The Collegiate Way

The real crisis in higher education today doesn’t have to do with the curriculum, it has to do with the poverty of student life. Endlessly rescrambled dormitories, social isolation, alcohol abuse and vandalism, institutionally-promoted segregation, and a loss of connection between the classroom and student life outside the classroom—all these troubles have for a generation plagued institutions that advertise themselves as caring and “student-centered.”

If universities are to have the transformative effect they ought to have on the lives of young people then the faculty must become the principal influences on student life throughout their institutions. They can do this by reviving one of the oldest models of university structure in existence: the decentralized residential colleges of Oxford and Cambridge Universities in Great Britain. Within these small collegiate communities—communities that include young and old, rich and poor, student and professor, artist and scientist—a stable, challenging, and diverse social and intellectual environment can be restored. This is already beginning to happen on many campuses, and a genuine residential college movement is now underway.

If you are a student you should include universities that have residential colleges in your college search. If you are a parent you should encourage your son or daughter to explore collegiate universities. If you are a faculty member or university administrator you should consider joining the residential college movement and establishing a collegiate system: it can be done much less expensively than you might think, and it will transform your institution for generations to come.

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Comments

[dearieme]

Even that is secondary to engaging the minds and efforts of the students, which in turn demands teaching to high intellectual standards.

[DR]

I agree with your post but currently only Oxbridge offers a true collegiate system. In other UK universities (even those that their collegiate system is similar or close to the Oxbridge one) the trend is towards the creation of colleges that essentially are residence halls.