Cozy Campuses Ewu Professor Believes Undergraduates Are Better Served By Small Universities

Parents looking for the best college for their sons and daughters are told by the Gonzagas, Whitworths and Whitmans of higher education that smallness is an advantage. It improves chances that students will get the attention of teachers.

But when the same parents consider public higher education, they hear just the opposite argument. Now they should prefer a large institution because it can offer a student the “prestige” of scientific research and sheer size. Thus Sen. Jim West proposes to improve higher education in this region by combining Eastern Washington University and Washington State University into one giant institution of 20,000 undergraduate students.

The question is, who is telling the parents the truth?

The answer is, Gonzaga, Whitworth and Whitman.

Greater size benefits graduate education and scientific research, but almost always harms undergraduate education. In a 1991 book called “How College Affects Students,” authors Ernest Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini reviewed and correlated the findings of 2,600 studies of college effectiveness made over the previous two decades. After 850 pages of statistical analysis they concluded: “There is little consistent evidence to indicate that college selectivity, prestige, or educational resources have any important net impact on students.”

This will come as a surprise to a general public that has been led to believe that big-name universities, with lots of scientists and huge libraries, are the essence of quality higher education.

But the finding did not surprise educators. Pascarella and Terenzini simply reconfirmed what has long been recognized within the profession. Learning is a function of “student orientation” of a college or university - basically how much time teachers have for students. Anything that promotes this promotes effective education. Anything that interferes with it hampers education. Small classes are better than bigger classes; small campuses tend to be better than big campuses.

Colleges and universities known for the quality of their undergraduate programs are so partially because they choose to remain as small as possible. Harvard, which could be as large as it wanted to be, has about the same number of undergraduate students (6,600) as Eastern Washington University (6,400). Stanford has about the same number (6,500). Arthur Chickering, a well known authority on undergraduate education, said that if he were to design the ideal college it would have no more than 1,200 students.

Not only do the prestige of scientific research and sheer size not help undergraduate education, both pose their own threats to it. Alexander W. Astin is one name in this field that lay readers may recognize. Every year, Astin’s UCLA-based institute produces a survey of undergraduate education that is reported in this newspaper and most others in the country. Astin has spent three decades studying the processes of higher education. In his 1993 book, “What Matters In College,” he writes: “There is a significant price to be paid, in terms of student development, for a very strong faculty emphasis on research.” The problem is “a widespread (but seldom publicly stated) belief among university administrators that some of the funds allocated for undergraduate education must be siphoned off to support graduate education and research.”

The siphoning generally takes the form of giant classes of 50 or more students that produce an economy of scale, but in the process make real education almost impossible. Study after study has shown that undergraduates learn most when there is questioning by students, frequent writing assignments, and informal discussion between teacher and students. All of these become more difficult as class size rises; they are virtually impossible when students are taught in battalions.

The study by Pascarella and Terrenzini found the least effective form of teaching was the traditional lecture - but it was also the most common approach. Its one advantage is that, with the help of a microphone, it can cover any number of students.

The teacher already hampered by a bloated classroom also may be distracted by demands that he or she do “research” befitting a “research institution.” Every college teacher needs to do research; otherwise the teacher soon has nothing useful to teach. But research institutions may define research in the narrowest possible way, as including only the study of a question obscure enough that no one has explored it before (perhaps for good reason). That kind of narrow and particular research is usually of little help to the undergraduate student, who needs information that is general and connected. It may or may not be of any value even to science or scholarship. Jacques Barzun, the author of a couple of dozen scholarly books, including the classic, “The Modern Researcher,” complained that compulsory research of this type has produced “an appalling amount of pointless papers.” “The side effects upon higher education,” he added, “are many and dire. The worst is the neglect of teaching - there is no time for both research and class preparation.”

Higher education is society’s last chance to have a long, serious talk with young people before they take over the controls. So how do we use this opportunity? We cast students into a vast, impersonal institution that is judged only by total numbers, and we let them know, by how we invest our money, that we consider science, not them, our real hope for the future.

“In American universities,” said noted historian Page Smith, a teacher in the gigantic University of California system, “the vast majority of the students pass through four years without having a fruitful contact with any professor, often without indeed having a professor call them by name.”

Giantism is widely recognized as the biggest threat to the effectiveness of colleges and universities. At the moment, higher education is bubbling with ideas to reverse some of the pernicious trends of the last three decades and return the campus to a more human scale. Although it is seldom possible to dismantle a mega-university (something to keep in mind), many institutions are experimenting with ways of reducing “psychological size” by creating autonomous campuses, small living groups, smaller classes, and the like.

Does it make sense, then, for higher education in Eastern Washington to follow in the footsteps so many institutions are regretting?

I suppose, since I am on the faculty of EWU, this argument is going to look defensive, an appeal on behalf of Eastern only. As a matter of fact, though, I consider myself no less a partisan of WSU. I worked five happy years in the service of WSU; I have a degree from WSU; I wrote a book about WSU; my son wants to go to WSU.

In my opinion, West’s proposition is as dangerous to WSU as it is to Eastern. Those who love WSU as it is had better consider whether they want to exchange it for the much bigger and more diffuse institution West proposes. WSU has advantages it is easy to take for granted. It is a world-class research institution, yet it retains, largely because of its isolation, the feel of a residential “college.” WSU is right now what many bloated state university systems in this country wish they were.

Combining EWU and WSU may enhance research, as Senator West says, perhaps bringing about economies that will produce enough money to open a research center in Spokane.

But if other states’ experiences are any guide, this additional research will be purchased by downgrading undergraduate education in this region.

MEMO: William Stimson is an associate professor of journalism at Eastern Washington University and author of “Going To Washington State,” a history of student life at WSU. He is writing a book about undergraduate education.