Quality Assurance Conference
Kenan Center, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
May 19-20, 1998

Under the joint sponsorship of the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trusts and the American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE), college and university presidents, provosts and deans from across the country assembled with leading foundation representatives on May 19-20, 1998, at the Kenan Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to discuss the future of liberal arts education in America.

William C. Friday, executive director of the Kenan Trust, Michael K. Hooker, chancellor of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Jeffrey D. Wallin, president of AALE, jointly welcomed the assembly and expressed concern for the quality, affordability, access to, and relevance of liberal education in the coming century. Robert Connor, professor of Classics at Princeton University and director of the National Humanities Center, delivered the opening keynote address, "The Role of Liberal Arts Education in the 21st Century," emphasizing both the history and proven importance of liberal education in the creation of responsible, reflective citizens for a democratic society.

Russell Edgerton, director of Education Programs at The Pew Charitable Trusts and past president of the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE), emphasized the failure of the current system of accreditation to address quality assurance, and called for the more rigorous establishment of benchmark standards of excellence, and a "community of evidence" to document effective assessment of quality in higher education. Richard Ekman, secretary of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, emphasized both the increasing relevance of the core values of liberal education to a healthy society, and the growing public distrust of the higher education "delivery system" in assuring reliable and affordable access to such education for coming generations. Both Edgerton and Ekman emphasized the importance of recognizing and rewarding high quality undergraduate teaching as pivotal to quality assurance, and as a traditional strength of liberal arts institutions.

Lee Fritschler, president of Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA), led a summit roundtable discussion of presidents and chief academic officers from Bard, Birmingham Southern, Bryn Mawr, Claremont McKenna, Gettysburg, Goucher, Hollins, Hood, Lewis and Clark, Middlebury, Reed, St. John's, Washington and Jefferson, William & Mary and Wofford colleges, together with Furman, Michigan State, North Carolina, Samford, and Wake Forest universities. Gordon Haaland, president of Gettysburg College and incoming chairman of the Council of Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), and Thomas Corts, president of Samford University and past chairman of SACS, spoke of the importance of promoting the quality and advocating the importance of liberal education to an increasingly disillusioned and skeptical public, but questioned whether accreditation itself was the proper venue for carrying out such measures. Following a lively and well-informed discussion of these issues, several of the assembled college and university officials concluded that AALE could and should play an important role within the existing system of accreditation without increasing the already onerous bureaucratic burden of accreditation. As a national association, AALE would simultaneously be in an advantageous position to educate the general public on the value and importance of liberal education.