Before We Spend More

In 1969, when I matriculated at UVA, America’s colleges and universities were in the process of abandoning the time-honored requirement that all undergraduates study a common curriculum during their first two years. 

  

At the time, this was celebrated as a reform – allowing students more freedom to pursue their interests, while ending the privileged status of courses focused on the literature, history, and philosophies of “dead white males”.

As it turned out, of course, the reform proved nothing of the kind.  It was part of an ambitious power grab by colleges and universities.  The goal, as so often with institutions of any kind, was empire-building – in this case, by exponentially expanding college enrollments.

The opportunity was there.  Baby Boomers were reaching college age.  The Vietnam War was at its peak – with nearly half-a-million young men serving in Indochina at any given moment.  And, with draft exemptions for college students, parents who could afford to pay a son’s college costs would certainly do so – rather than see him shipped off to Southeast Asia.

The table was set for colleges and universities to grow – building new dorms and enormous lecture halls; admitting a flood tide of middle-class boys less interested in academics than in avoiding jungle warfare; and financing the whole venture by taking full advantage of generous Federal student aid, made available by LBJ’s Higher Education Act of 1965.

Colleges and universities saw an opportunity to expand their “mission” – to become, not an option for the very bright or very well-off – but a necessary rite of passage for every middle-class youth eager to climb America’s economic ladder.

But this newly swollen generation of undergraduates – skeptical of their elders and, often, unaccustomed to academic rigor – demanded the end of the traditional curriculum.  They wanted courses that were “relevant” – and easier.

Their demands won considerable faculty support.  Professors whose departments were not represented in the old core curriculum – especially the so-called “social sciences” – saw an opportunity to increase enrollments at the expense of English, History, Foreign Languages, Mathematics and “hard sciences” such as biology, physics, chemistry, and astronomy.

Increased departmental enrollments required additional faculty – which meant more institutional power for department chairs, more prestige for their academic fields, and more jobs for their graduate students. 

The result had much to do with shaping the modern university, which – like its dining halls – is now more concerned with catering to students’ tastes than with offering a sound, balanced diet.

Higher education has become a smorgasbord, with departments and star teachers competing for students, while sacrificing rigor for popularity.  This is why, in today’s university, grade inflation makes anything less than a “B+” an occasion for formal complaints, the intimidation of instructors, and the intervention of “helicopter parents”.

The traditional function of a university – the development of a common vocabulary of ideas and cultural references, derived from the study of time-honored classics – has given way to academic faddism.

Departments have become rival fiefdoms, competing for students, prestige and resources.  At today’s university, there’s a major for every taste.

Departments of Economics, Commerce, and Political Science bid for students aspiring to join the global establishment.

The enticements of professional victimhood lure others to such dubious majors such as Women’s Studies, African-American Studies, LGBT Studies, etc.

And for those who prefer frat houses to the library, the mushy majors – Psychology, Sociology, Speech Communication, Sports Management, etc. – offer paths to graduation without excessive mental strain.

As for the old core subjects – other than Mathematics and the “hard” sciences – they, too, have learned to pander. 

What passes for History at today’s university offers a politically-correct, vaguely leftist – yet safely pro-establishment – alternative to the muscular realism which once defined the field.

The study of literature has become more about deconstruction and negation than the pursuit of wisdom, compassion, and beauty.

Philosophy, Rhetoric and Classics languish near death.

The downward race goes on and on, with universities and departments outbidding each other to offer less and less substance to more and more students – with Federal dollars paying the freight.

Having abandoned its traditional role as advocate for classical learning and unifying principles , the modern university wallows in narcissism and cultural diversity.

Yet, in this context, President Obama – among many – speaks of making college free for all who wish to attend.

Really?

If I were President – before handing the universities still more money and power – I’d insist on guaranteeing that they are teaching something worth studying. 

I’d achieve that by requiring that – after two years of undergraduate study – every student seeking further Federal financial aid pass a battery of substantive examinations in the subjects which once formed the core curriculum, not excluding mathematics, a second language, and at least one “hard” science.

To be sure, the Federal government lacks jurisdiction to mandate curriculum at private – or state – institutions of higher education.

But if these institutions covet yet higher enrollments, subsidized by additional Federal spending, we have the right to insist that they teach something worth knowing.