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CHANCIER
2
Rethinking Undergraduate
Professional Education for the
T~venty-First Century:
The University Vantage Point
Nils Hasselmo
In the recently published Carnegie Foundation report, Scholar-
sh~p Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, Ernest L. Coyer
said that he is "beginning to believe that the 1990S may well come
to be remembered as the decade of the undergraduate in American
higher education" (Moyer, l990:Xi). This thoughtful report should be
required reading, because in his usual manner, Foyer offers a rich
array of sensible ideas to help fulfill his prophecy.
The conference was extraordinarily consistent with those sen-
sible ideas, and 1 take that as additional evidence and encourage-
ment that improving undergraduate education has genuine momen-
tum that will, in fact, make a real difference.
I also sensed in the conference a spirit of openness tO educa-
tional reform without parochialism. Clearly and refreshingly, the
conference was not a circling of the academic wagons and a break-
ing out of the disciplinary rifles. Despite its popularity, that maneu-
ver has never been a good idea in higher education; we usually
end up shooting ourselves or each other-in the foot. It is essen-
tial that we look at education in a broader perspective.
The Agenda
What, then, is the agenda in undergraduate professional educa-
tion from my perspective? What do I see from my vantage point as
president of a land-grant university? I hear many voices that say
the following:
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AGRICULTURE AND THE UNDERGRADUATE
nary.
.
· Make undergraduate professional education more interdiscipli
· Make agricultural sciences degrees more environmental.
· Make health sciences degrees more social.
· Make business degrees more ethical.
· Make engineering degrees more humanistic.
· Make professional degrees more liberal.
· Make liberal degrees more professional.
· Make professional education a masters-level enterprise.
Make undergraduate education benefit more from the research
and public service environments of land-grant universities.
· Make undergraduate education more customer friendly, eco-
nomical, and effective.
Is this a cacophony of voices? It is certainly a formidable agenda,
but it also presents an exciting set of challenges and opportuni-
ties for constructive change. ~ would like to comment on four of
the many possible topics:
1. The squeeze on undergraduate professional education.
2. The opportunity for undergraduate professional education.
3. The challenge to undergraduate professional education.
4. The model of undergraduate professional education.
The Squeeze on Un~iergraduate
Professional Education
From my vantage point, it seems that undergraduate professional
education is being squeezed from below, from above, and from all
sides.
From below, undergraduate professional education is being
squeezed by the lack of preparation in elementary and secondary
schools. HOW much remedial education can we continue to do
and still do our real job7
From above, undergraduate professional education is being
squeezed by an enormous expansion of programs at the master's
level. AS president of the National Advisory Hoard for the National
Study of Masters Degrees, commissioned by the Council of Gradu-
ate Schools, I have caught a glimpse of this expansion. There are
approximately 800 different master's degrees offered nationwide.
At the University of Minnesota alone we offer some 180 different
fields and options at the master's level.
From the sides, undergraduate professional education is being
squeezed by general undergraduate education in the arts and sci-
ences. AS the demands of the professions have grown, the rate of
obsolescence of knowledge and the need to teach students how to
learn, communicate, and compute and quantify have grown. How
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UNIVERSITY VANTAGE POINT
liberal must undergraduate professional education be to meet
this situation?
The Opportunity for Undergraduate
Professional Education
1 see considerable opportunities for undergraduate professional
education. This is where the land-grant universities, with their broad
spectrum of undergraduate (and graduate) professional programs,
may have a special responsibility to exercise leadership. I believe
those who argue that liberal education can be enriched by the
content and the context of the professions and the professional
curricula.
I am as firm a believer as anybody in the need for students to
understand the basic nature of science and something about the
theory and methodology of at least one science. I believe, for
example, that students need to study the principles of ethics and
the need for social responsibility, that they need some familiarity
with our diverse world and our diverse society, that they need
historical perspective, and that they need at least some experience
with a language other than their mother tongue. Many of the basic
questions our students need to understand and try to answer are
found in the professions and in properly constructed professional
curricula. The skills in communication and computation that are
basic to a liberal education are also practiced and taught in specific
professional contexts.
in other words, undergraduate professional education can offer
content, context, and practice for undergraduate liberal study. Many
have said so. We need to keep affirming the principle and steer
curriculum development and teaching practice in that direction.
The Challenge to Undergra~inate
Professional Education
We need to look at undergraduate education more as an inte-
grated whole than as a group of separate disciplines. The future of
undergraduate professional education may lie not in an emphasis
on professional education but in one on undergraduate education.
The future of liberal education may lie not in its avowed lack of
professional content and context but in its role in laying a founda-
tion for and creating an understanding of what professional life is
all about.
With this approach, undergraduate professional education faces
all of the challenges that have been placed before undergraduate
education in general and that 1 listed earlier. With this approach,
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AGRICULTURE AND THE UNDERGRADUATE
however, undergraduate professional education can also better serve
as a model for solving those problems, which brings me to my
fourth topic.
The Model of Undergraduate
Professional Education
I believe that we can learn from undergraduate professional edu-
cation in solving the general problems of undergraduate education.
We can learn to insist on proper preparation before college work is
begun and in working with elementary and secondary schools to
ensure such preparation. Professional programs have been better
able to establish a distinct set of expectations for precollege stu-
dents than liberal education programs have. Establishing more
distinct expectations is clearly the key to better preparation, and
direct collaboration with elementary and secondary schools in
establishing the proper expectations is necessary.
We can learn to define the specific content of the curriculum and
to measure outcomes against established benchmarks. If we can-
not define the outcomes of what we do, we are not likely to achieve
what we should and will certainly continue to have trouble with our
political leaders and the public. The best and only defense against
simplistic assessment is thoughtful assessment. it is not easy, but
it is necessary. Many professional programs are far ahead of liberal
education in definition and measurement.
We can learn to improve teaching and advising by structuring the
interaction between faculty and students in a variety of ways and
by properly using instructional technology. I believe that, in this
regard, some undergraduate professional programs have set stan-
dards that should be applied more generally.
We can learn to provide an intellectual context for the learning
and application of theory and methodology that are a central part of
liberal as well as professional education. This includes drawing on
the richness of the research and public service environment in the
land-grant universities, which, 1 believe, is more common in under-
graduate professional education than it is elsewhere.
We can learn to provide a social context for learning by integrat-
ing the undergraduates into a professional or disciplinary environ-
ment. Again, this means drawing the students into a culture of
research and public service, that is, a professional culture. Many
professional programs do a better Job of this than many liberal
arts disciplines do.
We can learn to use, evaluate, and reward faculty on the basis of
all of their contributions to a program and on the basis of specific
objectives. Again, some undergraduate professional programs have
been pioneers in establishing such systems.
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UNIVERSITY VANTAGE POINT
What Are We Doing at the
University of Minnesota?
Let me first disavow any suggestion that we have solved all of
these problems at the University of Minnesota or that we have done
all the things that I mentioned above. We have not, but we have
begun to do so, as outlined below:
· We have set new preparation requirements for English, math-
ematics, science, social studies, and foreign language. The im-
provement in our students" preparation has been substantial.
· In what we simply call our Undergraduate Initiative, we have
taken a look at the quality of undergraduate education in our re-
search and land-grant universities. We have put significant resources
into undergraduate education through internal reallocation. So far,
we have implemented the transfer of almost SO million into under-
graduate education. The plan for the next 3 to 5 years, which was
adopted by the Board of Regents in March 1991, involves the real-
location of 10 percent of our tax-funded base budget, with much of
the funding going to the units that teach 84 percent of our under-
graduates.
· We have seen new, more interdisciplinary curricula, for ex-
ample, in the Colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources, that
represent distinctive movement in the directions 1 indicated above.
Our general liberal education requirements for students at the Twin
Cities campus are in the final stages of revision, with contributions
from the professional programs being an important ingredient, with
assessment of outcomes being a necessity, with articulation with
the secondary schools being a matter of course, and with teaching
across the curriculum being an indispensable mode of operation.
· We are gearing up to take a broad look at learning methods
and have several pockets of innovation to draw on, several of them
in undergraduate professional programs.
· We have developed sessions to determine what makes for a
successful department.
We are drawing on units that have had
great success in national contexts, especially in research and graduate
education. interestingly, but not surprisingly, very successful re-
search and graduate departments also seem to take good care of
their undergraduates.
What constitutes a high-quality department that delivers high-
quality undergraduate educations 1 suggest some characteristics
below, but with the admonition that the most promising analysis
can be had by looking carefully at real departments that seem tO
have it all.
A high-quality department that delivers high-quality education has
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AGRICULTURE AND THE UNDERG~UATE
a sense of community that is strong and evident. The balance of
the mission is understood, and the division of labor is both re-
spected and rewarded. There is a coherent sense of purpose and
direction, both for the department and for its individual members.
There is a clear sense of quality. There is a clear sense of "cus-
tomer," even if the term is not the preferred one. in one or more
persons there is leadership that knows how to recognize the needs
of individuals and that acts accordingly. There is an accountability
ethic in which both individuals and the group expect to be judged
fairly and rationally. Staff and students are full citizens, and they
are treated that way. There is both the security and the strategy to
seek out the best and the brightest without socioeconomic, racial
or ethnic, or geographical barriers. There is the commitment and
ability to develop their talent even more and to integrate them fully
into the department and its value system. There is a willingness to
target the investment of departmental resources toward clearly de-
fined objectives. There is a sense of departmental community with-
in larger communities. Finally, in terms of the land-grant university,
there is special attention to offering the undergraduate the full ben-
efit of the university's research and public-service culture.
These characteristics are anything but the naive wish list of aca-
demic reformers. They already exist in departments all over the
country, and they reflect a strength in values that will reinforce not
resist the restructuring and reform that will make a difference. The
president who wants to rethink undergraduate education has many
talented allies.
Conclusion
in the end, two factors are decisive: culture and economics.
The culture of the university represents our values, the values that
drive what we do. The culture determines how we implement
those values. Faculty members and administrators are an impor-
tant part of shaping that culture. The economics of the university
determine in fundamental ways how much we can do and how fast
we can do it. We face economic problems, no doubt, at the na-
tional and state levels. if the culture is one of constructive change
and accountability, however, I believe that our culture can over-
come our economics rather than vice versa.
Reference
Foyer, E. L. 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professori-
ate. Princeton, N.J.: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching.
34
Representative terms from entire chapter:
undergraduate professional
