I commend last week’s issue of The Mirror for its focus on the College’s presence outside Hanover, particularly Victoria Nelsen’s piece, “Can a Liberal Arts College Go Global?” Dartmouth’s brand recognition worldwide is, frankly, weak when compared with its peer institutions. To answer the article’s question — yes, a liberal arts college can go global, and the College can do so without compromising its identity and mission.
Most institutions, in vying for global brand recognition, tend to assert their prowess in faculty research output and graduate schools. Dartmouth could strive for similar recognition in several ways, including promoting its existing graduate programs and professional schools, adding more graduate programs and introducing graduate students into classrooms, therefore enabling faculty to do more research. These changes could all bolster Dartmouth’s global reputation if administrators wanted to implement them. There is a lot about the College — including the name — that could be changed if we so desire, but we do not need to fundamentally change anything about Dartmouth’s academic enterprise.
Our strength lies in what we are today — and this is the message that the College ought to bring to the world. Dartmouth does not fit in with its peers in the Ivy League, each of which is named “University.” The concept of a liberal arts college that operates with the capabilities and resources of a research university is rare, yet this is the College’s niche. We offer the attention, intimacy, academic breadth and depth of a liberal arts college. We also offer the capabilities, resources, the facilities and research opportunities of a research university. Moreover, Dartmouth offers the cachet and well-connected alumni body of an Ivy League institution to boot. Few other schools can offer this combination. Other institutions can talk all they want about their undergraduate focus, but the large proportion of graduate students to undergraduates, like at Columbia where enrollment in undergraduate schools makes up less than 30 percent of the total enrollment, belies such claims. Although we do not have a law school and our medical school is still not fully recovered from the institutional neglect it suffered a few decades ago, Dartmouth has an identity that almost no other academic institution in the world can assert — it is both truly a liberal arts college and truly a research university.
The American concept of the liberal arts college is foreign in many parts of the world. The College has an opportunity to bring a new and different message to countries that feature a “force-feeding” style of education that emphasizes rote memorization over creative thinking — especially in the Asia-Pacific region, where such educational systems are the norm. Research universities come a dime a dozen — Dartmouth can provide similar capabilities and facilities, but it can also provide meaningful student-faculty interaction, discussion sessions led by professors and a genuine sense of community. Conversely, liberal arts colleges in the United States are ubiquitous — the College can provide similar accessibility and intellectual stimulation, but it can also provide a faculty respected for its creation of knowledge, opportunities for student research and facilities, like Baker-Berry, that can compete with those of large universities. Dartmouth already occupies a special place in the middle of the higher-education spectrum, from research to the liberal arts, so the goal should be to market this distinction to an international community whose institutions of higher education more closely align with one end of that spectrum.
The College has managed to bridge the gap between liberal arts colleges and research universities, and it has largely done so successfully. We have the ability to offer the best of both academic worlds to the international community. To be sure, our graduate programs and schools are enterprises of which the whole Dartmouth community should be proud. We do not, however, need to change our core mission to suit some international ranking’s arbitrary criteria and blend in with our peers. By staying true to its historic identity and mission, the College can actually stand out and lead.
