





































Microsoft Word - 2 Trepanier Fall 2018.docx


[Expositions 12.2 (2018) 132–151]  Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 
 

The Character Model for the American University 

 

LEE TREPANIER 

Saginaw Valley State University 

 

 

The collapse of confidence in American higher education highlights two public concerns about its 

value: the cost no longer outweighs its economic benefits and colleges and universities have 

become havens for liberal ideologues whose values are at odds with most Americans. According 

to a 2011 PEW Research Center Report, a majority of Americans (57%) say that higher education 

fails to provide students good value for the money they and their families spend and even a larger 

majority (75%) say college is too expensive.1 Although 86% of college graduates say that college 

has been a good investment for them personally and on average earn $20,000 more than those who 

did not graduate from a four-year college, they are burdened with student debt.2 Nearly half of 

college graduates (49%) say that paying off debt makes it harder to pay for other bills and a quarter 

say it has had an impact on their career choice.3 For adults age 18–34 who are not in school and 

do not have a bachelor’s degree, two-thirds say a major reason for not continuing their education 

is the need to support their family and nearly half (48%) say they cannot afford college.4 This 

should come to no surprise as college and university tuition and fees have tripled since 1980–81, 

even after accounting for inflation.5 

Republicans have grown increasingly negative about the impact of colleges and universities on 

the U.S.6 58% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say that higher education has 

a negative effect on the way things are going in the country, while just 36% say the effect is 

positive. By contrast, 72% of Democrats see colleges and universities having a positive impact on 

the country. This partisan gap can partially be explained by how the two parties see the purpose of 

college: to teach specific skills and knowledge for the workforce (58% Republicans compared to 

43% Democrats) or an opportunity for personal growth (28% Republicans compared to 43% 

Democrats). Other recent events—such as the controversy over free speech and race on college 

campuses—have given the impression that American colleges and universities are bastions of 

liberal ideologies, values contrary to Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.7 



133  Trepanier 
 

In spite of Republicans’ skepticism about the political, social, and cultural value of American 

higher education, a majority of them (62%, compared to 73% of Democrats) say higher education 

does a good job preparing students for the workforce.8 This emphasis on preparing students for the 

workforce is shared by the American public as the primary mission of higher education: 47% say 

that colleges should teach workforce skills and knowledge and only 39% say that college is to help 

students grow socially and intellectually.9 College and university presidents likewise agree that 

making students productive members of the workforce is the most important societal role for 

higher education (74%).10 Interestingly, citizenship (73%) and access to higher education (72%) 

were a close second and third objectives for presidents, priorities not considered by either political 

parties or the American public.11 The consideration of liberal education is not explicitly considered 

by any of the surveyed groups, although there may be an association between liberal education 

and the objectives of personal and intellectual growth, which was lowly valued (28% Republicans; 

43% Democrats; and 39% American public).12 

Although college and university presidents see citizenship and access to education as societal 

priorities for higher education, the public instead sees higher education as essentially a business 

that is more concerned about its own well-being than educating students or serving communities.13 

In response to Rawlings’ editorial, “College is Not a Commodity. Stop Treating It Like One,” 

Selingo criticizes higher education for promoting the economic benefits of a college degree, the 

mismatch between curriculum and student success, and the growth of administrative staff at the 

expense of faculty to make the four-year degree into an “assembly line” experience for students.14 

For Selingo, American higher education is primarily responsible for the public seeing colleges and 

universities as a business that only looks out for their own interests: students are customers, faculty 

are employees, and alumni are financial donors. 

For faculty, they now exist in an era of technological change, globalization, and deteriorating 

work conditions: a decrease in financial resources and employment opportunities and an increase 

of being subject to a variety of accountability and assessment metrics.15 “Core” faculty—those 

who are employed as tenured or tenure-track—continue to diminish as “independent contractors” 

(e.g., adjuncts, post-doctoral fellows) increase, thereby diminishing the faculty’s role in university 

governance.16 Faculty currently spend more time on learning new technology, committee work 

and meetings, and preparing for teaching while simultaneously face a falling-off in funded 

research.17 Faculty also have noticed a decline in autonomy, with tenure being a particularly 



The Character Model for the American University  134 
 

contentious issue with respect to accountability, evaluation, and post-tenure review.18 Finally, the 

trend of specialization in both content and role among faculty has only accelerated in the past 

decade, making the university more fragmented in governance, curriculum, and scholarship.19 The 

result is a professoriate that is increasingly treated as an employee rather than a colleague in 

university life. 

American higher education consequently needs to adapt and adjust to the new circumstances 

that it currently confronts if it wants to preserve its value as a public good that is neither Republican 

nor Democratic in character. College and university presidents must demonstrate to the public that 

the values like citizenship and access are equally important to workforce preparedness. Colleges 

and universities must devise strategies to show that higher education is not a business that operates 

only out of its self-interest but as a public good where students are treated as learners, faculty as 

colleagues, and alumni as part of a community that transcends economic considerations. If 

American higher education wants to be and be perceived as a public value, it must discover new 

and creative ways to reinvent itself in today’s neoliberal, globalized era.20  

I suggest a possible model—the character model—for public colleges and universities to 

consider in this new age of American higher education.21 This model is based on the Aristotelian 

understanding of phronesis (prudence) which combines both theoretical and practical reason in the 

development of character.22 In this article I will explain how phronesis can be at the core of a 

college’s or university’s mission and then show how the general education curriculum could be 

adjusted to match this new model, for a revision of the general education curriculum is vital not 

only for student success but also for the mission and purpose of the college and university. I 

conclude the article with some thoughts about how faculty and administrators can better align their 

roles with the character model. 

I recognize that this proposal is an ideal type and may not work or even be feasible if 

implemented. But even if it were not to succeed, I hope that it will at least move the conversation 

of higher education to a rethinking about what constitutes its core and mission as a public value. 

The public value of American higher education, particularly its public institutions, has reached a 

tipping point. It is incumbent upon those who work and believe in the public value of higher 

education to make a new and different case for it. Failure to do so merely continues the gradual 

deterioration of one the great public institutions this country has created.23 

 



135  Trepanier 
 

The Character Model 

Aristotle’s understanding of phronesis is a form of practical reason while simultaneously 

connected with theoretical or scientific thinking to guide particular action. Phronesis paves a 

middle path between theoretical reason, which is too rigid and abstract to solve specific problems, 

and pragmatic calculation which is focused only on what works without understanding why.24 

Aristotle defines phronesis as the “ability to deliberate well about what sorts of things conduce to 

the good life in general,” but one can produce “no demonstration” of its first principles, even 

though “particular actions were true in practice.”25 Phronesis can never become a science 

(episteme), which is concerned about first principles that are always the same and true, because its 

attention to particulars precludes one from starting from universal premises or ending with 

comprehensive conclusions. Given its variable character, Aristotle instead categorizes phronesis 

as a deliberate intellectual virtue. 

This exclusion of phronesis from the category of theoretical or scientific reason makes any 

positivist attempt to evaluate its effectiveness defective: there are no axioms from which one can 

reason to conclusions or first principles. Yet phronesis is not a type of circular reasoning. It is 

connected to theoretical reason by its intuitive recognition of first principles. For example, a person 

recognizes that murder is wrong because his or her moral intuition recognizes it as such, although 

the person does not possess scientific certainty about the wrongfulness of murder. This is different 

from circular reasoning—a person believes his or her view that murder is wrong because the person 

believes it to be true—for it does not confuse first principles when a person validates what he or 

she immediately apprehends. Of course, a person could work him- or herself into a state of doubt 

about the wrongfulness of murder, but Aristotle would say that such a person is being foolish 

because these types of experiences are starting points and not the conclusion of inquiry.26 

The inability of a person to distinguish and defend first principles is to acknowledge he or she 

is an incomplete being when compared to the morally experienced or mature person (phronimos). 

But what happens if there is no phronimos to whom one can turn? For Aristotle, the answer resides 

in character formation. The community educates its young in pre-rational versions of virtues that 

are necessary for social stability and continuity, for, as Aristotle observes, such habituation 

“teaches right opinion about the first principle.”27 This pre-rational education orients young people 

towards phronesis where they eventually form an attachment to it. This incomplete or pre-rational 



The Character Model for the American University  136 
 

phronesis is a person’s “common sense” that preserves both him- or herself and the community 

but not enough for either the person or society to achieve excellence.  

While Americans value higher education, they value character even more. Asked what it takes 

a young person to succeed in the world, 61% say a good work ethic is extremely important and 

57% say the same about knowing how to get along with people—only 42% say a college 

education.28 The character model, based on a deliberative intellectual virtue that is both practical 

and theoretical, is therefore uniquely suited for American higher education to make its case for its 

public value. Furthermore, the formation of character as both practical and theoretical reason 

allows American institutions of higher education to distinguish themselves from their societal 

competitors. Both businesses and governments employ theoretical reason but ultimately for 

pragmatic ends (i.e., economic, political): theoretical reason is reduced to a practical activity. By 

contrast, colleges and universities can orient students’ practical reasoning to theoretical ends 

without losing sight of the world of particulars, something which liberal education tends to 

neglect.29 Navigating between the extremes of unprincipled pragmatism and detached 

theoreticism, the character model highlights what American higher education can do better than 

other societal institutions: cultivate a character in students that requires both theoretical and 

practical reason.30 

Given the diversity of institutions in American higher education, there is no need to impose a 

single normative standard on all colleges and universities. Religious colleges may wish to 

incorporate theology into their understanding of a character, while public institutions may choose 

to focus on a responsible and engaged democratic citizenry. The character model allows flexibility 

for colleges and universities to select an understanding of what constitutes a flourishing human 

person for that institution and orient students, faculty, and administrators to cultivate practical and 

theoretical reason towards that end. What is critical is that the model forces colleges and 

universities to consider what type of character they want to foster in their communities. This is not 

to deny that colleges and universities should provide the skills and knowledge for their students to 

be productive members in the workforce or responsible and active citizens. These goals are 

important but should be secondary to the fostering of character, as only colleges and universities 

are uniquely situated in society to do this. 

The character model therefore calls for a normative understanding of human flourishing specific 

to American higher education that includes both theoretical and practical reason, and to orient 



137  Trepanier 
 

colleges and universities in their teaching, research, and service towards that end. Other societal 

institutions, such as businesses and governments, lack a combination or balance between 

theoretical and practical reason and consequently are deficient in their understanding of human 

flourishing. Institutions of American higher education are uniquely suited for this task because 

they have the resources to cultivate a specific character in their students and they can encourage 

their faculty and administrators to partake in this ethos. Within the university itself, the character 

model can help bridge the gap between programs that are too theoretical (e.g., liberal education) 

and practical (e.g., professional training). The need for both theoretical and practical reason obliges 

faculty and administrators to learn from each other and thereby overcome the programmatic 

fragmentation and content specialization that characterizes today’s higher education. 

The character model thus forces students, faculty, and administrators to think about what should 

constitute the core mission of their institution and explain it to a public that already believes 

character is the critical factor for a person’s success. By making character central to their mission, 

colleges and universities can not only organize themselves intellectually and practically around 

this objective but also make a public case about the value of higher education that is different from 

workforce preparedness or democratic citizenship. Colleges and universities cannot compete with 

businesses and governments in these economic and political goals because these activities 

primarily employ practical rather than theoretical reason, whereas the higher education can do 

both. By informing the public that only they are uniquely suited to cultivate a certain type of 

character that requires both theoretical and practical reason, colleges and universities can hopefully 

improve the public’s understanding of their value in society. 

 

General Education 

General education programs are to impart to undergraduate students basic knowledge, or at least 

exposure, to a variety of disciplines in order to know how to study and live in a meaningful way. 

The first American institution of higher education to offer a general education curriculum was 

Harvard in 1825: students were free to choose courses according to their interests in subjects, 

although the range of choice was limited and the type of courses were liberal arts rather than 

professional or vocational ones.31 Over time general education has become the primary mode to 

introduce students to a college’s curriculum and often is conflated with liberal education itself. 

Steiner defines general education as “common education” for any person and that liberal 



The Character Model for the American University  138 
 

education, “being education for democracy, hence is general education.”32 Thus, the decline of the 

value of liberal education in the United States is also a decline in the value of general education 

itself, prompting several colleges and universities to revisit these programs because student 

learning outcomes are not being met and the failure to create a clear and consistent identity among 

faculty and students.33 

Besides a core or a Great Books curriculum, the alternative to general education program is 

competency-based education where students learn one skill at a time, which is a small component 

of a larger learning goal, before proceeding to the next competency to master.34 Students can skip 

learning modules entirely if they can demonstrate they already have mastery of them as evaluated 

by a form of testing. Unlike general education programs, competency-based education does not 

rely upon the credit hour for a student’s degree completion and has been adopted by some for-

profit universities.35 Although there has been criticism of competency-based education, it is 

increasingly becoming a viable alternative to general education programs at American colleges 

and universities.36 In the near future, colleges and universities will have to confront the choice of 

whether to retain and reform their general education programs or abandon them and instead adopt 

competency-based education. 

By ending general education programs, colleges and universities would devote themselves to 

practical reasoning at the expense of theoretical or scientific thinking, as competency-based 

education is more suitable for professional and vocational training. It would also align colleges 

and universities to the singular goal of preparing students for the workforce rather than character 

development, civic engagement, personal and intellectual growth, or other non-economic 

objectives. For some institutions of higher education this may be a necessary or a forward-looking 

move, while for others it might be contrary to their institution’s mission, student body wishes, 

faculty interest, and alumni demands. For those institutions who do not want to adopt competency-

based education, it is essential for those colleges and universities to reform their general education 

programs in such a manner to provide a public reason why general education is preferable to 

competency-based education.  

While most colleges and universities share a common set of learning outcomes that entail a 

broad range of skills and knowledge, there has been no increase of greater understanding of these 

goals among students.37 To remedy this situation, there has been an emphasis on integration of 

knowledge, skills, and application in general education programs, although fewer than two in five 



139  Trepanier 
 

require experiential learning.38 This integration usually was an applied or digital project (e.g., e-

portfolios) that was conducted at the end of the general education program with most schools 

employing the distribution model.39 However, this recent emphasis on integration reveals that 

students are not able to synthesize what they have learned in their general education programs. As 

a result, students—and the public—do not see the point of taking general education: they are just 

requirements one needs to fulfill before the real work begins in one’s major field.  

This need to integrate knowledge comports with the character model in two ways. First, 

depending upon what type of character a college or university wishes to cultivate, all the courses 

in the general education program would be oriented towards that conception of character or human 

flourishing. For example, if a college decides that it wants to cultivate a responsible, democratic 

citizenry in its students, then a course in the sciences would have to be taught in that context: the 

study of biology in a general education program would not be isolated to its own discipline but 

presented in the context of a responsible, democratic citizen. This does not necessarily mean a 

“dumbing down” of content in biology—students would still need to master the fundamentals of 

that science—but students would be required to think beyond the narrow disciplinary parameters 

of their courses to the larger question of character. The courses in the general education program 

therefore would be given a context where students would be able to integrate their knowledge from 

specific classes. 

In other words, colleges and universities would require the theme of character to make their 

general education programs intellectually coherent to students. To accomplish this, faculty would 

be required to revise their courses and coordinate with one another to provide a seamless and 

comprehensible general education program. Faculty should be encouraged and allowed to innovate 

to see what type of teaching pedagogies and techniques would be most effective, whether team-

teaching, bimonthly meetings, coordination of syllabi in terms of themes and approaches, and 

reserving time in each course for students to integrated what they have learned from other classes 

with their current course content. Another possibility is to remove the disciplinary designation for 

general education courses (e.g., BIO 101) and instead mark them as general education (i.e., GEN 

101), allowing faculty from any discipline to teach them. A third idea is to have a seminar as the 

capstone course of the general education program where students would have to synthesize their 

knowledge. Regardless of how it is implemented, the general education program will only be 



The Character Model for the American University  140 
 

successful if faculty are willing to step outside their disciplinary boundaries and coordinate and 

communicate among themselves. 

Second, the character model allows integration of skills, knowledge, and application not only 

across the general education program but also within courses by having students learn both 

theoretical and practical reason in their course. Students would be required to learn the theoretical 

knowledge of a subject but also learn how to practice or apply it, as in a laboratory, internship, 

service-learning, or civic engagement activity.40 For instance, a geography student would not only 

learn the foundations behind GIS but then show how to use it in an assignment, like mapping 

violent crimes in a local city. The student would also be required to demonstrate how his or her 

theoretical and practical reason is related to the larger question of character. Thus, the student 

learns not only theoretical and practical reason in a specific subject but is given a larger context to 

understand how these skills, knowledge, and application are valuable.  

By having students learn both practical and theoretical reason in a general education program 

that is intellectually coherent and oriented by the college’s or university’s mission, the character 

model can make a public case for the value of American higher education. The public is already 

primed favorably towards character and colleges and universities are uniquely situated to teach 

character in a way that is different from other societal institutions, thereby demonstrating their 

value to the public. This “product differentiation” should be embraced by American colleges and 

universities if they wish to retain their public value. And there is no greater opportunity to 

demonstrate this product than a reformed general education program that emphasizes the character 

model to students and the public. 

 

Conclusion 

Besides playing an instrumental role in reforming general education programs, how else would 

faculty and administrators fit into the character model for American higher education? For faculty, 

the character model can provide an orientation in their research and service. Faculty can continue 

in their disciplinary research and service but also could explore the scholarship of teaching and 

learning (SoTL) which could not only contribute to the mission of colleges and universities in 

teaching students but also demonstrate to the public the value of higher education. The value of 

teaching is a value that the public can understand and accept. Faculty therefore should consider 



141  Trepanier 
 

undertaking research in SoTL to not only become better teachers but show the value of their 

research to the public.41 

While SoTL may be a politically strategic way to communicate the value of colleges and 

universities, this proposal also has potential problems. First, there is some research that does not 

fit either in the SoTL or STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) paradigms.42 

Scholarship in the liberal arts disciplines, like Kantian epistemology or medieval choral music, 

would particularly be susceptible to not being supported. And although this type of research would 

continue, the emphasis of SoTL and STEM may devalue this type of scholarship within academia 

and the public which, in turn, raises questions about career advancement like tenure, promotion, 

and grant applications. These and other issues is where administrators, along with faculty, will 

have to determine what is to be valued at their institution and whether those values align with their 

understanding of character.  

Creating the conditions where excellent teaching, research, and service can occur is the 

fundamental task of a college or university administrators. They will have to work with faculty, 

students, and the public to determine what type of character, what kind of human flourishing, their 

institution should cultivate. This may require some difficult changes, as the selection of one type 

of character will inevitably be at the expense of others and thereby potentially alienate and anger 

certain communities. But even with the costs of selecting a type of character to orient the college 

or university, it is a better option than choosing a character that is broadly-defined, ambiguous, 

and, in short, means nothing because it could be interpreted as anything (e.g., “the future leaders 

of tomorrow”). For the character model to be successful, it has to be specific to an institution so 

students, faculty, administrators, and the public know exactly what that college or university is, 

even if they have reservations or disagreements about it. 

Administrators and faculty therefore may consider changing the work conditions of the 

academic profession, such as encouraging teaching general education or restructuring departments 

for interdisciplinary studies.43 These and other reforms may return colleges and universities to their 

primary mission of teaching undergraduates, with faculty paying more attention to teaching than 

to receiving recognition from their peers in specialized publications. Administrators may examine 

the best practices at other institutions of higher education and society to see how best to create 

work conditions to promote their mission of cultivating character in their colleges and universities.  



The Character Model for the American University  142 
 

The character model consequently is to ask the various communities in higher education—the 

public, administrators, faculty, and students—what type of human person they want to foster and 

promote in society. The answer will vary according to institution and community but a serious 

reflection upon what it means to be human, what type of character one should cultivate, returns 

American higher education to an activity for which it is uniquely suited rather than imitating the 

branding of businesses, nonprofits, and governments. American higher education needs to rethink 

and reclaim what makes it different from other societal institutions, if it wants to show its public 

value. Again, I do not claim the character model is the answer to this problem—I am open to better 

and different ideas than the one presented—but it is an answer that draws upon the tradition and 

resources of higher education. For it may be the case that for American higher education to move 

forward, it has to reflect upon its own past.  

 

 

Notes 

1. PEW, Is College Worth It? 5–6, 9; also see Riley; Newfield, The Great Mistake; Clynes; 

Caplan. 

2. Ibid. 6–10, 36–37, 45. Americans owe approximately $1.3 trillion in student debt in 2017, 

more than two and a half times more than a decade earlier. PEW, “Five Facts about Student 

Loans”; also see PEW, “Six Key Findings about Going to College.” 

3. Ibid. 

4. Ibid. 28–29, 39–40. 

5. Ibid. 26–27, 32. 

6. PEW, “Sharp Partisan Divisions in Views of National Institutions”; also see Newfield, 

“The Nation’s Electoral Divisions Highlight Questions about the Role of Public 

Universities.” 

7. A fifth of American college undergraduates say it is acceptable to use physical force to 

silence a speaker who makes “offensive and hurtful statements” (Villasenor). Also see 

Slater; Ben-Porath; Chemerinsky and Gillman; Scruton. For the most recent race 



143  Trepanier 
 

controversy on college campuses, see Quintana; see also Byrd; Ross. Although the actual 

impact that faculty have on students’ ideologies is minimal, the public perception is 

otherwise; see Gross and Simmons. 

8. PEW, “Sharp Partisan Divisions in Views of National Institutions.” 

9. The remaining 14% believe both missions are equally important; see PEW, Is College 

Worth It? 48–49. 

10. PEW, Is College Worth It? 61–63. 

11. The other objectives are conducting research to solve national problems (54%), 

contributing to regional economic development (52%), providing continual education to 

adults of all ages (37%), and providing cultural enrichment to the local community (17%). 

Ibid. For more about access to higher education, see Hacker and Dreifus. 

12. The literature about the challenges confronting liberal education, particularly the 

humanities, and possible remedies is enormous. For a summary, see Trepanier, Why the 

Humanities Matter Today ix–xvi. 

13. For more about how the neoliberal university perceives itself no longer as a public good, 

see Apple; Giroux, “Introduction: Critical Education or Training” and “Neoliberalism, 

Corporate Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education”; Gould; Powers; Bok; Washburn; 

Hill and Kumar; Tuchman; Canaan and Shumar; Kaufman-Osborn; King-White. 

14. Rawlings; Selingo. 

15. Warner; Srigley, “Dear Parents”; Finkelstein, et al. 7, 12–18, 245. 

16. Ibid. 96; also see Ginsberg. 

17. Ibid. 241–65; also see Flaherty. 

18. Ibid. 298–307; also see Kaufman-Osborn; Srigley, “Whose University Is It Anyway?” 

19. Ibid. 450–67. 



The Character Model for the American University  144 
 

20. For more about American higher education existing in an era of globalization, see ibid. 

378–482 and Mittleman. 

21. The exclusion of private colleges and universities is that their missions and strategies do 

not necessarily have to take the public into account, whereas public institutions by their 

very nature do. The rise of for-profit colleges and universities are another challenge which 

public institutions have to address and have failed to do so far. Hentschke and Lechuga; 

Angulo; Cottom. 

22. Trepanier, “A Philosophy of Prudence and the Purpose of Higher Education Today.” 

23. Nearly four out of ten college and university presidents say that higher education is moving 

in the wrong direction (38%) and only one out of five presidents say the U.S. system of 

higher education is the best in the world. PEW, Is College Worth It? 57–58. 

24. Beiner; Barber; Salkever; Steinberger. For more about phronesis, see Trepanier, “A 

Philosophy of Prudence and the Purpose of Higher Education Today.” 

25. Aristotle 1140a24–1140b30; 1142a11–30; 1146b35–1146a7. Translations are my own. 

26. Ibid. 1095b6. 

27. Ibid. 1151a15–20. 

28. PEW, Is College Worth It? 50. 

29. Trepanier, Why the Humanities Matter Today. 

30. Religious institutions also may be able to play a public role similar to the universities in 

cultivating a character in its members that uses both practical and theoretical reason. 

However, public support for religion has declined whereas higher education institutions, 

albeit questioned, has not. Putnam and Campbell; Jones. 

31. Herbst 223; Kimball 332; Fitzpatrick. 

32. Steiner 6. 



145  Trepanier 
 

33. Harvard and Duke are the latest universities to revisit their general education programs. 

Flaherty. For more about the decline of the value of liberal education, see Trepanier, Why 

the Humanities Matter Today ix–xvi. 

34. Voorhees; Daugherty, Davis, and Miller; Rasmussen, Northrup, and Colson. 

35. Cooper; Fain. 

36. For more about the criticisms of competency-based education, see Fitzpatrick. 

37. Hart 3–5. The skills to be imparted to students by the general education programs are 

writing; critical, analytic, ethical, and quantitative reason; oral communication; civic 

engagement; intercultural and research skills; and information literacy; and the types of 

knowledge were classified as science, mathematics, humanities, global culture, 

sustainability, American history, technology, foreign languages, and the arts. Ibid. 15. 

38. Ibid. 6–9. 

39. Ibid. 12–13. 

40. For more about service-learning and civic formation, see Trepanier, “A Philosophy of 

Prudence and the Purpose of Higher Education Today” 14. 

41. For more about this problem and how SoTL might ameliorate it, see Trepanier, “The 

Relevance of Political Philosophy and Political Science” and “SoTL as a Subfield for 

Political Science Graduate Programs.” 

42. The STEM paradigm is understandable and valued by the public because of the utilitarian 

benefits it brings to society. 

43. Taylor; Schaefer. 

 

Works Cited 

Angulo, A. J. Diploma Mills: How For-Profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the 

American Dream. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. 



The Character Model for the American University  146 
 

Apple, Michael. “Comparing Neoliberal Projects and Inequality in Education.” Comparative 

Education 37.4 (2001): 409–23. 

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library and Harvard 

University Press, 1990. 

Barber, Benjamin. The Conquest of Politics: Liberal Philosophy in Democratic Times. 

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. 

Beiner, Ronald. Political Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. 

Ben-Porath, Sigal R. Free Speech on Campus. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 

2017. 

Bok, Derek. Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education. 

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.   

Byrd, Carson. Poison in the Ivy: Race Relations and the Reproduction of Inequality on Elite 

College Campuses. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017. 

Canaan, Joyce E. and Wesley Shumar. Structure and Agency in the Neoliberal University. New 

York: Routledge, 2015. 

Caplan, Bryan. The Case against Education: Why Education is a Waste of Time and Money. 

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. 

Chemerinsky, Erwin, and Howard Gillman. Free Speech on Campus. New Haven: Yale 

University Press, 2017. 

Cooper, Peter. “Master the Skills, Not the Clock.” U.S. News & World Report February 17, 

2016. https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2016/02/17/the-approaching-

revolution-of-competency-based-higher-education.  

Cottom, Tressie McMillan. Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New 

Economy. New York: The New Press, 2017. 



147  Trepanier 
 

Clynes, Tom. “Peter Thiel Thinks You Should Skip College, And He’ll Even Pay You for 

Your Troubles.” Newsweek February 22, 2017. http://www.newsweek.com/2017/03/03/ 

peter-thiel-fellowship-college-higher-education-559261.html.  

Daugherty, Lindsay, Van L. Davis, and Trey Miller. Competency-Based Education Programs 

in Texas: An Innovative Approach to Higher Education. Santa Monica, CA: RAND 

Corporation, 2015. 

Fain, Paul. “American Public U’s New Competency-Based Degrees Do Not Rely on Credit-

Hour Standard.” Inside Higher Ed March 16, 2016. https://www.insidehighered.com/ 

news/2017/03/16/american-public-us-new-competency-based-degrees-do-not-rely-credit-

hour-standard.  

Finkelstein, Martin J., Valerie Martin Conley, and Jack H. Schuster. The Faculty Factor: 

Reassessing the American Academy in a Turbulent Era. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 

University Press, 2016. 

Fitzpatrick, Kirk. “The Third Era of Liberal Education.” In Why the Humanities Matter Today: 

In Defense of Liberal Education. Edited by Lee Trepanier. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 

2013. 1–36. 

Flaherty, Colleen. “Rethinking Gen Ed.” Inside Higher Ed March 10, 2016. 

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/03/10/undergraduate-curricular-reform-

efforts-harvard-and-duke-suggest-theres-no-one-way.  

Ginsberg, Benjamin. The Fall of Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and 

Why It Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 

Giroux, Henry. “Introduction: Critical Education or Training: Beyond the Commodification of 

Higher Education.” In Beyond the Corporate University. Edited by Henry A. Giroux and 

Kostas Myrsiades. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. 1–11. 

_____. “Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education: The 

University as a Democratic Public Sphere.” Harvard Educational Review 72.4 (December 

2002): 425–464. 



The Character Model for the American University  148 
 

Gould, Eric. The University in a Corporate Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. 

Gross, Neil, and Solon Simmons. Professors and Their Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 

University Press, 2014. 

Hacker, Andrew, and Claudia Dreifus. Higher Education? How Colleges are Wasting Our 

Money and Failing Our Kids—And What We Can Do About It. New York: Times Books, 

2010. 

Hart Research Associates. Recent Trends in General Education Design, Learning Outcomes, 

and Teaching Approaches: Key Findings from a Survey among Administrators at AAC&U 

Member Institutions. Association of American Colleges and Universities. January 19, 

2016. https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/publications/recent-trends-general-

education-design-learning-outcomes-and.  

Herbst, Jurgen. “The Yale Report of 1828.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 

11.2 (2004): 213–231. 

Hentschke, Guilbert C., Vicente M. Lechuga, and William G. Tierney, eds. For-Profit Colleges 

and Universities: Their Markets, Regulations, Performance, and Place in Higher 

Education. Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2010. 

Hill, David, and Ravi Kumar. Global Neoliberalism and Education and Its Consequences. 

New York: Routledge, 2009. 

Jones, Robert P. The End of White Protestant America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016. 

Kaufman-Osborn, Timothy. “Disenchanted Professionals: The Politics of Faculty Governance 

in the Neoliberal Academy.” Perspectives on Politics 15.1 (2017): 100–15. 

Kimball, Bruce. The Liberal Arts Tradition: a Documentary History. Lanham, MD: University 

Press of America, 2010. 

King-White, Ryan. Sport and the Neoliberal University: Profit, Politics, and Pedagogy. New 

Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. 



149  Trepanier 
 

Middleman, James H. The Implausible Dream: World-Class Universities and the Repurposing 

of Higher Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. 

Newfield, Christopher. “The Nation’s Electoral Divisions Highlight Questions about the Role 

of Public Universities.” Insider Higher Ed November 18, 2016. 

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/11/08/nations-electoral-divisions-highlight-

questions-about-role-public-universities.  

_____. The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them. 

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.   

PEW Research Center. Is College Worth It? College Presidents, Public Access, Value, Quality 

and Mission of Higher Education. May 16, 2011. http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-

content/uploads/sites/3/2011/05/higher-ed-report.pdf.   

_____. “Six Key Findings about Going to College.” February 11, 2014. 

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/11/6-key-findings-about-going-to-

college/.  

_____. “Five Facts about Student Loans.” August 24, 2017. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-

tank/2017/08/24/5-facts-about-student-loans/.  

_____. “Sharp Partisan Divisions in Views of National Institutions.” July 10, 2017.  

http://www.people-press.org/2017/07/10/sharp-partisan-divisions-in-views-of-national-

institutions/.  

Powers, Joshua B. “Commercializing Academic Research: Resource Effects of Performance 

of University Technology Transfer.” The Journal of Higher Education 74.1 (2003): 26–

50. 

Quintana, Chris. “A Polarized Campus Struggles to Understand How Racial Tensions Became 

National News.” The Chronicle of Higher Education June 2, 2017. 

https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-Polarized-Campus-Struggles/240260.  

Rasmussen, Karen, Pamela Northrup, and Robin Colson. Handbook of Research on 

Competency-Based Education in University Setting. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2016. 



The Character Model for the American University  150 
 

Rawlings, Hunter. “College is Not a Commodity. Stop Treating It Like One.” Washington 

Post. June 9, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/09/ 

college-is-not-a-commodity-stop-treating-it-like-one/?utm_term=.0c238b642c2f.  

Riley, Naomi Schaefer. The Faculty Lounges, and Other Reasons, Why You Won’t Get the 

College Education You Paid For. Lanham, MD: Ivan R. Dee, 2011. 

Ross, Tom. Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses. New 

York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017. 

Salkever, Stephen G. Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Philosophy. 

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. 

Scruton, Roger. “The Threat of Free Speech in the University.” Modern Age 59.3 (Summer 

2017): 7–16. 

Selingo, Jeffrey J. “Higher Ed as a Commodity? Colleges Have Only Themselves to Blame.” 

Washington Post June 16, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/ 

2015/06/16/higher-ed-as-a-commodity-colleges-have-only-themselves-to-

blame/?utm_term=.9f00a87df402.  

Putnam, Robert, and David Campbell. American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. 

New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. 

Slater, Tom. Unsafe Spaces: The Crisis of Free Speech on Campus. London: Palgrave, 2016. 

Srigley, Ron. “Dear Parents: Everything You Need to Know about Your Son’s and Daughter’s 

University but Don’t.” Los Angeles Review of Books December 9, 2015.  

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/dear-parents-everything-you-need-to-know-about-

your-son-and-daughters-university-but-dont/#!.  

_____. “Whose University Is It Anyway?” Los Angeles Review of Books February 22, 2018. 

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/whose-university-is-it-anyway/.  

Steinberger, Peter J. The Concept of Political Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 

1993. 



151  Trepanier 
 

Steiner, Elizabeth. “Toward a Conception of the Role of the Arts in Liberal Education.” Studies 

in Art Education 26.1 (1984): 5–13. 

Taylor, Mark. Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities. 

New York: Knopf, 2010. 

Trepanier, Lee. “A Philosophy of Prudence and the Purpose of Higher Education Today.” In 

The Relevance of Higher Education. Edited by Timothy Simpson. Lexington Books, 2013. 

1–23. 

_____. Why the Humanities Matter Today: In Defense of Liberal Education. Lanham, MD: 

Lexington Books, 2017. 

_____. “The Relevance of Political Philosophy and Political Science.” In Why the Humanities 

Matter Today: In Defense of Liberal Education. Edited by Lee Trepanier. Lexington 

Books, 2017. 127–44. 

_____. “SoTL as a Subfield for Political Science Graduate Programs.” Journal of Political 

Science Education 13.2 (2017): 138–51.  

Tuchman, Gaye. Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University. Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 2011. 

Villasenor, John. “Views Among College Students Regarding the First Amendment: Results 

from a New Survey.” Brookings Institute. September 18, 2017. 

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/09/18/views-among-college-students-

regarding-the-first-amendment-results-from-a-new-survey/.  

Voorhees, Richard. Measuring What Matters: Competency-Based Learning Models in Higher 

Education: New Directions for Institutional Research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001. 

Warner, Marina. “Why I Quit.” London Review of Books September 11, 2014. 

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n17/marina-warner/diary.  

Washburn, Jennifer. University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education. New 

York: Basic Books, 2005. 


