Princely vision: Hampshire College's Greg Prince weighs in on the hauteur of higher ed, the survival of liberal arts education, and keeping an educational experiment alive in the current economic climate - Interview

University Business, Jan, 2004 by Katherine Grayson

Tucked away on 800 acres of orchard- and farmland in South Amherst, MA, the 1,200-student Hampshire College is, for many, a model of what true liberal arts education should be: a collaborative, student-initiated, "experimenting" process of critical inquiry. President of the institution since September 1989, 64-year-old Gregory Smith Prince, Jr. is a former dean of Dartmouth College (NH) who is generally credited with greatly improving Hampshire's financial picture through his skill at fundraising. Indeed, some might say it is Prince's metabolism-in-overdrive and an uncanny ability to be four (attention-getting) places at once that has made the difference, money-wise. Prince is also largely responsible for bringing to the campus the renowned National Yiddish Book Center and the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, both representative of his vision of a "cultural village." Without a doubt, Prince seems intent on keeping his institution thriving--or better yet, pulsating--and admits to little fear of raised eyebrows.

You're known for speaking your mind, not toeing the line. Is that true about you?

When People read interviews that I've given, they assume that the journalist got it wrong when really, he didn't. It's just that nobody would believe I said what I did.

Do you see education so differently than much of the country does?

I think the greatest problem in K-12 education in the United States, for instance, is the arrogance of higher education. You'll find very few people in higher ed saying, "Wow, that's great" to someone who says, "I'm thinking of teaching in high school." They might say, "Why do you want to do that?" There are hundreds of signals sent in our culture--and higher ed repeats them--that there's higher education and there's lower education. I don't believe that. Our whole approach to teaching science education, for instance, (and for which we are nationally known), was taken from elementary school science teachers. Our science faculty wouldn't exist if it weren't for what they've learned, in terms of how to teach science, from the group of teachers that comes to our campus.

What's more, higher ed produces more Ph.D.'s than it can use. But it's not encouraging those people to think about high school teaching. We just keep pumping everyone into the Ph.D. programs, knowing that when they come out, there's not going to be a job for them. At the same time, all of that talent isn't being encouraged to think about high school teaching. The business model for doing that needs to be questioned. There's also a willingness in our society (particularly the current administration, but not just limited to Republicans) to blame K-12 teachers for all the problems. I think it's really the other way around. The Nation at Risk is probably inaccurate or not well-documented. It is true that the U.S.'s relative position to other countries has declined. But the actual scores our children get on these international exams have not declined. So the way I tell the story is that K-12 teachers, in the face of overwhelming odds--declining family stability, increased urban decay, increased drug use in-the nation as a whole, decreased investment in higher education, every possible sort of fault on the system--have managed to maintain the quality of education. I think the administration uses K-12 teachers like they use "weapons of mass destruction": as the excuse to blame them for everything and use it as the reason for interfering and moving into the schools. If The Nation at Risk is predicated on the fact that our loss of competitive position in the mid-'80s was due to teachers, well, that's a backhanded compliment, that the teachers are that important. When our competitive position improved in the mid-'90s, however, nobody seemed to give the teachers credit.

How do you help your professors become better teachers?

We don't see teaching and research as antithetical. We see them as complementary and integrated so that the process of inquiry (what research is) is what our instruction is. That's the way we teach. We get students to learn by asking and doing, not just by absorbing. And our teachers have more flexibility to team teach and therefore are watching and learning from each other. The faculty sit on committees that oversee the independent work of the students--their "contract"--so they're constantly interacting with each other. That leads to observation, copying things that work, and the informal process of supporting each other.

How important is that whole concept of sharing resources to the business of running Hampshire College?

I'm president of Hampshire because somewhere in my early career I stumbled on the reality of sharing resources, which seems pretty simple. I came to believe very quickly that that was the only way higher education would survive in the long run, by addressing the issues of affordability and cost. I was an associate dean at Dartmouth, responsible for interdisciplinary programs, and we were looking at astronomy and an observatory that was really small and had [a very small telescope] but very tall trees. There was concern that when the trees were cut down, the environmental students would protest. The estimate was about $200,000 to improve the observatory. I happened to find out that the Chair of Astronomy at Michigan and was meeting with MIT about moving a Michigan telescope to Arizona. So I invited them to meet here on neutral ground and maybe they'd invite us to the party. They did. By the end of the day, we were a part of the consortium, and we moved a 52-inch telescope from Ann Arbor to the National Observatory in Arizona, built the observatory, put it in place, and had it operating in something like 11 months. And all for $300,000 split three ways. In addition, that telescope was linked to and had priority with an X-ray satellite that MIT was launching. So, instead of getting next to nothing for its $200,000, Dartmouth went to world-class astronomy for undergraduates, for $100,00. I wouldn't say it's a "business" way of thinking; it's a good way of educating--expanding and enriching the educational environment for undergraduates at a cost you can afford. There has to be a relationship between the educational enterprise and the financial resources you have. And the best way to do it is to find how you can share resources and tap into what exists. Here at Hampshire, we've managed a whole range of consortia issues such as helping create and make independent the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, which is meant to satellite the NCAA and replace athletics with invention as the hallmark of American education.