LONDON - It comes as no surprise to me that The Herald would report that Brown dropped down two spots in the U.S. News and World Report list of "America's Best Colleges." Why? Because Brown, like everyone reading this column right now, is concerned with how it looks to the outside world.
Brown prides itself on being the only research university in America to have an educational model where required core classes and course distributions are not necessary for graduation. We believe that the value of education lies not on the strength of the curriculum handed down to you from a panel of administrators, but rather on each individual student's ability to choose the best education for their self.
We profess Brown's open curriculum to be a beacon of liberal education, the University a singularity, an island amongst its peers. In the high school cafeteria of American higher education, we're the hip-dressing, straight-A loner.
Yet, even though our educational philosophy has proven successful, and our academic curriculum eschews prescribed ideals in favor of individual freedom and choice, Brown just can't seem to handle a little criticism.
It has become painfully clear to me where Brown's newest priorities lie: in keeping its reputation intact. Instead of defending ourselves rigorously when the likes of David Horowitz accuse us of not supporting conservative students on campus, we respond by putting a large amount of money into a hedge fund for "intellectual diversity" that does nothing more than bring second-rate right-wing speakers to campus rather than putting the issue before the student body so that we can see just how many students felt persecuted because of their political leanings. As soon as any single rating of American schools comes out, we immediately jump to the presses and release said information on an unsuspecting student body, despite the fact that everyone knows that those ratings are really a lot of fluff numbers that schools will manipulate themselves to make their own institutions look better. And whenever anyone questions Brown's position as an academic powerhouse, particularly when it comes to, say, the sciences, we automatically go about doing something to make sure everyone knows just how good at it we actually are
Let me explain.
You should know that I spent this past summer working as a tour guide for the admissions office here at Brown, so I know a little thing or two about the face that Brown puts out into the world. It isn't pretty. My job consisted of leading tours and co-facilitating information sessions with admission officers - you'll be surprised how many people will laugh when you say Brown isn't spelled H-A-R-V-A-R-D - and I was one of the first tour guides here at Brown to experience the newest way we're luring kids to Brown: the sciences tour, an in-depth look at the sciences here at Brown and the facilities and programs we offer to budding scientists on 90 percent of our students graduate from Brown with a well rounded curriculum, across disciplines, similar to students at places with a core curriculum, we are telling groups of kids traipsing through our physical science labs that it's OK to just be a scientist, that you don't need to see any other facilities, and all the while implying that, if you don't want to, you never have to take another pesky humanities classes again (unless they're required in your concentration)!
What about an arts tour?
What about a social sciences tour?
What about a pre-med tour?
If Brown is so intent on specializing, why not do it across the disciplines? According to the admissions officers I worked with over the summer, we want to attract scientists to Brown because the outside world thinks that Brown is nothing more than a liberal arts school.
Now, I'm not saying that the science tours are a bad thing. There is value in showing kids a side of Brown they may not have known about before, a side we rarely get a chance to show on a general tour of the campus. But to do it for one academic discipline and not for the rest is almost an insult to those of us who would like to see not only the best scientists around come to Brown, but also the best poets, artists, historians, and academics as well.
Brown needs to stop worrying about its image, and the science tours are just one of the things we need to get rid of in order to do so. So what if people think that we're a bunch of pot-smoking Democrats who don't study the sciences? I don't think there is a single Brown student, professor or alum who believes that Brown needs to change its image to be better. We already think this place is kind of perfect, otherwise we never would have come here. So, buck up, Brown. You're still number one in our book, even if you think no one else thinks so.
