meeting SCHEV chairman Bill Allen was a speaker.

Second, VAS is very much concerned with the de jure and (more predominant) de facto proliferation of speech codes stifling free inquiry and promoting political correctness on campuses throughout Virginia and the nation. We are involved in an ongoing research project this year for VAS, following up on the national impact of the study of Alan Kors and Harvey Silvergate, The Shadow University (Free Press, 1998).

Third, VAS is heavily involved, as are several other state affiliates of NAS, in ascertaining the extent to which university admissions decisions on bases irrelevant to quality of candidate (this certainly affects quality and curriculum).

Fourth, VAS completed a major study of undergraduate curriculum early in 1998, as you know. You have that study in your materials, and I won't insult you by repeating it here. But I will spend a minute focusing on its raison d'etre.

VAS does not believe that the university should be like a Safeway, or a Giant, or a Ukrops.

Clients are sovereign when they enter supermarkets -- they can buy hot dogs or health food, soda or wine. No one does or should look over their shoulders. Universities, especially in their undergraduate efforts, should not see themselves as supermarkets. The average 19-year-old is not sufficiently experienced to know what learning is critical for a lifetime as an informed citizen. It is therefore the responsibility of the institution of higher learning to provide a meaningful set of requirements, not to leave it to each student to piece his or her education together as best he sees fit. To VAS, a quality education, at the undergraduate level, does necessarily imply some considerable degree of direction. Good and learned citizens are the goal.

For the most part, our undergraduate years are the last opportunity we have to learn and think about human culture and knowledge without the anxiety of immediate practical exigencies. General education requirements should provide students with a core of ideas and knowledge that leads to an enlightened citizenry, rather than a collection of intellectually unconnected graduates prepared neither to earn a living nor to live a life. Our study, which focused on colleges which 2/3 of VA undergraduates attend, found that Virginia was as lacking as any other state in this crucial respect. I respectfully refer you to our study: it found there were too few requirements and too much unguided student choice. Courses that do fulfill the few requirements there are are often narrow and esoteric in scope. They are not related coherently to the courses that will be chosen before or after. They ARE often related to faculty's research interests, but allowing these research interests to dilute core learning is truly allowing the tail to wag the dog. It is just too likely that students will leave college with only a random collection of unrelated courses on recondite or even trivial subjects. Believe me, as a professor at a graduate school (a law school), I reap the fruits of this unstructured education.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has presented a core curriculum ("50 hours", in your preparatory materials) that provides a map for student inquiry. As its former chairman, Madame Lynne Cheney, noted, core curricula are not limiting. Rather than stifling students' intellectual development, she writes, "A core curriculum devised so that students encounter classic works and significant ideas.... expands choices and enriches possibilities of the individual. No two students will come through its complex explorations quite the same. One will love the ordered world of the theorem, another the untamed landscapes of the Romantics. But both will know both"

Thoughtful undergraduate education costs no more money and requires no more human resources than thoughtless education: in fact it probably consumes less of both (maybe we can talk about this). Thank you.

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Posted: December 14, 1998
By The Educational Policy Institute of Virginia Tech
sjanosik@vt.edu