Does truth have a future in higher education?

ABSTRACT

Most institutions of higher education presume that the pursuit of truth is central to their missions. However, the status of truth has been seriously challenged in contemporary society—by postmodern critiques, confusion about the goals and methods of scholarly disciplines, and the seductive power of social and other digital media. In this essay, we describe a major empirical study of higher education in the United States. While faculty and senior administrators continue to value scholarship, a majority of students in the United States adopt a transactional approach to their education; and many of them are beleaguered by mental health challenges as well as feelings of alienation. These factors constitute a significant challenge to the laudable goals of the project ‘Positive Learning in the Age of Information’ (PLATO), which focuses on student learning in higher education. The authors recommend a sharp focus on the scholarly pursuit and elucidation of truth—beginning with admission to college (onboarding), if not before; highlighted and intertwined with all course work; and foregrounded as well in all institutions on campus (library, museums, research laboratories).

KEYWORDS:

• College
• mission
• truth
• cheating
• transactionality
• transformation

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper and for her exemplary collegiality over the years. We thank Shelby Clark and Sophie Blumert for their insightful collaboration on the data analyses reported here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We explicate and illustrate 'onboarding' and 'intertwining' in our book (Fischman and Gardner 2022, see especially Part IV).

Additional information

Funding

The project has been generously funded by three anonymous funders, as well as Jackie and Mike Bezos, The Carnegie Corporation of New York , The Meyer and Raena Hammerman Foundation, The Lumina Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Spencer Foundation, The Teagle Foundation, and The Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation. Special thanks to Thomas H. Lee and Anne Tenebaum, Paula and Jim Crown, and Julie Kidd of The Endeavor Foundation, who have been lead funders.