Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Remaking College: Innovation and the Liberal Arts ed. by Rebecca Chopp, Susan Frost, and Daniel H. Weiss
Student dollars follow trends in higher education as easily as those same dollars follow trends in fashion. Yet, there will always be consumers of that which is classic – the white button down shirt or the little black dress will always be in style. If anything, minor adjustments to these items to maintain their relevancy is all that is needed. Similarly, Rebecca Chopp, Susan Frost, and Daniel H. Weiss’s edited collection of essays Remaking College: Innovation and the Liberal Arts argues that liberal arts colleges, a classic choice for American higher education, must attend to the concerns of accessibility and cost, technological advancement, and vocational significance to remain relevant. As higher education institutions continue to navigate the quagmire of external and internal pressures and concerns that clamor for the attention of administrators, faculty, students, and parents alike, Remaking College presents a collaborative attempt to navigate the tensions of the immediate while preserving the foundational elements that make liberal arts colleges a uniquely American staple of higher education.
The editors and their contributors, many of whom run notable institutions such as Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr, begin with the simple assertion that liberal arts colleges are survivors, institutions that have persisted despite the various challenges that have always faced higher education. As they note in the introduction, “[t]he contemporary residential college is a surprising case study in flexibility, strength, and irrepressibility, all key components of the kind of resiliency that individuals and institutions need in the twenty-first century” (p. 1). They argue that liberal arts colleges, like the simple white shirt, are adaptable to any age.
The thesis is simple: liberal arts colleges are uniquely positioned to innovate and educate for a global, technologically progressive world. Remaking College is divided into six parts, representing the key areas of the work’s inquiry: (1) Reimagining the Liberal Arts College in America; (2) An Opportunity to Lead; (3) Knowledge, Learning, and New Technologies; (4) Collaboration and Partnerships; (5) Residential Communities and Social Purpose; and (6) Future Prospects for the Liberal Arts College. With these divisions as pattern pieces, Chopp and Weiss begin Part 1 by exploring what makes liberal arts education valuable and distinct, inviting their peers to embrace the call for innovation prompted by the challenges facing higher education today. Subsequent parts of Remaking College embrace the layout provided by Chopp and Weiss’s essays, attempt to provide commentary on the array of issues perplexing liberal arts colleges today while providing insight into the ways liberal arts college leaders view the critical issues of the day.
Chopp and Weiss begin their reimagining of liberal arts colleges by reasserting the commonly held belief that liberal arts colleges – through their emphasis on critical thinking, character development, and practical knowledge – provide students with an education that prepares theme to pursue both individual and communal good. Countering current critiques of liberal arts colleges as elitist and expensive, Chopp argues that change for liberal arts colleges can come from embracing knowledge design and intentional community as means of educating students that are primed by social learning for direct engagement. For Chopp, “knowledge [End Page 145] design… place[s] creativity and agility at the heart of learning and scholarship by embracing new learning platforms and recognizing the power of visualization and the remixing of knowledge” (p. 19). Intentional community, then, is the context in which knowledge design and learning engagement occur – a convenient argument for residential liberal arts colleges that have long touted the educational benefit of the residential experience as an extension of the classroom. Chopp’s embrace of the missional language of “life together” (p. 23) serves as a moral and educational imperative for liberal arts colleges in the higher education landscape.
In Chapter 2, Weiss argues that the most significant, immediate challenge for higher education is the need “to realize an academically compelling, publically comprehensible and economically sustainable vision in an environment...
