Just back from a fun speech and dinner. More details later. In the meantime, here is a copy of my prepared remarks. I will probably take these down in a couple of days (since I plan to give the same talk next year), but feedback on the substance is always welcome. (Apologies for the formatting.)

Also, for those interested, I will be speaking to the Purple Bull Investment Club at 1:00 PM Sunday in the Rogers Room at the top of Hopkins Hall. I don’t have prepared remarks but will be happy to talk about whatever the members are interested in. I will certainly try to sell them on the idea of working more closely with EphBlog to create a forum at which students and alums might discuss finance. 

How to Make Williams the Best College in the World


Define the Mission: To be the best college in the world.First, bring the best students from around the world, the smartest, most ambitious English-speaking 18 year-olds. Would Williams be a great college if all the students were stupid and lazy? No.

Second, provide those students with a much better experience then they would have had elsewhere. Williams is not excellent in isolation. It is excellent to comparison to the colleges and universities that students might have attended instead. Every student in this audience could have gone elsewhere. What would your life have been like if you had? This is not simply a question of would you have learned more or partied more at Yale or Amherst during the 4 years of your college career. The 60 years that follow are just as important.

Former Dean of the College Peter Murphy put it best when he said, in response to some nonsensical question about the College imposes its values on students, “Shaping hearts and minds is actually an important part of what we do here.”  

For almost everyone, attending a different college would be better in some ways and worse in others. But, in total and on average, we need the Williams experience to be better than the alternatives available elsewhere. Why is this a useful definition? Compare it to the College’s own.

“Williams seeks to provide the finest possible liberal arts education by nurturing in students the academic and civic virtues, and their related traits of character. Academic virtues include the capacities to explore widely and deeply, think critically, reason empirically, express clearly, and connect ideas creatively. Civic virtues include commitment to engage both the broad public realm and community life, and the skills to do so effectively. These virtues, in turn, have associated traits of character. For example, free inquiry requires open-mindedness, and commitment to community draws on concern for others.”

 

The best thing that I can say about this definition is that I don’t hate it. But 591 words? 6 adverbs in the second sentence: Widely, deeply, critically, empirically, clearly, creatively. The reader must surrender to this adverbial onslaught. This is not a horrible mission statement, but it is obviously produced by a committee, a committee with too many interests to satisfy, too many viewpoints to appease. The entire piece deserves a thorough fisking, but that is not today’s rant.

 

The mission of Williams is to give the best students the best experience, in comparison to what they could have had elsewhere, both in terms of their time in Williamstown and the lifetime which follows. Excellence without comparison is impossible. My definition highlights the trade-offs that the College faces and helps us focus on what our priorities should be. It suggests specific policies, like more tutorials, that the College is already implementing but which are too little and too late for making Williams the best college in the world. The College is, to some extent, complacent with its triumphs of the last 50 years. It needs a good kick in the backside. I am here to help.

 

Trade-Offs

Understanding the mission of Williams as student-centered provides a framework for thinking more rigorously about the inevitable trade-offs that the College faces. No matter how rich Williams becomes, money is always limited. There are always more worthy projects to devote resources toward than there are resources to do the devoting with. For example, consider the College’s recent donation of $2 million dollars to MASS MoCA. Whenever I complain about these sorts of boondoggles, people always accuse me of being some sort of ogre, of hating the arts or the local community. Untrue! The issue is that $2 million dollars could have been spent elsewhere, on projects with a much more direct impact in student life. Imagine if that money had been devoted to club sports or keeping the health center or Paresky open overnight or more summer research funding.People tend not to think that way. They refuse to recognize the inevitable trade-offs. They focus on what they can see ($2 million going to MASS MoCA) and not on what they can’t see ($2 million going to club sports). So, when I complain about spending money — your tuition dollars and my alumni donations — on MASS MoCA or North Adams Regional Hospital or Mount Greylock Regional High School, people, especially faculty members and local residents, become upset. As far as they are concerned, Williams has an infinite supply of money, things like museums and hospitals and schools are worthy causes, so it is obvious that some of the College’s endless resources should be devoted to local institutions. Gibberish! Funds are limited. Every dollar spent on something peripheral to the student experience is a dollar wasted.

The Administration will often claim that such donations are important because, without them, the local community would suffer and the College would have trouble recruiting and retaining the best faculty and staff. This is simply false. More than 75% of the tenured faculty would have trouble getting a similar position elsewhere. They are stuck in Williamstown for the rest of their lives. The job market facing junior faculty is so glutted that there are hundreds of excellent applicants for each opening. Williams could spend zero dollars on the local community and have almost no impact on the quality of its faculty and staff. And, in those few cases in which it would matter, a much better strategy is to pay those elite faculty a higher salary.

Again, the structure of the talk is to highlight all these issues quickly, allow those who have had enough to leave, and then answer questions at the end. Want more examples of wasteful spending, of spending that does not directly impact student life? Consider the Center for Development Economics and the masters program in Art History. At best, these are distractions from the College’s primary mission. At worst, they prevent us from seeing clearly what Williams is and what it should be.

Another example of how a student-centered definition of the mission of Williams helps in evaluating College activity concerns political activity. At least in the case of things like MASS MoCA, a not-too-ludicrous case can be made that better museums attract better faculty. But what about items like the  Bolin fellowships, recently doubled in size to 6 positions. How does giving random pre-Ph.D. graduate students a dissertation grant meaningfully impact undergraduate life? The people who run the College don’t like the racial mix of the US professoriate and so they spend the College’s money to try to change it. They should stop. Spend that money on the students.Consider Professor Wendy Raymond. Why is Raymond, one of the great teachers in the biology department, teaching only half as much as she used to and, instead, spending her time as associate dean of institutional diversity, a position that did not exist a few years ago? Every minute that Raymond does not spend in the classroom and laboratory robs Williams students of the education they deserve.

Again, little of this directly impacts the lives of current students for better or worse. And, what little impact it does have is dwarfed in comparison to what those same resources could have achieved elsewhere. Which would be better for students: More funding for club sports or Bolin Fellowships?

 

Focus


Besides emphasizing the importance of trade-offs, a mission statement for Williams that places the student experience at the center, allows us to  focus on what matters to Williams and what does not. If a professor, say Frank Morgan, writes a book, and no student reads it, is Williams a better college? If the Williams College Museum of Art puts on an exhibit on Felix Gonzalez Torres, and no student views it, is Williams a better college? If the College hosts the Berkshire Squash Open Championship, and no student participates, is Williams a better college? No. Things that don’t impact students directly, don’t matter. Or, at least, they don’t matter very much.If a tree falls in Hopkins Forest and no student hears it, then it makes no sound. Really!

Note the examples that I have picked above are some of my favorite parts of Williams. No professor has done more for the College over the last 25 years than Frank Morgan. As a former squash player, I celebrate the lives and achievements of Ephs like Renzi Lamb, Dave Johnson and Zafi Levy.

This definition of the “best college” is not primarily about what I like or you like. It is about those things that, in comparison with other colleges, have the most positive impact on the student experience, both during their four years and in the lives they lead afterwards.

 


See how this brings us back to the mission of Williams to be the best college in the world, or at least to my definition of it? Other reasonable Ephs may disagree with my definition. They believe that it is a good thing when a Williams professor publishes a book even if no student reads it, even if no student is even aware of its existence, because increasing the world’s knowledge is one of the missions of Williams. Those people are wrong. Increasing the world’s knowledge is a useful byproduct of Williams’ mission to be the best college in the world, but that is not the college’s mission. That is Harvard’s mission. As much as the faculty would occasionally like to pretend otherwise, Williams is a college, not a research university.

 

What Follows

Assume for a second that we agree that the mission of Williams is to be the best college in the world and that “best” is defined in terms of the students and their experiences, in comparison with the experiences that they would have had elsewhere. What follows from this framework?First, it’s not clear! Reasonable people will disagree. Consider Neighborhood housing or international admissions. Even if you use my definition and keep the focus on the students, it is not obvious what the best policy on these topics would be, although I am happy to share my thoughts during the Q&A.

Second, money. Without money, Williams will no longer be a great college because all the best students would be bid away. If Harvard (and Yale and Amherst and Swarthmore and Stanford) were free, would you really tell someone to pay $200,000 to come to Williams? What happens when other schools start offering Tyng-like scholarships to prospective students? Sorry for being so crass, but colleges operate in a competitive marketplace and the under-capitalized among them will lose out. Fortunately, this sad fact does not impact the life of the College very much. Indeed, raising money is about being nice and friendly, which are good things in their own right. But, no money means no College. I actually have some radical opinions about what Williams should be doing with its endowment, but more on that in the question and answer period, if anyone is interested.

Third, there are an entire collection of activities that most reasonable people will agree are desirable and will either raise money or, at worst, be money neutral. This is the heart of my speech. Once you accept that the mission of Williams is centered directly on the student experience, and on the quality of undergraduates who choose Williams, an entire set of policy changes becomes relatively obvious. (Hand-waving.)

 

Policies
First, better housing. Why doesn’t every Williams student have a single, at least after freshmen year? Why aren’t there twice as many co-op spaces, given how popular co-ops are among students? Why isn’t it easier for groups of seniors to live together outside of co-ops?  Compare Williams housing to Harvard housing. Better housing increases the likelihood that excellent applicants will choose Williams over Harvard and Amherst. It also improves student-student interaction.

Second, smaller classes. There should be no lectures at Williams. Aldous Huxley said it best:

Lecturing as a method of instruction dates from classical and mediaeval times, before the invention of printing. When books were worth their weight in gold, professors had to lecture. Cheap printing has radically changed the situation which produced the lecturer of antiquity. And yes — preposterous anomaly! — the lecturer survives and even flourishes. In all the universities of Europe his voice still drones and brays just as it droned and brayed in the days of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. Lecturers are as much an anachronism as bad drains or tallow candles; it is high time that they were got rid of.


Each time a student asks a professor a question, works with a professor on a piece of art or reads a professor’s comments on her writing, we are transported back to Mark Hopkins on the Log. The best, most meaningful interactions between professors and students occur on a one-to-one basis. Lectures can’t do that. The fewer lectures at Williams, the more likely students are to choose Williams over Yale and Swarthmore. Ending lectures increases and improves student-faculty interaction. Third, consider Donors Choose, a site which allows donors to select from a collection of charitable projects and then get feedback on exactly how their money was spent. Why not Ephs Choose ? Why aren’t students encouraged to contact alumni directly and ask them for money? (Answer: Control.) But just because the Alumni Office tries to prevent alumni-student interaction is no reason for us to listen.

Fourth, the College should be more transparent in everything it does. A good example of such transparency involves Roger Bolton’s efforts with the re-accreditation process. The more details that the College shares with the larger Eph community, the more we all — students, faculty, alumni, parents and local residents — feel connected to it, the more we are a part of the process. Alas, the College does this sometimes but not always. The Executive Committee of the Society of Alumni is meeting next week in sunny Boca Raton, Florida. I can’t even get a copy of the program much less the material that will be distributed to the committee members.

Now, it may appear that I am just going down a laundry list of my preferred policy changes. What do more co-ops, smaller classes, directed alumni donations and transparency have in common? They point to the central location of the magic that is the Williams College experience: personal interaction among the tribe of Ephs. More co-ops is about facilitating student-student interaction. Smaller classes encourage student-faculty interaction. Directed donations enable student-alumni interaction. Transparency includes all of us in the conversation. But, always, the student is at the center of our efforts. If something does not directly impact the lives of individual students, it does not matter much, if at all. And, the more that students are at the center of everything that the College tries to do, the more likely excellent applicants are to choose Williams.

Once you see that personal interactions are at the heart of the Williams student experience — especially meaningful interactions that stretch over weeks and months and years, interactions which develop into the relationships around which we structure our lives — then lots of smaller policy changes seem obvious. But let me leave the details for the question and answers.

 

When Jack Sawyer ‘39 become president of Williams in 1961, he found a successful, sleepy school that no one would have considered the best liberal arts college in the country. No other Eph deserves more credit for the elite position that Williams occupies today. But Sawyer’s presidency began almost 50 years ago. How can we do going forward what Sawyer did then? How can we transform Williams from one of the top handful of liberal arts colleges in the country to clearly the best college in the world?
     Focus on the students. Prevent the administration and faculty from spending money on things that they want, things that are unconnected to student life. It really is that simple. And, since the administration and faculty run the College, it is also that hard. Good luck!