Campus Life: America’s Ivory Towers Are Overlooking Some Mean Streets : Education: Crime, sexism and racism are increasingly common on campuses. There is diminished commitment to teaching and learning.

“The idyllic vision so routinely portrayed in college promotional materials often masks disturbing realities of student life,” concludes “Campus Life: In Search of Community,” a study published last Monday by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Following are excerpts from the study’s prologue:

American higher education is, by almost any measure, a remarkable success. In recent decades, new campuses have been built, enrollments have exploded and today many of our research centers are world-class. Still, with all these achievements, there are tensions just below the surface, and nowhere are the strains of change more apparent than in campus life.

At a recent meeting of college and university presidents, one participant explained his frustration: “We have growing racial tensions at our place. There’s more crime, and I’m really frustrated about how the university should respond.” The president of a large public university confessed: “I’ve been around a long time and frankly I’m more worried today than in the 1960s. Back then, you could meet with critics and confront problems head on. Today, there seems to be a lot of unspoken frustration which could explode anytime.” At the heart of these concerns was what yet another president called “the loss of community,” a feeling that colleges are administratively and socially so divided that common purposes are blurred, or lost altogether.

These presidents and others reflect the deep ambivalence many college leaders feel about how the campus should be governed. Every institution has clearly defined academic rules, but what about the social and civic dimensions of collegiate life?

There is a deep concern at most institutions about student conduct. College officials consider alcohol and drug abuse a very serious matter, one that poses both administrative and legal problems.

There is also a growing worry about crime. And while robberies and assaults have not reached the epidemic proportions recent headlines would suggest, many institutions are increasingly troubled about the safety of their students.

Especially disturbing is the breakdown of civility on campus. Incidents of abusive language are occurring more frequently and while efforts are being made to regulate offensive speech, such moves frequently compromise the university’s commitment to free expression.

Deeply rooted prejudices not only persist, but appear to be increasing. Students are separating themselves in unhealthy ways. Racial tensions have become a crisis on some campuses. Furthermore, even though bias against women is no longer institutionalized, sex discrimination in higher education persists in subtle and not-so-subtle forms. It shows up informally in the classroom and occasionally in tenure and promotion decisions.

Finally, there is an unhealthy separation between in-class and out-of-class activities. Many students are spending little time pursuing intellectual interests beyond the classroom. The goal of many is getting a credential, and while undergraduates worry about good grades, their commitment to the academic life is often shallow. Thus, it became increasingly apparent that the quality of campus life has been declining, at least in part, because the commitment to teaching and learning is diminished.

These concerns about campus life are not new, but surely they reveal themselves in strikingly new ways. Consider the students. Today’s undergraduates are, by every measure, more mature and sophisticated than the teen-agers who enrolled a century ago. But increasingly, many students come to college with personal problems that can work against their full participation in college life. Is it possible for colleges to intervene constructively in the lives of students whose special needs and personal lifestyles are already well-established?

In addition, lots of older, non-traditional students now populate the campus. Often they enroll part-time, only attend a class or two each week, and because of complicated schedules are unable to participate fully in campus life. Is it realistic even to talk about community in higher education when students have changed so much and when their commitments are so divided?

Diversity has dramatically changed the culture of American higher education as well. Men and women students come from almost every racial and ethnic group in this country and from every other nation in the world. The harsh truth is that, thus far, many campuses have not been particularly successful in building larger loyalties within a diverse student body.

Consider also how colleges and universities have become administratively complex. They are often organized into bureaucratic fiefdoms. Especially disturbing, the academic and non-academic functions are now divided into almost wholly separate worlds, and student-life concerns have become the province of a separate staff, with a dizzying array of “services” provided. How can the overall interests of students be well served in the face of such administrative fragmentation?

Most significant, perhaps, is the way campus governance has changed. Colonial colleges were, in the beginning, tightly regulated places. The first college leaders did not doubt their responsibility to educate the whole person--body, mind and spirit. By the late 19th Century, changing priorities meant that faculty increasingly were rewarded for research, not teaching, and professional loyalty gradually shifted from the campus to the guild. Still, college leaders did not fully free themselves from concern for the “whole person.” Well into the 20th Century, many colleges, both public and private, continued to require daily chapel of all students.

The 1960s brought historic changes. In loco parentis all but disappeared. Undergraduates enjoyed almost unlimited freedom in personal and social matters; responsibility for residence-hall living was delegated far down the administrative ladder. Top administrators were often out of touch with day-to-day conditions on the campus.

The problem was that no new theory of campus governance emerged to replace the old assumptions. Regulations could not be arbitrarily imposed--on that everyone agreed--but what was left in doubt was whether codes of conduct should be established and, if so, who should take the lead. Unclear about what standards to maintain, many administrators sought to sidestep the issue.

To complicate matters further, this shift toward a freer climate was not understood or accepted by either parents or the public. The assumption persists today that when an undergraduate “goes off to college,” he or she will, in some general manner, be “cared for” by the institution.

None of this is to suggest that colleges and universities have been unresponsive to the new realities of campus life. The opposite is true. Almost all institutions have dramatically expanded their student services and recruited more professional staff--counselors, financial-aid officers, residence-hall supervisors and so on. Colleges and universities have slowly shaped new codes of conduct, often in consultation with students. Many institutions also have created new orientation programs and have introduced workshops on social issues and all-college forums throughout the year.

Still, colleges and universities cannot live comfortably with a climate of endless ambiguity about how campus-life decisions should be made.

What is needed is a larger, more integrative vision of community in higher education, one that focuses not on the length of time students spend on campus, but on the quality of the encounter, and relates not only to social activities, but to the classroom, too. The goal is to clarify both academic and civic standards, and to define the enduring values that undergird a community of learning.

The following six principles provide an effective formula for day-to-day decision-making on the campus and, taken together, define the kind of community every college and university should strive to be.

A college or university is:

An educationally purposeful community, a place where faculty and students share academic goals and work together to strengthen teaching and learning on the campus.

An open community, a place where freedom of expression is uncompromisingly protected and where civility is powerfully affirmed.

A just community, a place where the sacredness of the person is honored and where diversity is aggressively pursued.

A disciplined community, a place where individuals accept their obligations to the group and where well-defined governance procedures guide behavior for the common good.

A caring community, a place where the well-being of each member is sensitively supported and where service to others is encouraged.

A celebrative community, one in which the heritage of the institution is remembered and where rituals affirming both tradition and change are widely shared.

These principles, adopted more formally as a campus compact and used more consistently as the basis for day-to-day decision-making on the campus, might provide a new post- in loco parentis framework that not only could strengthen the spirit of community on campus, but also provide, perhaps, a model for the nation.

Copies of the Carnegie Foundation report are available for $8 each from Princeton University Press, 3175 Princeton Pike, Lawrenceville, N.J. 08648.