MIDCONTINENT PERSPECTIVES Midwest Research Institute City,

January 17, 1989

James Gordon Kingsley President of William Jewell College

Do the Brits Do It Better? A Perspective on Higher Education In Britain and America

I have been on a pilgrimage. Each of us is, of course, as “humans merely being,” making our way through life, grateful for hands to help us and friends to guide us. I risk his disapproval by saluting such a friend today, Dr. Charles Kimball, a special person for many of us in our professional and personal pilgrimages. Most of us can say that he is the reason we are here today, and that includes your obedient humble speaker-servant. I pause, therefore, to voice the thanks of all of us to a great man, Dr. Charles Kimball, without whose influence Kansas City would be a far different and far bleaker place. But it is not this sort of life pilgrimage I am reflecting on at this moment – that comes later. I have been on a pilgrimage – a journey, a trip with a purpose – to Europe and England. It was a journey lasting most of September through November, most of it on a sabbatical Michelmas Term as Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College of Cambridge University. In this Visiting Fellow role, I just may have found the ideal job – you show up for formal dinners, wearing your academic robes, every Tuesday and Thursday night – if you want to. You give lectures – if they ask you. You do research – but nobody checks to see if you have done it or if it is any good. You have a title, and full rein of the resources of a great university. No set hours, no set tasks, no set boss, no set nothing. Except for the fact that there is also no pay, it may be the best job going. My project, in addition to sampling the wonders that England has to offer in London, Oxford, Stratford, Durham, Cambridge, and elsewhere, was a study of leadership and how one goes about developing leaders, something that has specific and direct application at William Jewell College. I did, in fact, work pretty hard. And enjoyed it. Such a pilgrimage is a good thing to do. People have taken such journeys-with-a-purpose, apparently, from the beginning of time. Chaucer was stating what was already a truism, in about 1386, when his prologue to the Canterbury Tales spoke of the coming of spring (“whan that April with his showres soote”), when “Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.” Such journeys give a perspective, give a freshness, give a vitality to our daily tasks that may be attainable in no other way. It is out of that pilgrimage experience of last fall that this talk comes. Perspective is the word. I mean, there you are getting off your TWA flight, taking a train to Cambridge, and finding yourself plopped down in a sad little overpriced flat in the center of town, shopping for Cornish pasties, steak and kidney pie, and all kinds of weird packaged foods

© MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 1 © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 2 at J. Sainsburys’; riding a bicycle instead of driving a New Yorker; drowning in gallons of tea (which a British professor one day points at and describes as “the difference between savagery and civilization”); finding the Queen’s picture on all your postage stamps; hearing everyone talking out of the front of their mouths, no doubt because you can’t take a deep breath in that misty, moisty chill; seeing long shadows from the slant of the northern sun as it is descending by 1:00 p.m., having just arisen by noon, so that you long for light and warmth; hearing British television announcers extol the virtues of their four god-awful channels as “the best television in the world,” when except for their brilliant documentaries and fine news programs they are offering American reruns and bad imitations thereof; dodging traffic from what still seems to you the “wrong” side of the road – you feel very foreign, indeed, and perspective begins to shift. When William Jewell College began programs with Oxford University, Cambridge University, and Harlaxton College in England fifteen years ago, I used to tell our alumni that we began in England because “English is the foreign language our students learn most quickly.” There is some truth to the statement. And so, you follow the American elections in the British media, watch their remarkably fair descriptions of candidates and issues, then wonder if they are being equally fair when they describe this particular election as “the evil of two lessers.” You hear them admire Americans for our positive attitudes, our freshness, our enterprising spirit, our willingness to take risks, our lack of class distinctions, our “can do” sense of things. One top executive told me he had encouraged his son to attend Wharton rather than the London School of Economics, not because of the technical knowledge acquired in America but because of the spirit of the possible Americans share. Americans, it seems to me, come over rather well in English eyes. They are rather charmed by our flag-waving, our freedom of expression, our honesty, though one woman wondered aloud if the English couldn’t do their flag- waving in a nice, discreet, dignified British way. They are perturbed by the violence they see in our culture. They feel we lack a sense of history – “an antiquarian book in America is one published before 1945,” said one speaker; and they simply go bonkers over some of our language patterns, particularly such things as “Hi, there” and “Have a nice day.” I was once with a group that made a game of answering “Have a nice day.” For example, “Thank you, Madam, but I have other plans.” Or, “I’ll try, but I am having surgery this afternoon.” That sure barometer of popular culture, advertising – and the largest advertising firms in the world are now not on Madison Avenue but in London – reflects British perspectives in its literacy and word play. For example, a full-page newspaper ad from the Midland Bank has a client saying, “I didn’t have money problems until I had money – now I find them taxing.” Kenko coffee advertises, “Not everyone’s beans have been where Kenco’s beans have been.” A florist wishes us a “flowerful good day.” Meow Mix cat food claims both nutrition and cost savings with the tag line, “something extra to put in the kitty.” The British Army advertises their equivalent of our ROTC with, “Be a little mercenary in university.” A recruiting notice for accountants says to prospects, “At our firm, you don’t just count, you matter.” And, for those of us who worry that everyone in America is out there raising money, there is comfort in that I have yet to see, in America, ads requesting gifts for The Donkey Sanctuary: “Please help a little donkey in distress this Christmas. The Donkey Sanctuary has taken in over 3,600 donkeys and guarantees a safe, happy, and secure future for all.” © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 3

It is all a matter of perspective. And now let me turn to the question assigned for this session – I didn’t really forget it – a perspective on higher education in Britain and America. I became immersed in Cambridge University life, as much as a short-term foreign visitor can – as I had a few years earlier in a short-term of study at the “other” Cambridge, the one in Massachusetts, where I also felt like a foreigner. (I remember my son, as a student at Columbia University, thinking he got into the much-prized housing in the Rockefellers’ International House, where few Americans are admitted, because the folks in New York thought Missouri must be a foreign country.) I interviewed many fine academics in Cambridge and elsewhere in England. I read much. I visited the four oldest universities and some others. I claim in no way to be an expert, as some persons in this room assuredly are; but I did garner some perspectives that may be useful for today’s occasion. Perspectives on higher education in Britain and in America: How do the two systems compare with one another? Are the British better, or the Americans? Are the British and American systems more alike or more different? Fundamental to any comparison is an understanding of what we are about in higher education, and that is the same mission in Britain and the United States. Education exists, higher education exists, to create our future. And creating our tomorrow is a subject of more than passing interest to each of us, to all of us. We sometimes do not sense the importance of education because there are so many students, so many teachers, so many schools, and the task goes on day by day until it becomes a kind of routine. But we readily understand the importance of higher education if we suddenly envision a country with no college or university anywhere – one of our first priorities would immediately be to invent such, as we in fact did all across America. As I wrote once in a little history of this region, a frontier traveler in the last century scarcely could camp his wagon overnight without a school springing up. We have always put education right out there in America. We know that we must educate our young if our tomorrows are to have meaning and value in them. Great schools are essential to great societies, to great civilizations. The dream and the drama are unlocked when minds begin to envision possibilities not before envisioned, to believe they can be realized, and to take the practical steps to achieve them. This is the stuff, the substance, the saga of our colleges and universities. I saw in a freshman’s dorm room at our school one year, a large yellow sign – made in the configuration of a highway road sign – with the caption, “Caution: Life Under Construction.” The freshman had it right, but his sign just didn’t go far enough: it is a life under construction, it is a city under construction, it is our economy under construction, it is our churches and families and hospitals and arts and culture, indeed our civilization that is under construction in our schools at any given moment, indeed at this given moment. Further, each nation, each society, constructs its future – that is, organizes and conducts its schools – in a fashion which reflects its own identity and values. Every culture has a style, and the colleges and universities reflect that style. Sometimes this is good, sometimes this is a trap which destroys innovation, but it is nevertheless inevitable. That eminent philosopher of our time, Bill Cosby, some years ago presented a routine in which he imagined that the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought out according to the forms of . He had the captain of the British and the captain of the American © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 4 forces meeting at mid-field before the fray, and his instructions went something like this: “Captain Clarkson of the British forces, your men will wear red coats, play fifes and drums, and walk down the middle of the road.” “Captain Kimball of the American forces, your men can wear anything they want, disguise themselves, hide behind stone walls and trees, and shoot at the red coats coming down the road.” Then there was a long pause, and that famous Cosby, “Right!” The story is credible because of our sense that the British do things more formally – who can handle a ceremony better than the English – and that the Americans do things more practically, pragmatically. There is no question of a difference in styles of the two cultures. And so, for example, on Tuesdays and Thursdays in my college in Cambridge, I went to formal dinners wearing these robes – can you imagine eating bad food in garb like this? Bad, globby food. The robes in fact derive from the medieval legacy of Oxford and Cambridge, when all scholars and teachers were clerics who wore churchly garb: the robes; the monk’s hoodsnow stylized and made colorful; the mortar board reflecting the medieval guilds or trade unions, for the first universities were trade unions of either students or lecturers or both. ...each nation, each society, constructs its future – that is, organizes and conducts its schools – in a fashion which reflects its own identity and values. In my own college, in contrast, during the first 90 of its 140 years, robes were not even allowed – its formidable presidents thinking them ostentatious and pretentious and thinking that good old common suits – American-woven suits – would do just fine, thank you. It is fascinating to me that the motto of our college, Deo Fisus Labora, meant originally in Anglo-Saxon English – “Trust in God and Work” – and only later was Latinized as the college went uptown to forge its link with the English and medieval past. I told here five years ago of the redoubtable John Priest Greene president of our college at the turn of the century, who greeted entering freshmen every year with a fourpoint speech: (1) “Keep your mouth shut” – presumably, be teachable; (2) “Keep your bowels open” – presumably, stay healthy; (3) Trust in God; and (4) Work. I tell alumni that we adopted the last points, Deo Fisus Labora, as our college motto because we couldn’t get the first two points, Tene os fermata et tene intestina operta, wrapped around our logo. Ponder Greene’s points – they are nothing if they are not practical, pragmatic. Style. As British and American universities create the future, in terms of their own histories and traditions and styles of culture, what things are alike and what different? Let us look at that in human terms – through the eyes of two real people, students of the now age. I know both of them personally, have talked with each and with members of their families. The one is Vanessa Pickford, from the town of Ely, 16 miles or so north of Cambridge. I met her and her family on a train to Durham, where she was going for interviews at the university there. The second is American John Gersh, from Shawnee Mission, his mother an administrator at Kansas University, himself a former student in the medical school program at UMKC, before he decided that he was to be one of our next members of the U.S. Congress, and should therefore take another course of study. I spent time with him in Cambridge, where he is © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 5 spending a year on a William Jewell program. In fact, I have taken him to dinner a couple of times, once at the Pizza Hut in Cambridge in what he called an act of U. S. patriotism. Picture both choosing their pilgrimage, and that of their families, creating their own tomorrow, and with it creating our tomorrow as well. Vanessa in England has a choice of 42 universities and 31 polytechnics, or of some local schools offering vocational and other education at varying levels. All but one of these are tax- supported, the lone private school being the University of Buckingham with only 500 students. This number of schools is for a population of 56 million, and equates to one university/college for every 750,000 citizens. John in America can select from 3,400 universities and colleges, plus a bewildering array of vocational and technical schools, about one-third of the colleges and universities tax- supported and two-thirds private. This number is in a population of 242 million, or one college or university for every 71,000 citizens. Note, then, that many more options are available for the American student, and note that 2,000 private colleges and universities exist in America contrasted with only one in Britain. John can go to just about any American school for which he is academically qualified, and in that free educational marketplace which is America, he can always find a school that will accept him. (In John’s real life case, I hasten to add, he could get into about any school in America, for he is what the British would call a “very clever lad.”) Over 50 percent of America’s young people have a go at college or university. Vanessa’s choice is much more restricted: she can apply to either Oxford or Cambridge – though not both in the same year – or to the universities’ Central Council on Admissions, applying for a place in up to five universities. Admission is very selective, universities in Britain serving only 7 percent of the nation’s youth (with that number declining as government aid is cut back). All higher education in Britain serves only about 15 percent of the appropriate age group. Universities in Britain do not recruit, but they select nationally, and 80-90 percent of students attend a university other than the one closest to their home. American students, on the other hand, are much more inclined to attend a regional or local school – with the exception of a relatively small number of national universities such as Harvard or Stanford and national liberal arts colleges such as Grinnell or Carleton. Freedom of choice, then, is far greater in America – which fits the American spirit of democracy and free enterprise. American students are constantly choosing: they choose a college, they choose whether to continue or drop out, they choose whether to stay or to transfer, they choose their majors, they choose their courses each semester. Freedom of choice is an important though little recognized part of their education in a country where open land and rich resources and individual freedom and the entrepreneurial spirit have stretched from frontier to frontier, from sea to shining sea, from inner to outer space. Over 50 percent of America’s young people have a go at college or university. No such range of choice exists in Britain, though Vanessa has more choice than some of her student peers on the Continent, whose university and even subject of study are assigned by a central government bureau on the basis of national need and spaces available rather than on the © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 6 student’s interests. Admission is much more competitive in Britain than in America, save in a few of our “Ivy League” institutions. In both cases, however, selectivity is less than in a Japanese university. At a Japanese university with which we conduct an exchange program, ranked – as the Japanese love to rank things – not at the top level but at the second tier of schools, there are nearly 25 applicants for every place, and the high application fees are a major source of university income. Compare this with an application rate of ten students for one place at a Harvard, or three for one at a William Jewell. Selectivity, in Japan, Britain, or America, always results from and/or produces an elite; but in a democracy – with America no doubt showing the way – it is becoming more and more an elitism of merit, an elitism of ability, rather than an elitism just of birth. Oxford formerly had a graduation with first-class honors, second-class honors, third-class honors, and a “gentlemen’s degree” of fourth-class honors, which essayist Stephen Leacock defined as a testimonial to the fact that Lord Somebody’s son “lived and breathed at Oxford and kept out of jail.” Some of that still exists, in England and America – it is difficult to summarily end several generations of family participation in one of the great schools such as Cambridge or Yale – but it is much less pronounced, now, and at least the minimal standards for admission and graduation – which are themselves high – must be met. British universities serve only 7 percent of the nation’s youth. Vanessa in England may be accepted by one of the ancient universities, Oxford founded in the 12th Century or Cambridge founded in the 13th Century. (This antiquity of Oxford and Cambridge has a certain reverential quality, however, so much so that William Jewell students who have studied there come back now unintimidated and often unimpressed by the aura of Harvard or Yale or Princeton – after all, these schools were not founded until 1636, or 1701 or 1746, and they are only in the Colonies.) But Vanessa was in fact interviewing, on the November day that I met her family, at the third oldest English university, that in Durham, founded only in 1837, just 12 years before William Jewell and 200 years after Harvard. Only four British universities are, in fact, older than William Jewell, and here we correct a myth, the myth of the antiquity of British education. Many American universities are much older than most British universities. The considerable antiquity and well-deserved reputations of Oxford and Cambridge often skew our thinking on the matter. In fact, more than half the present universities in Britain are only 30 years old, or so. In America students are constantly choosing: they choose a college, they choose whether to continue or drop out, they choose whether to stay or to transfer, they choose their majors, they choose their courses each semester. British schools are usually much smaller than American universities. Whereas Oxford or Cambridge University has 12,000 students, Harvard has 25,000. The largest British university by far is the University of London with a census of 46,000; the City University of New York claims 187,000. England has nothing like Michigan with 42,000 students or Illinois with 55,000. When the William Jewell Concert Choir sang in cathedrals of England and Scotland last year, the information prepared by our publicity office described our school as a “small liberal arts college in the Midwest.” In fact, William Jewell is not a small school by English standards, being twice as large as the largest Cambridge college and six or seven times larger than most. © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 7

Nor do the rank and file British have the foggiest idea of what “liberal arts” might mean, as we shall see. Once admitted, at least in most universities – for there is considerable diversity both in Britain and in America – Vanessa and John will have very different experiences. John, in America, will proceed to his degree through a series of classes and the accumulation of credits, taking four or five or six classes per term in a variety of subjects. He will have two fifteen- or sixteen-week semesters a year. Perhaps only one-third to one-half of his studies will be in his major subject, the remaining being studies across the spectrum of the liberal arts and sciences. When enough credits are accumulated, and in the right patterning of subjects, then John is eligible for his degree. His examinations and papers are usually course by course, though in some schools there are undergraduate theses and comprehensive examinations, usually in honors programs. No such range of choice exists in Britain.... Vanessa, in England, will seldom if ever see a class, and that will be in a language or a laboratory science. Rather, she will go to tutorials in Oxford, supervisions in Cambridge, meeting a tutor only once a week, getting assigned books to read and a topic on which she will write an essay – an essay being the creating of a position rather than merely the repeating of matter from the books – which she will read to her tutor for his comments and corrections at their tutorial session the next week. She is therefore “in class” typically one hour a week, for three eight-week terms per year, and the remainder of the time she is reading, as they say, “round her subject” and writing her essays. And participating in things like drama and sports. And talking with very bright people – fellow students and dons. She is reading in one, and at most, two subjects during all the three years of her university degree. (She has had thirteen years in school, compared to John’s twelve; she has now had three years in university, compared to John’s four.) She will have examinations at the end of two years, and her degree will depend on the series of examinations given at the end of three years. No reading for breadth, save in her own subject; the English university degree is a concentration in a “speciality.” The faculty-student ratio does not differ markedly in Britain and in America, but the British somehow manage to organize instruction so it is individual, whereas the American professor will face upwards of 100 or more students each week in teaching by the lecture mode. Lectures in the British university are offered only by request and not as part of classes. They are open to the entire university, and attendance on a specific set of lectures is often encouraged or directed by a don or tutor; but in the end all attendance is optional and more often underwhelming than overwhelming. Because Oxford or Cambridge professors, and those at most other British universities, do not lecture unless called upon by their departmental faculty to do so, some spend years waiting to be called on; as Leacock observes, “accumulated brain power thus dammed up is said to be colossal.” In America, students take four to six classes per term in a variety of subjects and will have two fifteen- or sixteen-week semesters, with only one-third to one-half of their studies in their major subject. John is likely to live at home, or in an apartment in the town, or in a fairly large college dormitory. Vanessa will live in a relatively small college, which is a residential but not a © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 8 teaching unit. Wolfson College, of which I was a member, had approximately 250 student residents who were taking their academic supervisions all over Cambridge, in whatever college or faculty the appropriate professor was resident. Their meals and sports and social activities and common life, were, however, in Wolfson. It was for Wolfson they rowed, for Wolfson they played on the rugby pitch, for Wolfson they fenced, for Wolfson they debated, for Wolfson they lived and died. There are 35 such colleges in Oxford, 31 in Cambridge, and 11 in Durham. The combination of smaller residential colleges with the availability of academic work throughout the rich resources of an entire university is attractive and certainly effective. Sport is strictly amateur in the British universities. It is strange that I would mention athletics in a comparison of the two systems, and I would not do so except for the terrible professional apparatus we have constructed around sport in our American universities. English members of Wolfson College sat aghast as I described athletic scholarships – “you pay people to play sport?” – and the multimillion dollar empires built and lost in intercollegiate athletics. In Britain, students will seldom ever see a class. Rather, they will go to tutorials in Oxford, supervisions in Cambridge, meeting a tutor only once a week, getting assigned books to read and a topic on which they will write an essay. I know that athletics have become a very important part of the American university scene – it is said that only the emergence of football forced Harvard to admit that other schools existed; and even though formidable president Andrew D. White of Cornell in 1874 telegraphed a challenging group of thirty University of Michigan players, who desired a game in Cleveland, “I will not permit thirty men to travel four hundred miles merely to agitate a bag of wind,” the fact is that in America intercollegiate sports have often become the athletic tail wagging the academic dog. Poor pup. None of this in Britain, and it is a breath of fresh – if slightly moist and chilly – air. John’s professors in the American university, though not in most American liberal arts colleges, may be graduate students until he is in the so-called “upper level” courses, when it may be a professor in the discipline who is promoted for his research and who may or may not be good at teaching. Fortunately, the liberal arts colleges emphasize teaching, and so there is yet a good choice available to the American undergraduate. Approximately half the students who register in an American college or university do not complete that college or university. Vanessa’s tutors in Britain will be spending about 30 percent of their time in research, will conduct tutorials for up to 12 students a week, singly or in groups of three, and will carry out other duties for the college or university, as will their American counterparts. British professors are not paid well by American standards: the lecturer will receive the equivalent of $15,000-$30,000 a year, the senior lecturer $28,000-$35,000; and the professor an average of $43,000. A dowdy British matron, at a formal hall dinner one evening, told me how she had stayed in England to accept one of the Queen’s professorial chairs at approximately $50,000 instead of going as a super star-scholar to the University of Virginia at $100,000 to teach one course every other semester, with an appointment for her husband thrown in at $67,000 to hang around the library doing bibliographies – or as she phrased it, “to do nothing you could measure.” “But,” she said, “the Queen asked, and one cannot say no to the Queen.” Remarkable. © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 9

But, as you can see, even a William Jewell College, in this Midwestern part of America with its depressed academic tuitions and salaries, could pay competitive salaries to a British professor and could in fact consider “raiding” Oxford in a way that we could never “raid” Harvard. Approximately 90 percent of the British professorate is tenured; the figure is nothing like that in America – probably more like 60 percent at most schools. In Britain, students are likely to stay in one college until graduation; 96 percent of undergraduate students receive degrees. There is a professor for any specialty in a university such as Oxford or Cambridge: when my own son was spending a term in Oxford under William Jewell auspices, he wished to study the history of Celtic Britain and Modern British Foreign Policy, and dons were rousted up for him post haste, though, in their first tutorial session, the don allowed as how there wasn’t any modern British foreign “policy” and might they study modern British foreign “relations,” thank you. (That was before Maggie Thatcher, the grocer’s daughter from Grantham, came to power.) Yet, the “specialty” is taught in such a way that students are not just amassing facts, but are rather developing broad skills. As the official Register of British universities puts it: They concentrate on principles rather than practice and aim to provide knowledge which is sufficiently general to enable the graduate to tackle a new problem imaginatively and intelligently. They are concerned with promoting the powers of the mind, and they seek to inculcate certain values deriving from a common heritage: the idea that standards matter, objective and disinterestedness in the search for truth, integrity and humility. Students are ... actively and individually involved with their teachers and with their fellow students. In essence, we have the values of a liberal arts teaching program fostered through the mode of learning in a specialized discipline. It was therefore no surprise, a few years back, when the head of that technological and organizational marvel, the BBC, was an Oxford graduate in Icelandic Studies – not in communication or business, neither of which is a university subject. Vanessa is served well by her British university, in my judgment. In this environment of close personal working relationships, standards are high and are ensured by the use of external examiners from other universities. John may well, during the course of his college career, transfer from one school to another (John has in fact transferred from one school to another), or he may drop out, or “stop out” for work or travel and return later. Approximately half the students who register in an American college or university do not complete that college or university. Vanessa in Britain, on the other hand, is likely to stay at her own college through her entire three-year course toward graduation; there is no national scheme for transferring, and 96 percent of undergraduate students receive degrees. That figure would be approached by the most selective institutions in America and is a factor more of selectivity than any other single factor. John may well pay for a portion or all of his education, and in fact John is paying for a chunk of it, or his family is. He receives scholarship grants or loans, as do most American students, and if the family income permits, he participates in a federal work study program. He is the beneficiary of a good endowment at his college and of generous gifts and grants from many people. He is not, as a student at a private school, in an institution which itself receives public subsidy, though about one-third of America’s universities are so subsidized, and to a great © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 10 degree. In general, John or any American student will not be denied an education because of costs, in part because of the wide range of financial programs which are available. Likewise, in England, it is a principle that no qualified student will be denied an education for financial reasons, and it would not even occur to a British student that he or she should pay tuition. In fact, all British universities are subsidized by the government, and all students are subsidized by government grants. Less than one percent of the income of British universities comes from endowments: even Oxford and Cambridge as universities are poor by American standards, though many of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges have very good endowments dating back to the 13th and successive centuries. The Thatcher government is cutting back support to universities and grants to students, seeking to cause the families to pay more educational costs and introducing loan funds rather than pure grants. Mrs. Thatcher herself, however, is appreciative of the value of grants, because as a very poor daughter of a grocer’s family in Grantham, she could never have gone to Oxford – the faculty of which has refused to vote her an honorary doctorate – without such scholarship help. Vanessa and John will both graduate, and both will become productive citizens of fine and free societies. Which of the two has had the better education? John, of course, for he will graduate from William Jewell College. I say that tongue-in-cheekily, but I am almost serious about it, for John is participating in our Hallmark-funded Oxbridge Program, which blends the best of the British and American systems. John in Oxbridge and Vanessa at Durham have the advantage of an academic program which calls on them to read extensively, to think extensively, and to write extensively. One of the blights of American university instruction, in my judgment, is our general reliance on the lecture method and the so-called “objective” exams, so that we teach students to listen, remember, and repeat – often by checking a box on a multiple guess test – rather than to read and write and think. They are very different activities. In that sense, the British system is superior. In research capability, it seems to me a tossup, the edge going to the Americans because of the greater dollars invested, though the British perhaps get more out of each dollar – or pound – than do we. Americans do not specialize as early, but we seem to catch up through our doctoral programs and not be at a disadvantage to either the English or the Europeans. We give access to 50 percent or more of our young people into colleges or universities, and Britain does not reach even one-third of that figure. I consider this a great strength of the American system, even though some would call it un-American in its inefficiency and “wastefulness.” I would argue that even one year of a college or university experience for a youngster is better than no experience at all, that exclusion benefits no one, not the student, not his family, not his community, not a free society. In America, one in four members of the work force is a college graduate – one in seven blacks and one in eight Hispanics – as contrasted with one in eleven British workers. If it “works,” as it very often does work in both England and America, Vanessa and John will find in themselves potentialities they had not even dreamed were there. As John Gardner has written, “The caged Eagle will soar,” the university experience will be, in the words of the poet © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 11

W.B. Yeats, “singing masters of the soul,” and John and Vanessa will stride out to create a tomorrow for all of us. They will create cathedrals by carving the stones, one by one; they will sustain the cathedrals by dusting the choir stalls, figure by figure; the dream and the drama will renew itself, as it has in all great civilizations, all great societies, through them as through ourselves. I close with a page from the notebook of my own pilgrimage. Before settling into my Fellowship at Cambridge, I spent some further sabbatical weeks, corresponding to the American school term, as a vagabond pilgrim on the European Continent. I went, as many of our students and faculty do – wearing a steadily deteriorating pair of jeans, carrying a Eurail pass and a food bag and almost no luggage. My one concession to my current course of life was the addition of a bag of work and reading for long hours on trains. I visited, many of them in return visits, some for the fifth or sixth time, the wonders of our world – the Acropolis in Athens, Delphi, Olympia, Mycenae, Old Corinthos, St. Peter’s in Rome, the Imperial Fori, the treasures of Florence and Venice and Salzburg, the great Universities of Heidelberg and Paris, the avenues of Brussels and Luxembourg, the canals of Amsterdam, the mysteries that are Madrid and Seville and Barcelona. I dined with a friend who serves in the West German Parliament, observing her work in “temporary” buildings now 40 years old. I jogged Alpine trails near Interlaken and completely around two islands off the coast of Brittany in France, and I ran the St. Albans Marathon – all 26 miles, 385 yards of it. I surveyed the Mediterranean coast from several vantage points, from the Peloponnese to Italy to Gibraltar – “the Gib” say the Englishmen who have taken over southern Spain. I went with Lord Auckland to the British Parliament. I dined where John Milton, Charles Darwin, Lord Tennyson, Isaac Newton supped – in the very spot – and talked education with the Masters of ancient colleges in Oxford and Cambridge. My pilgrimages, aesthetic and religious, included Mt. Dol, Mt. St. Michel, Notre Dame of Paris, Notre Dame of Chartres, St. Paul’s, Westminster Abbey, Durham Cathedral. I read, and thought, and reflected, and wrote. And there came to me a sense, I think not merely chauvinistic and parochial, that I had seen no more beautiful place in all the world than the simple red brick buildings and the green trees and slopes and hillsides which make up my home, William Jewell College, in our heartland of America. Grander places, yes to be sure. More beautiful places, no. And, further, there came to me the sense that no greater work was being carried forward anywhere I visited than was being done in my own Kansas City and in my own college – not in parliaments, not in papacies, not in cathedrals, not in towers of commerce and bastions of wealth, not in the fishing boats and fields and olive groves and vineyards – nowhere a task more purposeful, more alive with significance, more powerfully important than creating our tomorrow by educating today’s young. That task is purposely carried forward, by good men and women of good will and great learning, in this heart of America – it is holy work, quiet saga stuff, the essence of nobility. “Little Gidding,” that fine poem from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, a man from St. Louis who spent his life in England, speaks of the end of our journey – our pilgrimage – in these words: © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 12

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Education does that. It is an exploring, and a coming home. It creates men and women, it creates tomorrow, by showing us the world so it can show us – ourselves.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS QUESTION: I was wondering what you think about the current controversy over scholarships to athletes without high grades, and about the NCAA position on this. ANSWER: It certainly is an item of news. First, to define the issue a little closer, the question really is, Should an incoming freshman receive an athletic scholarship – we’re not talking about admission to college here – if he does not have a 2-point, a C, academic average in high school and doesn’t measure up to a certain standard on the ACT and SAT admission tests. I believe that the standards are minimal: 700 on the SAT – a good score would be about a thousand. On the ACT, I believe the student has to score 15. Of course, I’m not going to take on the coach at Georgetown, because he’s a real big guy. If he were here today, I would just say I agreed with him. But he’s in Washington and I am here, so let me say that, whereas I appreciate the sensitivity being expressed about education being available to minority students, it seems to me that the standards are minimal and that the question is not, Can you come into college and can you qualify for aid based on need. If a student is truly deprived economically, there is much aid available based on family financial need. A student who seriously wants to come to college can get financial aid. The question is, Can the student be paid to play ball, not Can the student be paid to come to college. And when you define the question that way, to say it very directly and very abruptly, I think the NCAA is absolutely right and I think it should be a non-issue. But you can tell that I am biased. I think the whole system of paying people to play sports not only has led to corruption but is intrinsically corrupt. If we’re going to connect teams to schools and not towns – so that it’s the K.U. Jayhawks not the Lawrence Jayhawks – if we’re going to pay them to play sport, I think we ought to go out and build the best teams money can buy. But let’s recognize they are professional minor leagues, and then let’s don’t even ask the players to be students. Let’s say to them, if you want to drop by school some time, feel free; it’s okay if you want to go to school, if you want to take courses and get an education along the way during your four years of eligibility playing sports for pay at – you name the school – but you are not obliged to in any way. We’re just buying a team and fielding a team, and that’s all we’re about in sports. It’s okay if you also want to get an education. Taking this approach would at least clean it up. Education is then education. Buying the best team you can buy is then buying the best team you can buy, and it is clean. Of course, you’ll have some NCAA people out of a job, but they’re nice people, good people, and could locate – we’d probably even hire some of them. © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 13

QUESTION: I personally have been puzzled about the financing of your famous artists series there at William Jewell, which is a splendid undertaking and does this community a great deal of good, as well as being a teaching aid for your Fine Arts program. I have heard that it requires great subsidy on the part of foundations and the school itself. I’ve also heard it said that this series is a goldmine for William Jewell College. So, which is it? ANSWER: What it is, is a goldmine for William Jewell College with no gold in it. The Fine Arts program is a wonderful educational endeavor, but to answer your question, does it make money for the college or does it require subsidies to keep operating, my answer – that it is a gold mine without gold in it – is that it is a very good thing for William Jewell College. It serves the community educationally by helping carry forward our educational mission to our students and to the community. It is a program which bespeaks excellence and thus has a carryover effect: “If that college is supporting this kind of series, it must be a college that advocates excellence.” In that sense, it is a goldmine. Financially, it takes great subsidies. It takes about a quarter million dollars in total subsidies out of the operating budget of the college each year, in addition to what many people, some of them in this very room, are donating to it. Let me clarify that a bit for you. We put about a quarter million dollars into it out of college operating money – not only direct cash but paying salaries of staff – and I’m not even counting the space, the utilities, or the time that our development staff spends trying to get the money to help the program. In addition, you know that we put the touch on generous people and foundations. That money is all necessary to operate the program. Like most arts programs, it is a loss. An accountant who was our business vice president a few years ago kept wanting us to get Johnny Cash in as one of the events and argued that if we would just once ... “Just one,” he’d say to Harriman. “You don’t have to go all out,” he’d say, “and you could pay the program all year.” And Harriman has no class at all so he wouldn’t do it. I mean he just wouldn’t do it. Pavarotti, for example, is coming back. He was scheduled to come in September, but then he couldn’t do that, and now he’s coming on April 16. His appearance is to be a benefit for the Fine Arts Program of the college, but I have to tell you, lords and ladies, that it is a benefit for . He is not donating his services. Some good people are underwriting Pavarotti’s fee, which is considerable, so that the program can be a benefit. Pavarotti first came on our series thirteen years ago. He’s now been here five times. I have a clipping from the Evening Standard in London. I was telling some of our staff about it this morning. The World Opera in London has been trying five years to get Pavarotti and are finally getting him back in 1990 by sending a man to woo – as they say in the article, “to woo the great tenor.” They are sending a man to Italy to convince him to come. “If you want the great singers, you’ve got to go after them,” it says here in this clipping. I’m reading this and saying, Harriman has had Pavarotti in Kansas City five times now. The first time, his fee was exorbitant – it was $6,000. The last time he was here, it was $80,000, and he’d knocked off $20,000 for old time’s sake because, you see, his first recital ever was at Jewell. His first recital ever was on our hilltop. This year his fee is more than $80,000. So the short answer to the question is that our series loses lots of money but some generous people help make up that loss so that we don’t take a bath on it. © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 14

QUESTION: What are your feelings about what is happening in secondary education to equip people to get into your kind of school? It seems we try to make it as complicated as we can, even the language. For example, what we used to call higher education we now call post-secondary education. I am of two minds on the subject. Students tend to come into schools now much more knowledgeable, aware, and experienced – which I often regret. They have dealt with issues that I didn’t even know were issues until I was out of college. We have a very lively, facile, sometimes glib, often creative clientele. When they’re dealing with world issues, at our school at least, they’re often very service-oriented. We have a gang of our kids right now down in Mexico, Guatemala, and some other place I’m worried to death about, building camps for young people and houses for families to live in. This is good stuff. On the other hand, the students come in not very able to read and write. Skills in reading have declined, skills in writing have declined markedly, and skills in spelling are nonexistent. I don’t know what to do about the lack of spelling skills. Maybe just accept it. Shakespeare spelled his name six ways in signatures that are still extant. Spelling was not something they worried about in Renaissance England, the greatest flowering of English civilization. Maybe we ought to declare that we’re going back to the Renaissance ways when spelling didn’t matter, and just quit all this worrying. What I do find is that in what we call the basics – reading, writing, and arithmetic – students are less proficient. That causes a lot of grief in a college. At Jewell, for example, we insist they learn to write at least at a certain level of proficiency and that they sustain this level for the four years. What students in general are accustomed to is getting past freshman comp and then it doesn’t matter how you write. Many of our students consider this business of making them maintain proficiency all four years un-American, if not uncivilized. Our faculty takes a very courageous stand on this, and they take a lot of grief from students and parents on it. So, the long answer to the good short question is that students are better in world awareness and better in all the things that television teaches, but much worse off in the basics of reading and writing – and also, I believe, in critical thinking, in analytic thinking. They are more an impression-oriented generation: “Let me experience it all at once.” They go around with these headsets and can’t hear birds sing, which is really rather sad. But we’ve always criticized the young, haven’t we? Our parents criticized us, and we made it. If only 7 percent of the kids in Britain go to college and only 15 percent to any college- type higher education or the polytechnics, and in America the figure is 50 percent, why the difference? In America we do in college a lot of things that in Britain they don’t do in college. For example, they have economics departments in Britain, but traditionally they have had no business schools. They are starting to build them now; there are a few around – and good ones – but the British have considered commerce not a subject for the university. You learn business by going into business. That’s a good idea. That’s not such bad schooling. Another example is nursing, which has not been a university program in Britain. It’s been something you would do in a hospital-based nursing school. Accountancy, for example, is not something you would do in a university or college. You do that in an accounting school or in on-the-job training. © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 15

Two more reasons for the discrepancy in the enrollment figures are that (a) we have been in recent years a much richer nation and could afford to have more institutions, and (b) the free market here in America allows you to hang up a shingle and say you have a college and, if you can convince people to come, there one is. This free market system in America also means that some schools will take anybody that moves, whereas in Britain there are greater controls over what constitutes a university degree and what is a university subject. I don’t think the lower percentages mean that the populace in Britain is less educated. They tend to be a very literate people and, as you know if you’ve been in Britain, very verbal. They talk a lot and talk nicely. QUESTION: Most of the debate about higher education in this country has centered around Stanford and, earlier, Harvard and their core curriculum. Does such debate occur in Britain in higher education? ANSWER: The answer for all practical purposes is that it does not, but let me editorialize. The curricular history in America follows the circuitous path of a snake moving forward, so what is today’s innovation was yesterday’s old-hat stuff. We’ve gone through core curricular debates every generation or two in America; but each time it is a new generation doing it, so they dust it off and it seems to be a zingy new topic. There is nothing like that in Britain. The only place I know about where there is anything like it is the University of Kiel, which has added a fourth year and that year is liberal arts and sciences as we know it. But in Britain, no. There, you have your general education in school – we would say high school – and if you don’t have it then, you’re not going to get in university. All you do in university is study your subject. QUESTION: You spoke of the decline in reading and writing skills in America. Based on what you saw in England, are they suffering from the same lack? And what do you think is the cause? ANSWER: Yes, they are, and they are worrying a lot about it. As to cause, the easy thing to point at is television of course. I think McLuhan was on to something when he talked about our ceasing to be a linear thinking people. A generation – and they are adults now – has ceased to think in linear terms: subjects, verbs, objects ... a, b, c ... if this is true, then this is true ... because they have grown up on television, where everything is image and impression and all-at-onceness. The attention span has to change, what is it, 32 times a minute. Click, click, click, click and you’ve raised a generation that is not accustomed to linear thinking. To them, the written word is no longer as important; it is the spoken word that is important. I have told people about my own freshman experience. I got into a class with a teacher who insisted that I get punctuation right. And I wasn’t into punctuation. This teacher was into apostrophes; commas above the line had never made sense to me. My friends all got along with gutteral grunts like “Hey, how ya doin’?” and that kind of talk. But my teacher was into words and sentences and spelling words right, and it was revolutionary for me, even in my generation. It’s easy to point to television, but I’m not sure that’s all of it. In America, we educate everybody, or we try to. And when you do that, inevitably you’re going to reduce standards to some common level. The bright kids are going to have to slow down while the “bluebirds” catch up. You know how it is in grade school. We call them bluebirds and redbirds and blackbirds, but the kids aren’t fooled. “Oh, those are the dumb ones,” they’ll say. Then something else I’ll point to – and this scares me – is that fewer good people have been going into teaching. It used to be – and I believe we’ll get there again as teaching jobs open © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 16 up – that some of our best students at Jewell were going into teaching. Now, they are not. They are going into business, where the prospects look brighter to them. This turn of events may be good for business, but it isn’t helping education. © MRI, 2000 James Gordon Kingsley, January 17, 1989 Page 17

DR. JAMES GORDON KINGSLEY, President of William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, is a popular speaker known for his candor, realism, and frequent touches of humor.’ He first spoke at the Midcontinent Perspectives series five years ago. At William Jewell, Gordon has guided the establishment of international programs for his students at Oxford and Cambridge. Gordon is a graduate of Mississippi College, has an M.A. from the , and doctorates from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He has done postdoctoral work at Northwestern, the National University of Ireland, and Harvard.

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MIDCONTINENT PERSPECTIVES was a lecture series sponsored by the Midwest Research Institute as a public service to the midcontinent region. Its purpose was to present new viewpoints on economic, political, social, and scientific issues that affect the Midwest and the nation. Midcontinent Perspectives was financed by the Kimball Fund, named for Charles N. Kimball, President of MRI from 1950 to 1975, Chairman of its Board of Trustees from 1975 to 1979, and President Emeritus until his death in 1994. Initiated in 1970, the Fund has been supported by annual contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations. Today it is the primary source of endowment income for MRI. It provides “front-end” money to start high- quality projects that might generate future research contracts of importance. It also funds public- interest projects focusing on civic or regional matters of interest. Initiated in 1974 and continuing until 1994, the sessions of the Midcontinent Perspectives were arranged and convened by Dr. Kimball at four- to six-week intervals. Attendance was by invitation, and the audience consisted of leaders in the Kansas City metropolitan area. The lectures, in monograph form, were later distributed to several thousand individuals and institutions throughout the country who were interested in MRI and in the topics addressed. The Western Historical Manuscript Collection-Kansas City, in cooperation with MRI, has reissued the Midcontinent Perspectives Lectures in electronic format in order to make the valuable information which they contain newly accessible and to honor the creator of the series, Dr. Charles N. Kimball.