“I am appalled that Marymount’s board of trustees has voted to eliminate these programs and I certainly see this as part of the larger erosion of the liberal arts across the country.”
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do in high school and had resigned myself to going into college with a random major and probably changing it five different times,” said Ms. Ash, who attended Kentucky’s private Christian Academy of Louisville. “I took a design-thinking class right before senior year and learned that you can have a career in creativity and absolutely fell in love.”
And while no government agency tracks liberal arts enrollment as distinct from other programs, officials in higher education say the pandemic shutdowns accelerated the trend by decreasing interest in humanities majors. Colleges and universities nationwide have cut their humanities programs, and several liberal arts schools have closed in recent years.
“Increasingly, we are seeing university administrations who seem to believe that the role of the university is to provide students with vocational training only,” Ms. Economos said. “It’s also shocking that Marymount has begun advertising itself as STEM-centered and yet has decided to eliminate its math program as part of these cuts.”
The value of “knowledge for its own sake,” as ancient Greeks understood a classical education, lies in having surgeons who know ethics, defense attorneys who have mastered public speaking and politicians well-versed in history and political science.According to an analysis of federal data by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, 861 institutions ceased operating between 2004 and 2021.
In addition to private schools closing, public universities have increasingly ended the core distribution requirements that once required all undergraduates to take humanities courses. “My college experience has been wonderful thus far,” said Ellie Richards, a sophomore majoring in English and philosophy at the University of Dallas, a Catholic school. “I’ve spent hours in dynamic conversation over Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy,’ Aristotle’s ‘Nicomachean Ethics,’ and Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’ with peers from all different majors.”“My primary concern is to be a well-formed human being and to learn to write, read converse, and think well,” Ms. Richards said.
“Humanities and social science majors are on the decline, with fewer than 30% of students pursuing them,” said Ms. Strogov, whose New York-based company preps high schoolers for college admissions. Carnegie Mellon University in February announced it had received a $150 million gift to endow scholarships for STEM graduate students from underrepresented racial minorities, women and first-generation college students.
“Higher education is supposed to save your soul, enlarge your mind and help you tell when a man is talking nonsense,” Mr. Bennett said in an interview. “Now it’s generating nonsense.”
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