By Harry Lewis
America's nice examine universities are the envy of the world—and none extra so than Harvard. by no means earlier than has the contest for excellence been fiercer. yet whereas striving to be unsurpassed within the caliber of its college and scholars, Universities have forgotten that the elemental function of undergraduate schooling is to show youngsters into adults who will take accountability for society. In Excellence with no Soul, Harry Lewis, a Harvard professor for greater than thirty years and Dean of Harvard university for 8, attracts from his event to provide an explanation for how our nice universities have deserted their project. Harvard is exclusive; it's the richest, oldest, strongest college in the USA, and so it has set many criteria, for higher or worse. Lewis evaluates the disasters of this grand institution—from the recent button factor of grade inflation to the hot controversy over Harvard's dealing with of sexual misconduct cases—and makes an impassioned argument for swap. The lack of objective in America's nice schools isn't inconsequential. Harvard, Yale, Stanford—these areas force American schooling, on which loads of our destiny relies. it's time to ask whether or not they are doing the task we wish them to do
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Example text
Deans and professors are discouraged from talking to the press, lest they say something “offmessage” from an official university position. As an unhappy consequence, media scrutiny regularly draws attention away from the real issues, and public embarrassment drives decisions that should be made with more principled deliberation. When the press of bad news drives policies, universities patch things that look bad rather than understand and repair things that truly are Introduction 15 broken. By spending time on grading policies or on the number of football players in the freshman class, as all the Ivy League colleges have done in recent years, these great universities have addressed symbols in which the media or other targeted groups have interest.
Isaac Greenwood, one of the twenty-five students who graduated in 1721, studied science in London and returned to Cambridge to become the first Hollis Professor of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy in 1728. With Greenwood, both the style and the substance of a Harvard education began to change. Greenwood gave collegewide lectures on the latest developments in astronomy and other sciences. His classes did 28 Excellence Without a Soul not rely on readings from textbooks, since there were none for the material he was teaching.
The graduate had few strong prejudices. He knew little, but his mind remained supple, ready to receive knowledge. Things have changed at Harvard, but elements of this description are hauntingly familiar today. The international prestige of the name and the ambitions of parents provide nonacademic rationales for stu- Choice and Direction 33 dents’ college selections. If Harvard graduates leave with prejudices, or even ideals, they probably did not pick them up from what they studied. They may be ready for anything, but not because curricular demands gave them skills and expertise.
