博雅教育的命运及可能的未来:美国大众高等教育的经验

马丁·特罗指出,高等教育的问题——包括提供博雅教育的能力——都内在于经济增长之中。制度的性质随增长而改变,“大众化”意味着对接受高等教育的机会和社会民主化的乐观态度,容易在大学中产生一种结构和文化状况,这与真正严格的、以文本为基础的、以讨论为中心的、写作密集型的博雅教育是对立的。问题的核心在于规模、质量和成本这三者看上去不可调和,也就是如何在规模日益增大的背景下使博雅教育成为可能并具有成本效益。解决当前问题的关键在于有意识的沟通,这种沟通操作性地位于高等教育录取层面。本文提出三种解决方案:对大学的适当信息之制度化,比如大学的目的和功能;在分化的高等教育体系中,将申请人与院校恰当匹配的实践;对在高校中成为一个真正的学生之预期的理解的标准化。

The Fate(and Possible Future)of Liberal Learning:Lessons from Mass Higher Education in the United States

In his classic work,the sociologist Martin Trow observed that in every advanced society,the problems of higher education-including ostensibly the ability to deliver a liberal education-inhere in growth.With growth,the character of institutions changes.University attendance increasingly carries varied meanings for students:first conceived as a privilege,then as a right,and finally as an "obligation."While "massification"is connoted with an optimism about access to higher education and a democratization of society,it is prone to propagating structural and cultural conditions of institutions that are antithetical to an authentically rigorous,text-based,discussion-centered,writing-intensive liberal education where students and faculty convene on behalf of education for the mind.The emergence of this problem centers on the seemingly irreconcilable triad of size,quality,and cost;that is,how liberal education is made possible and cost-effective on an increasingly large scale.This article suggests that solutions to this contemporary social problem center on intentional communication and are situated operationally in admissions to higher education.The solutions suggested here are three-fold:the institutionalization of proper information about universities,their purposes and functions;the practice of proper matching of applicants with institutions in institutionally-differentiated higher education systems;and the standardization of proper understanding of expectations about what it means to be a bona-fide student in an institution of higher education.