What Kind of University do Americans Want?

My alma mater, the University of Nebraska at Kearney, has placed several academic programs on the chopping block. Cuts to the fine arts have attracted the most attention: university administration has proposed axing the entire theatre program, and one-third of the music department. But while these cuts attract the most attention (and the most students inclined to protest), less sexy cuts include the entire Geography, Philosophy, and Journalism departments.

Other departments would survive, but in truncated forms. Modern Languages would lose its French and German majors, functionally turning the entire program into a Department of Spanish. The English Department would allow vacant positions to remain unfilled indefinitely, furthering the program’s decline into a Department of Freshman Composition. Although the administration has proposed some Education and Business cuts, two-thirds of proposed cuts come from Arts and Humanities.

Smarter commentators than me have addressed the costs which the campus and community will suffer. UNK, once a top-tier regional university, has slid in rankings since I left, which probably isn’t coincidental with the steep cuts previously imposed on academics, and the numerous tenure-track seats going unfilled. I’d rather focus on another question raised by these draconian cuts: what role will universities, and education generally, serve in coming years?

The university is slashing theatre, an art wherein people attempt to genuinely, realistically depict people dissimilar from themselves. Actors, and the myriad technicians supporting them, try to accurately channel people from other times, nations, or backgrounds, and tell their story respectfully. In other words, theatre cultivates empathy—a trait shared by, say, learning to speak and read French or German. Future students will have fewer opportunities to learn empathy.

Likewise, the university is cutting journalism at a time when Americans are historically ill-informed about world events, and lack of media savvy has produced painful consequences. The geography program is in jeopardy, as our earth faces climate shifts which have the potential to wipe out human civilization. These cuts reflect value judgments from state officials who want education to produce desired outcomes—which, apparently, had better not threaten state values.

A certain subset of American power has always wanted to limit state universities to teaching job skills. That subset, usually but not exclusively conservative, sees “liberal” arts, those knowledge domains which create free thinkers and liberated minds, as luxuries for the minority of students whose families can afford private universities. These self-appointed education pundits don’t want students asking difficult questions, they only want them learning marketable job skills.

We’ve witnessed this, in more dramatic terms, in Florida and Texas. Ron DeSantis’s Florida has banned entire fields of study, while Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma have allowed PragerU Kids, an edutainment company founded by an AM radio host and funded by fracking billionaires, to displace teachers in schools. The removal of entire academic disciplines from UNK, a school which primarily attracts regional students from poor backgrounds, is no less consequential.

Plato and Aristotle, depicted by Raphael

Throughout history, self-appointed polymaths have debated the purpose of education. Plato thought education fitted scholar-kings to rule the benighted masses, while Aristotle thought education made citizens into good people. Thomas Aquinas thought education brought people closer to God, though later scholars have thought education broke the yoke of religious delusion. I suggest there’s no pat resolution to these differences, but education prepares wise people to differ more constructively.

“Liberal” arts, the arts which liberate people—disciplines like literature, history, math, and science—allow students to know themselves. But equally, they allow students to know themselves in context, in their society and economy and culture. Educated citizens have tools necessary to evaluate fair use of power, just distribution of resources, or the difference between truth and lies. It isn’t coincidental that American slaveholders didn’t want their chattel to read.

Higher education shouldn’t be merely cost-efficient. Indeed, for many students, post-secondary education will be their last opportunity in this lifetime to pursue truth, beauty, science, and knowledge for their own sake. This, of course, offends those who believe every item, thought, and hour should have an owner. Students able to ask penetrating questions, will inevitably ask questions that powerful people don’t want answered.

I acknowledge limits exist. Three-fifths of UNK’s budget comes from taxes and endowments, which deserve accountability. While American generational cohorts continue getting smaller, tenured professors remain in harness for decades, narrowing the academic pipeline. These concerns aren’t hay. But the proposed cuts clearly aren’t value-neutral, and serve to limit the kinds of questions students can ask. University administrators should prepare themselves when inquisitive students stop showing up.