Keeping Dartmouth a “college,” in name and fact
President Wright has declared that Dartmouth is now a “university in all but name.” Sadly, he wasn’t far from the truth: undergraduate class sizes have grown larger, departments denied adequate funding to hire new full-time professors have had to rely on part-time instructors to meet basic curricular needs, and undergraduates have found it harder and harder to get the courses they want. This needs to change.
Dartmouth’s distinctiveness rests on the fact that it has historically treated undergraduates as its highest priority. That treatment, I take it, is what Daniel Webster had in mind when he famously argued to the Supreme Court, in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), that Dartmouth is a “small college.” It’s certainly what I had in mind when alumni of the College boast to friends and colleagues that Dartmouth is the only college in the Ivy League.
The “small college” formula articulated by Webster was translated into an undergraduate education that was second to none. Classes were taught by accomplished scholars employed as full-time Dartmouth professors – beloved teachers such as John Kemeny and John Rassias, inventors of the BASIC computer language and the Rassias method, respectively – not graduate students or part-time instructors. Our professors were not researchers who taught undergraduates; they were undergraduate teachers who did research. It could hardly have been otherwise at a school that prided itself on being a “college,” and a “small” one at that.
We must be a college, in name and in fact. The College needs to expand its efforts to hire more professors to reduce undergraduate class size and to expand the number of curricular offerings that are available to undergraduates. At a time when tuition and administrative budgets are soaring, it is unfair that today’s Dartmouth students are not guaranteed the opportunity to get into the courses they want, when they want, and to be taught by full-time professors who have met Dartmouth’s hiring and tenure standards for teaching and research excellence. More full-time professors will also benefit Dartmouth faculty by lightening their teaching loads and expanding the amount of time they can devote to their own scholarly endeavors and those of the undergraduates they mentor.
This is not in any way to deny the value of research at Dartmouth. Research contributes to the knowledge base of society, which is a good thing. In addition, research can actually result in a richer educational experience for undergraduates. Some kinds of research, particularly in medicine, directly benefit undergraduates by giving them the opportunity to work in the lab with noted scientists doing cutting-edge research. Even in the humanities, research can benefit the classroom experience by keeping professors current in their fields and giving them new insights into the subjects they teach — insights that can then be passed on to students.
For these reasons, even for those of us who take seriously the College’s “small college” mission, research has an important place at Dartmouth. In research, as in everything else the College does, the goal should be nothing short of excellence.
We must be on guard, however, to maintain a proper balance between teaching and research. As we aim for excellence in research, we must be vigilant to maintain teaching excellence. Research excellence should not be pursued at the expense of excellence in the classroom. To remain true to its “small college” mission, Dartmouth must aspire to — and invest in — the achievement of excellence in both.
Defenders of the “university in all but name” status quo defend higher class sizes, long waiting lists, and greater use on part-time teachers by pointing to other schools that are just as bad, if not worse. Since when is our goal just to avoid falling too far behind the pack? Dartmouth historically aspired to provide the very best undergraduate education in the world. That ought to be our goal again. The College and Board of Trustees should formally adopt achieving unparalleled excellence in undergraduate education, and the Board should require the President to file a written annual report with the Board concerning the measures the College is taking, and needs to take, in order to give our undergraduates an academic experience of unparalleled excellence.
