The Boyer Commission's work was funded by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The Commission wants to express its deep gratitude to Interim President Charles E. Glassick and President Lee Shulman.
We are most grateful to Robert W. Kenny, who wrote the report, and Milton Glaser, who designed it.

PREFACE
The National Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University was created in 1995 under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

What is a Research University?
The United States has more than 3,500 institutions of higher education. More than two thousand of them offer only Associate or Bachelor degrees. Of the remainder, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1994 classified eighty-eight as "Research I" universities; they are those which "offer a full range of baccalaureate programs, are committed to graduate education through the doctorate, and give high priority to research. They award 50 or more doctoral degrees each year. In addition, they receive annually $40- million or more in federal support." An additional thirty-seven institutions are called "Research II" universities: they receive "between $15.5-million and $40- million" in federal support but are otherwise like the Research I universities. A list of the Research I and Research II universities is appended to this report. Because of the research universities' commitment to create new knowledge, they consider research capability as a primary qualification for appointment, promotion, and tenure of faculty members, and they pride themselves on having world-class scholars among their ranks..
    Research universities characteristically have an international orientation. They attract students, particularly at the graduate level, from many parts of the world, thereby adding valued dimensions of diversity to the community. The international graduate students often become teaching assistants, so their presence becomes a part of undergraduate experience. And many research universities offer an array of interdisciplinary programs seldom available in smaller institutions. The graduates of these programs enter diplomatic service and international journalism, banking, commerce, and technology. They help to make the names of the American research universities recognized and respected throughout the world.
    In American higher education, nearly every institution has held racial and ethnic diversity to be a desirable goal. It is widely recognized that meaningful association with Americans of varying backgrounds and cultural histories, as well as contact with international students, adds to the breadth of baccalaureate experience and may serve long-range social goals of diversity and racial accommodation. Research universities have made diligent and often successful efforts to attract and hold students from racial and ethnic minorities. The large public universities with their lower tuition rates can promise education and social mobility to numbers of students from lower-income families of all kinds, and the well-endowed private universities can offer financial support, often quite generous, to gifted students of every background. So the campuses of research universities are characteristically heterogeneous places, polyglot, multi-cultural, and multi-ethnic.

REINVENTING UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION
A Blueprint for America's Research Universities

Many students graduate having accumulated whatever number of courses is required, but still lacking a coherent body of knowledge or any inkling as to how one sort of information might relate to others. And all too often they graduate without knowing how to think logically, write clearly, or speak coherently. The university has given them too little that will be of real value beyond a credential that will help them get their first jobs. And with larger and larger numbers of their peers holding the same paper in their hands, even that credential has lost much of its potency.

A New Model
What is needed now is a new model of undergraduate education at research universities that makes the baccalaureate experience an inseparable part of an integrated whole. Universities need to take advantage of the immense resources of their graduate and research programs to strengthen the quality of undergraduate education, rather than striving to replicate the special environment of the liberal arts colleges. There needs to be a symbiotic relationship between all the participants in university learning that will provide a new kind of undergraduate experience available only at research institutions. It is obvious that not every student should, or would wish to, attend a research university. Without attempting to characterize students at other kinds of institutions, it might be said that the undergraduate who flourishes at a research university is the individual who enjoys diverse experiences, is not dismayed by complexity or size, has a degree of independence and self-reliance, and seeks stimulation more than security. A research university is in many important ways a city; it offers almost unlimited opportunities and attractions in terms of associations, activities, and enterprises. But as in a city, the requirements of daily living may be taxing, and sorting out the opportunities and finding like-minded individuals may be difficult. The rewards of the ultimate experience, however, can be immeasurable.

Searching for a Shared Mission
The ecology of the university depends on a deep and abiding understanding that inquiry, investigation, and discovery are the heart of the enterprise, whether in funded research projects or in undergraduate classrooms or graduate apprenticeships. Everyone at a university should be a discoverer, a learner. That shared mission binds together all that happens on a campus. The teaching responsibility of the university is to make all its students participants in the mission. Those students must undergird their engagement in research with the strong "general" education that creates a unity with their peers, their professors, and the rest of society. Unfortunately, research universities are often archipelagos of intellectual pursuit rather than connected and integrated communities. Fragmentation has increased drastically during the last fifty years. At many universities, research faculty and undergraduate students do not expect to interact with each other, and both groups distinguish between teachers and researchers as though the two experiences were not inextricably linked. Even those students who encounter an introduction to research technique in one narrow field too often remain ignorant of how diverse fields overlap and intermingle. The institutional goal of research universities should be a balanced system in which each scholar--faculty member or student--learns in a campus environment that nurtures exploration and creativity on the part of every member.

AN ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS
When a university accepts an undergraduate student for admission and the student then enrolls, implicit commitments constitute an unwritten contract between them. Each assumes obligations and responsibilities, and each receives benefits. The student commits to a course of study intended to lead to a degree, agrees to follow such rules of civil behavior as the university prescribes, accepts the challenge of making an appropriate contribution to the community of scholars, and pledges to cultivate her or his mind, abilities, and talents with a view to becoming a productive and responsible citizen. The student at a research university, in addition, must come with appropriate preparation for the opportunities that will be provided, must commit to the strenuous burdens of active participation in the educational process, and must be prepared to live in a diverse and heterogeneous environment. By admitting a student, any college or university commits itself to provide maximal opportunities for intellectual and creative development. These should include:

• 1. Opportunities to learn through inquiry rather than simple transmission of knowledge.
• 2. Training in the skills necessary for oral and written communication at a level that will serve the student both within the university and in postgraduate professional and personal life.
• 3. Appreciation of arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences, and the opportunity to experience them at any intensity and depth the student can accommodate.
• 4. Careful and comprehensive preparation for whatever may lie beyond graduation, whether it be graduate school, professional school, or first professional position.

• 1. Expectation of and opportunity for work with talented senior researchers to help and guide the student's efforts.
• 2. Access to first-class facilities in which to pursue research--laboratories, libraries, studios, computer systems, and concert halls.
• 3. Many options among fields of study and directions to move within those fields, including areas and choices not found in other kinds of institutions.
• 4. Opportunities to interact with people of backgrounds, cultures, and experiences different from the student's own and with pursuers of knowledge at every level of accomplishment, from freshmen students to senior research faculty.

CONCLUSION
Research universities are so complex, so multifaceted, and often so fragmented that, short of major crisis, they can rarely focus their attention on a single agenda. We believe that the state of undergraduate education at research universities is such a crisis, an issue of such magnitude and volatility that universities must galvanize themselves to respond. Insofar as they have seen as their primary responsibility the creation and refinement of knowledge, America's research universities have been superbly successful; in ways innumerable and immeasurable they have been the wellsprings of national stature and achievement. But in the education of undergraduates the record has been one of inadequacy, even failure.

Commitment to Dramatic Change
We believe that the basic direction of change is clear: undergraduates need to benefit from the unique opportunities and resources available in research universities; clumsy adaptations of the practices of liberal arts colleges will no longer serve. The research universities need to be able to give to their students a dimension of experience and capability they cannot get in any other setting, a research experience that is genuine and meaningful. They should turn out graduates who are well on the way to being mature scholars, articulate and adept in the techniques and methods of their chosen fields, ready for the challenges of professional life or advanced graduate study. Research universities have unique capabilities and resources; it is incumbent upon them to equip their graduates to undertake uniquely productive roles.