I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of the public university in society lately and my last two blogs reviewed the history of the university up to the colonial colleges in America and then to the emergence of the U.S. land grant university.  This blog speculates on the future…..

The Public University as Communiversity*

The mission of the university is described as the production, preservation and transmission of knowledge.  I believe this is an incomplete understanding of the public mission.  Our failure to take the application of knowledge seriously results in a partially-deserved “ivory tower” critique.   Productivity (application) of knowledge is just as important as production (accumulation) of knowledge.  Research must be fully integrated with teaching, as well as off-campus community outreach to capture the synergy of each and serve the educational needs of the nation.

Knowledge should be available in both the written (published) and community-based (online) formats. Transmission should no longer be a one way “downloading” of information from the teacher-expert to the student-learner, but a mutual sharing of knowledge. The communiversity of the 21st century will make “learning through inquiry” the integrative paradigm that resolves the tension between research and teaching within the academy.

I spent much of my early career working in agricultural extension, where university experts were expected to make recommendations for farmers to implement.   Agricultural extension educators carried the authority of science, the arrogance of academia, and a nearly 100-year old federal law that mandated Extension educators not only aid in the diffusion of knowledge but “encourage the application of the same.”

These 20th century assumptions must (and are) changing.  Some academics (including those in agricultural extension) are actively  inventing new ways of working. Outreach educators engaged in participatory research and education for example, acknowledge the contribution of all learners in the inquiry process – those from the university and those from the community.  All participants are expected to help identify and define problems from their own perspective, suggest alternative solutions, test those solutions and interpret results, thus capturing the synergy of the scientific and the lay learning experience. The outcome of participatory learning is not only community-based knowledge and scholarly publications, but empowered community members likely to act on their new knowledge.

Other university educators are actively creating new online courses and engaging in community conversations using learning networks and blogs.  A rapidly emerging forum for community learning is the online discussion groups that focus on specific activities and issues.

Communiversity Programs

An example of a learning network is the Pioneer Valley Backyard Chicken Association.  While easily overlooked by academics, these networks of active learners share questions, practical experience, and science-based knowledge on a daily basis through a listserve.  To support this group and similar like-minded citizen-investigators, I participate in online conversations and stay linked via Facebook and Twitter groups created to share knowledge and experience on food self-sufficiency.  I believe more academics should join in these conversations to keep up with current public interests related to their area of study.

Another public program that should be adapted by the communiversity is the “Dutch science shop” concept.  In these university-managed and community-based offices (similar to a county agricultural extension office) citizens share knowledge and initiate research to solve problems of importance in their own neighborhood. These centers might also offer a training ground for students through service learning and internships.  Community learning centers would provide a public space for citizens to build group identity and gain public skills, while encouraging local learning, research and action.

A Need for Radical Change

I believe that a radical transformation of the public land grant university is needed to better serve the citizens, businesses and communities of the nation. Citizens should be actively engaged in the research and education programs of their land grant communiversity. Of course, these changes will not occur without much dialogue and debate. Dr. A. Bartlett Giamatti, past president of Yale University wrote, the university should be…

“…a community open to new ideas, to disagreement, to debate, to criticism, to the clash of opinions and convictions.”

Personally, I look forward to the debate and would like to hear your own opinion on these suggestions!

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* I first heard the term “communiversity” from Richard Sclove, the author of Democracy and Technology and founder of the Loka Institute.

I’d appreciate it if you would share this post with your friends.  And for more ideas, videos and challenges along these lines, please join my Facebook Group; Just Food Now.   And go here for more of my World.edu posts.

My last blog reviewed the history and culture of higher education from the tablet writers of ancient Mesopotamia through the establishment of  colleges by the American Colonies.   This essay continues the story with the emergence of the public land grant university.   Few students (or faculty) at public universities know this history.

The beginnings of the Land Grant University

Americans have long valued public education. Early settlers built schools as cornerstones of their new communities.  Leading farmers of the 18th and 19th centuries were known for their interest in public speeches and pamphlets (the blogs of that era) introducing and debating new ideas.  Although the value of education among the elite had been recognized for some time in Europe, affordable public education for all was truly an American idea.

Jonathan Baldwin Turner, professor at Illinois College, graduate of Yale College and native of Templeton, Massachusetts championed the idea of a public university to serve “the working classes” in speeches and pamphlets in the 1830’s.  Support for Turner’s ideas grew among farmer groups, newspaper editors, industrial societies, and state and federal legislators. Senator Justin Morrill of Vermont introduced the legislation which would provide grants of public land (land grants) to be sold to finance a university in each state to “teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanical arts in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes.”

We often associate the idea of “land grant” universities with farming and rural America.  I’ve heard some university leaders reject the land grant ideal as no longer relevant, given that most people today live in urban and suburban areas.  But the name “land grant” had less to do with farming than it did with the funding mechanism the federal government used to pay for the new public colleges.  What made these institutions truly unique was that they allowed access to higher education to those previously excluded, which in the later half of the 19th century were largely rural peoples.  If the land grant university was invented today, it would most likely focus on the urban poor.

The second Morrill Act (1890) further broadened the availability of higher education by providing federal appropriations to support “separate but equal” colleges for African Americans living in the Southern states. In 1994, Congress gave land grant status to twenty-nine Native American tribal colleges, thus continuing the tradition of extending the land grant ideal to marginalized peoples of the nation.  These landmark bills represented a major shift in thinking about the purpose of higher education, which previously had been available only to the wealthy classes.

Research and outreach to communities are added

Although the need for a national system of agricultural research was identified by President George Washington, it took nearly 100 years for Congress to pass legislation creating the agricultural experiment station system with the Hatch Act of 1887.  This legislation represented the second evolutionary step in the growth of the land grants.  It provided federal funding “to promote scientific investigations and experiments respecting the principles and applications of agricultural science.”   The research function was thus added to the evolving land grant ideal.

The third stage in the evolutionary growth of the land grants was accomplished with the passage of the Smith Lever Act in 1914, establishing the national Cooperative Extension Service “to aid in diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects relating to agriculture and home economics and to encourage the application of the same.”  Although the outreach programs of the public universities have been seriously undermined in many states by budget cuts, the concept of knowledge in service to the larger community remains an ideal of the public university.  

President of the University of Massachusetts Kenyon L. Butterfield was an early champion of the land grant ideal.  In a 1904 speech, President Butterfield made a case for the three land grant functions when he called for each college to support ” its threefold function as an organ of research, as an educator of students, and as a distributor of information to those who cannot come to the college.”   Butterfield recognized the necessary integration of the three functions when he stated “these are really coordinate functions and should be so recognized. The college should unify them into one comprehensive scheme. The principle of such unity is perfectly clear; for we have in research the quest for truth, in the education of students the incarnation of truth, and in extension work the democratization of truth.”   While Butterfield expressed this vision in 1904, it was many decades before his ideas were realized.

A brief look forward

The land grant ideal evolved over time to serve the practical needs of a growing nation by integrating research and outreach into the university teaching and learning experience – and making that experience available to previously excluded women and men. I believe the next expression of the land grant ideal will fully extend the university to those citizens not in residence on its many campuses.  It will do so in ways which further integrate research and teaching through online social networks and community-focused university outreach.

University of Wisconsin President C.R. Van Hise’s 1904 statement that “a state university can only permanently succeed where its doors are open to all” must be reinterpreted to not only allow previously excluded groups in, but also to send university scholars out to meet the people of the nation where they live and work. New communications technologies and online networks will not only support this effort, but will make it a necessity if the public university system is to thrive in the 21st century.

I believe those public universities that are able to build upon the land grant ideal, re-engage with the larger community, and take advantage of communications and societal networking technologies will thrive in the 21st century.  While I’m surely biased, I think one way to do this is through research and education focused on agricultural sustainability.  But frankly, we need to “put the public back into the public university” in all our many departments and disciplines.

What do you think?

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I’d appreciate it if you would share this post with your friends.  And for more ideas, videos and challenges along these lines, please join my Facebook Group; Just Food Now.   And go here for more of my World.edu posts.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog claiming that we need to put the “public” back into the public university.  My own vision for the future of the public university is one of radical change, but any responsible transformation of the university, radical or otherwise, should be built upon an understanding of our history.  This blog presents my own (biased) review of the history of  the university before the public land grant institutions were created in the U.S.

The Beginning
While the university as an institution is less than 1000 years old, the ancestors of university faculty go back to 2500 BC. The tablet writers of ancient Mesopotamia were the earliest recorded class of intelligentsia. These court scribes had great political influence as they handled the correspondence, records of taxes, and other affairs of state for the rulers of the day.  While the record is incomplete on these early scholars, there is little doubt they were an elite class of men devoted to study, learning and influence.

More is known about higher education in classical Greece beginning around 500 BC. The Greek sophists were the first full-time, paid, teachers. These men gave “sample” lectures in public places to attract students, and then charged large fees to continue with a standard curriculum of prepackaged lessons. Over time, the sophists became known for their superficial and costly teachings. Unlike the sophists, the philosopher Socrates believed that wisdom would not be gained from prepackaged lessons, but had to be earned through critical reflection and dialogue. This controversy between the value of standardized lessons versus critical reflection was a harbinger of later debates such as that between professional training and personal learning during the early 20th century.

The Early Academy
Neither Socrates nor the sophists carried on their teaching and learning in any particular physical place. Plato, a student of Socrates, was the first to have a school at a preset location, a grove dedicated to the Greek folk hero Academus (the first “academy”). For Plato, the purpose of learning was the development of a class of educated rulers or “philosopher-kings.” Plato’s student Aristotle, on the other hand, believed knowledge should not be pursued to develop society’s leaders, but for its own sake. Thus, the debate between knowledge for social purposes and knowledge for its own sake began 2500 years ago.

Throughout this period schools grew up around individual scholars, but only took root when they became associated with storehouses for scholarly manuscripts, or libraries. The first known library was the museum at Alexandria, the Temple of Muses, on the Egyptian coast. Here, beginning around 250 BC grew a museum library that had more than 500,000 manuscripts. This resource for study attracted the great scholars of the period, like Archimedes and Euclid, who came to do full-time research and learn from each other.

Foundation of the Early University
During the Roman period, schools of lesser quality sprung up as minor businesses. Most of these schools disappeared during the Middle Ages when the only institutes of higher learning were devoted to religious studies. During the 11th century, Europe began to emerge from the dark ages, with education becoming more open and available again. The major cathedral church colleges in Bologna and Salerno in Italy, and Paris and Montpelier in France, added new courses to traditional clerical studies and began to attract larger numbers of students. This marked the beginning of the modern university.

Medieval university instruction was in Latin and students entered at age fifteen or sixteen. The baccalaureate or “beginners” degree followed about four years of study and acceptance as a “master” took one to three more years. Many of those students working toward masters degrees were also teachers in the lower level courses, much like graduate students today. Students of the day took time for leisure, often as drunken evenings sometimes growing into riots. One of the most famous was a 2-day brawl in Oxford that began as a tavern fight between students and “townies.” Several scholars were killed, books were destroyed and classrooms were burned.  Sound familiar?

By the end of the 13th century most of the foundations of the modern university had been established including ornate college structures, competitive recruitment practices, standardized teaching methodologies, entrenched administration, examinations, degrees, and academic regalia.  Little has changed at universities since the 13th century and that which has changed has done so very slowly.

Universities are Slow to Change

The major social upheavals associated with the Italian Renaissance in the 16th century and the scientific and technical revolution in the 17th century did not affect the traditional universities, at least at first. Florence became the center of Italian humanistic studies under the patronage of the Medici family, and other centers of learning emerged as alternatives to the unexciting studies at the university. The leading families of the day were business and political leaders who preferred to send their children to popular academies or private tutors rather than the major universities.

Exploration of new continents and new areas of scientific and technical study marked the business  and cultural environment of the 17th century, but had little impact on the universities. Francis Bacon, in the early part of the century challenged colleges and universities to look beyond their ancient teachings. Nevertheless, universities largely ignored the growing scientific movement of the era, much as they had ignored the humanistic movement of the previous century. By the 18th century, older European universities were in a serious state of decline. Struggling institutions progressively lowered their standards to attract students, becoming the diploma mills of the era.  Edward Gibbon described the impressive buildings that had been built for universities as “masking the dry-rot within.”

Universities in America
By this time colleges had been built in America, mostly under the influence of various church denominations to train clergy and political leaders. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Rutgers and Dartmouth were supported partially by colonial governments and mostly by student tuition. Enrollment was from a few dozen to a few hundred students, at most. These were elite institutions that offered traditional training in medieval studies such as Greek, Latin, logic, rhetoric, ethics and theology.

Westward expansion and denominational rivalries contributed to the rapid proliferation of colleges in the later part of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Generally small, these new colleges offered training in geography, languages, law, mathematics, geology, history, ethics, natural philosophy, literature and biology. There was a growing tension between classical training and an emerging scientific and professional training.

President Jeremiah Day of Yale College believed that universities should build character among the young men of leading families and not concern themselves with the needs of the masses.  Even then, the major academic institutions of the time were out of touch with the needs of the nation. By the mid-19th century there was a public call for a more utilitarian education available to more people.  The result was a national investment in the public land grant universities.

Last Thoughts
The publicly funded land grant universities represented a radical departure from earlier American and European colleges. Even so, today many characteristics of universities “before the land grants” endure, for example: the elitism of the faculty much like the tablet writers of Mesopotamia; the continuing debate about education for social purposes (Plato) or for knowledge itself (Aristotle); the “research” library like the one at Alexandria; the drinking parties such as those at Oxford; and finally the failure of the accepted curriculum to address the needs of society during periods of major social change as in Italy during the Renaissance, most of Europe during the first stage of the scientific revolution, at Yale in the early 1800’s, and perhaps even among public universities today.

This history was influenced by “American Higher Education: A History” by Christopher J. Lucas. St. Martins’s Griffin, NY. 1994.  My next blog will focus on the future of the public university.

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I’d appreciate it if you would share this post with your friends.  And for more ideas, videos and challenges along these lines, please join my Facebook Group; Just Food Now.   And go here for more of my World.edu posts.