The President’s View

I don’t think there can be an educator in America who isn’t concerned with the achievement gap between white and black students. It is a persistent and nationwide problem.

What is a bit of a surprise is to learn that the achievement gap appears to be narrowing in the Southern states, while it remains persistent, or is even increasing, in the Northern states, including Connecticut.

This emerges from a July 15 report in the New York Times, based on a study by the National Center for Education Statistics. Historically, the achievement gap between America’s black and white students was found to be greater in the Southern states, “where the legacies of slavery and segregation were reflected in extremely low math and reading scores among poor African American children,” the Times writes.

This has changed. Evidently, the widest gaps are no longer seen in the Southern states like Alabama and Mississippi, but in states like “Connecticut, Illinois, Nebraska and Wisconsin.”

Officials who conducted the study offered no explanation for this trend, only to say that it calls for further research.

That Connecticut should be among the states with the greatest “achievement gap” is both embarrassing and inexcusable, and something that can’t be allowed to persist.

The reason stated is “partly because white students in Connecticut score above the national average, but also because blacks there score lower, on average than blacks elsewhere.”

Warren T. Smith, vice president of the Washington State Board of Education said that in the report that the regional variations were not as significant as the factors that remained consistent in all states where African American students are concerned. : “Inequitable distribution of teachers, inequitable funding of schools, institutional racism. That is consistent across the board.”

Clearly we need to do more. At Fairfield, we send student mentors to our local schools; we have a free Bridgeport tuition program, and are dedicated to preparing high school students from the surrounding towns so that they are prepared for college.

For instance, we recently developed a summer immersion program for Bridgeport science teachers from public and parochial schools with a goal of doing what we can to enhance science instruction in the schools, and many of our teaching graduates go straight into the local schools and we know that they are passionate young men and women who love what they do, and are driven to make a difference.

This is a systemic problem and we, as a community, need to take ownership.

For obvious reasons, universities have an interest in attracting the most promising students they can to their campuses. But “promise” has got to be expanded to include more generous assessments of human potential than just SAT scores and a bulging resume of student activities.

When allocating scholarship funds, all universities should embrace their responsibility to reach a broad diversity of students, to include individuals who exhibit broader dimensions of “promise” and who bring contrasting social and cultural perspectives to the work of the institution.

Unfortunately, we are in a period where many universities feel they are in a  squeeze. They feel compelled to remain high in the various rankings that make their school attractive. The costs of dropping in these rankings — which are pretty dubious in many cases — seems like a risk that is too great for the school to take. And so perhaps the easiest way to bolster or maintain the institutions ranking is to increase the dispensation of “merit” aid — that is, to give financial aid to students who appear the most likely to boost the rankings in the traditional ways.

Of course, a university can create a diverse environment while allocating “merit” aid as well as need-based financial support. The key is keeping a balance.

At the moment, it appears that for many institutions the balance has swung heavily toward “merit” based aid, and there is a social cost to this trend.

A new study by the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute — and cited on the Web site Inside Higher Ed — suggests that the adoption of merit aid by private colleges and universities has a negative impact when it comes to socioeconomic and racial diversity on campuses. The Author, Amanda L. Griffith, an assistant professor of economics at Wake Forest, did a survey of 93 colleges that began to award financial aid based on “merit” between 1987 and 2005.

What she found was that 5 years after a university began to award “merit” based aid, the percentage of students who receive Pell Grants — that is students from lower-income families who receive federal aid — begins to drop by as much as 5 percent. Also, after about 10 years of “merit” based award programs, the top and middle tier universities show a decline in the enrollment of students of African-American descent of 2 percent.

Perhaps these are not figures that seems significant, but extended over time and multiplied but hundreds of universities all competing with one another using “merit” aid, these percentages do add up to a lot of students who are being pushed to the margins.

The author of the report concludes, “It is worrisome, given the already low levels of representation of low-income and minority students at four-year colleges, to find that the introduction of a merit aid policy is associated with a decrease in the percentage of low-income and black students, particularly at the more selective institutions in the sample.”

There’s no doubt that  the world of higher education has been changed in recent years by new  technology. Not so long ago, if you wanted to discuss, say, the paintings of  Vermeer you would have directed your student’s attention to black-and-white  plates in a book. Now, each painting can be brought to the screen in stunning  color and resolution via the internet.

That’s just the beginning.  Increasingly, universities and colleges are offering online courses — even  online degrees — and there’s no question that there are enormous benefits that  come with the immediacy and scope that the technology offers. At Fairfield, we  post many lectures on the internet to be shared around the world. Many other  universities do the same.

Given that, wouldn’t it be better to put all  our energies into making our classes available via the internet to as many  students as possible?

Well, one of the principles that we believe in at  Fairfield is that education is conversation. In fact, it is a Jesuit principle  that we make sound decisions in our life out of a process of dialogue, out of  listening and being open, in the university, to a teacher. Something important  happens in the interaction between a student and a teacher.

There is an  exchange. Not just an exchange of ideas, but a process through which a young  mind is opened to a fresh insight and then directed through a tutorial  conversation towards a higher understanding. This is what a meaningful tutorial  conversation is all about.

That is one of the reasons why we keep our  student to faculty ratio somewhere in the order of 12 to 1. Those are small  classes, you’ll agree, but classes where we believe a spark can be ignited. We  think the “Aha!” moment, when a student really grasps an idea, is more likely to  happen in this more intimate environment  at a close-knit residential  school than in a big class, with hundreds of students taught by a graduate  assistant, or through a reliance on technical aids and online teaching.

Higher education should bring about a transformation of the student,  leading to a deeper understanding of the world we live in so they are equipped  to engage with the big problems, and have the confidence to bring about  meaningful change in the world.

Is this old fashioned?

Well, I don’t  believe so, and an interesting article in the latest Chronicle of Higher  Education by Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University,  seems to support our position that small classes and the conversations they  engender are important to real learning. He cites recent research from the  Higher Education Research Institute that suggests that only 29 percent of  students reported studying more than 10 hours a week, and that 79 percent of  them reported turning in work that “did not reflect their best work.” Sixty-two  percent said they came late, and 44 percent said they fell asleep in their  classes (not likely to happen when your professor is looking right at you).

Studies also found that many students “never” discussed what they  learned in the classroom outside the classroom. In other words, a majority of  undergraduate students are not very involved in what they are  learning.

And yet, other findings show that 78 percent of first-year  students said they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the amount of  faculty-student contact that they had. How can they be satisfied with their  teachers, and yet be so indifferent to what they are being  taught?

Bauerlein, looking at these statistics concerning students,  concludes thus: “In other words, they liked their professors, they felt  comfortable with them, but they didn’t much care to spend time discussing books  and ideas with them.

They didn’t realize that an essential part of higher  education takes place in conversation, in face time with professors, in the  give-and-take of one-on-one discussion.”

Certainly, at Fairfield we believe that education is a conversation. Any public discussion about how we can  streamline higher education or make it more productive or cost-effective should  not lose sight of the centrality of the one-to-one interaction of teacher and  student, the human relationship, at the heart of the experience.

Fairfield University admitted its first class of students to the College of Arts and Sciences in 1947. About 40 percent of that class, and the classes for the next few years, were veterans — young men returning from the fighting in Europe and the Pacific and now able to resume their studies and civilian life under the GI Bill. They were men like George Baehr from Waterbury, who took the bus to Fairfield every day to complete the degree that had been interrupted when war broke out, and who would later go on to get his doctorate in history and return to Fairfield to teach for almost 29 years. Over the years veterans have remained a big part of our University’s history, and they remain so today. We have several veterans on our campus these days, and we have started a new Veterans Pride Program that, in conjunction with the new Post 9/11 GI Bill, will cover the full cost of their tuition.

I was thinking about this as I read last week that the month of July will have been the deadliest month for American and allied nations’ troops in Afghanistan, with 55 soldiers killed. Over the last few years so many young Americans have served overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan and in support roles all over the world. Obviously, as a society, we owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude, and providing them with the resources they need to further their education is the least we can do in recompense.

We also need them on our college campuses. These are young men and women of maturity, who have already shouldered heavy responsibilities. They have lived in communities with other men and women and worked in teams doing very difficult and often of course, extremely hazardous work. This kind of formation is like no other, and when they join our campuses, they bring their maturity and resolve with them and it rubs off on their classmates.

Many of them will also have been in profound contact with the cultures of the Middle East and Central Asia, cultures and peoples with whom we are struggling to find common ground in many cases. The importance of this contact cannot be underestimated. Yes, it may often have been bitter. Where that is the case, it is our duty to find ways to help our veterans integrate that experience. On the other hand, this contact constitutes a profound aquaintance with the language and culture of these nations, the cuisine, the customs, the points-of-view. For many veterans there will have been many points of contact that will have changed them, shaping their perspective on the world. And contact with them may serve to bring about change in these conflict areas, especially if they can educate — and provide education — to young people living in these difficult circumstances.

My point, is that if we are to ever come to a greater mutuality of understanding with these cultures and nations then all of these experiences that our veterans have had — profound and seemingly insignificant, frightening and beautiful — are experiences that will help us all in the search to find a common language. Our veterans have much to teach us, and we have much to learn from each other.

As I write my first blog installment, you may ask why the President of Fairfield University would be interested in starting a blog in the first place? It is my hope that we might begin a conversation about a matter that is of great concern to me, and one which I believe is of concern to everyone — education.

About 500 years ago, Jesuits got into the business of educating people almost by accident.  The primary concern of St. Ignatius of Loyola was how to “help souls” as he would say. But how do you do that? The early Jesuits came to understand quite quickly that if you wanted to help people to realize their full potential, then you had to give them the tools. You had to teach them to read certainly, and to use their reason to analyze problems. You had to encourage them to pay attention to their own talents as they emerged, and you had to nurture those talents until they could be put to work in the world. In short, people need care given to them. We all need that, and education is an endeavor that requires genuine care above all else.

This is still true, but it seems to me that as a nation we may be failing our young people by not “caring” for them properly by providing them with the education they need. Certainly our public schools are overstressed. So many of our young men  and women are not prepared by the public school system for further education. What can we do about that? Then of course there is the matter of a university education. The trends are quite worrying.  The cost of higher education has increased by 439 percent since 1982, while the median family income has increased by only 147 percent. The result of this disparity has been predictable enough. According to one source, as many as 2.4 million students who were capable of attending a four-year college in this decade did not do so because of the cost.

With the economy in recession, I fear that this number will increase. At Fairfield we are doing what we can to increase our financial aid to students and to hold our costs down, but clearly we need fresh thinking about this problem and we need to engage as a community to reflect on how best to give our young people the quality education they deserve. Their education should equip them with not only the means to start a career but to contribute meaningfully to their professions and their communities. This is what I’ll be mulling over in this blog — this and other related matters — and I hope you’ll share your thoughts and ideas with me as we begin this important conversation.