Inaugural Address

The Enduring Value of a Liberal Education

Thanks

• To Board of Trustees, especially Tom Zelante our MC
• To Faculty, staff and students of the College
• To alumni, Foundation Board members, Friends of Ramapo College
• All who are here as guests and friends to participate in this ceremony
• I’m especially glad we could be joined by Governor Jon Corzine. Any time I am tempted to think of my own job as overly demanding or complex I need only reflect on the leadership and governance challenges that he faces.
• I welcome you all; it is an honor to stand before you on this day.
• A special welcome to members of my family. My father is unable to be here. In his 90th year he is no longer able to travel long distances but he is here in spirit. My son Ryan and daughter Imogen are also prevented by their examination schedules from attending.
•  I am glad to have my mother here together with my brother and nephew and from Jackie’s family her brother and sister and their families.
•  I would like to pay a very special and public tribute to my wife Jackie who has been such a tremendous support to me and to the College.
• I am also grateful to have with me today my colleagues from the University of Western Ontario, Alan Weedon , Ian Holloway and Jane O’Brien,
• Finally, it is wonderful to have Sir David and his wife Sally with us. They have both been immensely kind and gracious to Jackie and me and I have had the benefit of David’s guidance and example since first studying Administrative Law with him 30 years ago

Inauguration

One of my former colleagues from the University of Western Ontario Law School, Robert Hawkins, took office as President of the University of Regina in Canada at the same time I came to Ramapo. I received the following message from him yesterday:

  “ As I was thinking of you last night and regretting that I am not there to celebrate, I was reflecting on the fact that I was “installed” like a refrigerator while you are being inaugurated like a king. And in a republic no less. Life is mysterious.”

Introduction

• “My topic is the enduring value of a liberal education” Certainly not novel, but it is particularly important: accounting and engineering; public liberal education
• What do I mean by liberal education?
• Value to me personally and to society.

What I mean by liberal education

My favourite definition of liberal education is “education that enlarges and disciplines the mind irrespective of the particular business or profession one may follow”. In other words, education in how to think critically in order to analyze and solve problems.

Value to me personally

• Learning that words matter
• Being taught how to read when I was young. I was excited by it.
• Muggeridge quote from Page 12 of Volume 1 of his autobiography:

“ From the very beginning of my life I never doubted that words were my métier. There was nothing else I ever wanted to do except use them; no other accomplishment or achievement I ever had the slightest regard for, or desire to emulate. I have always loved words and still love them, for their own sake. For the power and beauty of them; for the wonderful things that can be done with them”

Part of this comes from my father. From the time I was very young, if I was being a pest, he would say “You are a cat’s fanacrifan” When I would ask what a fanacrifan was he would reply, “It’s the south end of a cat headed north”. If my brothers or I did something foolish, he would say “You are an utter clot” A clot is a thick lump, which is descriptive enough but in instances of remarkable ineptitude he would elevate it so instead of “clots” we became “thromboses”. Now I don’t want you to think these colorful terms were reserved for the family. A favorite term for a witless outsider was “nincompoop”, a word so exquisite in its disparagement that I remember going into fits of laughter when I first heard it.

Later on I became more interested in the precision, form and structure of language. It is one of the reasons I enjoyed the study of Latin and believe I profited from it. That view of the subject is little held today although I did I did once have a very satisfying conversation with a fellow attorney who after castigating his parents for requiring him to take Latin high school, said, without either affectation or self-awareness, “ I have nothing against Latin per se”

An indispensable feature of a truly valuable liberal education is collegiate community life – the opportunity for discussion and reflection without the distractions of job or family and in the company of others who are different from you. I did not experience this fully until I was in graduate school as I had been a commuter from my family home during my undergraduate and Law School days. At Cambridge, as a Master’s and then doctoral student, I lived on the ground floor of a row house. The house was not formally divided into self contained apartments but upstairs lived a fellow graduate student, Paul Millett and his wife Claire. We became close of necessity as there was no way for them to gain access to their quarters except by going through mine.

Paul and I were very different. He came from a working class family in Manchester where his father was a carpenter and was the first in his family to pursue higher education.  He was wary of me when I first moved in perhaps because the previous tenant had been entirely nocturnal in his habits which included playing dirge like Middle Eastern music at high volume on a tinny gramophone. His wariness increased when he saw that I subscribed to the Times newspaper; his paper was of course the Manchester Guardian. Our early conversations were short and strained along the lines of: Question: “Do you enjoy Kipling?” Answer; “I’ve never Kippled”

For reasons that neither of us can now fathom, we took to referring to each other as “rats” so the day’s exchanges would begin with the delivery of the papers: “Good morning rats -  morning rats” Before long we began exchanging newspapers and this led to discussion of our work. He was writing a dissertation on Banking and interest rates in ancient Athens which required a knowledge of classics and economics. My topic area was public interest representation. I read books that he lent me, he did the same. We took to getting together in his flat most evenings between 10 and midnight just to talk. These sessions were often enhanced by the lubricious qualities of a Greek sherry which could be purchased from a shop called Peter Dominick’s. A litre bottle cost less than a pound. As was once remarked of the wine served at a Newfoundland wedding reception, the stuff was so bad we could barely get enough of it.

I looked forward to these evening sessions with Paul and we soon expanded our scope to include discussion of a wide range of books. One week it might be Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, another the political and religious writings of Simone Weil or lighter fare such as the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. There were only two rules. The authors had to be dead and we each had to give a critical précis and evaluation of the work.

I learned a great deal in these sessions and made a fast friend for life. Paul Millet was fascinating and humbling to me. I had a scholarship which enabled me to travel; Paul on the other hand had never been outside England. I returned from a trip which had included a visit to the Vienna Opera House and began to describe to him the elaborate sets of the modern production I had seen. Oh he said” That must have been Der Yunge Lord” by Hans Verner Henze. It was.

His educational breadth also had an immensely practical side. We would occasionally go to a local pub called the Hat and Feathers. One evening, when it was his turn to buy, we sat beside some American graduate students and Paul immediately began talking with them. In a way that I now recognize was remarkably deft but at the time seemed merely coincidental, he turned the conversation to popular culture. Our new friends were vigorous in asserting the value of American literature and music and Paul agreed, citing as an example the Glenn Miller hit Chatanooga Choo Choo. I had no idea where this was going but the word “grifter” came to mind.

 One of the group said, “oh yeah and began to sing in not a bad voice “pardon me boys, is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo”. “Hmm” said Paul, “very nice but that’s not actually how it begins. Now on the defensive, our vocalist said “Well why don’t you sing it then?” Right said Paul, how about this. If I sing it all the way through, you chaps buy my mate and me a pint”.

So picture this: in a British pub which a generation before had been frequented by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the patrons were treated to a Manchester/Cambridge accent with attempted American overlays beginning as follows:

“ Hey there Tex, what you say
Step aside partner, it’s my day
Lend an ear and listen to my version
Of a really solid Tennessee excursion

And then continue without missing a beat all the way to the last line “Won’t you choo choo me home”

We got our pints drank them quickly and left. As soon as we exited I said “Where the devil did that come form?”. “I’m a Classicist; it’s a classic” he said – “anyway I had to do it: I realized when we went in that I hadn’t brought any money – but I think we may be on to something.”

Never underestimate the practical value of a broad education! Today Paul is a Senior Lecturer in Classics at Cambridge and our friendship endures.

Recently there has come to light much more direct evidence of the value of a liberal education. In the 1990’s, the core subjects of liberal education, the humanities, the social sciences and the fine arts were on the wane. This was in large measure because of the push to make higher education responsive to the assumed needs of the market. In 2001, an article appeared in the Canadian Journal of Higher Education entitled “ Against All Odds? The Enduring Value of Liberal Education in Universities, Professions, and the Labour Market”. Drawing from recent and previously unreported data, the article demonstrated that liberal education produces positive economic benefits for the individual graduate and that, to quote  “policies designed to diminish the presence of liberal education in universities in favor of more supposedly market-worthy subjects are short-sighted”.     

At about the same time, similar and very compelling evidence was being presented by the American economist Anthony Carnevale who was then Vice President for Public Leadership at the Education Testing Service. He was also formerly Chair of President Clinton’s National Commission for Employment Policy and the Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Services. At an American Youth Policy Forum in July 2001, he identified reversals in three trends that will directly affect education and employment policy over the next two decades.

FIRST

The reversal of the education premium in the American economy

• 1950’s through 1970’s blue collar workers with a high school education were doing better relative to college-educated white collar workers.
• Number of college-educated workers was growing and the glut of well-educated baby Boomers resulted in increased competition for skilled jobs. This further reduced the education premium. Since 1980, however, the college wage premium has nearly doubled largely because of the added value of a college education in the new economy.
• His conclusion: In the knowledge economy, education allocates earnings; work alone is not enough”

SECOND

• Second important trend reversal is declining growth rate of the American Labor force as Baby Boomers retire. 46 million college-educated baby boomers will retire between 2001 and 2020.  He estimates that there will be a shortage of nine million college-educated workers by 2020.This shortage will increase earnings differentials between educated and uneducated workers further raising the education premium.
• NOTE: social policies are not the solution to this problem. Raising the retirement age or providing access to childcare and transportation, if implemented without additional public support for higher education will simply increase the supply of less-skilled, non-college educated workers.

THIRD

• The shift from the relatively small Generation X (born between 1965 and 1981) to the much larger generation Y (born between 1982-1996). By the year 2015, Generation Y will bring almost 5 million additional 16 to 24 year olds into high school and college. Providing funds for the almost 2 million of these who will go on to college right after high school will require $20 Billion in public funds.

Dr Carnavale is now with the national Center on Education and the Economy. At this year’s AACU conference in Washington, he presented the results of his study of Department of Labor data from the last 15 years. There are two features of his findings that are particularly relevant to Ramapo College.

First has to do with the skills that are most valued in the marketplace: He divides Skills, defined as the ability to perform tasks, into seven classifications:

• Problem solving and critical thinking skills
• Technology and computer skills
• Learning skills
• Leadership and management skills
• Effective Communication skills
• Service skills
• Mechanical skills

Mean earnings were highest for those whose education had provided them with critical thinking and effective communications skills.

Second is the fact that socio-economic status is tied ever closer to educational attainment. Among the socially and economically disadvantaged there is increasingly less likelihood that a higher education will be pursued.

What does this mean for Ramapo College and for my role as your President. Ramapo College is New Jersey’s Public Liberal Arts College. We must continue to assert what we and our students and graduates and indeed our Governor and legislators know to be true: a liberal arts education is the very weave of a strong social fabric, not its embroidered border and we must offer a public education which makes it possible for qualified New Jersey students to fulfill their educational and societal potential.

I am grateful that you have expressed your confidence in my ability to proclaim this message and lead Ramapo College: New Jersey’s Public Liberal Arts College.