Philosophy 5: Critical Thinking and Composition

Pierce College

Department of History, Philosophy, & Sociology

Lecture Notes for Delbanco's College at Risk

Delbanco presents us with the difference between the college ideal and the college reality.

For some folks, the college ideal is a reality.

Delbanco: "For a relatively few, college remains the sort of place that Kronman, a former dean of Yale Law School, recalls from his days at Williams College, where his favorite class took place at the home of a philosophy professor whose two golden retrievers slept on either side of the fireplace 'like bookends beside the hearth' while the sunset lit the Berkshire hills 'in scarlet and gold.'"

For some folks, the reality of their college experience is not the college ideal.

Delbanco: "But for many more students, college means the anxious pursuit of marketable skills in overcrowded, under-resourced institutions, where little attention is paid to that elusive entity sometimes called the 'whole person.'"

"For still others, it means traveling by night to a fluorescent-lit office building or to a classroom that exists only in cyberspace."

Delbanco argues that the college ideal should become a reality for more people.