When English colleges were being developed, first at Oxford and shortly thereafter at Cambridge, the chapel was at the center of the diagram. The cultures of these institutions were only slightly removed from the monasteries of the Middle Ages.  It was in such cloistered setting that teaching and scholarship had been maintained through the aegis of the Church.

At Oxford and Cambridge, the chapel and its schedule of worship continued to be central to the life of each college. And so it continued for more than 300 years. By the early 1800s it was possible for Thomas Jefferson to conceive a new American university in Charlottesville in which the library took over the center of the diagram. It was there that the essential role of books and the printed page became the symbolic heart of the university.

When we visit a university today, the center of the diagram is less clear. If we judged merely by size we might believe that the football stadium is at the center of the diagram. If we judged by patterns of investment we might judge that the biomedical research enterprise was at the center of the diagram.

Other institutions have faced similar confusion. About 20 years ago academic medical centers began to adopt the notion of “patient-centered” care.  You might well ask, “What else could the care be centered on?”

For years, the operation and design of academic medical centers had been centered on the physician. Only in the past two decades have medical centers acted on the belief that the patient needed to be at the center of the diagram.

In much the same way, the university must act on the belief that the student is at the center of the diagram. Only the student provides the institutions raison d’être. The university loses its way as the center of the diagram migrates to the football stadium and the biomedical research enterprise.

By putting the student at the center of the diagram the University strengthens its core mission, the faculty is empowered to focus on teaching and scholarship, and the potential of higher education can be realized.

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