Shrinking Campus Programs Is No Conspiracy

By John Hood

RALEIGH — As a passionate aficionado of history, philosophy, and classical civilization — the foreign language I took in college was Ancient Greek — I wince when I read about shrinking departments and disappearing majors in classics, history, and other humanities. Several campuses of the University of North Carolina system have already been through this, others will surely follow, and earlier this year fellow ACC institution Syracuse University eliminated nearly 100 academic programs, including bachelor’s degrees in classics, fine art, French, Italian, and Russian.

I do not, however, attribute such developments to hostile political elites, corporate plutocrats, or clueless philistines. The college and university leaders making these decisions are, for the most part, acting in good faith and in response to inescapable facts.

At Syracuse, for example, 66% of its academic programs served, collectively, only 20% of the university’s students. At some UNC schools that have shuttered undergraduate majors and graduate programs, there simply weren’t enough students enrolled in them to justify the expense. Meanwhile, other programs on campus were exploding. To conduct regular reviews of academic programs, including enrollment trends and per-student costs, and then reallocate campus resources accordingly is hardly a sinister conspiracy. It is essential stewardship.

And, yet, I wince. I understand and sympathize with many of the arguments against these program eliminations and budget adjustments. Pursuing a university education shouldn’t just be about gaining work skills and maximizing future income. Studying the classics, history, literature, philosophy, and other humanities will make you a better person — a better partner, parent, friend, and citizen — regardless of whether it will ever make you a buck. And as a society, to the extent we fail to learn from our past, we imperil our future.

Under different circumstances, these arguments might be more persuasive. But in the actual world we inhabit, the vast majority of college students and their parents do place their highest priority on the earnings potential of attending certain schools and majoring in certain disciplines. The data available to them, and to the rest of us, are already copious, expanding every month, and clearly show large lifetime gains in income from studying computer and information technology, engineering, hard sciences, finance, economics, nursing, and the like. Moreover, some students will enjoy higher incomes and even career satisfaction by obtaining associate’s degrees or community-college certificates in high-demand technical fields and trades than they will by completing four-year degrees in humanities, the arts, and “soft” social sciences such as sociology and anthropology.

What should we do with this information? Wag our fingers disapprovingly at students, parents, and employers? Spend whatever amount of taxpayer money is required to preserve all preexisting academic programs regardless of enrollment? Cap high-demand departments and try to compel would-be technologists, bankers, entrepreneurs, or medical professionals to spend their college years reading Plato and Aristotle in their original language (an experience I greatly enjoyed, by the way).

No. Academic leaders and state policymakers are obliged to make sensible decisions. And as alumni, constituents, and citizens, we are obliged to understand them. That does not require, however, that we lovers of the humanities must throw up our hands in defeat. Eliminating degree programs need not eliminate the study of culture, which Matthew Arnold famously described as “a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits.”

For those attending four-year institutions, their first two years ought to feature immersion in a common core of science, art, and the humanities, as my colleagues at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal recommend. High schoolers should gain a solid grounding in English, history, and civics. As for the rest of us, let’s produce, consume, and celebrate great history, great art, and great ideas. More 1984, less Big Brother. More Odyssey, less Temptation Island.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).