Headline, April 15 2022/ ''' '' A UNIVERSITY A UNIVERSITY '' '''

''' ''A UNIVERSITY 

A UNIVERSITY'' '''

HIGHER EDUCATION - WITH BROAD STUDY IN THE LIBERAL ARTS - is meant to create not merely good workers but also good citizens.

Is a university a university without the liberal arts? Marymount University seems to think so. The institution's trustees voted unanimously in February to eliminate majors in mathematics, art, English, history and philosophy, among other fields.

It is the latest in a very long line of defeats for the liberal arts. From 2013 to 2016, across the United States, 651 foreign language programs were closed, and majors in classics, the arts and religion have frequently been eliminated or, at larger schools, shrunk.

The trend extends from small private schools like Marymount, in Arlington, Va, to the Ivy League and major public universities and shows no sign of stopping.

The steady disinvestment in the liberal arts risks turning America's universities into vocational schools narrowly focused on professional training. Increasingly, they have robust programs in subjects like business, nursing and computer science but less and less funding for and focus on departments of history, literature, philosophy, mathematics and theology.

America's higher education system was founded on the liberal arts and the widespread understanding that mass access to art, culture, language and science was essential if America was to thrive. 

But a bipartisan coalition of politicians and university administrators is now hard at work attacking it -and its essential role in public life - by slashing funding, cutting back on tenure protections, ending faculty governance and imposing narrow ideological limits on what can and can't be taught.

STUDENTS do not select majors and courses in a vacuum. Their choices are downstream of a cultural and political discourse that actively discourages engagement with the humanities.

For decades - and particularly since the 2008 recession - politicians in both parties have mounted a strident campaign against government funding for the liberal arts.

They express a growing disdain for any courses not explicitly tailored to the job market and outright contempt for the role the liberal-arts-focused university has played in American society.

Conservative assaults on higher education and the liberal arts often grab headlines, but cutting education funding - or selectively investing only in vocationally inclined departments - is a bipartisan disease.

Scott Walker's assault on higher education in Wisconsin when he was governor formed the bedrock of many later conservative attacks. His work severely undermined a state university system that was once globally admired.

Mr Walker reportedly attempted to cut phrases like ''the search for truth'' and ''public service'' ''the human condition'' from the University of Wisconsin's official mission statement.

Gov Ron DeSantis's attack on academic freedom in Florida, which has captivated the national press, alongside his preferences for vocational classe, is from the same playbook.

But blue states also regularly cut higher education funding, sometimes with similar rationales. In 2016, Matt Bevin, the Republican Governor of Kentucky at the time suggested that students majoring in the humanities shouldn't receive state funding. 

The current secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, a Democrat, seems to barely disagree. ''Every student should have access to an education that aligns with industry demands and evolves to meet the demand of tomorrow's global work force,'' he wrote in December.

Federal funding reflects those priorities. The National Endowment for the Humanities' budget in 2022 was just $180 million. The National Science Foundation's budget was about 50 times as large, having nearly doubled within two decades.

What were the students meant to think?

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Education and Thinking continues. The World Students Society thanks author Bret C. Devereaux, who is an ancient historian. He is also a teaching assistant professor at North Carolina State University.

With respectful dedication to the Global Founder Framers of The World Students Society - the exclusive ownership of every student in the world - and then Students, Professors and Teachers.

SeeYa all prepare for Great Global Elections on !WOW! : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

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