At most colleges and universities, the extracurricular experience is as strictly regulated (if not more so) than in-class academic time.

If the primary function of the university is academic scholarship, it strikes one as rather odd, indeed, almost perverse, that the life of the student outside of the classroom is as heavily regulated as it is on the modern campus.

The “other half” of a college education, that half that took place outside of the classroom that John Henry Cardinal Newman described as so vital, can only happen organically and naturally among students in peer-to-peer settings.

On today’s campus, though, students are trained in the thinking that they can only engage and enliven themselves through participation in clubs, events and programming that the office of student life prescribes.

The concept of the student leader has devolved from undergrads as definers of societal standards and college customs to mere union leaders, bargaining with college staffers for better goods and services.

In other words, it’s through the commonly accepted avenues of power in modern academia that administrators wield their authority to wade into even the most minor aspects of campus life.

This involvement impacts everything from student traditions they might deem harmful to the college’s public image to academic policies proscribed for their lack of perceived inclusiveness for all viewpoints.

As a result of this redefining of student leadership and the loss of the idea of a cohesive student body, the university has been castrated, its meaning debauched to education merely for one’s first job rather than for a lifetime of learning.

I should caution: administrators are not entirely to blame for our predicament. In the 1960s, many of the student instigators in the campus riots of that era demanded academic change, changes to residential life, and new models for student power.

In seeking power over fundamental college standards like academics, they quite often demanded the very kind of centralization that played right into the hands of administrative centralizers.

I believe that most young people, and many of their parents, would prefer the classical model of the university as a beacon of intellectual pluralism and vibrant student experience over the modern soulless the university, which is dominated by ideological purity and centrally managed and operated activities.

A place where the life of the university is treated as much as an exercise in consumer services as it is a place for endless power grabs by student leaders and control by administration is not a formula for a healthy campus.

Student leaders should be reminded of alternatives to the “consumer union” model of leadership. Student leaders can have a substantive, long-term impact on campus by establishing a system of power beyond the reach or sanction of the bureaucracy.

College students founded the fraternity and sorority systems before administrators and student life offices were ever conceived. They sang songs, formed reading societies and sporting groups long before the modern college trained them to first ask, “May I?”

The legal liability revolution may have sparked the need for administrators to strictly regulate what students are permitted to do on campus; today, the undergrad can recreate the “other half” of his education outside of the classroom, off the campus.

A new concept of student empowerment beckons, of student leaders who merit their title by virtue of their relationships to and bonds with their peers and friends, rather than by their proximity to committees endlessly tweak rules and regulations.

This can be accomplished by connecting with local townspeople, businessmen and philanthropists who are interested in underwriting new student ideas and initiatives and by networking with Rotarians and Kiwanians to enrich communities.

In this way, the student entrepreneurs, politicians, poets, researchers, authors, and all those with ambition beyond the imagination of the ordinary man can discover that simple friendship is the kindling that fuels the fire of a life well lived, of men and women well liked, and of a well remembered and beloved college experience.

Thomas A. Shakely is president of The Other Half, a nonprofit for renewal in higher education. He can be reached at tom@tomshakely.com.