The Beauty of the American University

And why the young people in your life should go to one

Lately my university has been in the news for one of the least desirable reasons possible (after and clearly following all causes of death and bodily harm). Yes, much worse things include shootings, suicides, sexual assaults, destructive choking infernos in the chemistry labs… and not much else. That’s right, my university is cutting programs.

This is not an unusual situation right now — a single February 20th-dated page of Inside Higher Ed lists these tragedies:

• The University of North Carolina at Greensboro has finalized a controversial plan to cut 20 academic programs

• The University of Toledo is suspending or merging 48 academic programs

• Wright State University, also in Ohio, announced last week that it is cutting 34 academic programs

• Ohio’s Baldwin Wallace University is cutting 23 staff positions, reorganizing 13 academic programs and maintaining a hiring freeze

• Marietta College in Ohio plans to shed 36 jobs over the next three years, cutting a mix of administrative and nontenured faculty positions

• The University of North Carolina at Asheville is planning to eliminate an undetermined number of jobs to address a $6 million deficit

Why is this happening to them, or to us? Some of it is demographics. Universities had to staff up to meet the needs of the huge and college-hungry Millennial generation, but that elephant has moved all the way through the snake: they graduated. Now, at the same time as the country’s pool of 18-year-olds is shrinking, so too shrinks the common feeling that a college education is necessary to a good, middle-class, American life.

I don’t think it will be too many years before large numbers of 20-to-22 year olds decide that lack of a college degree is holding them back in the eyes of their BA-holding credential-loving Millennial bosses — and many people simply develop a craving for classroom learning once they’ve been out of school for a while. Plus, immigration will surely add to the numbers of young adults on the North American continent seeking knowledge, opportunity, new experiences, and dynamic platforms for success — and that’s the unique and globally-valued tradition of the American liberal-arts-based University, my friends!

But those are my rose-colored future-gazing goggles speaking. In the here-and-now, real flesh-and-blood living-breathing students are having their degree programs unsettled, and even-more-frail-and-mortal professors are losing their jobs — and maybe (this is hard for people outside of the weird world of universities to understand) losing their whole careers. A firm like Meta/Facebook can lay of 10,000 people, and those 10,000 people can start looking right away for new jobs.

But for academic positions there are short, yearly hiring “seasons” which result in contracts for positions with start-dates many months in the future — woe betide the English PhD who needs to find a job in January! With luck she may land a full-time position that starts in 18 months. But the competition is fierce, and there are profound biases in favor of the newly minted PhD. Without getting too deep into the weeds — because it is complicated — it is safe to say that bouncing back from a mid-career academic job loss is not easy or really even likely. Drake will give the faculty whose lines are terminated ample time and opportunity, but it might not be enough.

So what can we do to make things better? Well, first, I’d really like to encourage you to tell any younger person who know who is questioning the value of a college education to dang it, just do it. Maybe take a year off first, maybe do something non-traditional, maybe choose a school for reasons others wouldn’t understand, and certainly be cost-conscious when you do it, but do it. And tell them to study what they love, or what fascinates them, not what is supposed to “make more money” (no one knows what that will be in the future anyway). Tell them to go to college because life is short and college is good: you meet interesting people — maybe the best friends you’ll hold dear for the rest of your life — and you’ll be exposed to whole new worlds of thought and beauty. Life will literally get bigger for you, more meaningful, richer. Do it.

While many countries have very narrowly focused ideas of higher education, the world of US Universities is broad and wide and varied. Universities differ more from one another — they have unique cultures, “brands,” and perspectives, and their centers can revolve around different realms: one university might be very Engineering focused, so that even the English classes are structured for engineers, another university might require everyone, even Engineering majors, to take a creative writing or art studio class. The only real unifying US feature is the tendency to, to some degree or another, require not just specialization but “general education” in the Liberal¹ Arts. Poets have to study math. Scientists have to learn design principles.

It can be argued that this approach leads to more invention in the spaces where fields overlap, more interdisciplinary connections, and more creativity, and that creative, interdisciplinary bredth of vision is the “secret sauce” of American innovation. Of course there’s no guarantee: some people go to college, check all the boxes, and get very little out of it. But for many people it’s an experience that transforms us from daydreaming deck-hand to the Captain of our Ship of Life.

What I say here is contrary to much of the muddled scuttlebutt on University life: they say we’re siloed, they say we indoctrintate students into specific and narrow belief systems, that students get radicalized — well, that can happen. But at the same time that some University folk are defending their silos, others are storming the walls. Are there some professors who advocate narrow belief systems? Yes, but then the bell rings, the student takes a 10 minute walk, and enters a different classroom with a different professor who advocates another point of view, or simply advocates a critical approach to all knowledge. Philosophy departments are the bomb yo.

As for students getting radicalized by college: I think people misunderstand what they see. College-age humans are never more than a swift gust away from overstating a half-considered opinion based on exaggerations or misinformation. That’s just human nature — I mean, this is the effect of not professors, but, like, hormones ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Most universities accept the age of development of their students while at the same time respecting their agency as legal adults. The students often read this as the university “not supporting” their Righteous Cause, while outsiders wonder why the university doesn’t shut down the rowdy rabble and tell them to get their butts to class. Universities have to walk a line. It’s like democracy itself: it’s messy, but the mess is worth it.

In the end, people will say, “I experimented with that idea in college”: they spent half a semester as a libertarian, or two years as a Marxist, or one summer as an atheist (and then joined every Christian organization on campus), or their entire sophomore year as a free-market absolutist. (We might also spend some time as a different gender or with a different sexual orientation or with a different name or maybe just a different hairstyle — there are so many ways we experiment with who we are.) But then we get exposed to more ideas, more perspectives… eventually we find ourselves, and the selves we find are older, wiser, and maybe more moderate, but even if not, they are maybe just a bit more committed to the plurality of views in a cosmopolitan society — which is good for everybody, no matter who you are, or what you believe.

So that’s my pitch: talk to the young people in your life. Tell them about the upsides to college. It doesn’t have to be a single thing. In fact, it’s better if it’s not a single thing. Let it be an adventure, a journey. Let it take you places you never dreamed to go because you didn’t even know those places existed. Be the change not by changing the world but by changing how you live in it. And the more young adults go to college, the more likely me and mine will get to keep our careers. I really love my job, folks. Help me keep it. :)

1. Here is the obligatory footnote pointing out that “Liberal Arts” are not politically liberal, and that the usage of “Liberal” here is based in the Latin root “Liber” meaning “free”; a “Liberal Arts” education is an education for a free person, as opposed to an enslaved person, or a serf, etc.