Questioning Trends in Higher Education

Abstract: This article revisits ideas put forward at the beginning of an academic career and discusses the ways in which time and experience within academe has shifted my perspective. Specifically, focusing on the balance of artistic thinking with the widely perceived need to justify the arts in higher education, I explore questions regarding the interaction of teaching within liberal-artsbased dance departments, the careers of those graduates as they become professionals, and possible effects on the art itself. dance | dance education | higher education | educational trends | dance professionals | Keywords: dance majors Article: This article revisits ideas put forward at the beginning of an academic career and discusses the ways in which time and experience within academe has shifted my perspective. Specifically, focusing on the balance of artistic thinking with the widely perceived need to justify the arts in higher education, I explore questions regarding the interaction of teaching within liberal-artsbased dance departments, the careers of those graduates as they become professionals, and possible effects on the art itself. Years ago, as a doctoral student returning to school after a career as an independent artist, I published an article (Van Dyke 1992) advocating against the narrow curriculum many dancers study and pointing out what I saw as the need for an education that teaches breadth, including advocacy skills based on both cultural and self-knowledge. At the time, I argued that a typical education for dancers failed to instruct about the world in which we live, and that studio-trained dance artists were often ill-equipped to speak for themselves among nondancers. My ideas were-and are-similar to thinking that continues to be current among dance educators, voiced here by Professor Ann Dils (2008): "I see reading and writing … as vital to our abilities to think, create and share information, and to participate in society" (97)