COLUMN: The Academic and the Practical

From Gabriele Marcotti's "Land of the Stoopid," Fall '94 No, make that university. Better yet, Ivy League liberal arts university... Imagine students strolling among faux-ancient stone buildings immersed in a gorgeous tree-lined campus... Earnest discussions of Heidegger, Sartre and Confucius wafting between tweed-clad twenty-somethings broadening their academic horizons and connecting with their intellectual inner beings... Tenured professors, true luminaries in their fields, sharing coffee with young men and women hungry for knowledge and ultimately, truth... This idyllic vision of academic bliss is what many conjure up when they think about higher education, particularly at a (supposedly) world class institution such as our own. Of course, when it comes to the University of Pennsylvania, this image fades away as fast as Susan Smith's credibility (For those out of the Hard Copy/Inside Edition loop, Susan Smith is the nice lady from South Carolina who drowned her angelic baby boys after claiming they were abducted by the usual malevolent black male). For years, professors and students alike have griped about the lack of intellectualism on this campus. After all, almost half of all undergraduates are in one of those nasty pre-professional trade schools -- Wharton, Nursing or Engineering. As for the rest, some are OK, but many only care about partying and others are, well, not too academically inclined (read: dumb). This whining is often accompanied by multifaceted plans to "intellectualize" the campus: more faculty living on campus, more mandatory seminars and, most recently, a college house system where students' residences would be dictated by their field of study (coincidentally, the same system as Provost Chodorow's last place of employment). The general objective of fostering an "intellectual environment" at Penn may be admirable, but only if it can be achieved without compromising the essential nature of this institution. Penn's academic mission is to combine the theoretical and the practical. That was Ben Franklin's original vision for the University, that's what President Rodin reiterated in her inaugural address and that's what has made this a world-class teaching institution. Unfortunately, some of the intellectual snobs lurking around campus would have us believe that pre-professional is a dirty word. Their counterparts throughout the Ancient Eight point to Penn and say, "We're communities of higher learning--you're anti-intellectual pre-professionals." Hmm, pre-professional. Pre means before, professional means work. Yup, a school that prepares you to work and contribute to society is a nasty thing indeed. Whenever I think of those self-proclaimed intellectuals who venerate the notion of "learning for learning's sake" and turn up their nose at Penn's pre-professional nature, I think back to Lord of the Flies. In William Golding's book, Ralph, the pragmatist (at least according to the Cliff's Notes), survives and gets rescued. On the other hand, Piggy, the ineffective intellectual (still according to Cliff), falls off a ravine and his brains get splattered all over the shore. The moral is that culture and learning are fine -- as long as they are combined with a modicum of practicality and applicability. Having said that, those who chastise Wharton for being a "trade school" miss the point entirely. First of all, without Wharton, Penn would not be on par with other Ivy League schools in terms of academic reputation (and those all important U.S. News rankings). The College of Arts and Sciences simply isn't that competitive (let's face it, unless you're an athlete, hold a job or are involved in some other time-consuming activity, getting less than a 3.0 at Penn is pretty tough). More importantly, Wharton brings a critical, practical, aspect that helps the school remain true to its academic mission. Chodorow and Rodin want to make undergraduate education a priority. This is a wonderful objective, as long as it is done without abandoning the concept of a cooperation between intellectualism and pre-professionalism. With this in mind, they should continue to work to establish the "one University" concept, which right now is merely a nice idea. They should work to eliminate "gut" courses -- everyone knows at least 10 or 12 -- that present no academic challenge whatsoever and are just a way for a professor to log easy teaching time, so he or she can concentrate on research. These courses, not the pre-professional classes, frustrate faculty and students alike, and make the school anti-intellectual. Cloaked behind pompous, erudite-sounding titles are colossal wastes of time, where no "cultural horizons are broadened" and nothing useful is learned. The University should also reward faculty members who have proven their commitment to undergraduate education: individuals who take the time to be available to students and whose passion for teaching equals their passion for research. Right now, tenure decisions are based almost entirely on research. While this promotes the University's reputation as a haven for serious world-class research, it does little for undergraduate education and even less to foster the kind of student/professor relationships which are the basis of an intellectual community. Penn has been a leader in combining academics and practicality (or the theoretical and the utilitarian as Rodin likes to call it), as its mission mandates. Penn isn't Yale, Williams or that other school in central New Jersey, nor should it try to be like them. Instead, it should play to its strengths, not only as a school that offers more than just abstract studies, but also a way to apply them to the real world-- an institution that recognizes that those who are able to study are indeed privileged and have an obligation to give back to society. If we successfully combine the academic and the practical in all departments, then some day even folklore majors might get real jobs. Gabriele Marcotti is a senior Communications and International Relations major from Milano, Italy and Editorial Page Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Land of the Stoopid appears alternate Mondays.