A highly critical report just released by the Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates (under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching) takes the country's leading research universities to task for failing to give undergraduates the kind of experience that captures the intrinsic strengths of these institutions.

Given the publicity the report is receiving, and Rochester's own special history of undergraduate education--and its recent curricular innovations--I believe I should comment.

The report, titled "Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities," alleges, among other things, that undergraduates at research universities are not taken seriously, are not "let in" on research projects, and are not taught by the leading professors (except, perhaps, in the most advanced classes), and that these institutions generally do not pay attention to "good teaching."

Unfortunately, the potentially good parts of the report (which is available on the web at http://notes.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf) are overwhelmed by a rehash of stale concepts and (despite the professed goals of the authors) a particular, and in its own way narrow, view of curricular reform.

The report is designed more to get good press coverage (which it got) than to contribute in a meaningful way to the goals of advancing undergraduate education within a university setting. It is, in the end, a very unfair document to many research universities; I know it is an unfair document as applied to the University of Rochester. And some of its unsupported statements are basically inflammatory (such as that "the students paying the tuition get . . . less than their money's worth"). I would have thought that any principle of fairness, or responsible investigation, would attempt to find some way to measure "value" before basing a report on such an amazing assertion that suggests that graduates of Harvard, Stanford, Rochester, or even state research universities (where tuitions are subsidized from public sources) fail to get their "money's worth" while their counterparts at Williams, Pomona, or Kenyon do.

The report is pointed in its view that the problems it is addressing reside within research universities; indeed, to make sure there is no ambiguity, the report provides a listing of its approximately 125 "targets"--including Rochester--as Appendix A. Given this, it is all the more telling that a major flaw of the report is its consistent and repeated failure to recognize that most of what it is talking about, in terms of curricular coherence and flow, has nothing whatsoever to do with research universities in particular. If research universities fail in many of the areas so important to the authors, so do liberal arts colleges.

A few (of many) such examples in the report:

1. "The 'general education' requirements are now near extinction at many research universities; what has survived is often more influenced by internal university politics than educational philosophies. The freshman experience needs to be an intellectually integrated one, so that the student will not learn to think of the academic program as a set of disparate and unconnected requirements." This statement is as true (or not) for liberal arts colleges as it is for research universities.

   More importantly, the implicit longing for a core of "general education" requirements (whether at research universities or in higher education generally) is itself highly debatable. There is much to be said for freedom of choice, as well: Freedom for the student to pick fields and discover interests, within a framework that ensures adherence to many ideals of a liberal arts curriculum, such as a coherent notion of "breadth" as well as "depth." I believe the philosophical statement undergirding the recently enacted Rochester curriculum--with only the requirement to complete at least a "cluster" of courses in each of the three branches of the liberal arts (humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences/engineering)--is substantially more compelling than this vision of a uniform undergraduate education.

2. "A supportive atmosphere for adjustment to university life can be created by block scheduling cohorts of freshmen into two or three courses during their first semester or year." Again, this statement is unrelated to research universities; it would be equally true (or not) for residential liberal arts colleges. Also again, this idea works only if one buys into the authors' curricular vision, which sees (essentially) an integrated first year, in which all students take the same "general education" courses, rather than one in which (as is true at Rochester) freedom of discovering one's own interests broadly across disciplines dominates.

3. "The failure of research universities seems most serious in conferring degrees upon inarticulate students." The report spends no time--and offers no evidence--to establish any basis for believing that this statement is more true in the context of research universities than liberal arts colleges--and is very unfair to our students as well as to our institutions.

I could go on with other examples, but I believe my point is clear.

Most importantly, to me, the authors of this report appear to ignore developments that have occurred at the University of Rochester, and perhaps other places. Our "Quest" courses are designed to provide small settings in which the values of being a part of a research university are introduced to our freshmen--and help build on some of the special attributes of being at this research university. Our students do see our "world-famous professors" and have ample opportunities to "tast[e] genuine research." Our curricular vision is exciting, sound, and responsive to the needs of our students to meet the challenges not just of their first job but, rather, of a lifetime of contributions to society.

To be sure, there is a continuing need to focus on and to improve undergraduate education, not just here but at other institutions as well. Recent curricular innovations, which build on a coherent intellectual vision, are making major strides toward reshaping undergraduate education at Rochester for the 21^st century. And recent efforts focusing on the residential nature of this campus are also providing a solid basis for ensuring that the entire undergraduate experience here takes maximum advantage of being at a small, national research university, which we recognize--indeed are taking steps to enhance--as at the core of our special attributes. We believe we can achieve the best of the liberal arts college world and the research university world--and have made major strides in that direction in the past several years.

It is unfortunate that the authors wrote with such an obvious predisposition. Their time would have been better spent actually visiting campuses such as this to see the exciting ways in which the faculty is addressing the enduring values of an undergraduate education. That is a notion with great resonance at our own University.

Thomas H. Jackson