Morton Owen Schapiro, 16th President of Williams
Induction Speech Oct. 22, 2000
I'd like to begin by thanking all of the official greeters. I know how much our great college means to each of you and it’s a special treat for me to have us share this stage together given our personal friendships.
As I listened to your words, I felt an almost overwhelming sense of excitement and of humility. Those of you who know me well will not be at all surprised about the former, although you might be just a little bit skeptical about the latter. But I realize what's at stake in leading one of America's premier higher education institutions. I understand the depth of not only your hopes and expectations, but the precedent set by the long line of brilliant leaders who have preceded me -- three of whom, John Chandler, Frank Oakley, and Carl Vogt, are sitting here today along with Jack Sawyer's wife, Anne.
Inductions are strange events. They seem to celebrate individuals but they really honor institutions. Nonetheless, on the personal side, I am truly blessed to be able to share this day with my wife, my children, my parents, my sister, my inlaws, and with so many wonderful friends. Mimi, you have recreated our lives so many times: in 1986 when we moved from Los Angeles to Williamstown, in 1991 when we moved from Williamstown to Los Angeles, and this past summer when we returned home to the Purple Valley. You have kept our many friendships alive despite the challenges of distance, made sure we have remained focused on our children, and somehow found the time to continue a successful screenwriting career. My parents, sister, and inlaws -- we are so fortunate to have you playing such a positive role in our children's lives and to have you here to celebrate with us today. Our friends -- you have come from near and far to join us here and Mimi and I will always be grateful for your unwavering love and support. I want to single out just three very special people who have had an extraordinary impact on my life and my career -- Bill Bowen, Dick Easterlin, and Mike McPherson -- I don't know where I would be today without each of you but it most certainly would not be on this stage.
Mike McPherson and I wrote a paper two years ago on the economic future of the liberal arts college and it opened our eyes to a reality we had somehow failed to notice during more than a decade of work on American higher education. I had always thought that the dire prediction made a century ago by Stanford president David Starr Jordan that the liberal arts college would become a relic of the past -- with the best becoming full blown research universities and the rest ceasing to exist -- was one of higher education's all-time worst predictions.
But was it? By the end of World War II, 20% of the 2 million students enrolled at America's colleges and universities were studying at liberal arts colleges. Today, that percentage has fallen to at most 4%, assuming an extremely generous definition of what counts as a liberal arts college. Without much fanfare, many colleges have transformed themselves into small universities with significant graduate programs or into professional schools, with shockingly few of their students majoring in English, physics, mathematics, political science, and the other disciplines that define the liberal arts.
What many of us picture as THE prototype for higher education -- a selective, residential, undergraduate college with the majority of students majoring in the liberal arts -- still exists. But that experience is the reality for fewer than 100,000 of the more than 15 million students currently enrolled at our nation's colleges and universities -- less than 1%. Little more than rounding error.
I'm an economist, and I believe in markets. If the student demand for what we do here at Williams and at but a few dozen other schools is so small that many institutions have been led to redefine their missions over the past century, then I have to question the relevance of what we do. This is especially true in light of what has been happening at research universities, where a smaller and smaller percentage of students major in the liberal arts. Only 1 of 4 undergraduates in this country majors in one of the traditional liberal arts disciplines, with the philosophy majors of previous generations being replaced by the business majors of today.
Why should we care if our nation's students select a very different type of education? Because when educators and the general public imagine the ideal education, they imagine us: dedicated faculty, teaching committed students, sitting around a seminar table discussing history -- in other words, Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other. If liberal arts colleges become so marginal that America's most talented high school students don't even consider us among their potential college choices, how long will that gold standard of higher education quality survive? I submit that the conscience of undergraduate education resides at Williams and at Carlton, at Amherst and Swarthmore, at Macalester and Bryn Mawr. And it is the responsibility of the faculty, staff, students and administrators at these schools to grasp the mantle of leadership in undergraduate education. I believe we have to work together to export more aggressively what we do so well. Just two days from now, I'll be joining the presidents of three other leading liberal arts colleges at a large gathering of high school students in New York City to extol the virtues of our kind of education. We have to get our message out -- not because we need to expand our applicant pool -- the elite liberal arts colleges are more selective than ever -- but because the most talented high school students in the country should think about our model as well as that of the research university when planning their college careers. And if they do select a large research university -- and for many of them that in fact will be the right choice -- they should surely consider majoring in one of the liberal arts disciplines.
Immersion in these disciplines enriches every aspect of students' lives and makes them better informed and effective citizens. At the same time, economists are quick to recognize how critical thinking skills are even more important in our new economy than in the old. Keeping pace in a world of rapid technological change puts a premium on becoming flexible, being prepared to respond to unknown situations and challenges. It means cultivating the ability for independent thought, for expanding the capacity to cope with new ideas and new outlooks. Learning to learn (and loving to learn), being comfortable with technology, and having well developed writing and speaking skills matter more in a world where individuals are changing jobs -- and even careers -- much more often than ever before. These are precisely the strengths of liberal education. If we believe this in our hearts, we have an obligation both to promote it and to make sure that the education we provide is in fact at the pedagogical cutting edge.
At Williams, and at the couple of dozen similar colleges, we pursue our undergraduate missions without the distraction of having to run hospitals, large Ph.D. and professional school programs, or highly visible revenue-generating sports. And those of us fortunate enough to be considered among the top liberal arts colleges don't have to scramble for students to fill our classrooms or for money to keep the lights on and the buildings from crumbling.
But, as President Bowen pointed out so effectively, with privilege comes responsibility -- a responsibility not only to serve our own students in the best manner possible, but to work with other higher education institutions to improve the quality of the entire educational enterprise.
At Williams, with a spectacularly talented and devoted faculty and staff, great physical and financial wealth, and the absolute finest students in all of American higher education, we are obligated to realize a vision of educational excellence worthy of our extraordinary resources. That vision undoubtedly involves the optimal use of new technologies to enhance the special relationship between a student and a faculty member; the breaking down of departmental boundaries, fostering cutting edge interdisciplinary teaching and research; a way to link more effectively the education that takes place within the classroom with the education that takes place in the dorm rooms and dining halls and on the playing fields; a program that allows our students to venture out into the world in ways that reinforce their classroom experiences; and a commitment to redouble our efforts to educate our students in an environment that reflects the great strength of our diverse society and to keep the precious prize of a Williams education open to the most talented students in the nation regardless of family background. Our college community is presently engaged in creating a strategic plan that considers all of this and much more.
The stakes are high. If Williams and its peer institutions do not take the lead in recreating undergraduate education in this country -- in defining excellence -- who will?
Our obligation to our students is clear. On a similar day 164 years ago Mark Hopkins stood in front of the Williams community and talked about the minds of our students not "as a receptacle into which knowledge may be poured; but as a flame that is to be fed, as an active being that must be strengthened to think and to feel ..." Thirty-nine years ago Jack Sawyer stood here and said that "The most versatile, the most durable, in an ultimate sense the most practical knowledge and intellectual resources which (our students) can now be offered are those impractical arts and sciences around which the liberal arts education has long centered." This vision is what has made Williams so great for so long. We have never wavered in understanding that our mission is to provide the highest quality undergraduate education possible, centered on an appreciation and indeed a love of the liberal arts. We can build on that legacy. This is a time for Williams to set a new standard of excellence in undergraduate education for an entire industry crying out for guidance. Let history one day note that our community had the courage to seize the moment.
Thank you.
Related Links
President Schapiro’s Biography
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