esearch universities are so complex, so multifaceted, and often so fragmented that, short of major crisis, they can rarely focus their attention on a single agenda. We believe that the state of undergraduate education at research universities is such a crisis, an issue of such magnitude and volatility that universities must galvanize themselves to respond. Insofar as they have seen as their primary responsibility the creation and refinement of knowledge, America’s research universities have been superbly successful; in ways innumerable and immeasurable they have been the wellsprings of national stature and achievement. But in the education of undergraduates the record has been one of inadequacy, even failure. In a context of increasing stress--declining governmental support, increased costs, mounting outside criticism, and growing consumerism from students and their families--universities too often continue to behave with complacency, indifference, or forgetfulness toward that constituency whose support is vital to the academic enterprise. Baccalaureate students are the second-class citizens who are allowed to pay taxes but are barred from voting, the guests at the banquet who pay their share of the tab but are given leftovers.Captivated by the excitement and the rewards of the research mission, research universities have not seriously attempted to think through what that mission might mean for undergraduates. They have accepted without meaningful debate a model of undergraduate education that is deemed successful at the liberal arts colleges, but they have found it awkward to emulate. The liberal arts model required a certain intimacy of scale to operate at its best, and the research universities often find themselves swamped by numbers. The model demands a commitment to the intellectual growth of individual students, both in the classroom and out, a commitment that is hard to accommodate to the research productivity that brings research universities recognition, professional advancement, and financial security. Almost without realizing it, research universities find themselves in the last half of the century operating large, often hugely extended undergraduate programs as though they are sideshows to the main event. The numbers are there but the attention is elsewhere. It is the purpose of this report to try to bring the undergraduates into the big tent, to explore what kind of education a research university might offer that would fully fit its character and take advantage of its resources.
Commitment to Dramatic Change
For decades we have employed the rhetoric of change; for decades experiments have been undertaken. Now those experiments are becoming more varied, sometimes more successful, and often more serious. Some funding agencies have directed money and attention to undergraduate issues. Still, considering the nation as a whole, efforts have been timid, sporadic, limited, and unavailing. We believe that universities must commit to significant transformation now. Research universities must be willing to approach the issue of undergraduate education free from the blinders of past practice, to ask basic questions and be prepared for answers that require radical reformation of methods of operation. Given the scale of the institutions and the multitude of interests touched, change will be anything but easy. The commitment to dramatic change, not half measures, must be made now, and action must respond to the urgency of the issue.
We believe that the basic direction of change is clear: undergraduates need to benefit from the unique opportunities and resources available in research universities; clumsy adaptations of the practices of liberal arts colleges will no longer serve. The research universities need to be able to give to their students a dimension of experience and capability they cannot get in any other setting, a research experience that is genuine and meaningful. They should turn out graduates who are well on the way to being mature scholars, articulate and adept in the techniques and methods of their chosen fields, ready for the challenges of professional life or advanced graduate study. Research universities have unique capabilities and resources; it is incumbent upon them to equip their graduates to undertake uniquely productive roles.
The recommendations in this report may not attract every institution, but we hope that faculties will be motivated to debate the issues raised here and to accelerate their pace of action. In the hope of speeding that process, we have established a home page (Boyer Discussion Database) where discussions may continue.
Research universities cannot continue to operate as though the world around them is that of 1930 or 1950 or 1980. As everyone knows, it is changing with dizzying rapidity. These universities must respond to the change; indeed, they ought to lead it. Their students, properly educated for the new millenium, will be required as leaders while that world continues to transform itself.
In the Preface to his 1990 study, Scholarship Reconsidered, Ernest Boyer wrote, "the most important obligation now confronting the nation’s colleges and universities is to break out of the tired old teaching versus research debate and define, in more creative ways, what it means to be a scholar." This report hopes to refine the context of that remark and to affirm that the most important obligation now confronting research universities is to define in more creative ways what it means to be a research university committed to teaching undergraduates. The nation demands and deserves no less.