Liberal Arts Vs. the Bottom Line

By Craig Savoye
From the Christian Science Monitor April 9, 2002

Craig Savoye's recent article profiles Carroll College as "a case study" of the challenges liberal arts colleges must confront to remain viable--and academically sound--when faced with the public's demands for professional programs.

As president of the oldest college in Wisconsin, Dr. Frank Falcone bolstered professional programs when he arrived in 1993. With this move, he was able to reverse the decades-long declining enrollment at the school. Backed by the college's board of trustees, Dr. Falcone intends to continue in this vein and divide the college into two parts: Graduate and Professional Studies and Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Many faculty members have voiced concern over this entrepreneurial decision. Their concern is that professional programs such as physical therapy and computer science, divorced from the classic liberal arts curriculum, may leave students in these departments under-prepared academically. Some faculty feel that the liberal arts side of Carroll College may be forced into serving the professional majors with just the occasional English or history elective rather than providing a foundation and architecture for an entire undergraduate education. There is also concern that the academic reputation may suffer, not only for graduate-studies bound liberal arts majors, but for the entire institution.

With interest flagging in traditional liberal arts fields, many small liberal arts colleges may see this type of division as a logical solution to low enrollment or budget crises. Carroll College faculty, however, who have voted twice against this division, are not likely to be able to stop the split. Savoye writes that this tension between giving the "customers what they want" and giving them what they need is endemic to the "struggle to find a sustainable pathway for liberal arts."

To view the original article, visit http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0409/p15s01-lehl.html.

To view other op-eds and articles and AAC&U's most recent articulation of the nature and value of a twenty-first century liberal education, part of AAC&U's Presidents' Campaign for the Advancement of Liberal Learning, see http://www.aacu.org/CALL/index.cfm.

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