Guest Essay by Richard Ekman
It’s easy nowadays to despair about the future of American higher education, but here are some ideas from someone who knows higher education better than anyone else I know,
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I read your latest Then and Now Newsletter with interest and want to add to what you said about West Virginia University’s decision to eliminate foreign languages. You note the possible “domino effect” of this change. From my perspective there are two, separable domino effects. The first is among colleges and universities that for more than a decade have, for financial reasons, been eliminating courses and programs that do not draw many students. The humanities have been big losers in this process, but so have other fields such as physics. It is unfortunate that students at these mainly smaller, not affluent institutions will no longer be able to obtain a well-rounded general education because core subjects have been eliminated from the curriculum. This domino effect shows no sign of abating, sad to say.
The second domino effect is the one you note in your discussion of West Virginia University. WVU, the leading research university in the state, has a mission to advance knowledge at the frontiers of research and to preserve knowledge for the benefit of future generations. While no university can be expected to cover all subjects, WVU’s elimination of several core fields suggests that it no longer aspires to be a true research university. Admittedly, there are among the “flagship” universities in the US, some that are clearly stronger than others. But if leading universities in additional states abandon core subjects, the domino effect you worry about will surely follow.
There are possible solutions. For example, several major universities with distinctive strengths in Southeast Asian studies, when they found it extremely difficult to enroll enough students to offer the full array of language courses in Vietnamese and the other languages on each campus every year, banded together to offer intensive summer courses on a rotating basis. Another example is Harvard’s Ukrainian studies program, for generations arguably the best in the US and perhaps the world. It has never attracted large numbers of students. Yet despite threats to eliminate it because of low enrollment, it has been sustained and now serves as a key resource for American understanding of current affairs. If these less-commonly-taught languages and literatures can be sustained, surely a research university can maintain expertise in the major languages and literatures of the world.
If state governments increasingly decide that they no longer need to have a true research university within the state’s borders, then the second domino effect you fear will follow. The consequences of this domino effect would go well beyond the loss of state pride.”
Richard Ekman
President Emeritus
Council of Independent Colleges