Historically, the traditional “liberal arts college” maintained a reputation quite different from that of the “research university.” Described as “private, nonprofit, coeducational, four-year schools with five thousand or fewer students” liberal arts colleges (LACs) are often characterized as strong sites for writing, whether such instruction is explicit in designated coursework or implicit in the entire curriculum (Rutz 60-61). Bob Connors (1997) points out that prior to the American trend toward establishing universities in the 1870s and 1880s, the “earlier college world” offered a “classical curriculum, with its emphasis on preprofessional generalism and ‘mental discipline’” in undergraduate courses (177). As distinctions between liberal arts colleges* and research universities grew in response to demand from scholars returning from study abroad, LACs continued to maintain the goal of generalism, and writing developed as the catalyst for integrating knowledge from a variety of disciplines. Because “the liberal arts tradition holds that learning is coming to know, and that knowing is in its end an act of power,” the liberal arts student used writing as a tool to explore, debate, challenge, and synthesize a variety of disciplines ranging from English to economics (Lloyd 100).
During the 19th century, Peter Vandenberg (1994) notes new universities “pushed to be at the center of knowledge creation,” (1) and purposefully distinguished themselves from LACs using the following contrasting characteristics:
university |
college |
|---|---|
national |
local |
research |
teaching |
theory |
practice |
science |
technology |
truth |
opinion |
objectivity |
subjectivity |
substance |
style |
sliterature |
composition |
While the end result of these associations caused the “development and maintenance of such a system of hierarchical oppositions founded on the privileged institutional status of the new research university over the traditional liberal arts college,” many of these characteristics associated with LACs remain proudly evident in their missions (Vandenberg 3). Some divisions remain less clear than the above hierarchy might indicate. For example, composition, a skill often associated with the historical liberal arts tradition in the above schema, also carried over to these newly established research universities even if literature was privileged as subject of study**. Writing in the research university evolved throughout the 19th century, and by 1885 Harvard had established a required first-year composition course that other universities used as a model for today’s first year writing programs, including the current program at The University of Findlay. Despite the now established presence of writing, Connors acknowledges, “the composition-rhetoric of the schools was different from that of the colleges, which was not that of the universities” (7).
In research universities, the enterprise of writing was now reconceived as “a set of skills, a tool of scientific method rather than an epistemic activity itself” (Vandenberg 3). In contrast, in liberal arts courses “Essays are assigned to help (or force) the students to an imaginative control of the material of the course. To ask for an essay is to ask for the invention of an idea whose formulation or at least development is new.” (Connelly and Irving 669) LAC faculty across disciplines generally promote a culture where writing is valued and “such a delivery system depends on the establishment and maintenance of a culture among faculty and students that esteems written communication in many forms for many purposes” (Rutz 61). For many liberal arts colleges, the embedded culture of writing appears to create stronger writers. In fact, contemporary studies such as the 2005 ASHE Higher Education report*** suggest that the liberal arts student tends to enjoy the higher-order cognitive thinking skills associated with writing, and demonstrates greater fluency, style, and skill during writing tasks ” than students at other types of universities (46).
*There is clearly a wide range of small liberal arts colleges. Amorose (2000) notes “these institutions often adhere to some ethos associated with being small or relatively small in size—e.g., a teaching (vs. research) orientation, a liberal-arts mission, individualized student attention. Typically, they enroll 2,000-3,000 students, though some ‘small’ regional universities may have as many as 5,000 undergraduates” (85). The University of Findlay’s enrollment figures for 2007 cite 3900 undergraduate students and 1400 graduate students (see http://www.findlay.edu/admissions/info/undergraduate/apply/profileclass2005.htm for an in-depth profile of the student population).
** Much has been written regarding the composition-literature “divide” (for a variety of perspectives, see Bergman and Baker 2006). The association of liberal arts colleges with composition in the previous schema may indicate more about maintaining the subordinate relationship between university and college, as an explicit composition curriculum is clearly present at many research universities.
***Results were measured in the study using the writing test of the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency (an exam developed by the American College Testing Program) (ASHE Higher Education Report 45). While this standardized test is just one measure of student aptitude, it does illustrate a link between highly developed writing skills and a liberal arts education.