The Chronicle of Higher Education has issued a new report entitled the “How Colleges Can Thrive in the Skills Economy” by Alex Kafka, one of their senior reporters. Alex interviewed me and included a few of those quotes in the report. My contribution was to validate both the larger “scaled” forms of higher education found at places like Western Governors University, but also to make the case for the “virtuously inefficient” forms of higher education found at liberal arts colleges like my own institution Soka University of America (SUA). By having smaller classes, more interpersonal interaction, and deeper engagement, such institutions can instill deeper values in students, such as courage, compassion, and wisdom (the key values of our institution). In the conclusion, the report included a quote from me that makes the case for liberal arts as follows, “to be smarter than a chatbot requires wisdom, and that takes time and can’t be rushed or easily quantified.” It was nice to be included in the discussion, which has a wide range of insights and is very much worth reading.

Below are the full versions of those quotes:

What drew the attention of the Forbes columnist, Bryan E. Penprase, to WGU is its emphasis on competency-based education. Penprase, an astrophysicist, explains to The Chronicle in an interview that WGU represents a fascinating contrast to Soka University of America, where he is vice president for sponsored research and external relations. Soka is a small liberal-arts college of about 450 students in Orange County, Calif. It’s secular but inspired by the Buddhist values of compassion and wisdom, and has class sizes of no more than 16 students. Penprase sees complementary roles for efficient and cost-effective learning of practical knowledge, as at WGU, and more intimate consideration of context, experience, identity, and purpose, as at Soka. “You need both,” he says, and notes that “an exclusive focus on proficiency and skills risks creating workers unaware of the deeper implications of their work.”

From the Chronicle of Higher Education report “How Colleges Can Thrive in the Skills Economy,” p. 19-20

From the conclusion:

Corporate America’s souped-up in-house learning capacity, then, is one more challenge among many for highereducation. In contrast to the efficiencies of competency-based education, particularly when it is fueled by AI, traditional liberal arts are virtuously inefficient, says Soka University’s Bryan Penprase. To be smarter than a chatbot requires wisdom, and that takes time and can’t be rushed or easily quantified.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education report “How Colleges Can Thrive in the Skills Economy,” Conclusion

How Colleges Can Thrive in the Skills Economyconnect.chronicle.com