Public Engagement

Harold Shapiro's A Larger Sense of Purpose: Higher Education and Society (Princeton, 2005) is a thought-provoking book. In Chapter 3 he writes about "Liberal Education, Liberal Democracy, and the Soul of the University". He points out that as universities are now constituted, there is usually a strong separation among undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools. The undergraduate experience is typically looked on as the time to get a “liberal education�, while graduate and professional schools are the places to be trained in a profession.

This separation is unfortunate because, as Shapiro (p. 89) says, “…the philosophy of a liberal arts education presumes learning experiences that enable citizens to understand their interrelated social, moral, and professional responsibilities. This view is as central to high-quality professional education as to education in the arts and sciences.�

He goes on to point out that professional training—in theology, law, and medicine—has from earliest days been the main purpose of universities. Only recently have the liberal arts been viewed as the central core of the university. In fact, professional and liberal education have much overlap and should be more tightly integrated. As Shapiro (p. 113) writes, “Indeed, the most valuable part of education for any learned profession is that aspect that teaches future professionals to think, read, compare, discriminate, analyze, form judgments, and generally enhance their mental capacity to confront the ambiguities and enigmas of the human condition.� These outcomes are also the benefits claimed for a liberal education.

These arguments also apply to education in public engagement. We have recently put more public engagement-related content into the undergraduate curriculum, through service-learning, multicultural requirements, etc. In fact, the fully aware and responsible practice of a profession (whether prepared for in graduate school or professional school) also demands attention to respectful and reciprocal partnership with the public that the profession serves.

Our professional schools acknowledge this truth to some extent, through law clinics, medical and dental clinics in underserved communities, and the like. Our graduate programs largely lag behind. In neglecting the potentially rich public engagement content of their disciplines, they are doing neither their graduate students nor their disciplines a service.