“Shocking,” “brutal” and “short-sighted” are just some of the words academics are using to describe University at Albany-SUNY”™s plan to eliminate certain humanities programs ”“ a nationwide trend that educators say could have costly implications for American business at home and abroad.
Facing a $33.5 million loss in state tax support, UAlbany President George Philip announced recently that degree programs in classics, French, Italian, Russian and theater would be phased out eventually, giving current majors time to earn their bachelor”™s. David Lavallee, the SUNY system”™s provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, estimates that would be by 2014.
Lavallee stresses that neither the State University of New York system ”“ which has seen a loss of close to $600 million in state tax support ”“ or UAlbany in particular is abandoning the humanities, which include philosophy, theology, history, languages and literature, and the arts.
“There”™s some very strong enrollment in English, history and philosophy,” he says. “But there are some areas where enrollment is declining ”“ the classics and certain languages, which tend to be cyclic, with one replacing the other. The concentration of students opting to take Spanish continues.”
Lavallee describes this decline as “a national phenomenon we are going to have to find creative approaches to counter.”
Nor is it limited to the humanities, at least not in the SUNY system. The SUNY Institute of Technology in Marcy, N.Y., is cutting professional programs in such subjects as finance and health management.
“It just depends on where enrollment is declining,” he says.
Time for some ”˜hard choices”™
A large number of schools in the SUNY system will be considering this and getting out the stiletto, if not the ax. What this will mean for the faculty in terms of job loss is still uncertain, although Lavallee says that many teachers will be redeployed while retiring professors will not be replaced.
Some of the reassigned teachers might find themselves working with students enrolled in shared humanities programs within the SUNY system. A UAlbany student interested in French, for instance, might concentrate on an immersion course over the winter or summer at another SUNY school, Lavallee says, or he or she might study the subject online during the school year.
The irony, says Lavallee ”“ a chemist by training who has studied many languages, including French, German and Latin ”“ is that enrollment for first- and second-year language students is up. It”™s the full degree programs that have dropped off.
None of this would be an issue were the economic picture brighter, he says:
“When you have the support, you find you do what you like to do and what you have to do. Now you have to do what is essential.”
His voice skips a beat: “Hard choices,” he adds.
But educators in area colleges and universities whose curricula include a strong complement of humanities say those choices are the wrong ones ”“ particularly if America is going to continue to compete in the global market.
“It”™s quite shocking,” says Melissa Frazier, a professor of Russian language and Russian and comparative literature at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, who has signed online protests and written the state Legislature. “I have a feeling the leadership has lost track of what a university is.”
“It”™s unconscionable for the state Legislature to be pulling back from supporting state schools,” says Robbin Crabtree, dean of College of Arts and Sciences at Fairfield University in Fairfield ”“ particularly, she adds, at a moment of economic crisis when education could be crucial to employment.
“It”™s a brutal calculation,” says Brian Nickerson, dean of the School of Arts and Science at Iona College in New Rochelle.
“It”™s very short-sighted,” says Leon Botstein, president of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., who blames not only the SUNY administration but the humanities faculty:
“The humanities have to make a better case for themselves. They”™ve looked down their noses. They”™ve made themselves insular and hid behind academic writing and speech.”
What about critical thinking?
A college education can earn an individual $40,000 a year more in salary, a third of which goes to the government in income tax, Botstein says, adding, “(College) is not a welfare state.” What the humanities have to do, he says, is demonstrate the ways in which they serve the individual, the nation and the global economy.
You can, for instance, learn enough of a foreign language through a Rosetta Stone-style program to get by, Nickerson says. But without the academic study of the language in the context of its literature and history, “you”™re not learning the subtle, meaningful nuances,” he says, which may make a difference in your business negotiations with the Chinese. No doubt this is why Westchester Community College, part of the SUNY system, houses its foreign language courses with its business programs in the new Gateway Center.
At Fairfield University, Crabtree says, there”™s a synergy between the liberal arts and the professional schools, with nursing and engineering students benefiting intellectually and ethically from a humanities-heavy core curriculum that draws on the school”™s Jesuit heritage.
The humanities, academics say, are key to nurturing what Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called “the integrated self.”
“A liberal arts education is designed to educate the whole person,” Nickerson says. “Remove one area from that, and you lose the focus on the whole person.”
The humanities play a vital role, academics say, in developing critical thinking skills that are necessary not only to an informed electorate but to a fluid work force.
In the new economy, people will hold many jobs and even have many careers over a lifetime, Crabtree says. They won”™t be served by a narrow education.
But Sarah Lawrence”™s Frazier worries about placing so much emphasis on the humanities”™ value to other fields.
“The study of language is important in itself,” Frazier says, because it teaches you not only how others think in their language but how you think in your own. Once you try to prove something is relevant, she adds, you have to show that everything is.
And yet, SUNY”™s Lavallee says that”™s precisely what administration and faculty may have to do:
“There has to be a compelling case made to students.”
