Educating prisoners--men and women incarcerated for crimes large and small--has become an important item in the news lately. Recently, Governor Andrew Cuomo, ostensibly inspired by the Bard Prison Initiative and other such programs, has proposed a new financing initiative for opportunities for prisoners to earn higher education degrees while they are serving their time.

My personal interest in the subject has deep roots entirely attributable to my wife, Marie. Marie is a public defender in Baltimore (and a very good one, at that) and started out her legal career as a public defender in Manhattan. In between, she was a prisoners' rights attorney (her favorite oxymoron) in Buffalo  and in Washington, DC. In DC, she was the executive director of DC Prisoners Legal Services Project before we moved to Baltimore for my job. In short, Marie, and by extension me, has been involved with this population over her quarter century as an attorney.

Several years ago, Marie became very interested in prisoner education, and was looking into starting a program in Maryland. She contacted Max Kenner, the founder of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), to see what guidance he could give. As an alumnus of Bard College, I had been following the development of this amazing and in many ways heroic effort to provide a high-quality education to the incarcerated in upstate New York. Mr. Kenner offered his advice freely, but Marie was distracted by the illness and death of her mother and maternal grandparents over just two years and was never able to pursue her goals.

With this pedigree, though, my interest grew. I became a minor donor to BPI, and because of that and Marie's interest and the good graces of the Bard Alumni Office, we were invited in 2012 to a BPI commencement at Woodbourne Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison for men.

I have attended dozens of commencements, and the commencement at Woodbourne remains one of the most important events of my life.

We arrived at Woodbourne on a chilly and foggy morning in early June. Marie has a great deal of experience entering prison facilities of all types (local, state, federal, and private) and was surprised at the friendly greeting we received from the correctional staff. They really support this program, apparently. The security clearance was thorough but respectful, extremely respectful. We strolled over to a large tent, which is just about a hallmark of any Bard graduation, and chatted with one of the current BPI students in a Bard-red gown serving as an usher. He and I were thrilled to note that when he graduated, we would both have Bard degrees because the BPI degrees are no different from the one I earned. The only distinction is that at Woodbourne, the degree is Associates because the sentences tend to be shorter there, a grim consideration for those enrolled in four-year degree programs.

Marie made sure we sat away from the families to give them their space, which was energized with excitement. Instead, we sat way in the back with prisoners currently in the BPI program, who were at first bemused and then impressed with Marie. (I was quickly irrelevant.) The commencement was interesting, as all Bard commencements are. Bard's visionary president, Leon Botstein, gave a typically excellent speech that featured an observation that I had never considered before. He said, and I am very much paraphrasing, something along the lines that they can take away your family, they can take away your freedom, and they can even take away your life. They cannot, though, take away the fact that you earned a college degree. Pretty cool.

At some point, seven of the graduates were allowed to speak. The first started off conventionally. He listed those in his life whom he needed to thank for getting him to this point. Then he said he needed to thank one other person, a historical figure. In my mind, I braced myself for the obvious. Would it be Jesus or Mohammed, Jesus or Mohammed? Then, after a dramatic pause, he named his historical influence: John Dewey.

I nearly passed out.

The speech elevated from there. He spoke of philosophical concepts in the context of his own life. I thought, I have never heard a better student speech. This guy is just getting an Associates, and he is in prison! The next six were as good or better. Brilliant, wonderful! A testament to Max Kenner, Leon Botstein, Bard, and the fantastic students and faculty of BPI. I also learned from one of the speeches that my college chum, Delia Mellis, is an English professor with BPI, an added personal thrill. We had our own mini reunion after the ceremony.

Botstein had explained that other prisoner-education initiatives from other institutions had often failed because they were too egalitarian, too thinly spread. Bard, on the other hand, searches for students who are the most intellectually curious and motivated. Notice that they are not necessarily the students with the best grades in high school. Bard's incredible High School Early College program uses a similar criteria. I love this approach because when I was at Bard last century, the joke was that Bard was the college for underachievers. I used to wince at that description, but after decades in higher education, I am proud of it. I hated high school and saw little value in it. I surged at Bard. Now I am a dean. Do the math. Connect the dots.

Since the Woodbourne BPI graduation, I have become tangentially involved in a similar program at Goucher College nearby. I have never been clear on the exact arrangement, but Goucher seems to have received start-up funding from George Soros' Open Society Institute (a major funder of BPI, unlike me) through Bard to extend its longstanding program in Maryland's Jessup Correctional Facility for Women. Now Goucher is offering degree programs for men and women in Jessup, and I am very interested.

The director of the Goucher Prison Education Partnership (GPEP), Amy Roza, invited Marie and me last fall to sit in on some classes at a men's facility and the women's facility at Jessup. The experience was wonderful, and the students were fantastic. It is electrifying to see people hungry (starving?) to learn and to better themselves in a place where just about every aspect of their lives is a conspiracy to destroy their personhood. Only a monster would not be moved.

On March 19th, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Stevenson University will be holding another in its Diverse Perspectives Forum Series. This time, Amy Roza will be bringing faculty and--we hope--students who have been released to talk to Stevenson faculty, students, and staff about GPEP. This event will be eye-opening, and I am very excited.

Prisoner education may be unpopular. It may seem counterintuitive to spend private and public funds on prisoner education. In favor of prisoner education, people make well-researched and unassailable arguments about reduced recidivism and the like. I endorse those arguments, but there is a more important one. Education is what makes us better as a species. We need to educate all who want an education, and educate them to the best of our ability. It is just the right thing to do. It is evolutionary.

We got so much in common
We strive for the same old ends
And I just can’t wait
Wait for us to become friends
I feel a change coming on
And the fourth part of the day is already gone.
-Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter

A running assumption throughout the 2014 AAC&U/ACAD Annual Meeting was that higher education should prepare for “a change coming on”—a theme shared with other annual meetings in recent years.  Many presenters addressed this inevitability directly or offered ways of managing, adapting, or otherwise mitigating the coming change. But is there anything particularly remarkable about this current period of transformation?  And is it unwelcome?  After all, Benjamin Franklin is widely attributed as aphorizing, “When you are finished changing, you are finished.”  Change is a major component of life and may be the most significant marker of continued existence.  Granted, entropy is a form of change, but is that the sort of change we in the academy are facing?  The consensus at AAC&U seems to suggest otherwise as colleagues propose and demonstrate their creative responses to anticipated change with great frequency and commitment.

Friday’s HEDs UP session was a fine example of such creativity and even practical advice.  The HEDs UP sessions at AAC&U are a relatively new format in which presenters offer ten-minute commentaries “in the spirit of TED talks.”  While the topics of each HEDs UP talk are less closely aligned than in most panel sessions, the ten-minute presentation window makes for more cogent statements and thus a livelier tone.

On Friday, Kate Kazin, chief academic officer of the College for America of Southern New Hampshire University, described her institution’s mastery model for working adult learners.  In a similar vein, Cori Gordon, assistant clinical professor of liberal arts at Northern Arizona University, outlined her institution’s three competency-based “Personalized Learning” programs in which students follow “Critical Paths” adapted for them to complete their studies.  The offerings of the other two HEDs UP panelists—Jen Page, director of the Pre-Health Collection at the Association of American Medical Colleges, and Laura Palucki-Blake, director of institutional research and effectiveness at Harvey Mudd College—may initially seem thematically unrelated to the first panelists.  Page spoke on her database of shared learning and teaching resources while Palucki-Blake argued that “More Data Is Not Better,” the succinct title of her presentation.

All four presenters, though, directly confronted the problem of a changing world of higher education with clear and practicable solutions.  And whatever one thinks of their approaches, their directness is admirable.  Later that afternoon, with his own charismatic directness, José Antonio Bowen, winner of the 2014 Ness Book Award for his Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology out of Your Classroom Will Improve Student Learning, addressed a packed and enthusiastic hall and offered his hands-on advice for engaging today’s learners.  As disparate as these presenters’ suggestions are, they all captured the meeting’s general collegial can-do spirit.

One could hear solution-rich pragmatism amid the zeitgeist of sinking anxiety in many panels and presentations.  For instance, the panel “Preparing for the Apocalypse,” which I described in an earlier blog post, was an exploration of the possibility of moving liberal arts instruction out of the traditional university setting in order to preserve it.  Aptly, even AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider’s commentary at the closing plenary was an optimistic call for reasserting the strength of liberal studies and moving forward.

Change is happening in and around higher education.  We all seem to agree to some extent.  Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, said, “If the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is near”—words we should heed.  The sort or scope or speed of that change in higher education remains open to debate, but the attendees and presenters at AAC&U meetings generally have rallied around a strategy of rising to the challenge of the unknown.  Whatever the future, we can be assured of our collegial resolve.  I usually am inclined to a cynical—some would say pessimistic—outlook, so it should be telling that I would make this statement: after four days in DC, I am out-and-out sanguine about looming transformation.  The challenges of the future will be formidable and remain largely mysterious, but we educators have a tremendous capacity for adaptability and a vast store of creative ideas, and we appear ready to use them.  If we rise to the test with honesty and aplomb, higher education will be better for it.

One more aphorism:

Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back.

-Piet Heim

I think of that rhyme often in the face of a sticky dilemma, and we, the professionals of higher education, would be wise to take it to heart as we venture into our future.

One of the great paradoxes of higher education has to do with our dueling outlooks on the world.  Why do professionals who have devoted their careers to the notion that they can improve the lives of individuals through education and therefore improve the world—an inherently optimistic leap of faith—simultaneously wallow in the contemplation of the demise of their very undertaking and the extinction of all they value?

I am referring, of course, to the current spate of academic criticism, what I call the “literature of academic eschatology.”  We go to meetings, read articles and books, and listen to talks all dedicated to the assumption that higher education, as we know it, and particularly the liberal arts, is doomed.  And we, the professional optimists, seem to love it.  I know I do.

Certainly there is nothing new about all this doom and gloom in higher ed.  For decades we have heard about the corporatization of education, the canon wars, laments about the lack of high school preparation, and so on, and many of these threats are still present in some form or other.  Some have likely increased.  Worries about disruptive technology and college affordability are largely variations on the themes of the past, which is not to say that these threats are not real or we should be dismissive of them.  In fact, it may be our very propensity toward pessimistic anxiety that gives us the wherewithal to adapt and survive.  I imagine university dons in the Middle Ages similarly bemoaning that, given the continued influx of lunkheads and roustabouts as students, there would be no way for their institutions to survive into future generations.  And yet here we are.

The Thursday AAC&U Annual Meeting session titled “Preparing for the Apocalypse? The Liberal Arts in the Era of ‘Higher Education Reform’” touched on many of these themes—sometimes indirectly—and unsurprisingly drew a large and enthusiastic crowd.  During the session, two presenters—Johann Neem, an associate professor of history at Western Washington University, and Scott Cohen, an associate professor of English at Stonehill College—gave their views on what we could do to keep liberal arts education intact in the face of elimination from its traditional perch in institutions of higher education.  Afterward, responsive commentaries from Benjamin Ginsberg of the Washington Center of American Government at Johns Hopkins and Goldie Blumenstyk from The Chronicle of Higher Education rounded out the session.

The title of the session alone is troubling: “Preparing for the Apocalypse?”  The question mark can either be a provocation or a dodge.  As for the session, in the best academic tradition, it raised many more questions than it answered.

Neem and Cohen offered intriguing alternate strategies to protect the liberal arts in the face of the threat of extinction.  They both assumed, as did the audience presumably, theexistential value of the liberal arts.  Neem, though, frequently asserted that he was not convinced of the imminent demise of liberal arts but that he wanted to be prepared, “like a Boy 

Scout.”  He suggested four alternatives to teaching the liberal arts in a traditional university setting, including seeking out philanthropic patrons and starting instructional service networks along the lines of yoga communities.  Cohen focused exclusively on building niche or boutique universities for the liberal arts, but he also expressed misgivings.  For instance, he cited Joseph Turow’s Niche Envy to suggest that boutique culture can erode the very coherence of society.  After all, if everyone has their niche, where is the common ground on which we can all gather?

Ginsberg picked up on this point to critique Neem’s and Cohen’s ideas by decrying the potential loss of the egalitarian reach of the liberal arts as they are currently offered.  He described Neem’s recommendations as a form of “immigration”—that is, departing from problems to find a new land of possibility—and Cohen’s niche as a “retreat.” The irony that these suggestions were offered to empower faculty but instead felt reactive supports Ginsberg’s assessment.  But Ginsberg also laid blame at the feet of the faculty who, as he claims, do not spend enough time or effort forcefully and explicitly promoting liberal arts through their teaching.  Ginsberg’s idealism was most apparent when he cited Richard Vedder’s observation that many cab drivers have liberal arts degrees, which Ginsberg sees not as a symbol of liberal arts’ uselessness, but a mark of our culture’s great strength.  Even our cab drivers are informed citizens of our democracy, he declared.  Nonetheless, his comments seemed to assume that the main audience for lauding the liberal arts would be found in the university classroom, which presents a dilemma in an age of shrinking liberal arts enrollments.

The ensuing questions and comments at times provided more heat (not entirely unwelcome on a frigid morning) than light.  Is there “a common body of knowledge” we must teach, or is it a set of “common cultural understandings?”  Or perhaps we should ask “a common set of questions” and guide students as they grapple with answers.

And there, in the final discussion, we returned to the beginning.  There is a crisis in academia, an imminent failure that threatens to undo all we hold in the highest esteem.  It is so malign that we cannot even formulate the question that it comprises.  Our only communal agreement is that we know there is a threat and that it imperils what we all most value.  As academics, we debate the details but take the fundamentals for granted.  No matter our perspectives or backgrounds or philosophical stances, we all react to the menace and move to protect our core.  Maybe, even in the midst of our disputes, we can pause and take stock of our common ground.  We can celebrate what we all agree to be most true—the inherent value of the liberal arts—and communicate that value boldly in the public sphere.  We instinctively react to threats to the liberal arts because of this common belief.  So, let us celebrate the transformational power of the liberal arts we all seek to preserve…

Good.  Now we can resume the debate.

Americans expect some pretty unreasonable things from higher education, most notably, guaranteed "good" (i.e. high-paying) jobs.  In this way, Americans often envision the university as a mere extension of high school, only this time with tastier employment prospects.  Indeed, raw job-placement data has become a crude criterion of academic achievement in the American mind, and the sweeter and juicier the jobs (and their salaries), the better the education.  Or so goes the assumption.

But is tastier always better?  Few things in life are as satisfying as, say, a fast food burger served with a side of fries and pie for dessert, but a moment's pleasure is not a reasonable gauge of a healthy diet.  No human can survive long on such trans-fat laden fare.

Unnaturally occurring trans fats saturate manufactured comfort foods.  They satisfy, yes, but they also present a hidden double danger by simultaneously raising levels of bad cholesterol and lowering levels of good cholesterol.

And, you may wonder, what does trans fat have to do with higher education?  Well, nothing really except for the similar double danger lurking in our universities.  Like trans fat, it plays on our desire for personal gratification.  As with the double carbon bond of trans fats, “trans ed”--as I call it--features an unnatural double bind of rising student entitlement and plummeting expectations of academic standards.  If every student is a mere customer in the convenience store of higher ed, just what has that student “purchased?”  Ostensibly, easy assignments, good grades, and guaranteed (juicy) jobs--all wrapped in a tortilla diploma and warmed up in a low-wattage classroom.

Students and their parents--our "consumers"--demand more for less.  They incongruously insist on a lower-cost, higher-quality university "experience," complete with snazzy facilities and doting faculty, while the demand for the de facto currency of education--grades, course credits, degrees, and the assurance of jobs--grows shriller and more arbitrary, particularly in such a sour economy.  Inevitably, the professoriate and academic administrators collapse under the morbid pressure of relentless expectation.

Consider, for instance, the plan the Obama Department of Education cooked up to "measure college performance through a new ratings system so students and families have the information to select schools that provide the best value." (I am quoting from a Fact Sheet on whitehouse.gov). These ratings will eventually be used to award federal aid and will rely on certain measures (and I am quoting the Fact Sheet again):

"-Access, such as percentage of students receiving Pell grants;
-Affordability, such as average tuition, scholarships, and loan debt; and
-Outcomes [and this is the one that really concerns me], such as graduation and transfer rates, _graduate earnings_, and advanced degrees of college graduates."

"Graduate earnings?" This scheme, whatever merits it may have, will potentially de-incentivize the development or even continuation of programs that lead to low-earning fields. Yes, that means, no more community organizers straight out of college. More insidious though, is how this recipe, however inadvertently, promotes the hardening of the national perception that a college education is a burdensome 

formality--a plain salad on the way to or--more likely--in the way of the coveted big greasy burger with fries.

To grasp this situation, think of the students' perspective as "transactional," a view of education as a linear series of exchanges with a final payout.  Many or even most students imagine a perfectly predictable path to remuneration: tuition, assignments, grades, course credits, degree, job.  You do your time; you get your (melted) cheddar.

Simultaneously, we educators frequently spin highfalutin fantasies of the "transformational" power of rigorous university learning.  Students, we dream, will strive to become more well-rounded, broader minded, and deeper thinking.  Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, argues that “higher education’s highest purpose is to give all citizens the opportunity to find 'large and human significance' in their lives and work.”  Neat.  We educators are peddling steamed broccoli and vegan "bacon" amid the funnel cake and deep-fried chocolate bars at the state fair.
 
The dichotomy between the expectations of the end-users--students and their parents--and the presumptions of professors cannot be more stark.  The disconnect between students' transactional experience and their professors' transformational idealism is nothing short of absurd.

But wait!  It gets more complicated.  Even as we academics decry the transactional expectations of our students, we own and operate that very system--doling out grades, credits, and degrees like so many coins of the realm.  More troubling, we manage the transactional and transformational models of education side by side with little apparent awareness and near-zero acknowledgment--the unhealthy double bind of trans ed.  As a result, students' expectations for easy, satisfying grades rise, like bad cholesterol.  Professors, meanwhile, caught in the double bind, compromise their professional integrity, and the healthy rigor of transformational learning, like good cholesterol, decreases.  Trans ed, like trans fat, satisfies at first, but its inherit unhealthfulness threatens to undo us all.

Yes, my analogy is decidedly labored, but I trust you get the idea.  Besides, its laborious imperfection helps make the point. Richard Keeling and Richard Hersh, coauthors of *We're Losing Our Minds: Rethinking American Higher Education*, have noted that higher learning, done well, can and should never be efficient (a reasoned counterblow to recent calls for $10,000 degrees and the like). Just as there is no perfect way to remove trans fats from the American diet, there is no perfect balance between transactional and transformational learning, but we can do much better.  Eliminating trans ed's double bind from the classrooms of the American university will be as challenging and necessary and take as much tenacity and honest dedication as removing trans fats from the shelves of the American pantry.  The Obama FDA recently banned trans fats, thus proving more enlightened about the overall wellbeing of the citizenry than the Department of Education.

Where to start with trans ed?  Step one: admit we--anyone with an interest in higher education--have a problem.

Until then, trans ed will remain to American higher education as trans fat is to the American diet: pervasive, pernicious, and deliciously fatal.