A modest proposal: A college at Princeton

Something's missing at Princeton: Something so important, so central to the whole undertaking that its absence is astonishing. We pride ourselves on our commitment to undergraduates. The University website tells visitors that "Princeton is distinctive among research universities in its commitment to undergraduate teaching." Orange Key guides make clear to visitors that undergraduates are at the center of the institution, the focus of professorial concern and the recipients of professorial time.

Princeton administrators reiterate these statements, especially, but not only, when talking to alumni. They insist, over and over again, that all Princeton faculty teach undergraduates. They note, with justified pride, the vast resources that the University commits to the supervision of independent work, and they celebrate the achievements of undergraduates in multiple ways through the academic year.

Some of this official rhetoric is a little exaggerated, in the way of official rhetoric everywhere. At least one of its side-effects, moreover, is noxious. Princeton's graduate students — a group of extraordinarily talented individuals, who come from the best colleges and universities around the world, survive worse odds for admission than the undergraduates and often do amazing work here and in their later careers — have told me for years that they feel as if they are marginal members of the institution.

They aren't, of course. Just ask the faculty, even the most dedicated and effective undergraduate teachers among them, how long they would stay at Princeton if it didn't have a highly selective, well-funded graduate school. Get rid of the graduate school and you would see bare, ruined choirs where late those undergraduate-loving professors sang. But you wouldn't know that from the University's public language, and in my mind, it's in drastic need of change.

That's not the problem I want to raise today, though. What's worrying me now is, in fact, the college — or rather, the lack of one. Princeton seeks — so it tells visitors — to be "the most outstanding undergraduate college in the world." That's a noble aspiration, which I share. But I don't understand how we can possibly achieve it when we have no bodt of faculty who gives its attention solely and systematically to the undergraduate experience.

Juridically, of course, the faculty decides the big issues. But the faculty as a whole doesn't exist. Faculty meetings — as our president herself has more than once made clear — are largely ritual occasions, getting-hit-in-the-head lessons, scaldingly boring and attended mostly by chairs and others with official positions. Little discussion takes place, and professors rarely introduce new business. Even when big issues come up for debate, moreover — issues like the change in Princeton's grading procedures — formal discussion is kept so brief that it cannot be very serious or searching. University committees are tasked to deal with individual issues. But they have massive loads of specific business to attend to, and their concerns are necessarily, and rightly, specialized.

As a result, in this great, undergraduate-centered university, the faculty aren't really minding the store. We have no forum at which to discuss issues of general importance to the college — not even to the academic life of the college. We, or our chosen representatives, never look collectively, or have our chosen representatives look, at academic, residential and social innovations at other schools. And we never think collectively about what we ourselves are doing in classrooms and residential colleges.

When the University decides to consider a major question — admissions, say, or grading — it forms a task force. These groups don't simply rubber stamp proposals from above. To its great credit, the administration rounds up as the usual suspects for these bodies the very people who are most inclined to criticize things as they are: professors emeriti John Fleming GS '63 and JohnGager, for example. Their deliberations have changed the University, often in ways that make me even happier to be here.

The fact remains, though, that the administration always sets the agenda. And no one except the administration looks at all of the pieces of the puzzle. Faculty initiative and energy have no place to go. We really enjoy our undergraduate teaching, and we commit a great deal of time and energy to it. But we don't have a full share in designing the college — or even in designing its larger academic form.

One simple solution would be to create a College Council — a group of elected faculty members who would not only be tasked to work with the dean of the college and the administration, but also to encourage and support new academic initiatives. I don't want to sound parochial here, but my own alma mater, the University of Chicago, has such a council. That may help to explain why it also has a much more innovative undergraduate curriculum than we do, thanks to a faculty that constantly worries about the college as a whole and regularly crafts new courses and programs.

I would love to see Princeton become "the most outstanding undergraduate college in the world." But we're not that now. Talk to people in the wider world of higher education, and you'll learn that many of them admire and envy our financial aid policies, but see Rice and Chicago and Duke as more innovative and effective colleges. Princeton's graduate school, by contrast, has become a national model.

We're not going to bring our college up to the level of the grad school if we keep on doing what we've always done. Time for a change — not to mention summer vacation. See you all in the fall. Anthony Grafton is the Henry Putnam University Professor of History. He can be reached at grafton@princeton.edu.