An Education of Heart and Soul
The hundreds of graduates singing “Old Wabash” at this year’s Alumni Chapel Sing weren’t celebrating pecuniary returns but good fortune writ
The Wabash experience is an education of increasing returns.
In the past few months I have witnessed a season of them.
At the May meeting I briefed our Board of Trustees on the recent accomplishments of our students—a Rhodes Scholar, three Fulbright Scholars, and multiple champions in athletics among them. We discussed the Payscale.com survey ranking Wabash as one of the best “returns on investment” in higher education, noting that Wabash graduates can expect to earn significantly more than the typical college graduate.
The next day I joined seniors and their families enjoying an early dividend on that return on investment—229 Wabash men at Commencement, each ready to demonstrate that his hard-earned education had prepared him for the working world he was about to enter.
Three weeks later I welcomed alumni for the Big Bash class reunions—more than 300 Wabash men renewing friendships and supporting the College, each confident that the education we offer today is as empowering as the one they returned to celebrate with their classmates. The Class of 1965’s reunion gift of $5.5 million puts an exclamation point on their commitment to help fund the next generation of Wabash men, much like an earlier generation paid for theirs!
The Payscale.com ranking is an eye-opener for a public that doesn’t realize the economic benefits of a liberal arts education. The hundreds of graduates singing “Old Wabash” at this year’s Alumni Chapel Sing in June weren’t celebrating pecuniary returns but good fortune writ large — the simple gifts of their Wabash liberal arts experience handed down from generation to generation. As you’ll read in this edition of the magazine, Wabash men define the return on investment from their education in about as many ways as there are Wabash men, regardless of income or earnings.
For Lora and me, the sight of those men singing—many arm-in-arm—was a pretty good definition in itself.
Not long after those two remarkable weekends I was asked, “If the parent of a prospective student asked you to describe the Wabash return on investment in one sentence, what would you say?”
I had a true and good response in mind: “Wabash College connects young men to opportunities for fulfillment and promise that allows them to lead personally and financially rewarding lives.”
But I heard myself saying one word: “Heart.”
Wabash is a challenging place. You are tested, you are confronted, and some of what you learn goes against the grain.
Wabash offers an education born of a deep understanding: Life is hard, and if college isn’t hard, it’s not preparing you for life.
So you are challenged here but also supported by faculty and staff who take time for students like no group of educators I have ever seen. Professor Emeritus of Classics John Fischer H’70 put it best when he returned to campus in May to receive an honorary degree: “People often ask me what Wabash is all about,” John said. “I have yet to come up with the perfect word, but what I do use is ‘intimacy.’
“That ‘intimacy’ seems to be at the very heart of what we are all about and what I think of when I contemplate my years here. The key to it all is the relationship between professor and student, advisor and advisee, and the open office door.
“I recall my advisees with great pleasure and think about all of the things we talked about whether in my office, in the Scarlet Inn, in a fraternity or dorm, or in my home.
“I hope that ‘intimacy’ and that bond is never diminished here—it’s what makes a Wabash education so powerful.”
When a master teacher and Wabash legend like John Fischer talks about what Wabash is all about, I listen.
I would add two more relationships to the bond of which John speaks. The largest support network at Wabash often goes unheralded: our students. Peers supply a certain level of accountability but also compassion. There is competition but also collaboration.
And the camaraderie among students and alumni here is extraordinary. Young men see that they do not have to face this difficult world alone, that friendships, when nurtured, can be life long. They see in the lives of alumni that even if those friendships lie fallow for a season, they will be renewed.
Wabash men are part of something larger than themselves, a fellowship of learning with no creed and one enigmatic rule: A Wabash man conducts himself as a gentleman at all times.
So I’ll stick with “heart.” What better return on investment could a student ask for or his parents hope for?
In her book Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, philosopher Martha Nussbaum presents a powerful argument for liberal arts education and the return on investment it offers not only individuals, but nations. Her word to define that return is not “heart,” but “soul.” She describes “a worldwide crisis in education.”
“We are pursuing the possessions that protect, please, and comfort us,” Nussbaum writes. “But we seem to be
forgetting about the soul, about what it is for thought to open out of the soul and connect a person to the world in a rich, subtle, and complicated manner; about what it is to approach another person as a soul, rather than as a mere useful instrument or an obstacle to one’s own plans.”
Soul has religious connotations for many people, Nussbaum realizes, but she defines it as “the faculties of thought and imagination that make us human and make our relationships rich human relationships, rather than relationships of mere use and manipulation.
“If we have not learned to see both self and other in that way, imagining in one another inner faculties of thought and emotion, democracy is bound to fail, because democracy is built upon respect and concern.”
In the economic and educational environment Nussbaum describes, the value and importance of liberal arts colleges are being openly questioned.
I welcome that conversation.
This is our chance to get the word out. We have evidence of what a Wabash liberal arts education does for students’ creativity, citizenship, competency, and careers. And the Payscale.com ranking of Wabash’s return on investment is a piece of that.
But as Wabash men know, behind all of the evidence is an education of the heart and soul—an increasing return on investment not only for students’ careers, but for their lives; not only for alumni, but for their families, friends, and the places they live and work.
Contact President Hess: hessg@wabash.edu
Follow President Hess on Twitter at @PrezHess