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Science at Liberal Arts Colleges: a Better Education?

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Science at Liberal Arts Colleges: a Better Education? Thomas R. Cech Science at Liberal Arts Colleges 195 Science at Liberal Arts Colleges: A Better Education? T WAS THE SUMMER OF 1970. Carol and I had spent four years at Grinnell College, located in the somnolent farming com­ I munity of Grinnell, Iowa. Now, newly married, we drove westward, where we would enter the graduate program in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. How would our liberal arts education serve us in the Ph.D. program of one of the world’s great research universities? As we met our new classmates, one of our preconceptions quickly dissipated: Ber­ keley graduate students were not only university graduates. They also hailed from a diverse collection of colleges—many of them less known than Grinnell. And as we took our qualifying examinations and struggled with quantum mechanics problem sets, any residual apprehension about the quality of our under­ graduate training evaporated. Through some combination of what our professors had taught us and our own hard work, we were well prepared for science at the research university level. I have used this personal anecdote to draw the reader’s interest, but not only to that end; it is also a “truth in advertis­ ing” disclaimer. I am a confessed enthusiast and supporter of the small, selective liberal arts colleges. My pulse quickens when I see students from Carleton, Haverford, and Williams who have applied to our Ph.D. program. I serve on the board of trustees of Grinnell College. On the other hand, I teach undergraduates both in the classroom and in my research labo­ ratory at the University of Colorado, so I also have personal experience with science education at a research university. Thomas R. Cech is Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medi­ cal Institute. 195 196 Thomas R. Cech Thus, recognizing that I may be too close to this subject to be completely unbiased, I have attempted to broaden my view in several ways. I have gathered statistics that quantify some aspects of the success of science education in liberal arts col­ leges versus research universities, although interpretation of these numbers is not unambiguous. I have also interviewed scientists who have achieved the highest levels of success in academia and government to obtain their perspective on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the preparation afforded by liberal arts colleges. I did so knowing that those interviewed had excelled in their profession, so one would expect them to be generally enthusiastic about the education that had preceded their success. Finally, I have sought the counsel of some of the country’s best college science teacher-scholars, those who are truly immersed in the subject. Others who have analyzed the subject of science education at liberal arts colleges have inde­ pendently come to similar conclusions, providing some confi­ dence that this shared view must not be too far off the mark.1 The aim of this essay is to explore three questions regarding undergraduate science education. First, how successful are those graduating from liberal arts colleges compared to their contem­ poraries at large universities? This analysis is based on objec­ tive measures of success, including the percentage of graduates who go on to obtain Ph.D. degrees. Second, how does the education at liberal arts colleges compare with that encoun­ tered by undergraduates at large universities? Both classroom education and research experiences will be considered. Third, why are the top liberal arts colleges so successful in training successful scientists? Here we confront a vexing conundrum: are these colleges successful because they do a great job train­ ing students, or are the students who enter their programs already so highly selected that they are destined to be success­ ful no matter what sort of education they receive? HOW SUCCESSFUL ARE LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES AT EDUCATING SCIENTISTS? Before examining the question of what it is about liberal arts colleges that makes them so successful at training future scien­ Science at Liberal Arts Colleges 197 tists, it is useful to review the objective data that indicate that they are indeed successful. Only about 8 percent of students who attend four-year colleges or universities are enrolled in baccalaureate colleges (a category that includes national lib­ eral arts colleges).2 Among the students who obtain Ph.D.’s in science, 17 percent received their undergraduate degree at a baccalaureate college.3 Thus, these colleges are about twice as productive as the average institution in training eventual Ph.D.’s. On the other hand, these same schools trained only 4 percent of the eventual Ph.D.’s in engineering, so their productivity is half the average in that field. This is unsurprising, as few liberal arts colleges have engineering programs. A more detailed view is provided by considering students trained by the top national liberal arts colleges. The institutions listed alphabetically in table 1 are representative of the best in the United States. Examination of table 1 indicates that most of the nation’s top colleges educated one to three hundred of the students who obtained Ph.D.’s during the five-year period from 1991–1995. These numbers put several of the liberal arts col­ leges in the top hundred of all institutions in Ph.D. production (see “Rank” in table 1). However, most of the institutions ranking in the top hundred are research universities with typi­ cal enrollments of twenty to thirty thousand students, whereas the liberal arts colleges typically enroll thirteen to twenty-six hundred, roughly tenfold fewer. Thus, to compare relative Ph.D. productivity of institutions of different size, the ratio of Ph.D.’s per hundred enrolled has been calculated. Note that this ratio is approximately equal to the percentage of baccalaureate de­ gree recipients from the college who eventually obtain a Ph.D. in science or engineering. (Because it integrates five years, it would exactly equal the percentage if one-fifth of a college’s total enrollment graduated in any given year; considering attri­ tion and the number of students who take more than four years to graduate, this is a reasonable approximation.) Thus, most of the top liberal arts colleges see between 5 percent and 18 percent of their graduates going on to obtain a Ph.D. in science or engineering (table 1, last column). Considering that their graduates majored in English, history, art, and other humani­ ties disciplines as well as in science, this represents an astound­ ing percentage. 198 Thomas R. Cech Table 1. Top National Liberal Arts Colleges: How many of their baccalaureate degree students go on to receive Ph.D.’s (1991–1995)?a Institution Number of Ph.D.’sb Rankc Ph.D.’s/100 enrolledd Amherst 118 169 7 Barnard 133 143 6 Bowdoin 89 205 6 Bryn Mawr 121 165 9 Carleton 260 69 15 Claremont McKenna 12 741 1 Colgate 132 145 5 Davidson 76 231 5 Grinnell 128 151 10 Haverford 114 174 11 Middlebury 82 219 4 Mount Holyoke 124 160 6 Oberlin 266 68 10 Pomona 135 138 10 Smith 153 120 6 Swarthmore 248 73 18 Vassar 125 158 6 Wellesley 137 137 6 Wesleyan 189 96 7 Williams 155 119 8 aStudents who received an undergraduate degree at the listed institution and went on to receive a Ph.D. in science or engineering. bNumber of former graduates who received a Ph.D. from 1991–1995 (NSF 96-334).2 cRank among all universities and colleges, based on raw numbers from previous column; the top 820 institutions were ranked. d(Number of Ph.D.’s) x 100/(Number of undergraduates enrolled). Source: NSF 96-334. For comparison, let us examine the extent to which baccalau­ reate degree recipients from the nation’s top research universi­ ties go on to receive science and engineering Ph.D. degrees. After all, these are the institutions that grant most of the Ph.D. degrees, so one might expect their undergraduates to be ori­ ented towards graduate education. Indeed, as shown in table 2, undergraduates from each of the nation’s top research univer­ sities accounted for three hundred to more than one thousand Ph.D.’s in the recent five-year period. (The criterion of federal contract and grant money favors larger institutions and under­ rates those not associated with a medical school; e.g., CalTech did not make this particular list.4 Yet the institutions on this Science at Liberal Arts Colleges 199 “top twenty” list mostly remain on the list when other criteria of research success are substituted.) Most of these research universities rank among the fifty-largest producers of under­ graduates who go on to obtain science and engineering Ph.D.’s (see “Rank” column). When normalized to the size of the un­ dergraduate population, as few as 1 percent or as many as 22 percent of these undergraduates go on to obtain Ph.D.’s (see “Ph.D.’s/100 enrolled”). Table 2. Top Research Universities: How many of their baccalaureate degree students go on to receive Ph.D.’s (1991–1995)? Institutiona Number of Ph.D.’sb Rankc Ph.D.’s/100 enrolledd Columbia U. 270 65 2 Cornell U. 1090 3 9 Harvard U. 752 9 11 Johns Hopkins U. 324 50 10 M.I.T. 1000 5 22 Penn State U. 865 7 3 Stanford U. 519 23 8 U. of Colorado 500 26 3 U. of Michigan 1060 4 5 U. of Minnesota 712 10 3 U. of No. Carolina 354 43 2 U. of Pennsylvania 535 21 6 U. of So.
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