The End of the Liberal Arts?
Thomas C. Reeves, The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

[Editor's Note: This entry also appears HERE on the History News Network.]

Post University in Waterbury, Connecticut, was launched in 1890 as a private university. A century later it affiliated with a Japanese corporation, and in 2004 private investors turned it into a for-profit institution. Post now has 1,400 students and recently raised eyebrows in academia by calling a halt to liberal arts degrees. Majors in English and history and upper-level courses in the liberal arts generally are all to be axed. Henceforth, says the institution’s president, the emphasis will be on majors that “lead to a job.” One long-time Post professor who approves of recent developments asked, “What kind of career does an English major lead to?”

The move to the practical, as historians well know, is hardly new in American higher education. The big swing came in the 1920s, and seems closely linked with the spread of democracy and prosperity. The fashion has simply become more obvious and extreme in recent decades as the demand for cash-related college degrees has grown exceedingly popular. For-profit institutions on the Internet have fueled this trend. Even our most distinguished universities and colleges have tended to lay aside the liberal arts in favor of a wide assortment of vocational majors. In the minds of a great many administrators, trustees, professors, and (above all) students, the hope of financial security is simply more important than the possibility of acquiring knowledge, wisdom, and cultural literacy. Marketing majors do not want to study medieval or even American history, and the will to require them to do so has almost disappeared in academia.

Post hopes to expand its offerings in criminal justice, health services, and sports and entertainment, and wants to improve its equestrian program. Why should someone training to be a television sportscaster study a foreign language, read Chaucer, understand the Reformation, discover the ideas behind the French Revolution, learn about the rise of modern medicine, or study world wars?

There are conservatives who welcome the disappearance of the liberal arts in colleges and universities, arguing that disciplines such as English and history (not to mention the social sciences) have become so dominated by political correctness that students are better off majoring in something more objective as well as practical. The critics have a point about the domination of the Left, of course. It is hard to justify propaganda disguised as scholarship. But their argument has overtones of anti-intellectualism, the greatest enemy of all learning. The study of history and literature can be enormously enriching, especially to the intelligent and perceptive. Thinking carefully and critically about evidence, being able to write solid and objective conclusions, and adding historical perspective to any major contemporary problem will always be valuable, if not to one’s employer then to oneself for a lifetime.

One way to learn history without being brainwashed is to require broad-ranging college degree examinations. Students would then be responsible for reading and learning on their own, and they might learn a great deal. In any case, they would not be permitted, as is now the case, to be wholly ignorant of the past.

The current emphasis on academic vocationalism and fun (e.g. film studies and sports management) will surely not mandate the widespread disappearance of the liberal arts. They form too firm a place in the traditional understanding of what a solid education is about. No institution with integrity would consent to the abolition of history and its kindred disciplines. The tragedy is not that the liberal arts are under attack at places like Post, but that more distinguished colleges and universities in this country do not require them of their graduates. And few educators seem to care. The cultural level in modern America is sinking rapidly, and our institutions of higher education are currently on the “cutting edge” of the descent.

NAS1:40 PM