“The tragedy of the contemporary academy is that even when traditional liberal learning clearly wins with students and donors, it loses with those in power.”

That’s Jennifer Frey, who was lured away from her position at the University of South Carolina a couple of years ago to become the inaugural dean of the University of Tulsa’s Honors College, writing in the New York Times.

Frey organized the new Honors College around the ideal of a traditional liberal arts education, “focused on studying the classic texts of the Western tradition.”

She writes:

The curriculum I helped build and teach required students to read thousands of pages of difficult material every semester, decipher historical texts across disciplines and genres and debate ideas vigorously and civilly in small, Socratic seminars. It was tremendously popular among students, who not only do the reading but also engage in rigorous and lively conversations across deep differences in seminars, hallways and dorms. For the past two years, we attracted over a quarter of each freshman class to this reading-heavy, humanities-focused curriculum.

Some other successes of the Honors College are detailed in a thread from Frey on X.com.

Her op-ed today follows announcements by the university’s new administration that the Honors College must “go in a different direction.” Frey says: “That meant eliminating the entire dean’s office and associated staff positions as well as many of our distinctive programs and—through increased class sizes—effectively ending our small seminars.”

Frey’s thesis is that students are hungry for the kind of education her college offered: “When students realize their own humanity is at stake in their education, they are deeply invested in it.” Why is the administration pushing for change?

The stated reason for these cuts was to save money — the same reason the University of Tulsa gave in 2019 when it targeted many of the same traditional forms of liberal learning for elimination. Back then, the administration attempted to turn the university into a vocational school. Those efforts largely failed, in part because of lack of student support for the new model. [see also here and here]

It’s the administrative class and the board of trustees, she says, who are the problem:

An unpleasant truth has emerged in Tulsa over the years. It’s not that traditional liberal learning is out of step with student demand. Instead, it’s out of step with the priorities, values and desires of a powerful board of trustees with no apparent commitment to liberal education, and an administrative class that won’t fight for the liberal arts even when it attracts both students and major financial gifts. The tragedy of the contemporary academy is that even when traditional liberal learning clearly wins with students and donors, it loses with those in power.

That last sentence is puzzling. It may describe what happened in Tulsa (I’m in no position to second guess Frey), but as an account of a more general phenomenon—“the tragedy of the contemporary academy”—it raises some questions.

First, is it actually what’s going on? Are the enrollment and budgetary (not to mention educational) benefits of the liberal arts “clear” to administrators and trustees who are nonetheless deciding not to support them?

If so, then, second, why? Why would trustees and upper administrators reject liberal arts even when it “clearly wins with students and donors”? What’s a plausible, non-caricaturing, non-conspiratorial explanation for such behavior?

My concern, in regard to the first question, is that the enrollment and budgetary effects are not clear. They may have been in regard to Frey’s Honors College, but that was a bit of an experiment. How many other similar experiments have there been? How successful have they been? That a focus on the traditional liberal arts could be a winning strategy for schools concerned with their bottom lines, if true, may not be sufficiently well known, and is an idea that has to compete with a broader culture that’s constantly hurling contrary messages at universities.

In regard to the second, one possible answer is: other things “win with students and donors” more. Is that true?

Another possible answer has to do with the trustee system. Most university trustees come from the business world, and perhaps, on average, they are more inclined to want university education to be more obviously about funneling people into jobs (and so favoring programs like engineering, business, nursing, etc.).

What’s frustrating here is that both questions suggest that proponents of the liberal arts have to do more to demonstrate the economic value of a liberal arts education. Yet, as I’ve noted elsewhere, too much of an emphasis on the economic benefits of a liberal arts education may be self-undermining, as it contributes to eroding students’ capacity for valuing (and doing) the work such an education asks of them.

Suggestions on effectively threading that needle are welcome, as are entirely different takes on all of this.

I will admit that part of me is skeptical that widespread higher education in the liberal arts can be sustained. Appreciating its value and reaping its benefits, like many other good things, requires both patience and and a kind of comfort with uncertainty, and today’s culture and technology do not incline people, or institutions, to either.