"Parking Across the Curriculum"
Dan Aronson
Raritan Valley Community College
Constant student complaints about parking are normally dismissed as incidental to the
mission of higher education. It turns out, however, that the issue of parking relates to
teaching and learning in several important ways. Since parking policies have a strong
impact on transportation and real estate, the issue relates to business, environmental
science and social science, i.e. it is interdisciplinary. Therefore, it can serve as a concrete
topic around which interdisciplinary learning can take place. Furthermore, the fact that
academics do not challenge the conventional practice of providing "free" parking despite
the problems generated by this practice relates to the process of paradigm shifts – such
shifts being learning processes in and of themselves.
"A university is a diverse community held together by common complaints about parking."
-- Clark Kerr, former chancellor of the University of California*
THE PROBLEM
As faculty, we often hear complaints about parking. According to the Noel-Levitz
National Student Satisfaction and Priorities Report, "inadequate student parking" ranks sixth out
of seventy sources of dissatisfaction among community colleges nationally. But once the
complaints are uttered, we move on to ostensibly more profound matters. Parking, however, is
hardly a mundane issue. It has economic and environmental implications that are as important as
________________
__________________
______________
*Quotation originally used in Transportation and Sustainable Campus Communities, by W. Toor.
they are hidden -- lost in conversations mostly about the lack of parking. The construction of
"free" parking:

causes overreliance on automobiles, which imposes high costs on businesses (which must
pay drivers to sit in traffic) as well as low and middle income households;

crowds out land that could be used for housing, thereby contributing to low supplies/high
prices of housing.
These are practical, real-world problems, but they directly relate to community colleges
in several important ways. First, access to community colleges, a central part of our mission, will
be deficient in the absence of effective transit options. Second, burdensome costs force both
traditional and nontraditional students to work long hours, which interfere with lifelong learning,
another crucial part of our mission. Third, construction of "free" campus parking imposes
burdensome costs on our own institutions. At Raritan Valley Community College, recently built
parking spaces cost $3900 per space. Total maintenance for all lots is only about $20,000 a year,
but $1.21 million for 310 parking spots is serious money that merits scrutiny (B. O'Rourke, email communication, 2008). Finally, and most importantly, all of the above problems stem from
inadequacies in higher education, specifically, an unwillingness to consider legitimate
challenges to prevailing ideas, and insufficient communication between disciplines. The latter
points are addressed in the following two sections.
PARADIGM SHIFTS
The construction of vast oceans of "free" parking, by creating total dependence on the
automobile, has given rise to a lifestyle in which students work without end to pay for cars so
that, in the future, they will most likely endure long commutes and continue to incur high
automobile costs. From 1980 to 2000, mean travel time to work in the US went from 21.7 to 24.5
minutes (US Census Bureau, 2000). In New Jersey, mean travel time to work in 2006 was 29
minutes (US Census Bureau, 2006 American Community Survey). The fact that we incur high
costs to endure this inconvenience adds insult to injury; automobile costs constitute the second
largest portion of the average household's budget (Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2006,
p. 456). Government subsidies for parking and driving perpetuate this lifestyle -- it is not a
matter of choice under free market conditions.
To raise the obvious question, "Why do we continue in this manner?" is to raise the idea
of paradigm shifts developed by Princeton historian of science Thomas Kuhn. According to
Kuhn, a paradigm is a conceptual framework that has gained acceptance throughout a
profession. Research is conducted according to the established conceptual framework, but
sometimes a body of contradictory evidence causes some researchers to adopt a new
framework. For example, when astronomers assumed that the sun was a planet that revolved
around the earth, the data they collected became problematic. Eventually, Copernicus
hypothesized that the earth revolved around the sun, and the new focus of research resulted in
observations that confirmed this conceptual framework (Kuhn, 2000, p. 15).
Donald Shoup, professor of urban planning at UCLA, argues for a paradigm shift in the
way we think about parking in The High Cost of Free Parking (Shoup, 2005, p. 579). Shoup not
only finds problems with data generated by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (he reprints
pages from their handbook that include the warning, "Caution -- Use Carefully -- Low R2"), but
also explains that the very purpose for which they collect data involves circular reasoning:
... most surveys of parking demand are conducted at sites that offer ample free parking,
and the observed "demand" is correspondingly high. Following this circular logic, urban
planners neglect both the price and the cost of parking when they set parking
requirements, and the maximum observed parking demand becomes the minimum
required parking supply (Shoup, 2005, p. 580).
Planners continue practicing this approach because they're taught to do so, and until there
are more academic and professional challenges to conventional thinking, we will persist in
causing total dependence on automobiles, extreme congestion, global warming, etc. To be sure,
this unwelcome situation has caused some municipal officials to rethink prevailing beliefs, which
is part of the paradigm shift that Thomas Kuhn describes. At the same time, the process is slow
and accompanied by much resistance.
Notice that the process of paradigm shifts does not merely relate to the process of
learning, it is learning. When reality forces us to reconsider prevailing ideas, we engage in a
learning process. Moreover, if we discuss paradigm shifts with students, we convey to them that
learning is not about "received knowledge" from professors. To the contrary, what professors
teach can often be untenable and illegitimate. That being the case, the job of the student is not to
be a stenographer who regurgitates information on tests and in papers, but to think for him or
herself. That's the ultimate in teaching and learning.
We need not permit students to engage in nihilism -- believing that one idea is as good as
another, and that professors have nothing to offer. Challenges to existing paradigms need to be
supported by well-made arguments; without a firm academic background, challengers will be
dismissed. Moreover, established professions can be surprisingly receptive to challenges. In
1936, John Maynard Keynes assumed that his criticism of the economic orthodoxy would only
be widely accepted after older economists died off one by one. As it transpired, after World War
II most policymakers in the industrialized world adopted his ideas. Furthermore, while Donald
Shoup directly challenges the planning establishment, his book was published by the American
Planning Association -- for which Professor Shoup offers gratitude as well as
credit. Acknowledging these points would convey to students that the academic world is not so
one-dimensional after all.
The fact that some scholars dismiss justifiable challenges to the orthodoxy poses a special
problem for measuring educational outcomes. Even if we accept the value of outcomes
assessment, it will never be the purview of the assessors to determine whether the educational
material that is taught is in fact legitimate -- since such a determination would flagrantly violate
academic freedom. Nor can we measure whether students are thinking for themselves rather than
acting as stenographers. The point here is not to challenge outcomes assessment, but merely to
raise a difficult issue.
INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUE
As implied by the title of this paper, the issue of parking relates to several disciplines,
including social science, business, and environmental science. While teachers in various
departments may not eliminate sufficient material from their existing syllabi to hold substantive
class discussions on parking, there is ample opportunity to discuss the issue at Faculty
Development seminars and Student Government meetings. That being said, the topic is truly
interdisciplinary, and the value of interdisciplinary communication cannot be underestimated. To
illustrate this point, let's momentarily leave the subject of parking and see what happens when
we apply the second law of thermodynamics, or "entropy," to economics. (The issue of parking
will in turn relate to this exercise in a powerful manner.)
Entropy is the tendency of all matter and energy to move to a state of disorder, i.e. to fall
apart or become dissipated. A great deal of our lives is spent resisting entropy. We regularly eat
and drink to prevent our bodies from falling apart, and we change the oil in our cars to prolong
the life of the engine. Food and drink as well as new oil represent valuable "inputs," and it's a
basic law of physics that all systems -- living and nonliving -- must take in valuable inputs to
resist entropy. It immediately follows that "outputs" must leave the system in the form of
waste. A system that takes in valuable inputs and emits waste is an "open" system. In contrast, a
system that neither takes in valuable inputs nor emits waste is a "closed" system, and such a
system would fall apart in short order. (The last point should not be seen as abstract theory. Just
imagine what would happen to any system -- living or inanimate -- if it neither took in valuable
inputs nor emitted waste.)
The point of this discussion is that economists across the ideological spectrum show the
economy as a closed system, set apart from nature with neither inputs nor outputs. Any scientist
would immediately see the absurdity of the situation -- just as the reader of these paragraphs,
having been introduced to the second law of thermodynamics, undoubtedly sees. To show the
economic system in a scientifically accurate manner, we would depict valuable natural resources
entering the system and waste leaving it. The economic system is then shown as a gargantuan
machine voraciously gobbling up valuable resources and spewing out fantastic amounts of
waste. It immediately becomes apparent that growth in the production of physical goods is the
very last thing we want. In summary, applying a basic law of physics to economics forces us to
think differently.
Applying the issue of parking, as part of the discipline of urban planning, to economics -conventional or ecological -- also yields significant results. Financial (dis) incentives to reduce
the demand for parking offer one of the most powerful means to promote alternatives to singleoccupancy-vehicle trips (Shoup, pp. 211-17). Implementing such alternatives would improve
transportation for all (because of reduced congestion) while reducing automobile costs. In turn,
rendering oceans of employee parking lots useless would free up already paved land for the
construction of new housing, thereby reducing housing prices for future buyers. And local
planners could streamline the permit process for builders that utilize LEED construction. Such
construction offers the benefit of low annual utility bills for negligible increases in upfront
costs. In other words, well-conceived urban planning can effectively reduce the two largest
portions of the average household's monthly budget (housing and transportation) while
dramatically improving material well-being. Consequently, the discipline of urban planning can
serve to obviate the main problem that is posed by both conventional and ecological economics,
namely, the challenge of improving material well-being in the face of supply constraints.
The point here is not to make particular academic arguments, but rather to illustrate the
power of interdisciplinary work in general. The important first step is to promote dialogue
between different academic departments, and the issue of parking is an excellent place to begin.
The call for interdisciplinary dialogue has been especially pronounced over the past two
generations. C.P. Snow, in a 1959 lecture entitled "The Two Cultures and the Scientific
Revolution," declared that: "[in advanced western society] persons educated with the greatest
intensity we know can no longer communicate with each other on the plane of their major
intellectual concern... It is making it difficult or impossible for us to take good action (Snow,
1998, p. 60)." Interestingly, the question Snow used to test scientific literacy was, What do you
know of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? (Snow, 1998, p. 71)
Peter Elbow, in Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching,
recommends a "nondisciplinary" course. His overall argument is that the concepts taught in each
discipline only engender learning when applied to concrete issues that hold some meaning for
students. Learning especially occurs when the applications of various disciplines to a concrete
issue seem to conflict -- thereby forcing students to think through various contradictions. As
Elbow puts it:
The sort of nondisciplinary course I advocate -- to supplement disciplinary courses, not
replace them -- is one in which a single concrete particular is seen from the point of view
of the widest range of conflicting models, metaphors, hypotheses, conceptual schemes,
sets, and disciplines. Relatively current and loaded events would make natural choices
for the focus of such courses... (Elbow, 1986, p. 9. Note that the issue of parking is
literally "concrete.")
Harvard professor and award-winning author Edward O. Wilson devoted an entire book,
Consilience, to the need to promote communication between disciplines. According to Wilson,
"We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run
by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically
about it, and make important choices wisely" (Wilson, E.O., 1998, 294).
This line of thinking is also promulgated by advocates for "learning-centered"
community colleges. In Establishing and Sustaining Learning-Centered Community Colleges,
Christine Johnson McPhail states: "Education research reveals that new knowledge grows out of
the process of relating new ideas to what we already know and exploring the interrelationships
among ideas" (McPhail, 2005, p. ix).
TEACHING AND LEARNING VS. SOLVING PROBLEMS
It could be (and has been) argued that solving practical campus and community problems
is not necessarily what teaching and learning is about. This argument recalls the provocative
discussion sparked by George Kennan's criticism of student radicals in a 1968 article entitled
"Rebels without a Program." Kennan wrote that the process of learning would ideally be pursued
with a "...renunciation of participation in contemporary life in the interests of the achievement of
a better perspective on that life when the period of withdrawal is over" (Kennan, G. 1968, p.
3). At the time, there was an outpouring of criticism from students and professors from the new
left.
Yet it is precisely because education involves detached reflection that we must promote
solutions to practical problems. For example, the leader of a business-sponsored organization
dedicated to promoting public transit, when asked why business leaders do not energetically
promote transit alternatives even though a reduction in both traffic congestion and expenditures
on foreign oil are in the interests of the business community, told me, "They're too busy and it's
not their top priority." Similarly, politicians of both parties, with rare exceptions, promulgate the
very policies, cheap oil and free parking, that give rise to total dependence on automobiles. The
burden of solving problems rests with the people whose precise function is to reflect, namely,
teachers and students.
The notion of education as a "problem solver" for real-world crises is hardly the province
of the new left. Consider the following quote from President John Adams:
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and
philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural
history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their
children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and
porcelain (Bartlett, 1992, p. 338, italics added).
Kennan did acknowledge the appropriateness of students and teachers becoming engaged
in real world affairs, but he argued that the truly worrisome issues lay beyond the immediate
concerns of the time, such as the Vietnam War and racial discrimination. After bemoaning
damage to our natural environment, Kennan stated:
I worry about the private automobile. It is a dirty, noisy, wasteful, and lonely means of
travel. It... exercises upon the individual a discipline which takes away far more freedom
than it gives him.... it has crowded out other, more civilized and more convenient means
of transport, leaving older people, infirm people, poor people and children in a worse
situation than they were a hundred years ago. It continues to lend a terrible element of
fragility to our civilization, placing us in a situation where our life would break down
completely if anything ever interfered with the oil supply (Kennan 232).
Kennan's statements that the automobile "exercises upon the individual a discipline which
takes away far more freedom than it gives him," and that "poor people and children [are] in a
worse situation than they were a hundred years ago" brings to mind the various costs of complete
dependence on the automobile. It bears repeating: automobile expenses now constitute the
second largest component of the average household's budget. For younger college students, such
expenses constitute the largest component of their budgets, leaving them little choice but to work
long hours. Among all students in public two-year institutions, 53% work full-time while 30.4%
work part-time (Wilson, C., 2004, p.29). It also bears repeating that the oceans of parking lots
built to accommodate these automobiles occupy land that could otherwise be used for housing,
thereby contributing to the low supply and high cost of housing. If lifelong learning, a core
mission of the community college, is to be a meaningful reality, then this problem of overwork
must be directly addressed. And of course the role of parking in this whole matter merits
discussion.
Actual attempts to expand transit options to college campuses, as described in
Transportation and Sustainable Campus Communities have been limited to universities. This is
unfortunate, given the fact that "access" is such a critical part of our own mission. In any case,
given the daunting challenge of expanding transit options, any practical efforts should involve
collaboration between campus and community constituents. Such collaboration led to tangible
successes at the University of Montana at Missoula -- where the efforts were initiated by student
leadership -- and at Cornell University (Toor, 2004, 174-212).
LISTENING
Inherent in the idea of interdisciplinary dialogue as well as receptiveness to challenges to
prevailing beliefs is the notion that academicians actually listen to one another. It's a simple
thought, but Peter Elbow illustrates its significance by contrasting standard argumentation with
actual listening. Elbow describes a group that is "... full of disagreement, but whenever someone
starts to say something, he is immediately interrupted by someone else starting to say why he
disagrees with what (he thinks) the person was starting to say. There is no fruitful interaction,
there is none of the productive phenomenon of one idea or perception reflected or seen through
the lens of another. There is only deadlock and stalemate." Elbow later continues, "They need to
stop all the interrupting: make sure each speaker finishes what he's saying before someone else
speaks. In this way they can maximize the chance of one person's view actually getting inside the
head of the other people and being transmuted or reoriented there" (Elbow, 1986, p. 47).
This line of thinking is expounded upon in The Argument Culture, by Deborah Tannen,
who writes:
Philosophy equates logical reasoning with the Adversary Paradigm, a matter of making
claims and then trying to find, and argue against, counterexamples to that claim... In this
paradigm, the best way to evaluate someone's work is to "subject it to the strongest or
most extreme opposition."
But if you parry individual points -- a negative and defensive enterprise -- you never step
back and actively imagine a world in which a different system of ideas could be true -- a
positive act. And you never ask how larger systems of thought relate to each
other. According to [philosopher] Janice Moulton, our devotion to the Adversary
Paradigm has led us to misinterpret the type of argumentation that Socrates favored: We
think of the Socratic method as systematically leading an opponent into admitting
error. This is primarily a way of showing up an adversary as wrong. Moulton shows that
the original Socratic method – the elenchus -- was designed to convince others, to shake
them out of their habitual mode of thought and lead them to new insight. Our version of
the Socratic method -- an adversarial public debate -- is unlikely to result in opponents
changing their minds (Tannen, 1999, 274).
Let's apply these ideas to some of the specific issues raised in this paper. In debates about
transportation policy, we normally have liberals calling for greater subsidies for public transit,
often with a view to providing relief for low-income households, and conservatives favoring
automobile travel. This is not surprising, because the "private" automobile is normally associated
with private enterprise, while "public" transit is associated with the public sector. But if people
would take a moment to listen to writers like Donald Shoup (among others), they would be made
aware that driving is subsidized -- it is not a choice under free market conditions. If we charged
drivers the full cost of their activity, through increases in tolls and gas taxes as well as higher
parking fees, it would create a market for car/vanpooling, biking and public transit. In other
words, the best way to promote public transit is to emulate private enterprise. This is a
conservative approach because it relies upon user fees instead of subsidies funded through
income taxes, a market-based approach that tends to favor upper income households. But while
relying upon user fees rather than income taxes benefits upper income households, creating a
market for effective transit alternatives would also provide tremendous relief for low-income
households; automobile costs constitute 33% of the income of households in the lowest two
quintiles (Litman, 2007, p. 3). And at the same time that we benefit low-income households, we
serve the interests of the business community by reducing congestion and expenditures on
foreign oil. From every angle, the usual deadlock between conservatives and liberals in this issue
melts away if we listen to each other and absorb the facts.
Again, the main point here is not to make the case for particular arguments, but rather to
demonstrate that commonly held perceptions could melt away if people actually listen to one
another.
CONCLUSION
It has been argued in this paper that certain real-world issues pose direct problems to
community colleges (lack of access in the absence of transit options, overwork interfering with
lifelong learning), that prevailing material taught by academics is responsible for these problems
(the conception of the economy as existing apart from the natural world, urban planners being
taught that "free" parking must be required), and that challenges to material taught in the
classrooms as well as interdisciplinary dialogue would simultaneously promote fruitful teaching
and learning and help solve real-world problems. The issue of parking has obviously served as a
central theme, but parking may be thought of as a kind of metaphor for systemic thinking. The
point is, a business as usual approach is simply not tenable. We must address interrelated
problems that affect teaching and learning and, in turn, are caused by deficiencies in teaching
and learning.
These may appear to be far-reaching ideas, but when reality demands a change of course,
it is not exactly sensible to pretend that change is not necessary. As Edward O. Wilson puts it:
The future of the liberal arts lies, therefore, in addressing the fundamental questions of
human existence head on, without embarrassment or fear, taking them from the top down
in an easily understood language, and progressively rearranging them into domains of
inquiry that unite the best of science and humanities at each level of organization in
turn. That of course is a very difficult task. But so are cardiac surgery and building space
vehicles difficult tasks. Competent people get on with them, because they need to be
done. Why should less be expected from the professionals responsible for education?
(Wilson, E.O., 1998, p. 295)
REFERENCES
Elbow, P. (1986). Embracing contraries: Explorations in learning and teaching. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Kennan, G. (1968). Democracy and the student left. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
Kuhn, T. (2000). The road since structure. Chicago: The University Of Chicago Press.
MacPhail, C. (2005). Establishing and sustaining learning-centered community colleges.
Washington, DC: Community College Press.
Snow, C.P. (2007). The two cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Tannen, D. (1999). The argument culture: Stopping America's war of words. New York:
Ballantine Books.
Litman, T. (2007). Transportation affordability: Strategies to increase transportation
affordability. Victoria Transport Policy Institute: http://www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm106.htm.
Toor, W. (2004). Transportation and the sustainable campus communities. Washington, DC:
Island Press.
Wilson, E.O. (1998). Consilience: The unity of knowledge. New York: Random House, Inc.
Wilson, C. (2004). Keeping America's promise: A report on the future of the community
college. Denver: Education Commission of the States.