Correct Diagnosis of Higher Ed Problems
By 
This professor at the University of Tulsa correctly diagnoses why the liberal arts are being eliminated across American higher education–the rich donors who actually run colleges on boards of trustees don’t care about them and want education to serve as job training programs. And the administrators will do the bidding of their corporate masters.
Our success in Tulsa derives from our old-fashioned approach to liberal learning, which does not attempt to prepare students for any career but equips them to fashion meaningful and deeply fulfilling lives. This classical model of education, found in the work of both Plato and Aristotle, asks students to seek to discover what is true, good and beautiful, and to understand why. It is a truly liberating education because it requires deep and sustained reflection about the ultimate questions of human life. The goal is to achieve a modicum of self-knowledge and wisdom about our own humanity. It certainly captured the hearts and minds of our students.
Sadly, this education has fared less well with my university’s new administration. After the former president and provost departed this year, the newly installed provost informed me that the Honors College must “go in a different direction.” That meant eliminating the entire dean’s office and associated staff positions as well as many of our distinctive programs and — through increased class sizes — effectively ending our small seminars. (A representative of the university told The Times that while it had “restructured” the Honors College, the university believes that academics and student experiences will “remain the same.”)
The stated reason for these cuts was to save money — the same reason the University of Tulsa gave in 2019 when it targeted many of the same traditional forms of liberal learning for elimination. Back then, the administration attempted to turn the university into a vocational school. Those efforts largely failed, in part because of lack of student support for the new model.
An unpleasant truth has emerged in Tulsa over the years. It’s not that traditional liberal learning is out of step with student demand. Instead, it’s out of step with the priorities, values and desires of a powerful board of trustees with no apparent commitment to liberal education, and an administrative class that won’t fight for the liberal arts even when it attracts both students and major financial gifts. The tragedy of the contemporary academy is that even when traditional liberal learning clearly wins with students and donors, it loses with those in power.
This is exactly 100% correct. I never talk about internal academic issues on this blog but who fucking cares, but I am often at odds with my own colleagues over what to do with our declining majors in history. To me, this is a structural question that is affecting every single part of the humanities around American higher education. To some of my colleagues, if we just had a better Facebook page, the kids would totally choose us over nursing or business. The problem with all of this is that even if we did everything amazing and we started getting majors again, they’d just take it all away. For example, I’ve seen multiple schools start criminology programs, including my own. Then when they become successful, the sociology or political science department that started them end up losing because they get cleaved off into their own programs, the sociologists and political scientists are once again told they are worthless, and their idea ends up destroying them in the end.
None of this is any good reason to stop trying to attract majors. But you’d think more academics would apply the structural analysis from their own scholarship to what is happening in higher ed.