Higher Education and the Formation of Character

What are the ends of higher education? There should be little dispute that they include the cultivation of intellectual virtues through the pursuit of truth. But do the ends, the goods, of higher education include the cultivation of moral character? There is dispute over the answer to this question even amongst those who subscribe to a rigorous liberal arts education for the reason that moral virtues are not able to be taught in the same way that intellectual virtues are. Nonetheless, I think it is clear that the Western tradition exhorts those involved in higher education to orient students towards the cultivation of moral character in addition to the acquisition of wisdom and truth. In this lecture I will make the case for that conclusion and consider applications for how the work of character formation ought to be pursued within a university setting.